Hogarth’s House, Chiswick, London

I had passed this house often but only at times when it was not open.  Apart from being a fine early 18th century building, it houses a well curated exhibition of the family life and work of Hogarth, who lived there from 1749 to 1764. It also has a fine garden and skittle alley. 

Although it is not a gallery as such, it does contain a number of his prints, which are always worth looking at in detail and benefit here from being in a quiet location. 4* 

Unforgotten Lives, an exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives

A fascinating exhibition that presents the stories of Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous heritage who lived and worked in the city between 1560 and 1860 and are recorded in London’s archives. It is the outcome of an ongoing research project with the Northeastern University London.  

We see some of the 3300 people discovered by the research project to date, along with their stories and their importance in the history of London.  For example Olaudah Equiano, a key figure in the movement to abolish slavery and member of the Sons of Africa, features with his daughter Joanna. The London life and family of Ellen and William Craft is documented, following their extraordinary escape from enslavement, and a manuscript voting record of Ignatius Sancho from 1774, believed to be the first time that a person of African heritage voted in an election in Britain.  There are details of Katherine Auker, who successfully petitioned to be released from her enslaver in 1690, a man from Bengal known as John Morgan who escorts a cheetah to London in the 1760s and Prince Dederi Jaquoah who was baptised in the City of London in 1611. 

For many of the people there is little information other than, for example, they were recorded as being baptised and their skin colour was recorded as black. The project continues to find out more. 5* 

Milk at the Wellcome Collection, London

This exhibition is partly a history of how cows’ milk became an unquestioned healthy component of the Western diet and partly an illustration of the environmental impact of this fact: the CO₂ implications of the rearing of daily cattle and the health impact of ingesting fatty dairy products. Like most Wellcome exhibitions it was very skilfully curated, with a combination of interesting historic film and current political and art video presentations. 4*

Animals, Art Science and Sound at the British Library, London

Sounded like an interesting exhibition, but, as might be expected from a library, it was a display of books from their archive collections that dealt with animals, fish, reptiles etc. in their various forms.  The Sound aspect included recordings of birdsong, including now extinct species; the art included paintings by Audubon, which were nice to look at, but there was little attempt made to create a narrative. 2*

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

Gwen John painted similar subject matter in a similar style throughout her life and that —apart from the fact that she was a woman — may partly explain why her work has been overshadowed by that of her certainly no more talented brother Augustus. The nature of her work probably also contributed to the idea that she was a solitary, retiring individual but this is far from the truth as she was an active member of several artistic circles, including those of Whistler in London and Rodin (with whom she had long-lasting relationship) in Paris. 

Her technique is interesting: in order to achieve the pale, bleached images in her portraits she mixed her oil paints with chalk. That gives them a kind of ghostliness that is appealing. Application of the same technique to a couple of interiors shown here and the effect it has on the light portrayed in the work makes them reminiscent of the paintings of Wilhelm Hammarshøi. 4* 

Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Morisot is portrayed as a “trailblazer” in this rare exhibition of her work but, while this may be true, as she was a founder member of the French Impressionism School, the work on display here doesn’t fully justify the description.  Much is made of the influences on her work, they being Fragonard and Gainsborough; so there is a lot of in-filling with examples of their paintings.  While Morisot placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of these two artists, it really isn’t clear from the work displayed (and there is quite a lot of it) exactly how they influenced the development of her style. Annoyingly, some of her best work is shown only as photographs, presumably because the gallery was unable to get the originals on loan. 2*

Herzog & De Meuron at the Royal Academy, London

A display of the work of the well-known architects, famous for the Beijing Olympic Stadium and the extension to Tate Modern, but with a wide variety of prestigious commissions built throughout the world. These are shown as massive wall-mounted photographs, alongside cabinets containing their original models and mock-ups, interestingly with some of the earlier versions that looked quite different. There was also an interesting video showing the wide variety of their work including, in detail, the facilities built into the Neurorehabilitation Centre in Basel, Switzerland — architecture at its best. One could not help comparing it with the architectural environment one normally encounters in an NHS hospital. 4* 

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St. Francis of Assisi at the National Gallery, London

A popular exhibition, with associated tour, presenting the many art works over centuries that portray Francis and his good works. These include his love of nature and the environment, his relief of suffering of people and animals and his commitment to the poor. He inspired not only works by near-contemporaries, but also appears in recent comic strips and in a projected video installation by Richard Long. We see him giving away his ragged clothes to a poor man, rescuing women from being terrorised by a wolf, receiving stigmata from heaven. Also displayed are some of his original letters, still intact, along with his bell and a scrap of material, alleged to be from his clothing.  

