Portraiture
The genius of Frans Hals
Since art auctions were invented, they have served to hype artists’ prices. It can happen during an artist’s lifetime —…
Was I the picture of evil incarnate?
Not long after Catriona and I first met, her husband painted my head and shoulders portrait in oils as I…
From light into darkness: the genius of Goya
The great Spanish artist Francisco Goya was born in Zaragoza in 1746, the son of a gilder whose livelihood was…
Pyramids of piffle: Tate Britain’s British Baroque reviewed
British Baroque: it was never going to fly. Les rosbifs emulating the splendour of le Roi Soleil? Pas possible. Still,…
A mesmerising retrospective: Victoria Crowe at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, reviewed
This mesmerising retrospective takes up three floors of the City Art Centre, moving in distinct stages from the reedy flanks…
No one can beat Mary Cassatt at painting mothers and children
A lady licking an envelope. An intimate thing. It might be only the bill from the coal-man she’s paying, but…
A dazzling vision
There are a number of reports by his contemporaries of Thomas Gainsborough at work. They make you realise what a…
As he approaches 80, the German master Georg Baselitz contemplates the end
‘In many ways,’ Georg Baselitz muses, ‘I behaved against the grain of the times I grew up in.’ The era…
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…
Forget Vienna - Britain now has its own chamber of curiosities at the British Museum
Art is not jewellery. Its value does not reside in the price of the materials from which it is made.…
Wellington's PR machine
The history of portraiture is festooned with images of sitters overwhelmed by dress, setting and the accoutrements of worldly success.…
Without a model, Moroni could be stunningly dull. With one, he was peerless...
Giovanni Battista Moroni, wrote Bernard Berenson, was ‘the only mere portrait painter that Italy has ever produced’. Indeed, Berenson continued,…
The lost Victorian who sculpted Churchill
Ivor Roberts-Jones was in many ways the right artist at the wrong time. Had the sculptor been born a few…
Reynolds produced some of the finest portraits of the 18th century – and a few of the silliest
On Monday 21 April 1760 Joshua Reynolds had a busy day. Through the morning and the afternoon he had a…
