Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds’s revival
In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…
The art of pregnancy
Pregnancy has always been a public spectacle – and as the Foundling Museum’s new exhibition shows, a dangerous one
Cracking jokes with Dr Johnson
I cast my Readers under two general Divisions, the Mercurial and the Saturnine. The first are the gay part of…
Fifty-one hours in Dr Johnson’s rumbustious company
When a man is tired of Samuel Johnson, he’s tired of life. James Boswell intended his biography of Dr Johnson,…
A dazzling vision
There are a number of reports by his contemporaries of Thomas Gainsborough at work. They make you realise what a…
Why do some museums insist on playing piped music into exhibitions?
There was a genteel brouhaha last year — leaders in the Times, letters to the Telegraph, tutting in the galleries…
Francis Barber: reluctant member of Dr Johnson’s mad ménage
We know a great deal about Samuel Johnson and virtually nothing about his Jamaican servant, Francis Barber. The few facts…
Rubens and His Legacy at the Royal Academy reviewed: his imitators fall short of their master miserably
The main spring offering at the Royal Academy, Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cézanne, teaches two useful lessons.…
