Rebel Rebel, the first major UK commission by Iranian artist Soheila Sokhanvari, celebrates and commemorates feminist icons from pre-revolutionary Iran. Sokhanvari transforms the Curve into a devotional space, populated with exquisite miniature portraits of glamorous cultural figures from Iran. The project spotlights the rarely told histories of these women, who pursued creative careers in a […]
In this talk, Dr Lucy Davis explores in greater depth the miniatures at the Wallace Collection, which were collected by the Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace. She discusses highlights and less well-known examples from the collection, focussing particularly but not exclusively on the British miniatures. She explores the different techniques and materials used by […]
A recently discovered painting dated 1626 features an unidentified, regally-dressed child. The previously forgotten painting was left hanging behind an open door for several decades and was uncovered by an antiques expert during a house clearance, following the death of its owner. The 400-year-old portrait could fetch 20,000 pounds at auction. It bears the name Adriaen Verkins (possibly Dutch) and is dated […]
Jennifer Van Horne’s Portraits of Resistance tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured […]
The Cincinnati Art Museum has discovered that underneath Cezanne’s Still Life With Bread And Eggs lies a portait, potentially a self-portrait. Serena Urry, the museums chief conservator, sent the painting for an X-ray following a routine inspection. Whilst early craquelure was unsurpirinsg, it’s clustering into two specific areas raised eyebrows. The X-ray as seen […]
Currently covering the walls of London’s underground, bus shelters and highstreets, Portrait of Britain is a “celebration of identity; an opportunity to rejoice in the diversity of a changing nation”. The British Journal of Photography has announced the winners of Portrait of Britain Vol.5, an annual photography competition which is open to applications to all amateur photographers. With support […]
A temporary export bar has been placed on Rebecca Solomon’s portrait of Fanny Eaton. Solomon was a pioneering Jewish painter who campaigned for women artists. In ‘A Young Teacher’ Fanny Eaton, whose mother was a former enslaved woman in Jamaica, poses as an Indian nursemaid. The piece provides a nuanced and sensitive perspective […]
Sasha Huber: YOU NAME IT’ is now open at Autograph, London. Open until the 23rd March 2023, the exhibition explores how colonial histories are imprinted into the landscape through naming and acts of remembrance – asking what actions it might take to repair the inherited traumas of history. Bringing together over a […]
In 1768 Thomas Gainsborough painted the portrait of Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729-1780), who was then valet to the Duke of Montagu. The portrait of Sancho is a rare depiction of a black man in eighteenth-century Europe shown not as an enslaved person, servant or caricature, but as a gentleman. After Sancho’s death, the portrait […]
New Contemporaries returns to the South London Gallery for the fifth consecutive year with Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2022. This year’s exhibition features 47 of the UK’s most exciting artists emerging from art schools and alternative peer-to-peer learning programmes. The 2022 cohort were selected by internationally renowned artists James Richards, Veronica Ryan and Zadie Xa from […]
