Rosalind Ormiston

I am an art & architectural historian, and arts & travel writer, with many books published on art movements, and artists, including Hieronymus Bosch, Vermeer, Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Gauguin, William Morris, Egon Schiele and Edward Hopper.

NOVEMBER diary 

La Piscine museum of arts and industry - a mini French V&A -  in Roubaix, France, is gaining attention. Director Bruno Gaudichon and architect Jean-Paul Philippon, gave interviews, and a tour of the museum and new extension, which reopened on 20 October. La Piscine is an Art Deco swimming pool now an art gallery and museum, doing for Roubaix what the Guggenheim has done for Bilbao. (see carousel Jean-Paul Philippon + Art Deco pool)

2019 is REMBRANDT350, marking 350 years since the death of Rembrandt van Rijn. Many exhibitions planned. This month 'Rembrandt and Saskia: Love in the Dutch Golden Age' opens on 24 November, at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden. A brilliant reason to visit the museum, and Leeuwarden, European Capital of Culture in 2018.  Exhibition runs until 17 March 2019. Rembrandt's drawing of himself and his wife Saskia (on carousel), is from the exhibition. 

Lorenzo Lotto Portraits, at the National Gallery, London (on until 10 February, 2019), is the first-ever exhibition of the Italian Renaissance artist Lorenzo Lotto (1480-155) portraits. It is stunning: the faces, the clothes, the colours, Lotto's attention to detail. Loved it.  Free to view. (See carousel, detail of 'Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527, Royal Collection Trust) 

LEONARDO500 - is to be celebrated in 2019. I came across the 'Leonardo da Vinci' rose (on the carousel) during a 6-day press tour of the Loire Valley, in the summer, in prep for Renaissance500: to mark year-long events in 2019 to celebrate  500years of the French Renaissance, and mark the death of Da Vinci in France.