Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson’s rehang of Tate Britain, revealed to the public on May 23, has been much derided in the press. The Guardian called it ‘vacuous, worthy and dull’; the FT suggested a ‘hectoring’ and ‘self-righteous’ tone to the labelling. But there are, to be fair, many positives to come out of it, and one is that the British pop artist Richard Hamilton has been given his own room.

To use the parlance of the time, the Welsh artist Ceri Richards (1903-1971) ‘had a good war’, though it didn’t start off terribly well.

Jonathan Clark Fine Art Gallery represent Richards’ estate, and studies made in situ in the foundry are displayed in their current exhibition, hence the ‘Furnaces’ in its title. The ‘Feathers’ refers to the garments worn by the costermonger Pearly Kings and Queens, who had inspired the artist when he was living in London: wartime sketches of these flamboyant figures, also on show.

Emily Young, ‘Britain’s greatest living land sculptor’ (FT), talks about having a friendship, even a marriage, with every bit of stone she works with, whether that’s Onyx or Speleothem, or Jaisalmer, or Quartzite, or Calacatta, or Lapis or Alabaster.

Two interconnected shows opened at Pallant House Gallery on May 13, both in their different way concerned with what might be described as ‘the female gaze’.

Osborne Samuel have named their latest exhibition of the work of Keith Vaughan – their fifth since 2007 – Image and Anxiety.

The Mayfair gallery has gathered over 80 works from major private collections, and paintings from their own inventory, including all eight of his lithographs, and the show – which enjoyed a crowded private view on May 10 – is illustrated with two cabinets full of Vaughan’s notebooks, letters, photographs and journals.

King Charles, it turns out, is a very competent artist. A series of 16 of his paintings – made when he was Prince of Wales, between 1992 and 2000 – were made into lithograph prints, in a limited edition of 100, by the late Stanley Jones at the Curwen Studio, with proceeds going to the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund.

These four characterful East London kids, dressed in their best for the 1953 Coronation, posing patiently for the camera under a flurry of raggedy bunting, will now be in their mid-seventies, around the same age as King Charles. They will, no doubt, currently be preparing for Charles’ coronation, if they’re still with us.

It’s been a long struggle, but Sir Joshua Reynold’s Portrait of Mai (Omai), it was announced today (April 25), is to stay in the country… for the time being, at least.

A retrospective of the vibrant paintings of Maro Gorky, to celebrate her 80th birthday, has just opened at Long & Ryle, round the corner on John Islip Street. In the show’s catalogue, Cressida Connolly writes: ‘any room would sing with one of her paintings on the wall.’ Well here are 20 or so of her exuberant creations in a single – rather intimate – gallery space: make that a joyful chorus.

1964 was an eventful year for the Yorkshire artist Mark Lancaster. He was studying fine art, under pop-art guru Richard Hamilton, at King’s College, Newcastle. In his summer break, he went to New York, where he wangled a job assisting Andy Warhol in the first incarnation of The Factory, on East 87th Street. How? Here’s a lesson: he found his number in the phone book, and rang him up.

In December 1953 a 27-year-old Leon Kossoff attended the exhibition Russian Emigres in Paris, at the Redfern Gallery in London, which included four works by the late expressionist artist, Chaim Soutine. This was the first time he had seen one of the late oil painter’s works in the flesh. 

The oil painter David Storey brings forgotten people’s memories to life, and makes them universal.

He trawls car boot sales and flea markets for old family photo albums, and uses selected images - often of individuals or family groups posing rather awkwardly for a loved-one’s holiday snap - as the starting point of his process. He works these images into miniature portraits, using egg tempera and oil on wood, attempting to ‘unlock the poetry from within’.

Gillian Wearing is, of course, best known for her conceptual videos and photographs and, more recently, her sculptures. But during lockdown the Turner Prize-winning artist also turned – like other YBAs before her – to painting. And, in particular, to painting portraits.

RJ Kitaj was taught drawing by Percy Horton, who was taught by Walter Sickert, who was taught by Edgar Degas. Is it fanciful to see the connection between the French master and the American artist?

Kitaj, who spent his formative years in England, had a big influence on British pop art, and never stopped experimenting with style, form and medium, but he was, above all, an exceptional draftsman: the critic Robert Hughes called him ‘better than almost anyone else’.

In 2018 the Charleston Trust opened a gallery in the grounds to exhibit artists who, in one way or another, were connected to Charleston. Hylton Nel, whose work is displayed in the adjacent South Gallery, could also be described as a ceramicist, though he prefers to use the term ‘artist-potter’. He makes plates in his studio in South Africa, and uses them as a medium for expression, painting onto them figures, patterns and words. This is Grant and Bell territory, of course…

For four decades the artist Phyllida Barlow, who died this week aged 78, dedicated her life to teaching her students at the Slade School of Art. She was, by all accounts, a brilliant teacher. Some of those students made a big name for themselves: Rachel Whiteread, for example. Tacita Dean. Douglas Gordon. Ángela De La Cruz. All this time she was making her own work, quietly, in her studio.

Sculptural ceramicist Halima Cassell admits she had never heard of the Watts Gallery Artists’ Village, near Guildford in Surrey, before she was invited to become the first contemporary artist to exhibit there since its restoration in 2011. But as soon as she entered the Watts Cemetery Chapel, she fell in love with the eclectically styled terracotta building, realising that the artistic vision of Mary Watts, who oversaw its exterior and interior design 125 years ago, bore uncanny similarities to her own.

‘That man is the greatest painter in watercolours of our time’. So wrote the artist Augustus John, of Arthur Henry Knighton-Hammond, in a review of an exhibition of his work in Menton, on the French Riviera, in 1926.

Alex Leith is with Roberta Travers, of Piano Nobile, in front of the haunting self-portrait of Jean Cooke, completed in 1954, which opens the gallery’s new show about the painter, Seascapes and Chalk Caves.

John Piper was an artistic polymath, able to shift, seemingly effortlessly, from style to style, genre to genre, medium to medium. He is perhaps most famous today for his delicate, elegant, rather brooding landscapes, particularly those depicting the ruins of churches in the English countryside. But he also worked in the fields of abstract art, collage, book illustration…