Andrew Lambirth

John Virtue (born 1947) is the sixth National Gallery Associate Artist. A great deal of fuss is being made of the exhibition which marks his two-year period in residence in a basement studio. On display are the 11 new paintings he has made, several of them vast, and the show spills out from the Sunley Room into the adjacent corridors and galleries. The accompanying catalogue is a very plush affair, published in hardback (special exhibition price £12.95) and containing essays by the historian Simon Schama, Paul Moorhouse of the Tate and Colin Wiggins of the National Gallery. The current issue of Modern Painters magazine carries a laudatory article about Virtue by the National’s director, Charles Saumarez Smith.

A good many years ago I wrote a short article about the recent work of an artist (who shall remain nameless), and characterised it — in a very positive way — as ‘decorative’. This did not go down at all well, and I was asked to change what I had written and remove this offending word. I refused, and the piece was not published. Such was, and still is, the stigma attached to ‘decorative’. Though it can be intended as praise, it is more often construed as damning criticism. The one great painter whose work has always defied such narrow categorisation is Henri Matisse (1869–1954).

This brace of exhibitions takes up the whole of Level 4 (aside from the coffee bar and souvenir shop) of Tate Modern; I say ‘take up’ rather than fill because the Strindberg is stretched so thin it almost achieves invisibility, while the Beuys needs a lot of room to ‘breathe’. In the case of the Strindberg display, I have rarely seen public gallery space so underused. I cannot begin to comprehend why this vast suite of rooms has been given over to an exhibition better suited to the foyer of the National Theatre (where, incidentally, a new version by Caryl Churchill of Strindberg’s A Dream Play is being staged). A visually oriented writer, as Strindberg undeniably was, is not necessarily an artist worthy of a Tate retrospective.

Michelangelo Merisi (1571–1610), called Caravaggio after his place of birth, has become something of a mythical figure in the half-century or so since his reputation was rescued from obscurity. Today he is celebrated as the great precursor of realism, the archetypal bohemian artist, and the prototype genius who behaved badly and died young. Caravaggio is hot property, and a full-scale retrospective of his work would be a certain crowd-puller, a blockbuster to cap all blockbusters. (Caravaggio scores on so many counts: proto-Marxist, rebel, homosexual icon, avant-garde hero — a PR dream.

It could so easily not have worked, this bold (some might say foolhardy) juxtaposition of three such dissimilar artists. Particularly if one of them was felt to be somehow of inferior power — the sick man of the trio — a position which might have been reserved (by those who judge from ignorance) for James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). What a mistake that would have been, and what a triumph this exhibition turns out to be. It has been superlatively hung and installed in the Tate’s often unfriendly basement galleries, and is an absolute joy to look at.

The ravishing new exhibition of Lee Miller’s portrait photographs at the NPG is prefaced by a corridor selection of shots of Miller by others — principally by the fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene (whose assistant she was on French Vogue in 1930) and her long-standing friend and lover, Life photographer David E. Scherman. Miller (1907–77) was a great beauty who had considerable success as a model before taking to the camera herself. She had first wanted to be a painter, and studied lighting and stage design before travelling to Italy to study art. Edward Steichen, who photographed her, suggested she try photography, and at this point she went to Paris to meet Man Ray.

The first question to spring to mind concerning this most welcome and in-depth study of the Irish–British painter Sir William Orpen (1878–1931) is why the Imperial War Museum? Recently, there have been notable exhibitions of his contemporaries Augustus John and William Nicholson at the Tate and the Royal Academy respectively, but Orpen it seems does not merit a star ‘art venue’, his life’s achievement (only a fraction of which was actually devoted to the subject of war) being relegated to a repository of machines of mass destruction.

The Guildhall Art Gallery has a well-defined policy of mounting temporary exhibitions of work by living artists, providing the subject matter is closely involved with the theme of London. David Tress, although born in the capital in 1955, has lived in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, since 1976, and has made a substantial reputation for himself as a painter of wild, not to say elemental, landscape. But, as the riverscapes of George Rowlett make abundantly clear, you don’t have to go to the country for passion and drama — the paint can swirl just as crazily or as poignantly over the Thames. Tress’s London scenes are equally robust, based upon childhood memories and refreshed by recent trips to the capital.

