Country houses and contemporary art
One of the most intriguing narratives in contemporary British art is the steady transformation of Damien Hirst from enfant terrible into Grand Old Man. Few contemporary artists have placed themselves so unequivocally in the old-master tradition. Early works such as A thousand years (1990), a vitrine containing a cow’s head, maggots and flies, demonstrated an engagement with themes of mortality and decay that have a long ancestry in Western art, as the exhibition of the work alongside five triptychs by Francis Bacon at the Gagosian Gallery, London, in 2006, made strikingly obvious.1
Cézanne’s portraits. London
In his portraits Paul Cézanne avoided all the accepted attributes of the genre as it was understood in the late nineteenth century. His aesthetic programme ruled out attempts at ‘getting a likeness’, even if his images may be ‘like’ his sitters. One remembers here his comment to Ambroise Vollard of the ‘horrible resemblance’ of most conventional art as seen in the ‘Salon de M. Bouguereau’. He had no interest in social context; there are almost no telling settings for his figures; and he had no desire to flatter or to give an exaggeratedly ‘public’ characterisation.
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‘Qualis vita, finis ita’: The life and death of Margaret Lemon, mistress of Van Dyck
By Hilary Maddicott -
Hans Memling’s Nájera altarpiece: new documentary evidence
By Bart Fransen -
The patron of Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Last Judgment’ triptych in Vienna
By Jos Koldeweij,Luuk Hoogstede,Matthijs Ilsink,Koen Janssens,Nouchka de Keyser,Rik Klein Gotink,Stijn Legrand,Julia M. Nauhaus,Geert van der Snickt,Ron Spronk -
Codde not Brekelenkam: a case of mistaken identity
By Jochai Rosen -
Bringing Mondrian’s ‘Lozenge composition with yellow lines’ to the Netherlands
By Lieke Wijnia -
The Art of Conservation XIV. Accommodating change: twentieth-century American artists and conservators
By Bradford A. Epley
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Cornelis van Poelenburch, 1594/95–1667: The Paintings. By Nicolette Sluijter-Seijffert
By Luuk Pijl -
Jan Brueghel and the Senses of Scale. By Elizabeth Alice Honig
By Iain Buchanan -
Jacob Duck, c.1600–1667: Catalogue Raisonné (OCULI: Studies in the Arts of the Low Countries, 16). By Jochai Rosen
By Lara Yeager-Crasselt -
Rubens. Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XI). By Elizabeth McGrath, Gregory Martin, Fiona Healy, Bert Schepers, Carl Van de Velde and Karolien De Clippel
By Lisa Rosenthal -
The Age of Rubens: Diplomacy, Dynastic Politics and the Visual Arts in Early Seventeenth-century Europe. Edited by Luc Duerloo and Malcolm Smuts
By Gregory Martin -
Art Royal: Meisterzeichnungen aus dem Louvre. By Regina Kaltenbrunner, Peter Laub and Eva Léchelle
By Gauvin Alexander Bailey -
Apethorpe: The Story of an English Country House. Edited by Kathryn A. Morrison
By Christopher Ridgway -
Clothing Art: The Visual Culture of Fashion 1600–1914. By Aileen Ribeiro
By Sanda Miller -
Barbara Hepworth: The Sculptor in the Studio. By Sophie Bowness
By Jeremy Lewison
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Michelangelo in New York
By Matthias Wivel -
Rembrandt’s master pupils. Amsterdam
By Christopher Brown -
Bernini. Rome
By Carlo Milano -
Monochrome. London
By Katharine Stahlbuhk -
Canova, Hayez and Cicognara. Venice
By Philip Rylands -
Salon de la Rose Croix. New York and Venice
By Rachel Sloan -
Cézanne’s portraits. London
By Richard Shone -
Modigliani. London
By Sarah Whitfield -
Rufino Tamayo. Washington
By Edward J. Sullivan -
Rachel Whiteread. London
By Michael Archer -
Laura Owens. New York
By Andrew Hunt