James Nicholls

Artnet refer to her as ' The greatest artistic rediscovery of the century.' Like all the press there, I arrived at this exhibition not knowing Michaelina Wautier — and left questioning how she had been overlooked for so long. At the Royal Academy of Arts for The Art Review , I encountered a remarkable artist working in 17th-century Brussels, who challenged the limits placed on women by painting across portraiture, still life, and monumental history scenes — a scale rarely afforded to female...

Sometimes just three paintings are enough to command an entire gallery. Yesterday I was at the National Gallery, London for the press view of the new exhibition 'Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse' — a small but compelling exhibition centred on just three major works and a group of drawings by George Stubbs (1724-1806) Intimate in scale yet remarkable in impact, the display allows visitors to focus closely on Stubbs’ extraordinary understanding of the horse — an animal he studied with almost...

At the National Portrait Gallery for Lucien Freud Drawing into Painting . Few artists have been reserved or as controversial as Freud. His portraits are uncompromising. Unfiltered. Often uncomfortable. They resist glamour. They reject flattery Flesh is rendered as weight, texture, vulnerability - never idealised. And yet, decades later, his work continues to define psychological portraiture in Britain. I have been interviewing Sarah Southgate, Senior Curator of Contemporary Collections at...