January round-up

The abstract painter John McLean celebrates his 70th birthday this year, and the enterprising Poussin Gallery (Block K, 13 Bell Yard Mews, 175 Bermondsey Street, SE1) has mounted a show of his recent prints in recognition (until 14 February).

At Gimpel Fils (30 Davies Street, W1, until 21 February) is a show concentrating on the work Peter Lanyon made in the last two years before his untimely death in 1964, at the age of 46. What we see as his final work would probably have been a transitional period of development as he distilled the American and Mexican influences he absorbed from his travels. This show from Lanyon’s long-time dealer follows on from the very recent Porthmeor mural exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. It’s evidently a time of Lanyon reassessment, though a major museum retrospective is still required to show the true scope of his achievement.

I’ve just been sent a particularly impressive catalogue of Master Drawings, assembled by Stephen Ongpin Fine Art. The collection will be showing in New York until 31 January (at Mark Murray Fine Paintings, 39 East 72nd Street), then part of it at the Salon du Dessin, Place de la Bourse, Paris (24 to 30 March), before London (6 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, St James’s) 1 to 24 July. The catalogue has been thoroughly researched and contains informative entries on each of the 50 items, which range from Palma Giovane to R.B. Kitaj. Just to pick out a few plums: Herman van Swanevelt’s brown ink ‘Landscape with Balaam and the Ass’, a beautiful preparatory study for an etching; an exquisite Corot pencil drawing of the Roman Forum with the Temple of Venus and Roma; a riverbank in watercolour by Delacroix; a view of Bordighera by Calame, done in black chalk and grey wash on dark-blue paper; a passionate watercolour landscape by Antoine Vollon; a Burne-Jones gouache angel; and memorable pastels by Giuseppe Casciaro, Degas, Schuffenecker and Monet. There’s also a Vuillard oil on paper, a distinctly emblematic watercolour tree by Henri Edmond Cross and good things by John Minton and Ben Nicholson. Mouthwatering. q