prints
Poise and gentleness: Hiroshige, at the British Museum, reviewed
Why is Hiroshige’s work so delightful? While his close predecessor Hokusai has more drama in his draughtsmanship, Hiroshige’s pastoral visions…
Breathtaking: Mary Cassatt at Work, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reviewed
Work – in the sense of toil – is about the last thing a 19th-century painter wished to be associated…
One hundred years of humiliation
By the 1800s, the mechanical clock had become a status symbol for wealthy Chinese. The first arrived with Jesuit missionaries…
Grandeur and subtlety
The Victorian dictum ‘every picture tells a story’ is true of Paula Rego’s works, but it’s only part of the…
Selling out
Stuart Jeffries on the artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
Grubby thumb prints and peeling glue
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
Human soup
The earliest depictions of the Americas were eye-popping, and shaped European art, says Laura Gascoigne
Red or dead
There was a basket of thick red wool and two pairs of large knitting needles at the start of University…
It’s grim up north
The strange and faintly sinister works of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert have been compared — not unreasonably — to…
Small wonder
The V&A has an unparalleled collection of hundreds of works by John Constable (1776–1837), but hardly anyone seems to know…
