portraits
Marina Vaizey
Titian! Mantegna! Rubens! Dürer! Veronese! Van Dyck! Raphael! Velazquez! About 140 works which were once part of Charles I’s 2,000-strong collection are reunited in a sumptuous collaboration between the Royal Academy and the Royal Collection. It is a marvellous selection covering the 15th to the 17th centuries, the Northern and Southern Renaissance and the baroque. Charles I may have been a wretched king and politician, but he was an outstanding and original connoisseur collector and commissioner of art. Among the greatest hits exhibitions, there are even surprises: take Rembrandt' Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Dedicated to a foundation stone of western artistic training, this exhibition attempts a celebratory note as the Royal Academy approaches its 250th anniversary. But if the printed guide handed to visitors offers a detailed overview of working from life, the exhibition itself is a far flimsier construction that never really establishes the purpose of a practice that it simultaneously wants us to believe is thriving today.The study of nature was fundamental to Renaissance thinking, and as artists aspired to the naturalism they perceived in Antique sculpture, working from the life took on a new Read more ...
Bill Knight
What does it take to be included in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition? This year 2,423 photographers entered 5,717 images: 2,373 of those photographers are left wondering what it takes to make the grade. Remarks from the judges are a little on the Delphic side: "Those we have selected provoked a connection that resonated in all of us." "It’s always tricky to whittle down to the contenders." "We simply nominated our favourite pictures…".What do the pictures themselves tell us? Extremes, as usual, play their part. The selection now on show at the National Portrait Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Some 50 portraits by Paul Cézanne – almost a third of all those the artist painted that have survived – are on view in this quietly sensational exhibition. Eye-opening and heart-breaking, it examines his art exclusively in the context of his portrayal of people for the first time.It is that proverbial once-in-a-lifetime show: half a dozen or so works have not been seen in public for decades, and several have never been shown in the UK. In microcosm, too, this selection shows us essential Cézanne: exactly what made him different from his peers as he took what, say, the Impressionists were Read more ...
Alison Cole
This is the latest in a line of beautifully curated, closely focused exhibitions that the Courtauld Gallery does so well. Its subject is the great Russian-French painter Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) who, remarkably, has not had a UK exhibition devoted to his work for 35 years. More specifically, the show draws together a series of Soutine’s portraits of modern workers, largely men and women working in the hospitality trades, many identified by their uniforms (such as bellboy reds or kitchen whites): hotel page boys, valets and room-attendants; cooks and pastry chefs; waiters and maids.For those Read more ...
Sarah Kent
I hate biopics about artists in which the portrayal of “genius” is hyped to the point where it becomes a ludicrous cliché. Although I appreciate that, as far as entertainment goes, seeing pigment brushed onto canvas is on a par with watching paint dry, I still can’t forgive directors who resort to dramatic extremes in the hope of evoking the tribulations of the creative process.Stanley Tucci’s Final Portrait, his first film in 10 years, is in a class of its own, though. In place of melodrama he gives us detailed observation of Alberto Giacometti grappling with his inability to translate what Read more ...
Florence Hallett
As a line flows or falters, registering each slight change in pressure, pause, or occasional reworking, it seems to offer a glimpse into the mind of the artist at work. The line is the instrument of the artist’s eye, the often unpolished, provisional nature of a drawing offering a spark and freshness that tends to gradually lessen as a composition is rethought and worked up in paint.Portraits only intensify this sense of immediacy, and from likenesses of loved ones hastily dashed off, to awkward first sittings for a commission, such drawings offer an unparalleled sense of encounter with an Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Born in Rome and taught by her artist father, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652) led a colourfully energetic life. As an adolescent she was raped by her father’s assistant – an episode which unusually, then as now, actually came to public trial – but she nevertheless became a confident, resolute woman, and a successful artist. She was vitally ambitious, portraying herself as La Pittura in her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, c.1638-9, an image at the heart of this exhibition.Here Artemisia is almost hurling herself at her canvas, brush in one hand, palette in the other. Wearing Read more ...
Bill Knight
It’s that time of year again. The National Portrait Gallery exhibits the finalists in the annual Taylor Wessing Portrait prize. The judges have seen 4,303 photographs from 1,842 photographers and now show us 57.The imprimatur of the National Portrait Gallery means that this is a really significant show. Entries come from all over the world and the quality of image and reproduction is second to none. As seen through the eyes of the exhibitors, life is a pretty serious business. Here are images of hardship, endurance, duty and emptiness. Not many smiles, unless you count Nigel Farage, hidden Read more ...
Florence Hallett
There’s something familiar about those dark, piercing eyes, but the impenetrable, mask-like countenance of Picasso’s Self-Portrait with Palette, 1906, is ultimately unknowable. In fact, the painting serves as something of a rebuke: we think we know Picasso so well, but we don’t. It’s a theme emphasised by the hang of this exhibition, and the bewildering range of styles and formats from Picasso’s early years results in a visual discord that underlines his chameleon-like tendencies.There are tiny, pen and ink portraits of his cronies at Els Quatre Gats, the legendary watering hole of Barcelona’ Read more ...
Bill Knight
This exhibition includes one of my images, so I hesitated when I was asked to write about it – but I only hesitated for a moment. I have learned that if you are reluctant to promote your own work other people are even more inclined in that direction, so you should seize any chance you get.My entry (main picture) shows the actor Vanessa Babiyre and her eldest sister Vivian (nearest the camera). The shot was taken at the Royal Court, where Vanessa has recently appeared, and is part of my forthcoming exhibition Where I Come From, about BAME graduates and their families. I have been a fan of Read more ...
Sarah Kent
American photographer William Eggleston is famous for dedicating himself to colour photography at a time when it was still considered kitsch – acceptable for wedding and Christening photos, but not much else. The best known example of his embrace of colour is a 1973 photo of a red light bulb hanging from a red ceiling, a picture devoid of subject matter beyond redness and the associations it triggers.You could almost say the same of a photograph he took the following year of a young woman at a fast food counter in Biloxi, Mississippi (main picture). We see her from the side waiting Read more ...