Category: Exhibitions
'Peaks and Glaciers'
January 22 2018
Picture: John Mitchell Fine Paintings
It may be because I'm half Swiss, but I've always had a thing for snowy pictures. So allow me to plug an annual selling exhibition in London, Peaks and Glaciers, put on by my friends William and James Mitchell on Avery Row, just off Bond St. William is an intrepid climber. The exhibition opens on 25th Jan, and runs until 9th March. Catalogue and further details here.
William Blake at Petworth (ctd.)
January 15 2018
Picture: NPG
The William Blake exhibition at Petworth is now open; Maev Kennedy has had a preview in The Guardian.
Fakes, fakes everywhere? (ctd.)
January 10 2018
Video: Palazzo Ducale, Genoa
Last year, an exhibition of works by Modigliani was put on with great fanfare at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Alas, all but one of them were (as the Telegraph reports) fake, and the exhibition was closed down.
I suspect most of you can tell from the exhibition video above that the pictures are not only fake, but are really bad fakes. How did they ever slip through the net?
The Telegraph adds:
Three people are now under investigation for the alleged fakes, including Rudy Chiappini, the curator of the art exhibition, and Joseph Guttmann, a Hungarian art dealer who owns 11 of the works.
You can see a video of Chiappini saying the works are not fake here.
Always nteresting to see what other exhibitions people have been involved with.
Zurburan in the US
January 8 2018
Video: Meadows Museum
The Auckland Castle Zurburans are on tour in the US. Their next stop will be at the Frick in New York (which doesn't allow children in) from 31st Jan to 22nd April. More here.
Until recently they've been at the Meadows Museum in Dallas, which made the above, excellent video (which I've only just seen - sorry).
'Charles II - Art & Power' review
December 15 2017
Picture: Her Majesty the Queen/Royal Collection Trust
Here's my Financial Times review of the new Royal Collection exhibition on Charles II.
Have you seen this missing Freda Kahlo?
December 4 2017
Picture: AFP
A new exhibition in Poland highlights the fact that the above painting by Freda Kahlo, The Wounded Table, has been missing since it was sent to Warsaw for an exhibition in 1955. More here.
Bowes Museum show in London (ctd.)
October 18 2017
Video: Wallace Collection
Here's Wallace Collection director Xavier Bray on some highlights of the Wallace's new exhibition featuring loaned Spanish paintings from the Bowes Museum.
More museum directors should do this - five minutes and a iPhone is all you need!
New Rubens portrait exhibition
October 5 2017
Video: Grand Palais
I'll definitely be getting on a plane for this; a new exhibition on Rubens' royal portraits at the Musee du Luxembourg. Here's the blurb:
Rubens was, in all likelihood a little reluctantly, a prolific court portraitist. With portraits of Philippe IV, Louis XIII and Marie de’ Medici and other royal figures by the artist and some of his famous contemporaries (Pourbus, Champaigne, Velázquez, Van Dyck, etc.), the exhibition introduces visitors to the stately environment of 17th century Europe’s most illustrious courts.
It's open as of yesterday until the 14th January. Open daily till 7pm, and on Fridays till 10pm. UK museums keen on closing before 6pm take note!
More here.
Update - a reader writes:
And Italian museums used to be notorious for odd and restrictive opening hours; some still are; but others are on the wave of the future: the fabulous Museo del Opera del Duomo in Florence is open every day from 9:00 to 19:00 (closed only one Tuesday a month for necessary deep cleaning), and the Palazzo Strozzi’s exhibitions are open every day from 10:00 to 20:00 and on Thursdays to 23:00.
Alma-Tadema in London
September 29 2017
Video: Leighton House Museum
There's just a month left to see the well-received Alma-Tadema exhibition at the Leighton House museum in London:
Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity (7 July - 29 October 2017) is the largest exhibition devoted to the celebrated Victorian artist held in London since 1913. The show explores Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s fascination with the representation of domestic life in antiquity and how this interest related to his own domestic circumstances expressed through the two remarkable studio-houses that he created in St John’s Wood together with his wife Laura and daughters.
New Joseph Highmore exhibition
September 28 2017
Picture: Foundling Museum
This is interesting; the first exhibition on Joseph Highmore since 1963 will open tomorrow at the Foundling Museum in London. Says the blurb;
Curated by Dr Jacqueline Riding, Basic Instincts explores Georgian attitudes to love, desire and female respectability through the radical paintings of Joseph Highmore.
A highly successful artist and Governor of London’s Foundling Hospital, Joseph Highmore (1692-1780) is best known as a portrait painter of the Georgian middle class. However, during the 1740s his art radically shifted, reflecting his engagement with the work of the new Foundling Hospital and its mission to support desperate and abused women. Highmore’s involvement with the Hospital sparked engagement with issues around women’s vulnerability to sexual assault and society’s unwillingness to support them, culminating in a work of exceptional power, The Angel of Mercy.
