She was a highly successful artist in 17th-century Brussels, creating the sort of paintings you might have seen from Rubens or Van Dyck, but then she vanished from art history. It’s only very recently she’s been rescued from obscurity, her pictures rightfully reattributed. Michaelina Wautier comes to the Royal Academy in London on March 27 from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, offering the first opportunity to encounter her work on a large scale. On till June 21.
.jpg)
And while we’re on the theme of new discoveries, we’ve made quite a few at the Dulwich Picture Gallery down the years. The latest arrival there is a completely unknown name to us, from the Baltic: Konrad Mägi (1878-1925), described as a pioneer of Estonian modernism. More than 60 of his works are being shown in the UK for the first time in an exhibition that runs from March 24 to July 12.
No introduction is needed for David Hockney, and he’s taking over the Serpentine Gallery on March 12 with his 90-metre-long frieze A Year in Normandie, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry (which will of course be at the British Museum later in the year). Entry to David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, which can be seen until August 23, is free, but it’s best to book a timeslot online. Also on at the Serpentine, and also free, is Cecily Brown: Picture Making, starting on March 27 and running until September 6.
Whistlejacket, the stallion painted life-size by George Stubbs in about 1762, has a new stable companion at the National Gallery. In Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse, a free one-room exhibition, you can meet Scrub, also a retired racehorse, whom Stubbs painted at around the same time and on the same monumental scale. It’s on from March 12 to May 31. For a taster, you can read about the great Stubbs show we saw in Milton Keynes a few years ago.
.jpg)
And another free exhibition in London this month: Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture at Sir John Soane’s Museum from March 4 to June 28. This marks the 300th anniversary of the death of Sir John Vanbrugh, star of the English Baroque and designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, among others. Oh, and playwright and alleged spy. Not so much Renaissance man as Restoration man.
Manchester rarely features as a destination on our previews, but this month we’re heading to the Whitworth for a show of ukiyo-e prints from the two greatest exponents of the genre, artists who exerted a huge influence on the development of western painting from the late 19th century after the opening-up of Japan; Hokusai’s The Great Wave is one of the most recognisable of all artworks. Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige runs from March 14 to November 15, and entry is free.
Flower-related exhibitions seem to have been a growing trend in recent years; now it’s time for In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. With more than 100 artworks and objects, the show aims to tell the stories of how many exotic plants came to Britain through trade and exploration. March 19 to August 16.
.jpg)
We’ve recently seen John Constable at Tate Britain in a blockbuster show with JMW Turner celebrating the 250th anniversary of their births. Suffolk, Constable’s home county, has got events running all through the year, and Constable: A Cast of Characters opens at Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich on March 28. It looks at those who influenced and supported the artist, including fellow Suffolk painter Thomas Gainsborough, and explores the era Constable lived in. Until June 14.
We started off with Michaelina Wautier, and she’s also one of more than 40 women who feature in Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam 1600-1750 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent from March 7 to May 31. Like Wautier, they have in many cases been left on the sidelines of art history down the centuries; this show in Flanders aims to put the record straight. Judith Leyster, Maria Sybilla Merian, Clara Peeters and Rachel Ruysch are big names; we’re looking forward to meeting the three dozen others.
It’s the centenary of Claude Monet’s death in 2026. One of the big exhibitions is Monet on the Normandy Coast: The Discovery of Etretat at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt from March 19 to July 5, which features 24 works by Monet, as well as dozens more by artists including Delacroix, Courbet and Matisse, celebrating the delights of the fabulous cliff formations around Etretat, once a quiet fishing village. It’s a terrific show; we saw it in Lyon late last year.
.jpg)
Just before World War I, The Blue Rider group in Germany around Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky created pioneering Expressionist art. A show of 150 works at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, opening on March 10 — Beyond the World: The Blue Rider — includes new acquisitions by the gallery and has a special focus on women in the group, notably Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin. No rush for this one: it’s on till September 5, 2027, in the run-up to the museum’s centenary in 2029.
