Nigel Ip
With climate change looming above our heads every minute of everyday, sometimes it's important to take a step back and remind ourselves of the organisms which give us the 'breath of life'. Among the Trees at the Hayward Gallery blew me away with how immersive and engaging it could be without feeling overwhelmingly repetitive. Although [...]
But Nigel, it’s already 2020! And it’s February! Indeed, it is, and I hope you’ve all had a wonderful start to the new year. If you haven’t followed me on Instagram yet, I highly encourage you to do so! I’m a lot more active there with a fabulously wonderful community of like-minded followers. On to [...]
Out of the world’s collections of Leonardo da Vinci drawings, the Royal Collection’s holdings are the largest, totalling an impressive 550 sheets. For the 500th anniversary celebrations of the artist’s death, a third of these were exhibited at 12 simultaneous venues in the UK, before being reunited in a major exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery [...]
In recent years, it seems as though there is a new set of art fairs popping up spontaneously on the calendar without a moment’s notice. Many of these tend to be derivative of others, exhibiting the same kinds of work and targeting the same minority of wealthy collectors. Yet dealers continue to exhibit in as [...]
Another year has passed and sadly I’ve been too occupied to write properly this year! However, my Instagram has been very active indeed with short reviews and nuggets of art-historical information. I also published a number of book reviews on the Museum Bookstore website, writing about Michelangelo and Andrea del Sarto. 2018 has been a [...]
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! As festive cheer spreads throughout the country, let’s look at some of the best exhibitions this year. Below are my top 5 exhibitions of 2017 in London, in addition to some special honourable mentions: Cézanne Portraits – National Portrait Gallery This exhibition was thoroughly impressive with every room. The [...]
By now, everyone will have heard of the world record-breaking sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (c.1500) at Christie’s New York on 15 November 2017. Christie’s ‘triumph of marketing’ praised it as ‘the last da Vinci’, referring to its status as the last painting by the artist in private hands; this is untrue as [...]
The V&A is known for many things: full-sized casts of Michelangelo’s David (1501-4) and Trajan’s Column, the Raphael’s tapestry cartoons, the ‘Green’ Dining Room designed by William Morris, the Indian barrel organ called Tippoo’s Tiger (1793), Matthew Cotes Wyatt’s sculpture of the dog Bashaw, the Faithful Friend of Man (1832-34), Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Day [...]
When the National Gallery acquired Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434) in 1842, it was the only pristine example of early Netherlandish painting from this period in their collection. Van Eyck had also been erroneously credited as the inventor of oil painting, a sixteenth-century myth invented by Giorgio Vasari in Italy and perpetuated by Karel [...]
Of all the museums and galleries in London, the Wallace Collection is my favourite. Displayed at Hertford House and only a short walk away from Oxford Street, the collection contains everything from leaves of illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance and Baroque paintings, to military arms and armoury, in addition to a very strong selection of French 18th-century [...]
