Category: London and UK

  • Now You See Us at Tate Britain: A Review

    Now You See Us at Tate Britain: A Review

    โ€œNow you see usโ€ is the title of an exhibition running at Tate Britain until October. It aims to place before us the output of British women artists over the course of half a millennium, from 1520 to 1920. Along the way, it plucks many names from oblivion and it…

  • Medieval Horizons

    Medieval Horizons

    Ian Mortimer, Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter, The Bodley Head, 2023. Reviewed by Charles Freeman When do the Middle Ages begin and end? I think AD 500 is a good starting point, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476. Many studies do not get going…

  • Tired of London?

    Tired of London?

    Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the great lexicographer, journalist, conversationalist, inveterate London pub-goer and general good egg, famously remarked that if a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. Another quote of his on London is less well known: โ€œSir, if you wish to have a just notion of…

  • Lying in state

    Lying in state

    Paola Pugsley explores the history of this now established custom When faced with a crisis like the death of a much beloved sovereign, human beings tend to seek comfort in ritual. One of these is the tradition of the lying in state, when the deceased is laid in his or…

  • Book Review: ‘The Art Museum in Modern Times’

    Book Review: ‘The Art Museum in Modern Times’

    This new book by Charles Saumarez Smith (Thames & Hudson, 2021) is a fascinating look at how museums, their mission and their vision, have evolved over the past half-century. Forty-two museums are explored; the choice is personal, focusing on institutions that the author knows well, without any aim to be…

  • Book review: Lost Prestige

    Book review: Lost Prestige

    Lost Prestige, by historian, diplomat and former Hungarian Foreign Minister Gรฉza Jeszenszky, now published in English translation, is a book about reputation. Using British perceptions of Hungary in the years leading up to the First World War, it seeks to examine more broadly the relationships between states, and how international…

  • Blue Guide London, Daniel Defoe and the Plague Year

    Blue Guide London, Daniel Defoe and the Plague Year

    The first edition of Blue Guide London was published in 1918, the year of the Spanish Flu. Work on the 19th edition was supposed to be completed in 2020, the year of Covid-19. But the measures introduced to contain the spread of the virus have brought research to a temporary…

  • Artemisia Gentileschi

    Artemisia Gentileschi

    This month, a new exhibition devoted to the art of the 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi was to have opened at the National Gallery in London. Blue Guides was to have visited the exhibition and posted a review of it. That will now have to wait. Artemisia Gentileschi features in many…

  • Modernists and Mavericks

    By Martin Gayford. โ€˜After the war, because everybody who was about had escaped death in some way, there was a curious feeling of liberty. It was sexy in a way, this semi-destroyed London. There was a scavenging feeling of living in a ruined city.โ€™ This is the reflection of Frank…

  • Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits

    Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits

    โ€œLorenzo Lotto. Portraitsโ€ is the title of an exhibition currently running at the National Gallery in London. It has come from the Prado in Madrid, in slightly slimmed-down form. Not all of the works on show in the Prado can be seen in London (the catalogue is teasingly tantalising in…

  • Charles I: King and Collector

    Charles I: King and Collector

    This magnificent display of Old Master paintings from the royal collection amassed by King Charles I, many of them reunited for the first time since the mid-17th century at the Royal Academy in London (running until mid-April) has been met with frenzied enthusiasm. And rightly so. There are some stunning…

  • The Scythians at the British Museum

    The Scythians at the British Museum

    โ€œThe Scythians: Warriors of ancient Siberiaโ€ is the title of a major new exhibition at the British Museum, London, running until 14th January. The show attempts to redeem from oblivion the culture and character of a people who strewed their path across the steppe with gold but who are otherwise…

  • Abstract Expressionism at the RA

    Abstract Expressionism at the RA

    Abstract Expressionism emerged in the 1940s in the United States and remained a predominantly American phenomenon. Its main characteristic, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Art, is the โ€œdesire to convey powerful emotions through the sensuous qualities of paint, often on canvases of huge size.โ€ The Baroque movement of the…

  • Five major London museums

    Emily Barber, author of Blue Guide London, recommends five main museums:ย  1. “V&A” – the Victoria and Albert Museum – for its architecture and varied content. It is also home to the National Art Library which is a peaceful place to read or study overlooking the courtyard. And the V&A…

  • Whither Tate Britain?

    Whither Tate Britain?

    London is thriving, museum attendance is higher than ever.  Here are the numbers (visitors) for some of the main museums: 2014 2004 1 British Museum 6,695,213 4,868,176 +38% 2 The National Gallery 6,416,724 4,959,946 +29% 3 Tate Modern 5,785,427 4,441,225 +30% 4 V&A South Kensington 3,180,450 2,010,825 +58% 5 Somerset…

  • Artwork of the Month: January. Medieval stained glass

    Artwork of the Month: January. Medieval stained glass

    Medieval stained glass is relatively rare in English country churches because so much was destroyed by zealots during the Reformation in the 16th century and under Cromwell in the 17th. Fragments of old glass exist and have been pieced together in many windows across the country, but entire windows are…

  • Giovanni Battista Moroni

    Giovanni Battista Moroni

    At the Royal Academy, London until 25th January. For anyone who loves Lombardy, Giovanni Battista Moroni (1520/4โ€“1579/80) will be a familiar name. He is one of the finest portraitists of 16th-century Italy. This small and beautifully curated show at the Royal Academy attempts to demonstrate that he can stand with…

  • London The Information Capital

    London The Information Capital

    London: The Information Capital: 100 maps and graphics that will change how you view the city by James Cheshire & Oliver Uberti, Particular Books 2014 More than any other city, London does seem to have an intimate connection with maps. In fact itโ€™s hard to hold an image of the…

  • Dull London? Surely a mistake

    Dull London? Surely a mistake

    Dull? London? Says who? What happened to the spirit of Dr Johnson, to the tired-of-London-tired-of-life, almost jingoistic belief that home was best? Anyone who has read Paul Fussellโ€™s brilliant Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars, will know the answer. Nineteenth-century escapees, such as Browning, enthused in torrents over Italy…

  • National Gallery London to allow photography

    National Gallery London to allow photography

    This picture shows a likeness by the English portraitist Sir Thomas Lawrence of Amelia Angerstein and her son John Julius. There are two things that are significant about it. Firstly, the picture was taken on a telephone, in the Musรฉe dโ€™Art et dโ€™Histoire in Geneva and no one bustled up…

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