Exhibition of the week British Baroque: Power and Illusion
Tate Britain, London SW1 (020-7887 8888, tate.org.uk). Until 19 April
Baroque art was a dynamic, often bombastic style that produced some breathtaking paintings, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Prevalent in Britain from the early 1600s, it enjoyed its golden age here during the reign of Charles I, who commissioned baroque masters such as Rubens and van Dyck. So it is somewhat inexplicable, then, that
British Baroque, Tate Britain’s “comically inadequate” survey of the style, skips this era entirely and instead limits itself to exploring the half century between Charles II’s restoration in 1660 and the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Completely bypassing the greatest achievements of the baroque in this country, it instead brings together dozens of derivative portraits, still lifes and sculptures alongside various manuscripts, pieces of furniture and architectural drawings from the period. Baroque art rejoiced in “movement, passion and abundance”; if only the same could be said of this show. “Restoration Britain may have been outrageous and dirty (in every sense), but it was not boring.”
True, it’s a “rather drily museological” experience, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting look at an “often overlooked” period, and the best of the exhibits speak for themselves. Highlights include Antonio Verrio’s “ludicrous” The Sea Triumph of Charles II (c.1674), which depicts the king as a “modern-day Neptune” surrounded by “trumpetblasting maidens” and classical putti; and a silver chandelier that once “shimmered at the heart of Whitehall social gatherings”. More intriguing still are the show’s “revelatory” insights into this period, during which Britain transitioned from absolutist monarchy to parliamentary democracy. One of the final exhibits is John James Baker’s The Whig Junto (1710), depicting a group of distinctly un-regal politicians; as a representation of power, it could hardly be more different from Verrio’s celebration of divine rights.
The show’s “chief interest” comes with a section devoted to architecture, said Jackie Wullschläger in the FT. The great visual geniuses of late 17th century England were its architects: Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanbrugh, who are here represented by sketches and models. A particular thrill is a series of “beautiful” preparatory drawings for St Paul’s Cathedral, showing its conception in fascinating detail. Elsewhere, however, this “uneven” exhibition fails to disguise the fact that the Restoration was “British art’s most excruciatingly dull epoch, lacking a single noteworthy painter”. It is a pretty “disheartening” experience.