Visual tapas

Last spring, in honour of the reopening of the refurbished York Art Gallery, the statue of local artist William Etty RA outside the entrance — striking a swagger pose to rival Reynolds’s outside the Royal Academy — got a wash and brush-up from the City Council. This spring, it welcomes the public to an ambitious exhibition for a provincial gallery: Spanish Masters, the first Spanish painting survey in Britain since the one at the Academy in 1976.

Admittedly, York’s survey is a little smaller. By borrowing ten works from the Bowes Museum — owner of the UK’s biggest collection of Spanish paintings outside London — and adding others from here and there to its own holdings, York Art Gallery has managed to put together a taster exhibition of Spanish painting from the Golden Age to the age of Goya. With a total of 17 works, Spanish Masters is what you might call a speed-dating introduction to Spanish art.