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Show of the week
British Landscape: A View of the Landscape
Love is the secret of Britain’s green and pleasant landscapes, as captured by artists from Gainsborough to Hepworth.
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, from 30 May to 1 November
Also show
Lisa Ivory
Beautiful gothic paintings with skeletons and naked bodies in shadowy places that evoke a dark, dark past.
Gramercy Park Studios, London, until 26 June
Jack White
Is the Detroit-born musician and, er, upholsterer a good artist? Damien Hirst’s paintings say yes.
Newport Street Gallery, London, until 13 September
Delaine Le Bas
New private art including pieces made in glass at Venice’s Murano workshops.
Maureen Paley Gallery, London, from 4 June
Wendy McMurdo
Images that play on the border between reality and digital fantasy in a 30-year survey of the work of this Scottish artist.
Image, Edinburgh, from 30 May to 25 October
Picture of the week
Reclusive Canadian artist Steven Shearer likes his work – like the Tokerman shown here – to speak. However, Our writer managed to open it about how his paintings reframe history through the lens of youthful ennui and coming-of-age interactions.
What we learned
T Venkanna captures the festive atmosphere of the festival
British actress Tess Jaray has died aged 88
New artwork will turn salvaged wood from Sycamore Gap’s cut trees into a “living archive”
Phyllida Barlow has messed up a good house
Two artists have sold their works to raise money for the lighting of Nigel Farage’s Essex seat
A con artist who tried to sell fake antiques to Sotheby’s was thwarted by false invoices.
Artist Lee Friedlander can turn “any piece of junk into a masterpiece”
Leonora Carrington’s painting made in a mental hospital is on display for the first time
Mine of the week
Portrait of the poet by Palma Vecchio, circa 1516
She is beautiful, she is sensitive and she seems to have a laurel tree growing out of her head. The growth of that shoot really represents the poet, or wanted to be portrayed as one, because the green leaves of the laurel were full of poetry in Renaissance Italy. In the 14th century, the revolutionary romantic poet Petrarch, who put inner feelings at the heart of the budding Renaissance, dedicated many of his sonnets to a woman he called Laura, knowingly playing on her name and the ancient myth that the god Apollo pursued a woman who ran away and became a laurel tree. Petrarch’s Laura may or may not have been real, but she sowed the connection of laurels, love and poetry in the new Italian culture, even being crowned as a Roman poet. In the 15th century the poet and politician Lorenzo de’ Medici proudly sang his name as a laurel. But who is this spirit of poetry? Laurels and sonnets were romantic fodder, so perhaps Palma Vecchio is celebrating the man’s musical sensibilities rather than portraying a more well-known figure.
National Gallery, London
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