The first part of the title of the Whitechapel’s latest portmanteau show is taken from Ezra Pound’s masterpiece of compression, the two-line poem ‘In a Station of the Metro’ — ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.’ The poem is a triumph of Imagism, the short-lived movement (c.1910–17) Pound helped to launch, which was in favour of brief, musical phrases and clarity of image, and in revolt against the woolliness of Romanticism. The second part of the title reveals the outward thrust or purpose of the exhibition: to present an alternative history of modernism as seen through the evolution of realism.

To get the year off to a good start is the eye-catchingly titled William Orpen — Politics, Sex & Death at the Imperial War Museum (27 January–2 May). Is this an exhibition or a manifesto? (From its title, difficult to tell.) Sir William Orpen (1878–1931) was a dazzling painter, rich and successful, Sargent’s heir as portrayer of the haut monde. Yet he has the unfortunate reputation of being brilliant but superficial, and as a consequence there has never been an exhibition of his work in a national gallery in this country. The IWM is all set to change that with a show of 80 oils and 40 drawings, focusing not merely on his activities as an Official War Artist (1917–19), but also on his nudes, conversation pieces and portraits.

By no means all commercial galleries run their Christmas exhibitions on into the New Year, but several that are doing so happen to be showing some of the most interesting work that has been around in months. However, if you are venturing out in search of artistic sustenance, do check gallery opening times to avoid disappointment. A glorious show of new work (until 14 January) at Timothy Taylor Gallery, 24 Dering Street, W1 (020 7409 3344), proclaims that Craigie Aitchison (born 1926) has lost none of his magic. The familiar subjects are once more in evidence, but given imaginative new treatment. A landscape is for the first time ever over-arched by a rainbow, reindeer crop the turf, and cypress trees feature in a big way.

Collecting stained glass seems to have fallen somewhat from fashion. In the first half of the 20th century, acquisition was lively and prices soared as the Big Three — William Burrell, Pierpont Morgan and William Randolph Hearst — vied for possession of the best examples of this essentially Christian artform. (There is no stained glass recorded before the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century. It may have become secularised later, but it was originally intended for purposes of religious instruction and adornment.) After the second world war, tastes changed and stained glass was largely ignored. In recent years, there has been something of a revival of interest, with Sam Fogg a pioneer in the field.

The reputation of George Frederick Watts (1817–1904) has not fared well for the past 80 years or so. He was much admired during his lifetime (his friend and fellow-artist Lord Leighton even dubbed him ‘England’s Michelangelo’), and his allegories of repentance and hope were still popular during the first world war, but his stock has slumped since then.

The very fact that this exhibition’s subtitle has to explain who Nicholson is stands as a blatant admission of his supposed obscurity. The Academy is surely faint-hearted here — does it underestimate the intelligence of its audience? How many visitors might, without benefit of subtitle, have naturally assumed that Nicholson was an Iranian swordsmith? I have no doubt that a good percentage of the Academy’s core support group will be acquainted with Nicholson’s work or with his secondary role as father of the more-famous Ben. After all, people become Friends of the RA because they’re interested in art, and have some knowledge of that world.

People love to sniff the scandal of forgery. Didn’t that old rogue Tom Keating practically become a folk idol? The disputes of scholars are mostly dry stuff, but the notion that the National Gallery’s recently and expensively purchased ‘Madonna of the Pinks’ by Raphael could be a fake has been resurrected by arts reporters and newshounds hungry for headlines on the occasion of this eagerly awaited Raphael exhibition. I have heard artists and critics voicing their doubts about the authenticity of this painting — one of the former opining that the faces do not look sufficiently Italian to be by Raphael, but are instead ‘neurotic and unmistakably Low Countries’ — and indeed it is easy to have misgivings about such a controversial picture.

Constance Spry (1886–1960) was a remarkable figure who exerted a powerful influence over the taste of generations of home-makers, particularly from the 1930s to the 1950s. Born in Derby, she was brought up in Ireland where she studied hygiene and physiology, with a view to a career in nursing. A natural communicator, she soon found herself lecturing on first aid and home nursing for the Women’s National Health Association in Ireland. From the start there was a noticeable emphasis on self-help and what can be done in the home. But Spry was always capable of working equally well with larger institutions, and at the beginning of the first world war she became secretary of Dublin Red Cross.