Van Dyck
How flabby our ideas of draughtsmanship have become
The term drawing is a broad umbrella, so in an exhibition of 120 works it helps to outline some distinctions.…
A sumptuous feast of an exhibition: Charles I at the Royal Academy reviewed
Peter Paul Rubens thought highly of Charles I’s art collection. ‘When it comes to fine pictures by the hands of…
Lost, found and lost again
This is an extraordinary story. In 1845 John Snare, an unremarkable Reading bookseller, goes to an auction in a defunct…
Best in show
Martin Gayford recommends the exhibitions to see — and to avoid — over the coming year
Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous
‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…
Rubens wronged
The main spring offering at the Royal Academy, Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cézanne, teaches two useful lessons.…
Cellulite factor
Are Rubens’s figures too fat for the British to appreciate them? Martin Gayford investigates
The treasures of Turin
Laura Gascoigne enjoys a grand tour of Italy’s former capital city
They do it with mirrors
If ever there was a time to write a book about self-portraits, this must be it. ‘Past interest in the…
Save our Van Dyck
The Flemish artist’s final self-portrait was vital to British art. We’d be philistines to let it leave the country
