Hiroshige’s peerless prints, McCartney’s unseen snaps and Vancouver’s blue skies – the week in art

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Exhibition of the week

Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road
It’s not hard to see why Hiroshige was Van Gogh’s favourite Japanese printmaker – his colours have a radiant intensity almost without equal in art.
British Museum, London, from 1 May until 7 September

Also showing

Do Ho Suh: Walk the House
Installations that play with images of home by the noted Korean artist based in London.
Tate Modern, London from 1 May until 19 October

The World of King James VI and I
The 17th-century ruler of both Scotland and England presided over an edgy cultural golden age.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh from 26 April until 14 September

Robert Thomas James Mills: Extratemporal
An exploration of the nature of time and space by this Glasgow artist.
CCA, Glasgow from 3 May until 24 May

Lisa Milroy: The Colour Blue
Paintings of blue skies and memories of a Vancouver childhood from an artist best known for her still lifes.
Kate MacGarry, London from 3 May until 31 May

Image of the week

Here you can see Brian Epstein, Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall setting off, with four mop-topped popsters, for New York in February 1964; one of the hitherto unseen glimpses into Beatlemania’s birth shared by Paul McCartney, opening at the Gagosian gallery in Beverly Hills, California, today. Read the full story here

What we learned

The days of controversial and shocking Turner prize shortlists are over

Scientists weren’t sure a paint in the ‘new’ colour they’ve discovered has the right mix

Mao Ishikawa’s photographs honour people regarded as ‘less than human’ elsewhere

Yinka Shonibare has filled a 2,200 sq m building in Madagascar with his works

Royal exhibition will show 70 artworks of Charles touring the world over 40 years

Richard Wright’s new show is a mind-bending and mesmerising visual adventure

Survivors of abuse have curated work by once revered sexual abuser Eric Gill

JMW Turner, born 250 years ago this spring, remains Britain’s greatest artist

Ali Cherri’s primeval sculptures use ancient artefacts to make new work

Graven Hill, the UK’s biggest self-build experiment, has lost some creative chaos

Masterpiece of the week

Nymphs Surprised By Satyrs by Franchoys Wouters, about 1650-60

Franchoys Wouters, ‘Nymphs Surprised By Satyrs’

This painting belongs to a genre that flourished for hundreds of years, so it presumably pleased someone. First take your woodlands – tenderly, atmospherically painted by Wouters in shades of green and brown – then depict nude women resting in a leafy bower, in this case on luxurious bedding. It was a combination pioneered by the Venetian artists Giorgione and Titian in the early 1500s and taken up by later artists including Poussin and Rubens – in whose studio the painter of this canvas had worked.

Such peepshow pastorals were among the first canvases to be bought by private collectors for personal enjoyment. Yet in this example, Wouters (again, following Titian) mocks the male viewer by adding lustful satyrs who peep at the snoozing women: look all you like, he laughs, but don’t think you’re better than these goatish voyeurs. He adds another twist. The two nymphs face each other and their feet touch as they lie in close tranquility: the satyrs have chanced on same-sex forest lovers. As ever in art, there’s more going on than first meets the eye.
National Gallery, London

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