Matisse

Is my phobia of upmarket restaurants misplaced?

26 September 2020 9:00 am

Scotching my bright idea of a stiff gin for Dutch courage in the bar across the road, Catriona bounded straight…

We're wrong to think the impressionists were chocolate boxy

22 August 2020 9:00 am

One Sunday evening in the autumn of 1888 Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin went for a walk. They headed…

‘The Conversation’, by Henri Matisse, 1908–1912, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

It is not the masterpieces that were lost, but the collectors, Natalya Semenova rights a wrong

6 October 2018 9:00 am

It is not as surprising at it sounds that two of the greatest collectors of modern art should have been…

Split decision

5 October 2017 2:00 pm

Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…

Matisse’s ‘Still Life with Shell’ (1940) with his beloved chocolate pot, top left

Object lesson

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Why did Henri Matisse not play chess? It’s a question, perhaps, that few have ever pondered. Yet the great artist…

Andrew Marr’s diary: The summer of Corbyn — and other things we didn’t see coming

22 August 2015 9:00 am

This is the Corbyn summer. From the perspective of a short holiday, my overwhelming feeling is one of despair at…

Andrew Marr’s diary: Why this is such a tooth-grindingly awful election

11 April 2015 9:00 am

So far, what an infuriating election campaign. We have the most extraordinary array of digital, paper and broadcasting media at…

‘Two Figures in a Room’, 1959, by Francis Bacon

The dos and don’ts of the Russian art scene

28 February 2015 9:00 am

They’re doing fantastic deals on five-star hotels in St Petersburg the weekend the Francis Bacon exhibition opens at the Hermitage.…

‘Rain, Steam and Speed — The Great Western Railway’, 1844, by J.M.W. Turner

Tate Britain’s Turner show reveals an old master - though the Spectator didn’t think so at the time

27 September 2014 9:00 am

Juvenilia is the work produced during an artist’s youth. It would seem logical to think, therefore, that an artist’s output…

‘Moonrise and Pale Dancer’ by Derek Hyatt

The man who brought Cubism to New York

20 September 2014 9:00 am

The American Jewish artist Max Weber (1881–1961) was born in Belostok in Russia (now Bialystok in Poland), and although he…

‘La Guingette à Montmartre’ by Van Gogh (1886)

Exactly how much fun was it being an impoverished artist in Paris?

30 August 2014 9:00 am

What he really wanted, Picasso once remarked, was to live ‘like a pauper, but with plenty of money’. It sounds…

Farewell, Speccie

19 July 2014 9:00 am

So we are all going to have to pay for fatties to have stomach bands and bypasses, are we? It…

The curator brain drain

5 April 2014 9:00 am

Britain may have educated the most talented curators, but, as Jack Wakefield says, we can’t always keep them

Unmissable: ‘The Horse, the Rider and the Clown’, 1943–4, by Matisse will go on show at Tate Modern in April

Art shows you simply mustn't miss in 2014

11 January 2014 9:00 am

Andrew Lambirth reveals the treats on show in 2014