Basic Instincts is the first major Highmore exhibition for 50 years and explores this decade of disruptive social commentary in his art. Amongst the works on display are four paintings from a series of twelve, inspired by Samuel Richardson’s international bestseller, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, explicitly making reference to the abuse and sexual violence at the core of the novel. On public display in the UK for the first time as part of Basic Instincts is a remarkable painting that still retains the power to shock. The Angel of Mercy (c.1746) depicts a desperate mother in the act of killing her baby, with the distant Foundling Hospital presented as the alternative. Set among Highmore’s tender portraits of mothers and children, family and friends, this show uniquely demonstrates the artist’s depth and variety.
More here in The Guardian, and details on opening times etc, here.
William Blake at Petworth
September 26 2017
Picture: NPG
The National Trust put on some fascinating exhibitions at Petworth in Sussex, and the latest of these will be one on William Blake, opening in January. Says the NT press release:
The new exhibition is the first to bring together many of the works that were inspired by Blake’s experience of living in Sussex, including paintings commissioned by the Wyndham family, owners of Petworth, and rare hand-coloured relief etchings of Blake’s illustrated epic poem Milton.
Sussex is the only area outside London that Blake ever lived, spending three years there from 1800 to 1803 with his wife Catherine, renting a cottage in Felpham that he described as ‘the sweetest spot on Earth’.
Paintings to go on display include extraordinary works by Blake on loan from the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Tate, as well as three paintings by Blake from the Petworth collection and another on loan from the National Trust’s Arlington Court in Devon.
Of the paintings to come from the Petworth collection, two were commissioned by Elizabeth Ilive, mistress and then wife to George Wyndham, the 3rd Earl of Egremont. The third was purchased by the 3rd Earl from the artist’s widow as a philanthropic gesture. Descendants of the 3rd Earl donated the 17th-century mansion to the National Trust in 1947.
The exhibition will run from 13th Jan to 25th March.
Van Dyck exhibition in Munich
September 13 2017
Picture: Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Exciting news - a major new Van Dyck exhibition is to be held at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in late 2019. Says the museum's website:
The exhibition, which will also include loans from international museums, creates a multidimensional portrait of Van Dyck, who carved out his own style in his younger years precisely through his confrontation with the almost overpowering artistic persona of Peter Paul Rubens.
It will run from 1.10.19 to 1.2.20, and AHN has already booked tickets.
Flemish portraits 1400-1700
September 13 2017
Picture: via Mauritshuis
The Mauritshuis in The Hague has a new exhibition of Flemish portraits on loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the KMSKA. Says the Mauritshuis website:
The exhibition includes major works by Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Pieter Pourbus, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. Remarkably, almost all the sitters can be identified. This is why the exhibition will not only highlight what makes Flemish portraits so special, but also who appears in the pictures and how they wanted to be viewed.
The KMSKA is currently closed for refurbishment, and is planned to reopen in 2019. It has been closed since 2011 - and is further proof that museums should never entirely close for refurbishment, as it's a recipe for delays and a loss of momentum. That said, the KMSKA has been quite good at putting works from its collection on loan elsewhere.
Waldemar on the NPG's 'Encounter'
September 13 2017
Picture: BG
If you haven't read it, the Great Waldemar's succinct review of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition, The Encounter, spares no punches:
Not for the first time in my life, as I left the new show at the National Portrait Gallery, I was moved to mutter: “Thank heavens for the Queen.” Once again, Her Majesty had saved the day. Were it not for her loan of a wall full of commanding Holbein drawings from the Royal Collection to the exhibition entitled The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt, that exhibition would be a poor event. Short on quality. Short on direction.
It is the fate of the National Portrait Gallery to be searching continuously for angles. Portraiture is, after all, a straightforward affair. Over here you have the artist. Over there you have the sitter. One records the other. And that’s it. Finding inventive ways to present this exchange is, therefore, a museum challenge that encourages much smoking of mirrors.
The problem with the angle attempted by The Encounter is that it isn’t an angle. Every portrait ever produced is the result of an encounter — it’s all a portrait can be. Putting a definite article in front is not enough to give this effort any true purpose or meaning. As for the subtitle, Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt, it’s a tease. Neither Leonardo nor Rembrandt is represented here in a significant fashion. If you ignore these directional problems, you are left with a drawing show in which various Old Masters of various levels of talent have been arranged in a string of sections that are supposed to frame telling aspects of Old Master portraiture. But don’t.
'The Encounter' at the NPG
August 23 2017
Video: NPG
I enjoyed the new Old Master drawings exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It's on until 22nd October. There are a number of connoisseurial conundrums, including the below 'Venetian School' portrait drawing of the early 1500s, which is nagging me because I'm sure I've seen him before somewhere. Anybody got any ideas? It was once called Durer.
There were other conundrum drawings in the show, but I was stopped from taking photos, even though all the works are of course out of copyright. Meanwhile, in the next door gallery at the NPG you could take photos to your heart's content, even though all the works were in copyright. I suppose the argument is that some lenders insist on not allowing photography. In which case, major institutions like the NPG, which allow photography everywhere else in their galleries, should simply refuse to borrow from these lenders.
