Reviews
A Radical Conservative
How could Muirhead Bone have been so committed to tradition in his own art while also being a patron of the extreme avantgarde, asks Peyton Skipwith?
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BOOKS
A family stripped down
Alexander Waugh’s ambitious account of the Wittgenstein family has surprisingly little to say about the importance of art and architecture in their lives, writes Richard Calvocoressi.
BOOKS
The epic of common life
Andrew Wilton welcomes a powerful analysis of the rise of genre painting in British art.
Intimate Womanhood
The sculptures of women that Jules Dalou produced during his exile in England in the 1870s quietly reveal his political ideals, writes Nancy Ireson.
Throned in Platinum
Politically they were a disaster but a spectacular exhibition in Madrid makes plain that Carlos IV and Queen Maria Luisa were superb patrons of art, writes Christopher Rowell.
King of Carving
An exhibition in his native Belluno amply confirms the stature of the baroque carver Andrea Brustolon as – in Balzac’s words – ‘the Michelangelo of wood’, writes Andrew Hopkins.
Rivals in Venice
An ambitious attempt to chart the way that the careers of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese intertwined presents all three artists in a novel – and not always flattering – light, writes Jonathan Lopez.
Uses for a sponge
Mary Beard enjoyably punctures myths about Pompeii but is in danger of creating a few of her own, writes Peter Howell.
The self-importance of being earnest
Tate has collaborated with Yale to publish a three-volume history of British art. For all its many good qualities, writes Robin Simon, it suffers from Tate’s familar biases.