Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice

Wyndham Lewis PortraitsNational Portrait Gallery

London. Until 19 October
Admission charge

Wyndham Lewis seemed the epitome of ‘modern art’ after World War I. Now his portraits looks like charming pastiches. The RA turned down his portrait of TS Eliot in 1938, although Sickert called him ‘the greatest portraitist of this or any other time’. A baffling episode in the history of taste.

The Vulture, Daily Mail, 8 August 2008

Robin Simon's Daily Mail weekly choice

Edgar Degas, l'Absinthe

'Impressionism & Scotland'
National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh
Until 12 October
Admission charge

Magnificent display of over 100 masterpieces telling the story of the powerful relationship between the French Impressionists and Scotland. The Glasgow draper Arthur Kay bought Degas’s great l’Absinthe (see illustration) as early as 1892, while Scotland boasted its own ‘Glasgow Boys’ and ‘Scottish Colourists’. Knockout works by Van Gogh, Monet (Poplars on the Epte illustrated here), … the lot.

The Vulture, Daily Mail, 1 August 2008