National Gallery
Bellini vs Mantegna – whose side are you on?
Sometimes Andrea Mantegna was just showing off. For the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, he painted a false ceiling above the…
The public are quite right to love Monet
Think of the work of Claude Monet and water lilies come to mind, so do reflections in rippling rivers, and…
Intelligent, poetic and profound: Tacita Dean at the National and National Portrait galleries
Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…
I spy
Where was Degas standing as he sketched his ‘Laundresses’ (c.1882–4)? Did he watch the two women from behind sheets hanging…
Jonathan Meades on the postmodernist buildings that we must protect
Best of postmodernism: is that an oxymoron? Jonathan Meades thinks not
How a Liberal MP's inability to draw led him to invent photography
William Henry Fox Talbot had many accomplishments. He was Liberal MP for Chippenham; at Cambridge he won a prize for…
Eugene Delacroix foresaw the future of society not just art
Delacroix’s frigid self-control concealed an emotional volcano. Martin Gayford explores the paradoxes that define the apostle of modernism
Galleries are getting bigger - but is there enough good art to put in them?
Martin Gayford recommends the exhibitions to see — and to avoid — over the coming year
Why did Goya’s sitters put up with his brutal honesty?
Sometimes, contrary to a widespread suspicion, critics do get it right. On 17 August, 1798 an anonymous contributor to the…
There’s not a trace of shaving foam in sight in the early Turners on show at Salisbury Museum
It has often been related how, towards the end of his long life, a critical barb got under J.M.W. Turner’s…
Seeing Paris through Impressionist eyes
The spectre of the Charlie Hebdo killings still hangs over Paris. Outside the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, opposite the…
Inventing Impressionism at the National Gallery reviewed: a mixed bag of sometimes magnificent paintings
When it was suggested that a huge exhibition of Impressionist paintings should be held in London, Claude Monet had his…
2015 in exhibitions - painting still rules
The art on show over the coming year demonstrates that we still live in an age of mighty painters, says Martin Gayford
We must never again let this 19th century Norwegian master slip into oblivion
You won’t have heard of Peder Balke. Yet this long-neglected painter from 19th-century Norway is now the subject of a…
The story of the first painting to sell for over a million pounds
Nothing could have prepared the art world for the astounding moment in 1970 when, at a Christie’s sale on 27…
Rembrandt at the National Gallery: the greatest show on earth
Martin Gayford sees Rembrandt’s late works at the National Gallery – is this the greatest show on earth?
Tate Britain’s Turner show reveals an old master - though the Spectator didn’t think so at the time
Juvenilia is the work produced during an artist’s youth. It would seem logical to think, therefore, that an artist’s output…
Why everyone loves Rembrandt
Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…
It took 11 years to bring Bill Viola to St Paul’s Cathedral – but it was worth it
Deans are a strange breed. Growing up in the Church of England, I met a wide range, their cultural tastes…
The National Gallery's Veronese is the exhibition of a lifetime
The National Gallery’s exhibition succeeds triumphantly, says Andrew Lambirth
The curator brain drain
Britain may have educated the most talented curators, but, as Jack Wakefield says, we can’t always keep them
Upside down and right on top: the power of George Baselitz
It’s German Season in London, and revealingly the best of three new shows is the one dealing with the most…
In the National Gallery's Vienna show, it's Oscar Kokoschka who's the real revelation
The current exhibition in the Sainsbury Wing claims to be a portrait of Vienna in 1900, but in fact offers…
Samuel Courtauld’s great collection
In 1929, Samuel Courtauld owned the most important collection of works by Paul Gauguin in England: five paintings, ten woodcuts…
When a smartphone gallery is better than the real thing
Michael Prodger finds that new technology is transforming how we experience art – in galleries, on computers and on smartphones too
