A Kiss is Never Just a Kiss (for Valentine's Day)

 

Giotto, ‘Meeting of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate’, c.1303-6, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy (Wikimedia Commons)

You might think art galleries were good places to find romance. All that beauty, all those stories of love, all that naked flesh. But the longer you look and the more you know, the less lovely love seems.

Giotto is usually credited with painting the first kiss in Western art. It is a tender image of middle age devotion, as Anne and Joachim meet to share the happy news that they are finally to have a child. The trouble is, worshippers looking at this would have known what happens next. It’s the start of a tragedy: their son will be John the Baptist, destined to be beheaded at the whim of Salome. Suddenly a kiss of joy looks almost like one of consolation, and you start focusing on the ominous figure in black.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard/ Marguerite Gérard,’The Stolen Kiss’, 1787, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia (Wikimedia Commons)

Eighteenth-century artists loved romantic intrigue and The Stolen Kiss was a favourite subject. A wealthy young woman has left her friends socialising in the other room, perhaps on the pretext of getting her shawl. Really she is meeting her lover. But will it end happily? The strong diagonal of messy fabric which draws your eye to her low-cut dress and the deep shadows behind suggest not. The mystery extends to the artist which may be Fragonard (famous for The Swing) or a female painter, Marguerite Gérard, whose work is often misattributed to him. 

Isobel Gloag, ‘The Kiss of the Enchantress’, c.1890 (Wikimedia Commons)

It wasn’t just women in danger. Art is full of mermaids and sirens who would lure an unsuspecting man to death or enchantment. Look how the knight is becoming trapped by the enchantress’ tail and the thorny branches springing up around him. This watercolour is sometimes linked to Keats’ poem Lamia based on a serpent-woman in Greek mythology, sometimes it is titled The Knight and the Mermaid. Whatever the exact inspiration, it is one of a number of such late nineteenth century images. They are often connected masculine fears about to the rise of educated, independent New Women. Although in this case the artist is female.

Edvard Munch, ‘The Kiss’, 1897, Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway (Wikimedia Commons)

Becoming inseparable is a such a romantic idea, until it is taken literally. Munch’s work frequently portrays a jaundiced view of love and sex, and his Kiss feels increasingly sinister when you start to focus on the featureless blobs of merged flesh. Yet the figures emanate an infectious warmth. The intense intimacy, with the bright world shut out and the curving brush strokes cradling the figures’ heads, somehow wins through.

Francesco Hayez, ‘The Kiss’, 1859, Pinacoteca de Brera, Milan, Italy (Wikimedia Commons)

Hayez’s Medieval romance is as perfect a pastiche of history as an Hollywood Technicolor film. A mysterious, passionate embrace with just a hint of tragedy – look at those figures lurking through the doorway. Yet this is less about individuals in love and more about political symbolism. It was commissioned to promote the idea of an alliance with France during the nineteenth century fight for Italian unification. The colours deliberately recall the French flag. But Hayez puts his heart and soul into it: even knowing all that, you can still hear violins. 

Gustav Klimt, ‘The Kiss’ 1907-8, The Belvedere, Vienna. Austria (Wikimedia Commons)

Arguably the most famous kiss in art, this is also a litmus test: are you a romantic or a realist? The gold, the flowers, the pattern create a such a beautiful intensity that you almost ignore the figures. Does he seem domineering? Does her pose seem awkwardly tense? Is her hand on his an encouragement or a restraint? Why are they on the edge of a precipice? Some historians argue that this is Orpheus and Eurydice, captured at the moment when she sinks back into death, lost to him forever. Some see it as indicative of Klimt’s own preference for sexually submissive women. Others just focus on the closed lids of her ecstatic swoon. 

Maybe February 14th is not the time to be cynical about love, but the best art always repays a second look. Go to a gallery and have a (friendly) argument with your partner about what you see. You could even enjoy kissing and making up afterwards.

This article originally appeared in Erato Magazine.

'Artist as Witness: The Impact of War' (Russell Cotes Art Gallery Bournemouth until March 8 2026)

Paul Nash, Spring in the Trenches, Ridge Wood 1917, 1918, Imperial War Museum, London

The Russell Cotes Art Gallery in Bournemouth is a slightly incongruous place to hold an exhibition of war art, with it pot plants, Arts and Crafts decor and spectacular seascape views. Yet, the Morning Room is testimony to the reality that war can strike anywhere: the ceiling was repainted by Anna Zinkeisen after a blast wave from a German parachute mine caused its collapse in 1941. Their exhibition space is currently devoted to Artist as Witness: the Impact of War, too large a theme perhaps for such a small venue, but nonetheless an absorbing show which although focused on the two World Wars, is brought right up to date with contributions from George Butler in Ukraine.

There is a clear attempt to avoid the cliches of war art and to reflect the full range of those impacted. This is particularly seen in the contribution of women, some of whom, like Ethel Gabain, were employed as official War Artists, recording images of the Home Front. Themed sections include the rather unglamorous sounding 'Food Production' and 'War Preparations': Evelyn Dunbar has become a recognised name in recent years and while her unfussy depiction of the Women's Land Army Hostel has less visual impact than some of her works, it remains a fascinating slice of social history. In contrast Archibald Standish-Hartrick's lithograph invests his ploughing female figure with timelessness which seems to echo back to Medieval Books of Hours and  James Bateman's Evacuees Help with the Hay Harvest is a rural idyll which belies the labour and the uprooted workforce involved.

