Some exhibitions make you feel inspired, others perplexed. Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting at the National Portrait Gallery left me feeling battered and bruised – as if I’d been hit by a wrecking ball.
The show doesn’t start out that way. In the early 1940s, Freud spent several years perfecting his drawing technique. At first, he used a mapping pen, which produces clear, sharp lines perfect for detailed observation.
If you stand close to a picture by Georges Seurat, the experience is totally different from being a few feet away. To a certain extent this is true of any painting since, close to, any brush marks and fine details are more apparent; but with Seurat the discrepancy is not only more emphatic, it was factored into his way of working.
Turner and Constable, Rivals and Originals, Tate Britain, November 2025
Whoever thought of creating an exhibition comparing the brilliance of JMW Turner with that of John Constable deserves a medal. Even if you are familiar with the work, seeing their paintings hung side by side reveals surprising similarities as well as differences.
Whoever thought of creating an exhibition comparing the brilliance of JMW Turner with that of John Constable deserves a medal – maybe Tate Britain’s senior curator, Amy Concannon? Even if you are familiar with the work, seeing their paintings hung side by side reveals surprising similarities as well as differences.
A lone slice of cherry pie sits on a plate inside a glass case (pictured below), waiting to be released from its solitary confinement and guzzled by a hungry diner. There it is again, in an eye-watering display of sickly offerings (main picture). This time, four slices are lined up alongside their chocolate, pecan and lemon meringue counterparts. The display goes on and on, for as far as the eye can see.
The title of Joy Gregory’s Whitechapel exhibition is inspired by a proverb her mother used to quote – “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar” – and her aim is to seduce rather than harangue the viewer.
Regarded as one of Denmark’s most important artists, Anna Ancher is virtually unknown here, so this overview of her paintings is a revelation as well as a delight.
At roughly the same time, in the 1880s, that Gauguin quit Paris for the remote village of Pont-Aven in Brittany, other artists began moving to Skagen, a fishing village at the northernmost tip of Denmark, attracted by the light and the unspoiled beaches, dunes and heathland. Among the incomers was Michael Ancher, whom Anna married, and who liked to paint the local fishermen heroically battling the elements.
Photo Oxford 2025 presents a programme of exhibitions, lectures and events ranging from well-known artists and documentary photographers to new talent, spread over the town at 26 venues in colleges, galleries and bookshops. In a way this is reminiscent of the rencontres de la photographie at Arles. Unlike at Arles however, admission is free and the weather is less sunny.
There was a time when Gilbert & George made provocative pictures that probed the body politic for sore points that others preferred to ignore. Trawling the streets of East London, where they’ve lived since the 1960s, the artist duo chronicled the poverty and squalor of their neighbourhood in large photographic panels that feature the angry, the debased and the destitute.
Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective begins with a soft focus picture of her by New York photographer Arnold Genthe dated 1927, when she was working as a fashion model. The image is so hazy that she appears as dreamlike and insubstantial as a wraith.