John Singer Sargent Exhibition at National Portrait Gallery

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was the greatest portrait painter of his generation. Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, he was closely connected to many of the other leading artists, writers, actors and musicians of the time. His portraits of these friends and contemporaries, including Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Robert Louis Stevenson, were rarely commissioned and allowed him to create more intimate and experimental works than was possible in his formal portraiture.

This major exhibition of over seventy portraits spans Sargent’s time in London, Paris and Boston as well as his travels in the Italian and English countryside. Important loans from galleries and private collections in Europe and America make this an unmissable opportunity to discover the artist’s most daring, personal and distinctive portraits. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London will be from 12 February until 25 May 2015.

The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy by John Singer Sargent

The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy by John Singer Sargent, 1907. Photo: ©The Art Institute of Chicago.

Tina Engstrom

One of the most popular items in the British Museum in London is the Rosetta Stone. It is rather unremarkable. It is the height of a child, cracked at the edges, lacking colour, and with inscriptions on only one side. There is little beauty in it, and the inscriptions are boring decrees - yet it is maybe one of the most famous stones in the world. For over 20 years it became the focus of a race to crack a code of strange pictures and shapes and in doing so uncover the life of Ancient Egypt.

07 November 2014

Allen Jones Exhibition at Royal Academy of Arts

A new exhibition showcasing the career of British Pop artist Allen Jones, from the 1960s (when alongside peers like Hockney and Caulfield he was closely associated with the rise of Pop Art) to the present day will open at the Royal Academy of Arts.