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I confess I was unaware of Francisco de Zubarán (1598-1664) but now I can see why he’s regarded as one of Spain’s most accomplished renaissance artists. His prodigious talent was apparent in his youth and he trained within Seville’s exacting standards of painting, sculpture and gilding before moving to Madrid for royal commissions. And he went on to demonstrate his remarkable skills and vivid imagination in wonderful paintings for religious houses, churches and wealthy patrons.

He’s clearly an artist with a remarkable understanding of fabric and depicts the richest of cloths with great elan. I really liked the room with portraits of saints – presumably using real people as models – but they capture the story behind the saint depicted as well as a great record of the women who modelled the costumes. Above left is Saint Catherine of Alexandria – who was martyred by the Romans and on the rights is Saint Casilda who was a Muslim princess who smuggled bread to Christian prisoners. When confronted, the bread she was carrying turned to roses. You can just about see her carrying them. But the cloth of her dress is amazing.

He has a very confident way of depicting pale fabric, brightly lit against very dark backgrounds. On the left is St Francis of Assisi, in the centre is Saint Serapion, a 13th century British friar who freed Christian captives in Algiers before being horribly tortured and beaten to death. On the right is a strange painting, quite a work of photo-realism, of a veil which Saint Veronica used to wipe Christ’s head as he carried the cross and subsequently revealed an impression of his face.

I loved these paintings of figures and you can spend ages studying the fabric and unusual clothing. On the left, holding the bread basket, is Asher, representing one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and centre is Joseph from the same series. And on the right is St Margaret of Antioch who, apparently, emerged unscathed after being swallowed by a dragon. I love the woven bag she’s holding.

It wasn’t just people that he could paint. One room is filled with very expertly done still life works which are breathtaking in their perfection. Actually, the still life on the left was painted by Zurbarán’s son, Juan de Zurbarán, who died when he was just 29, having shown the same talent as his father. And the still life with the lemons the peaches and the cup on a silver salver shows how clever he was at creating texture.

But it’s the spectacular religious works that Zurbarán made which stay with you for a long time. This is a show well worth making time to see.

This new museum opens with a major exhibition exploring how Black music has shaped British culture over the last 125 years. The Music is Black: A British Story enhances the display of images, instruments, costumes and technology by giving each visitor a headset. As you move around the rooms and gaze at the exhibits the music changes, reflecting the pieces, people or events you are viewing.

When viewing the battered old piano played with such gusto by Winifred Atwell in that jazzy, honkytonk way, the sound came through the headset.

Amazing costumes, iconic outfits, challenging clothing – the style of Black artists is so distinctive. Fun to see the Stormzy stab vest and a clip of his performance at Glastonbury in 2019.

From the origins of Jazz to more recent genres such as garage and grime, the look and sound is celebrated. The exhibition doesn’t shy away from the issues Black artists have experienced with race and and the battles they have endured to convey their message and sound within the UK.

The new museum opens on Saturday 18th April. I do recommend you combine a trip there with a visit to the V&A warehouse which is just a few minutes’ walk away across the Olympic Park. The Stratford destination is very easy to reach with so many transport systems to take you there. Definitely a place to check out.

I liked the portraits. They were all painted with strong blocks of colour and daubs of paint. The subjects all have a rather faraway look, not quite gazing at us but at some imagined object or deep in thought.

Likewise, the visionary landscapes are filled with colours jostling in a large-scale pointillist style and strong outlines done with broad brushstrokes. His paintings project a very individual form of surrealism and an evolution of the ‘fauvists’ which preceded him. There’s more calculation involved with these works. Most of the scenes are views of Norwegian countryside, where Mägi lived between 1908 -10.

Mägi was a very successful artist in his lifetime 1878-1925. He died at just 46 and, given he was only working for sixteen years, this exhibition presents an impressive impression of his output. You certainly get the idea that you are seeing a modernist style taking its place just as European art was evolving into something much more abstract.

The show is on at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until 12th July 2026.

This exhibition at the Royal Academy opens with a spectacular self-portrait which shows how very confident she was as a portrait painter. A contemporary with Artemisia Gentileschi, Wautier must have been a strong character. Forging a career as a female artist was a bold thing to do. But it’s clear that she was very talented and especially interested in creating portraits, and narrative paintings which convey great character. She was based in Brussels, never married, and appears to have devoted her life to her art.

