James Fenton | The New York Review of Books

Catching the Moment

John Singer Sargent saw into the souls of his models, whether they were society women, nude men, or lower-class Venetians. How did he do it?

Fashioned by Sargent

an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 8, 2023–January 15, 2024, and Tate Britain, London, February 22–July 7, 2024

May 9, 2024 issue

Here’s Looking at Yew

In the English garden, eccentricity and variety went hand in hand.

English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries

by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

April 6, 2023 issue

What He Saw in a Dream

Jean-Jacques Lequeu: Visionary Architect

an exhibition at the Petit Palais, Paris, December 11, 2018–March 31, 2019; the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, October 4, 2019–January 5, 2020; and the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, January 31–September 13, 2020

Jean-Jacques Lequeu: Bâtisseur de Fantasmes

Catalog of the exhibition edited by Laurent Baridon, Jean-Philippe Garric, and Martial Guédron, with the collaboration of Corinne Le Bitouzé

May 14, 2020 issue

The Art of Combat

The Last Knight: The Art, Armor, and Ambition of Maximilian I

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 7, 2019–January 5, 2020

The Renaissance of Etching

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 23, 2019–January 20, 2020; and the Albertina Museum, Vienna, February 12–May 10, 2020

March 12, 2020 issue

Nasty & Nice

Bouguereau and America

an exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, February 15–May 12, 2019; the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, June 22–September 22, 2019; and the San Diego Museum of Art, November 9, 2019–March 15, 2020

May 9, 2019 issue

A Spitting Image

‘Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now)’ at the Met Breuer

Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now)

an exhibition at the Met Breuer, New York City, March 21–July 22, 2018

July 19, 2018 issue

The Bishop’s Elders of Israel

Zurbarán’s Jacob and His Twelve Sons: Paintings from Auckland Castle

an exhibition at the Meadows Museum, Dallas, September 17, 2017–January 7, 2018; and the Frick Collection, New York City, January 31–April 22, 2018

April 5, 2018 issue

The Master of Wonder House

John Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London

an exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York City, September 15, 2017—January 7, 2018

March 22, 2018 issue

Moses in Mexico

On Cristobal de Villalpando’s altarpiece

Cristóbal de Villalpando: Mexican Painter of the Baroque

an exhibition at the Palacio de Cultura Citibanamex–Palacio de Iturbide, Mexico City, March 9–June 4, 2017; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, July 25–October 15, 2017

October 12, 2017 issue

Learning to Love French Art

America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting

an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., May 21–August 20, 2017

August 17, 2017 issue

The Disasters of War

The Great War in American art and literature

World War I and American Art

an exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, November 4, 2016–April 9, 2017; the New-York Historical Society, New York City, May 26–September 3, 2017; and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, October 6, 2017–January 21, 2018

The Art of Devastation: Medals and Posters of the Great War

an exhibition at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, January 27–April 9, 2017

World War I and America: Told by the Americans Who Lived It

edited by A. Scott Berg

May 25, 2017 issue

On the Road to Martial Law

“I might go down in history as the butcher,” Rodrigo Duterte has said. “It’s up to you.”

February 23, 2017 issue

Murderous Manila: On the Night Shift

Duterte’s war seems very much to be a war against the poor.

February 9, 2017 issue

Van Dyck: ‘The Great Power of Execution’

Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture

an exhibition at the Frick Collection, New York City, March 2–June 5, 2016

May 12, 2016 issue

Dennis Hastert: Victim

August 13, 2015 issue

The Rothschild Taste

They like to do things well, but they prefer to do them really really well

The Rothschilds at Waddesdon Manor

by Mrs. James de Rothschild

Personal Characteristics from French History

by Ferdinand Rothschild

The Salon Doré from the Hôtel de la Trémoille

edited by Martin Chapman

Paintings: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor

by Ellis Waterhouse

Sculpture: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor

by Terence Hodgkinson

Architecture and Panelling: The James A. de Rothschild Bequest at Waddesdon Manor

by Bruno Pons

The Savonnerie: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor

by Pierre Verlet

Sacred Stitches: Ecclesiastical Textiles in the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor

by Rachel Boak

Drawings for Architecture Design and Ornament: The James A. de Rothschild Bequest at Waddesdon Manor

by Alastair Laing and others

Theatres of Life: Drawings from the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor

by Juliet Carey

A Rothschild Renaissance: Treasures from the Waddesdon Bequest

by Dora Thornton

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June 25, 2015 issue

Letter

Roger Dee

Balfour at Waddesdon

August 13, 2015 issue

What I Mean by Mexico

One says of any great subject as yet untackled—Mexico, for instance—Oh, that’s such a big undertaking, that’s going to need such preparation. Then something happens and you just have to go in there anyway.

February 25, 2015

The Abbey That Jumped the Shark

Is ‘Downton Abbey’ great television?

Downton Abbey

a television series created by Julian Fellowes

Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey

by Margaret Powell

March 8, 2012 issue

Two Kinds of Magic

Zarkana

a show by Cirque du Soleil, written and directed by François Girard

A Magic Flute

directed by Peter Brook

August 18, 2011 issue

Two Kinds of Theatrical Magic

Who knows in how many directorial breasts a conflict rages between a desire for intimacy and the yearning for the very grandest of effects? On the one hand, there is the ambition to mount, in the smallest of theaters, a drama of the most intense kind, in which the actors are never obliged to raise their voices to suit the acoustics of the space, because nothing is going to be missed. Working through improvisation, perhaps, or through other revered techniques of self-discovery, the performers arrive at dangerous levels of intensity and verisimilitude.

July 18, 2011