This is not just an art exhibition, but even more an insight into an extraordinary human being. 5* 

The Big City and the City Model Exhibition at the Guildhall, City of London

Two exhibitions that reflect London in the past, present and future. 

The Big City in the Guildhall Art Gallery presents large canvases from their collection on the theme of London itself — from the 18th century to the present day.  Some of the earlier work served as a pre-photographic record of major events, while more recent impressionistic work aims to reflect the experience of living in the City. 4* 

The City Model is hugely impressive.  Two vast models of London occupy the whole of the downstairs area of the Guildhall Library, with detailed 3-dimensional representations of every street and building.  Different colours on the model show Greater London at three different periods.  The model is accompanied by photographic, graphic and video presentations on how London has expanded and how it will look in the future. A touch-screen version of the 3D-model is also available, on which you can zoom in and see each area from different perspectives. Fascinating if you know and appreciate London. 4* 

Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now at Barbican Art Gallery, London

Weems is best known for her photographic work from the 1980s that challenges views on race and ethnic identity, currently a very topical subject.  This exhibition manages to presented her work, both old and new, in a way that appears novel and relevant to today, as the artist’s exhibition title suggests. 

The photographs, mainly black and white, are impressive.  In some cases they tell a story, accompanied by words or on their own; in other cases they cause us to contemplate world events or famous architecture. There is humour in some of the works: videos of clowns and people behaving in the strangest of ways with no explanations.  A long video The Shape of Things in seven parts invites us to think about how society is evolving and how the future might look for the next generation; the take-home message is one of sadness that our generation will be leaving society in its current state when we have gone. 

Very worth seeing. 5*

Brian Clarke: a Great Light at the Newport Street Gallery, London

Clarke is known internationally for his architectural installations of stained glass, which he has been producing for over 50 years. He is at at the forefront of new technology in glassmaking.  This  exhibition shows some of these new techniques, e.g. using dot-matrix printing on multi-layered glass to produce some fascinating images. Also shown in the exhibition are the collages he has produced as a basis for some of his extraordinarily beautiful glass panels. 5*

Plants of the Qua’ran by Sue Wickison at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens, London

The Qua’ran mentions a great number of fruits and vegetables.  She has spent many years visiting the Middle East to gather the plants and to confer on their religious meaning before producing her large, finely detailed and very beautiful watercolours.  5* 

All The Flowers Are For Me by Anila Quayyum Agha at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens, London

Agha’s work shown here consists of stainless steel cutouts of plant shapes and traditional Islamic patterns material, which are set against light and colours to produce fascinating shadows that fill entire rooms.   and uses light to produce shadows of botanical materials 5*

Ai Weiwei: Making Sense at the Design Museum, London

Ai Weiwei’s current exhibition is a reflection on how China has changed over the past 30 years. His massive installations are accompanied by videos taken from a moving bus or from static positions in Beijing at two periods of time, 1980s and 2023, in which we can see the phenomenal change in the city’s culture. The other theme, particular to this exhibition, is the contradiction between the appearance of an object and its materials, e.g. a snake made from life jackets, a toilet roll made from glass. 