These two pictures, above, show great story-telling skills. On the left is the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine. On the right is The Education of the Virgin, a very sensitive picture of a young girl learning to read – a normal parent activity – yet it is clear that this child is destined for a special role

Where Wautier really succeeds is her very sensitively painted and characterful portraits. Clearly she had some favourite models for these paintings but the results are spectacular.

You can see the ‘Netherlandish’ influence in this painting of the annunciation. I love the rug on the table. Makes one think of those remarkable paintings by Vermeer. The show is on at the Royal Academy until 21st June 2026.

This spectacular painting is life-sized and it dominates a small but perfectly formed show at the National Gallery. This is a portrait of Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham and was painted in about 1762. I’m no horse expert but you can tell that Stubbs has really spent time sketching the horse from life and also understands the skeleton and musculature of the beast so that it looks entirely plausible.

It’s really interesting to see the detailed sketches made in preparation for horse portraits. Apparently Stubbs was anxious to capture the physique of each horse and their nature too. Working from dissections he was able to work out the proportions, contours and skeletons of horses before, later, find a way to capture character and personality in the finished portrait.

I was very enchanted by this portrait of Dungannon with a lamb. Apparently the horse developed a close friendship with the sheep who wandered into his paddock and they became inseparable.

Stubbs produced much of his work for the Turf Gallery, specialising in equine art, and clearly it was a very popular and lucrative specialism for an artist. A great treat to see, close up, such spectacular paintings and the research which went into their creation.

George Stubbs (1724-1806) The show is on in Room 1 at the National Gallery until 31st May 2026.

We start this very comprehensive exhibition of Tracy Emin’s work with what remains of her early work at art school. She destroyed her work in a fit of self-doubt but at least these tiny photographs survive. Seeing them mounted on fragments of canvas they provide a very informative and fascinating collection of images which presage the work that was to come.

It’s great to see some of Emin’s works with fabrics and her own idiosyncratic form of tapestry and embroidery. It’s a form of collage and the effect of these combined images is very bold and moving. You can see she’s channelling those old-school samplers girls might have made at school 150 years ago but has developed the skills into remarkable pieces of art.

Two films, made directly to camera by Emin, express her fury at the way she was treated as a young teenager growing up in Margate. In retrospect it was abuse by local boys and men but she wanted to experience everything that life had to offer. And sometimes her experiences were very unpleasant. These bold self-portraits, depicting moment of huge emotional trauma are very hard to view. They evoke such depths of pain and disappointment in a very immediate way. Looking closely to the works there’s the sense of a palimpsest – of images behind the one we are looking at – which have been erased or corrupted in some way and replaced with the powerful top layer. She also includes very honest assessments in writing of her mental state, views and desires.

And there is the bed. This famous piece from 1998 which bewildered viewers. Now it is understood as the ultimate self-portrait of a time in Emin’s life when she was in a state of breakdown after an abortion, relationship breakdown and lack of self-worth. It has the most amazing atmosphere and you really do pick up on the experience which these items convey.

The exhibition is very much an expression of Emin’s life post the life she lived in her youth. For a while she stopped painting entirely and then, when she picked up a brush again, the work emerged with a whoosh of energy, fury and a need to express her own opinion of all the wrongs that had been done to her and a snub to all the people who never believed she would achieve all that has done.

The show is on at Tate Modern until 31st August 2026.

Very exhilarating to see this huge exhibition of work by Rose Wylie. She’s 91 and still busy working, having started making art in earnest in her seventies. And what a body of work she has created – it fills all the galleries of the Royal Academy. And, amazingly, she’s the first female artist to have been given a retrospective at this august gallery.

I was impressed to see that she uses paper collage to create her initial designs before scaling them up for the huge, baggy canvases that fill the walls. At first you might think that the work has a child-like quality but they are more structured than the careless daubings of a child. She is inspired by stuff – images on the telly, film, in magazines, memory.

There’s also terrific humour to her work. I did like the daft painting of the horse with an attempt to depict the anatomy of the beast. Her faces, whether human or animal have a charming innocence to them and a lot of eyelashes!

You can see that when she has hit upon an idea she really develops it in a witty, very playful way and, just to avoid any doubt as to her intension, there is text to tease and beguile the viewer.

Born in Kent during the war she recalls attacks by Doodle bugs and the destruction caused.

I liked this very playful collage of her husband.

The show is on at the Royal Academy of Art until 19th April 2026