Arts news

• Statue of Anne Lister, TV’s Gentleman Jack, unveiled in Halifax

  26-09-2021 18:09
  
  Suranne Jones, who played 19th-century diarist regarded as first modern lesbian, says she hopes artwork will be an inspirationA bronze statue of the 19th-century diarist Anne Lister, known as Gentleman Jack, has been installed in Halifax, the West Yorkshire town where she lived.The artwork was unveiled on Sunday by Suranne Jones, who starred as Lister in the recent BBC One drama Gentleman Jack, and Sally Wainwright, the multiple award-winning creator of the show. Continue reading...
  
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• Get fruity: vintage botanical watercolours – in pictures

  26-09-2021 18:00
  
  Pascale Georgiev, editorial director at Atelier Éditions, was researching botanical artwork a few years ago when she came across the US Department of Agriculture’s pomological watercolour collection, an archive of 7,500 watercolours of fruit and nuts grown in the US between 1886 and 1942, mostly created before photography was widespread. The discovery led to a new book, An Illustrated Catalog of American Fruits & Nuts (Atelier, £44), full of images that Georgiev describes
  
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• ‘Excessive tourism can destroy a place’: artist Tony Foster on the rush to the countryside

  26-09-2021 14:41
  
  The painter expresses sadness at how social media, Covid and new buildings have made it a challenge to find places to create artThe far south-west of Britain has long been regarded as a wild and romantic spot, a place where you can lose yourself in rugged landscapes beloved of artists and dreamers.But a renowned Cornish-based artist celebrated for his images of the world’s great wildernesses has expressed sadness and frustration that social media, new building and the rush to the countrysi
  
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• Frans Hals: The Male Portrait review – painting as performance art

  26-09-2021 14:00
  
  Wallace Collection, London
  Revered by Manet and Van Gogh, scorned by Kenneth Clark, the great 17th-century portraitist captures each sitter in the moment with astonishing force and freedomThe brewer is mighty: a man of outsize prowess looking down on you with all his shrewd vigour, satin doublet straining to contain his huge girth. The hat is so large it has its own planetary halo; the lace collar could cover a table. It is not hard to imagine the awful strength of his grip.He was the owner of t
  
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• Richmond’s Confederate statues are gone. What should replace them?

  26-09-2021 11:00
  
  The removal of Gen Robert E Lee’s statue – a target for Black Lives Matter protesters – from Monument Avenue has sparked a debate on public art in VirginiaAll but one plinth is now bare on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.Where once stood enormous statues glorifying Confederate leaders, on a thoroughfare that memorialized a white supremacist past in the former capital of the Confederacy, there is now empty space. The only monument that remains is of a black man: the Richmo
  
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• Was famed Samson and Delilah really painted by Rubens? No, says AI

  26-09-2021 09:30
  
  Long-held doubts about the authenticity of the National Gallery’s masterpiece, bought for £2.5m in 1980, are backed by pioneering technologyThe National Gallery has always given pride of place to Peter Paul Rubens’s Samson and Delilah, listing it among the “highlights” of its collection, since it purchased the picture at Christie’s in 1980 for a then record price.It depicts the Old Testament hero in the lap of the lover who betrayed him, having beguiled him in
  
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