Curiously, the catalogue for the exhibition contains (as numbered catalogue entries) two oil sketches, one of which, attributed to Rubens, I have long wanted to see. But they were not included in the actual exhibition. I've never seen this before.
Richard Waitt exhibition
August 7 2017
Picture: Grantown Museum
Bravo to Bonhams, who are sponsoring an exhibition of the Scottish portrait artist Richard Waitt. The Grantown museum in Scotland has assembled Waitt's portraits of Grant clan. More here.
Antoon in Scotland!
July 25 2017
Video: AHN
The National Portrait Gallery's Van Dyck self-portrait has finally made it up here to Scotland, on the last leg of its three year UK-wide tour. And poor Antoon, for he has been slotted into a very curious little show at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, called 'Looking Good - the Male Gaze from Van Dyck to Lucian Freud'. The blurb tells us that the exhibition:
[...] considers the theme of male image, identity and appearance from the 16th century to the present day. The selection of portraits, from the National Galleries of Scotland and National Portrait Gallery, London collections will explore the elaborate hairstyles and fashions of the courtiers and cavaliers of the 16th and 17th centuries; the emergence of the dandy in the early 18th century; the rise of celebrity and the interest in male beauty and personal grooming; and representations of gender and sexuality.
But alas it doesn't really work. The aim, and the wordy exhibition texts, try to tick every right-on box under the sun, but the finished result doesn't deliver. For a start the exhibition is too small, with only 28 objects of multiple media spread over five centuries, and cannot begin to 'explore' all the themes that have been wedged into its remit. It's hung in one of the SNPG's smaller rooms, used for minor displays, and everything feels too scattergun; Grayson Perry is predictably wheeled out as a transvestite, and there's David Beckham with great hair. Worst of all, there's an oppressively terrible 'soundscape' blaring out, whether you want to hear it or not. In the video above you can hear the blessed moment of silence when the room warden came to switch the music off (we visited just before closing time).
This exhibition feels like the result of museum group-think - but nobody has thought of the poor visitor. If you're in Scotland, and wanted to come and see the Van Dyck self-portrait, learn more about the artist, the time in which he lived and worked, and how he painted and why, then you would leave this show none the wiser. Finally, the lighting is dreadful, as you can see with the darkened full-length Mytens in the above video. The National Portrait Gallery's £10m Van Dyck deserves better.
The show is open till 1st October. More here.
Update - there's a more enthusiastic review of the show in Apollo, here.
Sargent watercolours
July 6 2017
Video: Dulwich Picture Gallery
Lachlan Goudie guides us around the new Sargent watercolour exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery. There was a good review of the show from Jackie Wulschlager in the FT, here.
Bowie's Tintoretto at the Rubenshuis Museum
July 6 2017
Video: Antwerp Museums
Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to the unveiling of a new loan at the Rubenshuis museum in Antwerp (one of AHN's favourite museums, as regular readers will know). There was a wonderful concert of period music, played on 'instrumenti originale'.
The painting, of St Catherine, was one of the first artworks bought by David Bowie, and was sold with his collection last year in London by Sotheby's. It didn't fetch a great deal, to be honest (£191k), as its status was somewhat misunderstood - some suggested it was merely a studio piece. But new research has revealed that in fact it was a major commission for Tintoretto, in competition with Veronese, for a church in St Mark's square in Venice. And new analysis such as infra-red drawing has revealed numerous pentimenti, and astonishing underdrawing, which confirms it as an autograph work by Tintoretto. Eventually, it is hoped that a new campaign of conservation will remove any old overpaint. It has been sympathetically re-framed.
For now, though, the painting looks fantastic at the Rubenshuis - Rubens of course being a great admirer of Tintoretto. A new book on the painting will further explore Rubens' interest in Tintoretto, and how he borrowed many of Tintoretto's poses. Also, it turns out that David Bowie was a frequent visitor of the Rubenshuis - so this all has a serendipitous feel to it, especially when you consider that the private collector who bought the painting in London only found out about it three hours before it was due to sell. And did you know that Bowie's music label was called 'Tintoretto Music'?
I'll post more details on this painting soon, with photos of the infra-red etc, showing the under-drawing.
Bowes museum show in London
June 6 2017
Video: National Gallery
This September the Wallace Collection in London will host an exhibition of Spanish paintings on loan from the Bowes Museum. In the video above, the Wallace's new director, Xavier Bray, tells us more.
Incidentally, although the National Gallery's slick video about their forthcoming exhibitions (below) is excellently made and well produced, the Wallace's video, shot on a phone in a few minutes, is no less effective. AHN urges more museums to try this approach, especially if you don't have a large media budget. Stick a short film on Twitter and You Tube, and you're off. Of course, Bray makes it look easier than it is - but also shows us how important it is for museums to have effective and enthusiastic communicators in leadership roles.
