'Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art' at the National Gallery

Eugene Delacroix was a revolutionary painter and pioneer of French Romanticism who covered all human emotion in his art. A champion of the avant-garde, Delacroix was a painter of literary, biblical and historical scenes, of flowers, love, violence and war.
While not the most fashionable of 19th century French artists today, Delacroix was a key figure for his contemporaries including Courbet and Gericault and had a profound influence on later artists, such as Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse and Kandinsky, all of whom are included in the exhibition.
Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art, National Gallery
Opens on 17th February and runs until 22nd May

'Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse'

The Royal Academy's beautiful show of garden painters features passionate horticulturists such as Monet, Kandinsky, Nolde and Lieberman, as well as artists for whom the garden provided powerful subject matter, including Matisse, Singer Sargent, Pissarro and Van Gogh.
Monet's monumental paintings of his garden at Giverny are shown alongside Kandinsky's pioneering semi-abstract paintings of his garden at Murnau, Nolde's maginifcent expressionist landscapes and flower paintings based on his gardens at Seebull and Liebermann's impressionist canvases of his grand Berlin garden.
A must-see exhibition, which not only traces the development of European modern art, but will be uplifting during the dreary winter months!
At the Royal Academy, from 30th January until 20th April 2016
Royal Academy of Arts

Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer

The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, has today opened a new exhibition showing almost 30 of the finest 17th & 18th century Dutch paintings in the Royal Collection, including Vermeer's The Music Lesson.
Masterpieces by Rembrandt, Jan Steen and Pieter de Hooch are also noteable in this show of genre paintings which explore themes typical of the Dutch Golden Age, such as love, music and drinking.

Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace

Frank Auerbach at Tate Britain

A major retrospective of the celebrated British artist Frank Auerbach, regarded by many as our greatest living painter, is currently on show at Tate Britain.
Most of the 70 paintings in the exhibition, which celebrates his 84th birthday, are loans from private collections and have rarely been seen in public. The tactile, thick impasto paintings are all of friends and family and the urban landscape of Camden town, London, his home for the last 50 years.
Frank Auerbach

Goya: The Portraits, National Gallery

Francisco da Goya was a portraitist who captured the likeness of a wide range of sitters, from friends to royalty, broke traditional boundaries of technique and offered unconventional portrait types which convey personality and pyschological insight.
The theme of the National Gallery exhibition is Goya's reappraisal as a portraitist and 70 works, many never seen before in London, are on display. His career is traced from the court of Charles III in Madrid, his appointment as Court Painter to Charles IV, working for Joseph Bonaparte and his final years in France.
Goya: The Portraits, National Gallery, until 10th January 2016

National Gallery Strike Ended!

As of today, Monday 5th October, the National Gallery is fully open to the public, as staff return to work. An agreement has been reached to end the dispute over privatisation of visitor and security services.

Bridget Riley: Learning from Seurat

Bridget Riley: Learning from Seurat, a one-room display at the Courtauld Gallery, explores the influence of the paintings of the 19th century Post-Impressionist artist George Seurat on the abstract work of Bridget Riley, a contemporary British artist, born in 1931. Both artists share an interest in how the eye works and how we mix colours in our minds and this stunning small exhibition certainly plays with our visual perception!

http://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/

'Titian at Apsley'

Three paintings which have recently been revealed to be by Titian are on display in a small exhibition at Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, until the end of October. The paintings were given to the Duke of Wellington, who lived at Apsley House, by the King of Spain from the Spanish Royal collection, after Wellington defeated Napolean's brother Joseph Bonaparte in 1813 at Vitoria, Spain. Conservation work by English Heritage, the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge and the Prado in Madrid has confirmed that each work, previoulsy believed to be copies or by later followers, is a genuine Titian.

Titian conservation.jpg
Source: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/p...

Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World

My "must see" exhibition for the summer in London is Barbara Hepworth at Tate Britain until 25th October. It includes iconic Hepworth works in wood, stone and bronze alongside photos, textiles, collage and film, with examples of work by her peers, including Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein. It is almost 50 years since London has seen a Barbara Hepworth retrospective, which makes this exhibition all the more welcome!
http://www.tate.org.uk

Seating at the Galleries

Although some of the galleries have benches, folding seats are available on request from the Information Desks in both the National Gallery and Tate Britain. If you would like to borrow a free stool for one of our Gallery Tours please do so before the Talk starts at 10.30am.

Recommended Summer Reading

I recommend the following books about artists which I have read recently.

Artists' Biographies

  • "Turner" by Peter Ackroyd (2006)
  • "Blake" by Peter Ackroyd (1999)
  • "Leonardo da Vinci" by Charles Nicholl (2005)
  • "Caravaggio" by Andrew Graham-Dixon (2011)

Historical Fiction about Artists

  • "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Tracy Chevalier (2000)- Vermeer
  • "Burning Bright" by Tracy Chevalier (2008) - William Blake

Courtauld Gallery Course Coming Soon

Starting in the Autumn, I will be introducing a new Gallery Talks course once a month on Thursdays at the The Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House.
The Courtauld is a renowned art collection originally built up by the industrial magnate Samuel Courtauld in the 1920s. The core of the collection is 19th century Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, reflecting Samuel Courtauld's interests and has since been expanded by gifts and bequests to embrace important works from the 14th to 20th centuries.

www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/

Selfie Sticks banned at the National Gallery!

As reported by the BBC today (Wednesday 11th March), the National Gallery has banned selfie sticks. (The selfie stick is an elongated pole on which a camera or mobile phone can be attached to take a better photo.)

The National Gallery ban follows other galleries around the world, including the Smithsonian museums in Washington.