What to see this week
Artists at Work is at The Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2, until July 15 (020–7848 2526; www.courtauld.ac.uk) From David Kandel’s allegorical Virtue protecting the artist (1587) to Georg Eduard Gehbe’s picturesque encounter in a forest between a surprised artist and a leaping deer and Carlo Labruzzi’s pair of tourists observing a painter sketching Rome’s Colosseum, this delightful selection from the collection of Katrin Bellinger turns the spotlight on the artists themselves—in the studio, the academy or out of doors. Exterior scenes are not exclusively landscapes; in this pen-and ink-wash sketch of about 1660, Jan de Bisschop depicts two draughtsmen studying an antique bust in bright sunshine, the intense light deftly conveyed through his swiftly applied brown wash. Spanning the 16th to 20th centuries, the exhibition includes works by Tiepolo, Fragonard and Schiele and a catalogue with an essay by guest curator Deanna Petherbridge, author of the outstanding The Primacy of Drawing (2010).
Picturing Forgotten London is at London Metropolitan Archives, 40, Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1, until October 31 (020–7332 3820; www.cityoflondon.gov.uk) Paintings, engravings, photographs, maps and film clips spanning the 15th to 20th centuries depict lost landmarks of London, from ragged schools and the farms of 1840s Archway to the Gothic magnificence of Columbia Market in Bethnal Green and the triumphal arch at Euston.
John Piper: A Very English Artist is at Bohun Gallery, 15, Reading Road, Henley-on-thames, Oxfordshire, until July 28 (01491 576228; www.bohungallery.co.uk) A selling exhibition that takes as its theme Piper’s travels around Britain, with some of the landscapes, churches and country houses whose protection he championed.
Edward Stott: A Master of Colour and Atmosphere is at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, East Sussex, May 26– September 16 (01323 434670; www.townereastbourne.org.uk) Explores the work of the neglected late-victorian ‘poetpainter of the twilight’, who created poignant and painterly images of the rural idyll, on the centenary of his death.