Summer round-up 2

There’s a run of fine shows among the commercial galleries at the moment: perhaps they’re gearing up for the August recess, or simply facing out the recession.

There’s a run of fine shows among the commercial galleries at the moment: perhaps they’re gearing up for the August recess, or simply facing out the recession. Whichever, there’s plenty to see, and a good place to start is with Browse & Darby’s 33rd annual exhibition (19 Cork Street, W1, until 24 July), a mixed summer show guaranteed to spring some surprises among the expected masters. There’s always a Degas and a Gwen John (I particularly liked the gouache ‘Flowers and Ferns in a Vase’), and usually something by Sickert (this year a memorable drawing of Pulteney Bridge in Bath). There’s a beautiful small square painting of a cactus by another artist we associate with B&D, William Nicholson; a Vuillard landscape and a moody Piper of Wales keep it company.

Among the other delights spread over the three floors of this townhouse gallery are a trio of crisp lithographic geometries by Robert Bevan, all studies of horse dealing, a powerful French landscape by Henri Hayden, one of Augustus John’s full-length, self-possessed ladies, a lovely early Victor Pasmore still-life, an interesting but rather Dufy-like illustrational Christopher Wood of Monte Carlo, and a magnificent Matthew Smith flower painting. This, for me, is the star of the show: glorious colour, sumptuous paintwork and a price to match. Smith is one of our most underrated artists at the moment. Now’s the time to buy him.

Round the corner at the old Museum of Mankind, currently leased by the Royal Academy to the Haunch of Venison gallery, is the second part of a mid-career retrospective of Keith Coventry (born Burnley, 1958).