Staying in Munich for something a little different: Hair: Stories of Power and Passion at the Kunsthalle from March 20 to October 4. Hair is a potent form of expression, the Kunsthalle says, to signal status and belonging, to captivate or intimidate. A journey through three millennia of art and culture with around 200 objects and artworks. A version of the show will open at the Augustinermuseum in Freiburg in south-west Germany in November.
And another slightly out-of-the-ordinary listing: the first retrospective in more than three decades of Carl Grossberg, a member of the German New Objectivity movement who almost exclusively painted architectural and industrial motifs. Carl Grossberg: Objective — Magical — Visionary is on at the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal from March 22 to August 30, and then from late September at the Museum im Kulturspeicher in Würzburg. Now Wuppertal’s got the monorail, but then Würzburg has the Tiepolo ceiling. And the wine.
Back to the mainstream for Renoir and Love: A Joyful Modernity (1865-1885) at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Mainstream now, but as the museum points out, his paintings “are so well-known that it has become difficult to perceive how radical they are.” Astonishingly, the last Renoir retrospective in Paris was in 1985, and this exhibition aims to put the focus on his break with conventions in depicting relationships between men and women. On from March 17 to July 19, and then moving to the National Gallery in London in October and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in February 2027.
.jpg)
Just across the River Seine, at the Musée de l’Orangerie, there’s Henri Rousseau: The Ambition of Painting from March 25 to July 20. This show of the work of perhaps the most famous of all Primitive-style painters comes to Paris from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where it garnered very good reviews.
And another Monet show, this time at the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny, just down the road from the painter’s garden with its water-lily pond. Monet in Giverny: Before the Water Lilies, 1883-1890 looks at the years after Monet first moved to the village and will have around 30 works showing how he explored the attractions of his new surroundings. It’s on from March 27 to July 5.
Anthony van Dyck was a star artist in Flanders, in Italy and in England. Van Dyck, the European is the very appropriate title of the new exhibition at the Doge’s Palace in Genoa, where he was based during his time in Italy, from March 20 to July 19. It’s the largest van Dyck show in 25 years, with more than 50 paintings on loan from 32 museums across the continent.
One of this month’s most intriguing new openings is at the Kunstmuseum in Basel: The First Homosexuals: The Birth of New Identities 1869-1939. With around 80 works, it shows how new ideas on gender, identity and sexuality were depicted starting in 1869, the year the word homosexual first appeared in print. This exhibition was originally shown at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, and it can be seen in Switzerland from March 7 to August 2.
One final show to tell you about this month: Canaletto & Bellotto at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Bringing together views of London, Venice and Vienna by Canaletto and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto (who sometimes traded on his uncle’s name), the show aims to offer insights into the interaction between 18th-century art and society. March 24 to September 6.
Last chance to see….
If you’re in Lyon right now and you haven’t been to the magnificent Etretat exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, cancel all your other plans and go, because it closes on March 1 before moving to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (see above).
Winter still getting you down? Get along to the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-west London by March 8 to soak up the light-filled interiors of the Danish painter Anna Ancher.
.jpg)
Or you could head to Suffolk for some very English scenes by Stanley Spencer, as well as insights into his sometimes very singular relationships, in Love & Landscape at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury until March 22.
Images
Michaelina Wautier (1604-1689), Self-Portrait, c. 1650, Private collection
George Stubbs (1724-1806), Scrub, a Bay Horse Belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham, about 1762, Private collection. © Private collection. Photo: The National Gallery, London
Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (1836–1912), Orchids, 1879, Private collection, USA, courtesy of the Richard Green Gallery, London
Claude Monet (1840-1926), Rough Sea at Etretat, 1883, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Photo © MBA Lyon; Photo Martial Couderette
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880-81, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC. Photo Courtesy of The Phillips Collection
Gabriel Morcillo (1887-1973), Fructidor, c. 1932, Dr Adolfo Planet, Valencia
Anna Ancher (1859-1935), Interior, Brøndum’s Annex, c. 1916. Image courtesy of Skagens Museum