Throughout the exhibition is the underlying recognition that Ai Weiwei is considered as a dissident, expelled from China, and his work and studio destroyed. Most of his work is undertaken on a huge scale and requires massive resources and investment. The question of who funds it, and why, is interesting. His principal funder is recognised as the Reuben Foundation. 4* 

Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands

A half-day trip from Amsterdam to nearby Haarlem, a perfectly preserved historic city with a beautiful pedestrian city centre with a clear air of prosperity. The Frans Hals Museum is split into two sites: one (closed when we were there) the home of the painter Frans Hals, immediately adjacent to the Cathedral in the centre of the city and the other in a street a few minutes walk away. The latter houses a splendid selection of 16th and 17th century Dutch painting that were of additional interest in the light of our having been at the Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam two days previously. What impressed most about the works on display were not just the quality of the craftsmanship but also the sophistication of the way in which some of the subject matter was portrayed, particularly in the portraiture.  4*

The Cube Houses, Rotterdam, Netherlands

These really weird houses were designed by architect Piet Blom in 1977.  They are literally cubes set at 45 degrees on top of a concrete platform that was designed to maximise the use of urban space both internally and externally. It was planned that there would be a whole estate of them but only 38 were built and are still occupied as private homes, with one open to the public. 

It may be that the small amount of space is used efficiently, but the interiors still feel very cramped, with tiny narrow stairs and lack of headroom, partly because the walls of the rooms, with the windows, are at a 50 degree angle; it would take a bit of getting used to. Interesting, though. 5* 

The Sonneveld House, Rotterdam, Netherlands

This 1933 house built in a then-rural area of Rotteram for industrialist Albertus Sonneveld and his family is an outstanding example of Dutch Functionalist architecture.  The architects were the firm of Brinkman and Van her Vugt.  All furniture and fittings were purchased new at the time and are nearly all original.  They show the owners interest in technology and innovation with, for example, open-plan rooms, doors opening on to external space, radio and music relayed into speakers in individual rooms.  The bathrooms had the most modern sanitary facilities and the kitchen had the latest equipment, operated by two domestics, who lived in reasonably comfortable-looking accommodation in the lower part of the house. 

This was a world much removed from the lives of ordinary people in Rotterdam at the time, but is a beautifully preserved example of a building that represented the best in modernist architecture.  5*

Vermeer, an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Much advertised internationally as being unmissable, to the extent that we left it too late at one point to get tickets and had to change our travel and accommodation to suit; in fact we could have made a profit on the whole venture had we cancelled, as tickets ultimately were rumoured to be changing hands for 1000 Euros. 

The praise was justified.  Only 37 paintings by Johannes Vermeer are known to exist and 37 of them were on display here, with only a small number missing, having been returned to their galleries.  The ticket to the exhibition gave entry to the rest of the Rijksmuseum; so it was possible to look at a lot more 17th century Dutch painting — not a genre I normally find of the greatest interest — to try to understand what makes Vermeer’s work so unique. Clearly there were a lot of Dutch artists of merit at the time and their style of painting is similar, but it is both the unusual subject matter and detail of Vermeer’s work that stand out from the rest.  None of his paintings is particularly large, apart from a couple of early religious works that are not his best.  Within a small canvas he manages to capture the tiniest details using a kind of pointillist techniques of tiny dots of paint.  This is exemplified in one of the works in which the subject is holding a music manuscript that is no longer on the canvas that 2 cm but, when magnified, can be seen to contain staves, notes and other musical notation. 

Vermeer, although he died leaving his wife and 11 surviving children in poverty, used the most expensive pigments in his paints and this gives them a particular brilliance and translucence that is different from most other works of the period.  Also his subject matter: calm interiors with single subject enigmatically engaging in ordinary activities.  The furniture and set items that appear in the pictures were apparently based on his own, although improved to make them look of higher quality. 