The horror of war is never far away with Holocaust survivor Edith Birkin, and Robert McBryde's eerie ruins, but in many ways it is the banality which strikes home: Laura Knight's and George Biddle's sketched recordings of the Nuremberg Trials. These sit alongside more conventional reportage like Stephen Bone's Tank Landing Craft, with its dawn sky and oppressive silence which not only feels like the calm before the storm but engenders the stiff upper lip stoicism of British films. Similarly, Charles Burleigh's scene of Brighton Pavillion being used as a hospital is a straightforward representation, which derives its power from the incongruity of the grandiose setting and the ranks of white-sheeted beds. 

Stephen Bone, Tank Landing Craft: On the Bridge at Dawn, 1943, 

Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth

There are plenty of big names: John Lavery's view of cavalry horses in Green Park 1914, and Lady Butler's watercolour of a kilted VC hero  both seem like left-0vers from another more honourable age. Paul Nash manages to conjure poetry from the decimation of the First World War. Yet, as often the case with provincial exhibitions in which curators have raided both their own collections and the stacks of other museums, there are new names to discover. The faceless, ghostly figures of Amy Julia Drucker's 1916 Air Raid Shelter, crowded under artificial lights are reminiscent of Henry Moore's sketches of the same from the Second World War. Albert Richards' Anti Tank Ditch is like an bloody gash across the landscape; John Armstrong's The Red Cow takes a deliberately oblique view on the impact of war on the countryside.

This is an unfussy exhibition, with a good range of works and a functional display which allows all your attention to focus on the fifty or so pieces of art. There is variety aplenty, and Gill Clarke's clever juxtapositions of themes and examples means that one never feels overwhelmed by the subject. It is, however, impossible not to leave with a heavy heart: George Butler's works mean that this is the stuff of present reality not past history. Ultimately, all artists can do is to bear witness. 

'Empire of Sleep' (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris until March 1 2026): The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Carolus-Duran, Sleeping Man, 1861, Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille, France

It is a big call to say in January that you have seen one of your exhibitions of the year, but the Musee Marmottan's Empire of Sleep is the stuff that dreams are made of. I have rarely seen such a beautifully hung, thoughtfully curated show. The mood is set with a first small rotunda, hung with heavy drapes of a deep midnight blue on which hang five depictions of sleep, from a Renaissance St Peter to Monet's baby son. The thematic, eclectic approach is continued throughout, for although the focus is 19th century there are Medieval woodcarvings, Picasso prints and a whole lot more besides. The wall texts and labelling (helpfully dual language) are full of information without sacrificing clarity - the section on Religion for instance lists Biblical associations from the Drunkenness of Noah to the idea of Christ being not dead but sleeping. 

The exhibition unfolds in eight sections, including Biblical, classical, erotic, dreams and death. The rich blue walls give way to an equally rich red to sweep you through the developing mood, but this is not just about crowd-pleasing paintings. There is a a serious curatorial line about shifting interpretations of sleep and dreams through the course of the nineteenth century: the exhibition is co-curated by a neurologist, Laura Bossi, and scholarship is at its heart. Effort has also gone into the loans, from literally all over - Grenoble, Montreal, Prague, Skagens, even an Evelyn De Morgan from Cannon Hall near Barnsley - and the effect is a journey of discovery. I was not familiar with Gaetano Previati's work: his Opium Smokers treads an uneasy line between glamour and seediness all painted with a hashish-brown sludge that makes you feel like you may have imbibed yourself. Or Fernand Pelez's Violet Seller, a ruthlessly unsentimental portrayal of a child dying in a doorway which gut-punches with emotion. Or Jules Bastien Lepage's Young Woman Sleeping, a soft focus interior from an artist known for his countryside realism. These discoveries are strung together like pearls by the hang and the curation - individually beautiful but so much more in combination.

One might think that sleep is a narrow theme - a hundred and thirty works of people with their eyes closed - but variety comes from the range of media and the depth of exploration. Goya's famous engraving The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is borne out by Fuseli's disturbing eroticism, Maximilián Pirner's La Somnambule perched precariously on a window ledge and Kiki Smith's spidery drawing from 2001. Sculpture comes in the form of Rodin's fragmentary sleeping figure and a Medieval ivory, apostles crammed together in mutual support. The curators are not afraid to venture into high camp, with John Faed's The Dream of the Poet, a John Martin-esque extravaganza of Highland landscape and spectral figures. And there is room for humour too, from David Hockney's dog and John Everett Millais' sleeping sermon goer, kept just the right side of cutesy by his rich palette of reds and purples.

John Everett Millais, My Second Sermon, 1864, Guildhall Art Gallery, London 

If there is a negative, it is the final bedroom section, which, like a rude awakening, takes you into a brighter lit, more functional space. It almost feels as if the show has accidently spilled over with works crammed awkwardly between stairwell and lift shaft. The Lepage is hung in a corner, next to a similarly stunning Sorolla Mother and Child, two dark heads marooned in a sea of white, distance only serving to emphasise closeness. However, this anticlimax is only really evidence of the woozy pleasure that the previous sections fostered, rather like the comfort of a warm bed and a good night's sleep, this is was an exhibition that I simply didn't want to end.