The exhibition was extremely well curated and dealt well with large number of visitors: each painting was given a large amount of space and described in detail so that one did not have to wait for more than a minute or two to get a close view. The staff were helpful and friendly, despite dealing with such large numbers, something we found everywhere on this visit to the Netherlands.   5*

House of Our Lord in the Attic, a museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands

A fascinating Catholic church that was concealed inside a domestic property in the centre of Amsterdam during the 17th century, when Catholicism was tolerated in the Netherlands as long as it was not openly on display. The canal-side house was commissioned by Amsterdam merchant Jan Hartman.  The whole building, including the vast chapel that also occupies adjacent properties, is beautifully preserved and gives an insight into the lives of the people who contributed to the famous 17th century environment of Amsterdam. 4*

Kumihino, the Japanese Art of Silk Braiding in the Japan Centre, London

This exhibition concentrates on the work of a particular workshop in Japan, founded in 1652 in the area around Tokyo.  The braided silk is used to secure the sash of women’s kimonos but also, historically, as an important component of suits of armour for Japanese military. Different patterns of braiding and types of knot are shown alongside working models of the looms on which the braids are hand-produced. There are some beautiful patterns and colours. And, of course all meticulously presented as always in this gallery. 4*

Some historical examples of braiding

Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Of course it is shocking that the names of so few of the artists represented here are familiar, unless occasionally one had come across them as the partners of better known male painters. 

A collection of 60 or so abstract expressionist works is quite hard viewing in one go.  It would have been more interesting to see, at least in some cases, how the artist’s work had progressed towards abstraction and what her previous work had looked like.  Instead, the exhibition was curated into six fairly meaningless categories: e.g. Performance, Gesture, Rhythm; Being, Expression, Empathy that could effectively be ignored when viewing the works. 

Most of the artists had generated the work shown here in the 1950s and 60s when abstract expressionism was at its height internationally. I could only look at them and decide on which to sample on the basis of whether or not it was a pleasant experience to look at the canvas or, in a couple of cases, I had some previous knowledge of the artist and her work. 3*  

Peter Doig at the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, London

This was a small exhibition of the most recent works by the Scottish/Canadian artist Peter Doig, whose work I have come across but don’t know well.  He painted all of the works on show after 2021 when he moved from Trinidad to London. The text accompanying the exhibition says that his work should be seen as transitional, but that was difficult when no previous work was shown. 

The text also points out the not surprising fact that Doig finds some of the French impressionist paintings in the Courtauld “important to him” — it is a wonderful collection, of course.  You can see a small sign of this as, in an adjacent room to the Doig work, is the Courtauld’s permanent display and the two paintings nearest the respective doors have a very similar colour palette. 2* 

The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, London

The Wallace Collection is a national museum which displays the art collections brought together by the first four marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the likely illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. It was bequeathed to the British nation by Lady Wallace, Sir Richard’s widow, in 1897.

Among the Collection’s treasures are an outstanding array of 18th-century French art, many important 17th and 19th-century paintings, medieval and Renaissance works of art and one of the finest collections of princely arms and armour in Britain.

The extravagance of the exhibits and the interior of the building is what hits one in particular: some of the most famous paintings are here, mainly French, but also some Dutch, Italian and English, along with an enormous collection of amazing Sèvres porcelain. It’s unclear how the 4th Marquess of Hertford, who was the principal collector, acquired the wealth necessary to purchase the enormous number of valuable items in the collection, apart from his being a member of the aristocracy; his paternal grandmother was the mistress of the Prince of Wales (later George IV). 5*

Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water at Pallant Gallery, Chichester

An indulgence for the many lovers of the Sussex countryside, with paintings, drawings, prints and digital works from the 18th to the 21st century. Some favourites shown here. Well worth the trip. 5*

Giorgio Moroni at Estorick Gallery, London

Moroni (1890-1964) is, although I confess to not knowing this, one of Italy’s best known 20th century painters. He was a recluse, spending nearly all of his life in Bologna and only travelling outside Italy in his 60s.  Much of his work is in one collection, that of his patron Luigi Magnani, whose entire collection of Moroni is presented in this exhibition. 

Moroni was obsessive in his subject matter, fascinated by the shapes of specific objects — bowls, jugs and bottles — that are drawn or painted in various media in very muted colours. The interest in his technique lies in the lines between objects and how these are deliberately slightly blurred, in contrast with the hard surfaces of the objects he is presenting.  

I found it difficult to become very enthusiastic about the repetition of the same still lives in so many marginally different ways.  Some of the etchings of places were quite interesting, as was his competent self-portrait that used the same fragmented-line technique. (photos 14/1/2023). 2*