The Courtauld

The Courtauld World-famous Gallery and international centre for the teaching, research and enjoyment of art history Look deeper, see further.
(1888)

Explore art across centuries and from around the globe.


Autumn is on its way 🍂Claude Monet painted this view of the river Seine and the town of Argenteuil from his studio boat,...
05/09/2026

Autumn is on its way 🍂

Claude Monet painted this view of the river Seine and the town of Argenteuil from his studio boat, moored on a quiet side channel.

The real subjects of this work are the flamboyant autumn colours. The orange leaves contrast with the blue water, rendered in thick parallel lines. Monet added texture to the trees by scratching the paint with the handle of his brush.

Monet lived in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris, from 1871 to 1878. It was an affordable alternative to the capital, easily accessible by the new railroads.

📷 Claude Monet (1940-1926), Autumn Effect at Argenteuil, 1873, oil on canvas. Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). Image: Courtauld

03/09/2026

Courtauld Commission 2026 – Ella Walker 🎨

Now on display are two new site-specific commissions for the Courtauld Gallery by artist Ella Walker (b.1993, Manchester, UK). The second in a series of annual l commissions by contemporary artists, Ella Walker’s commissions are now on display in The John Browne
Entrance Hall and the Ticketing Hall, and are free to visit.

Ella Walker creates monumental canvases that act like stages where bewitching figures gather. Her new artworks continue the artist’s dialogue with traditional techniques and subjects from the Renaissance period, richly represented at the Courtauld Gallery.

In Verdaccio Wall (2026), Walker draws on iconography, costume, and prose observed in Gothic sculptures and Renaissance painting as well as popular culture, creating scenes that flicker between time periods. In The Studio (2026), Walker paints the artist’s studio as a space in which images and memories are gathered in a collage-like process, building on the subject of the artist’s studio by reimagining Renaissance settings.

See the works on your next visit – free to visit for all.

Find out more at the link in bio 👆

📷 Ella Walker (b. 1993), Verdaccio Wall, 2026. Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen, on loan from the artist; Ella Walker (b. 1993), The Studio, 2026. Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen, on loan from the artist. Photos: Eva Herzog. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London

A rapidly painted scene of Pissarro's home 🏡L’Hermitage was a cluster of houses on the outskirts of the town of Pontoise...
31/08/2026

A rapidly painted scene of Pissarro's home 🏡

L’Hermitage was a cluster of houses on the outskirts of the town of Pontoise, where Camille Pissarro lived on and off between 1866 and 1882. This rapidly painted scene shows temporary stalls set up for a fair.

Close inspection reveals a number of finely dressed figures amongst the crowd. They may be visitors from Paris, located about twenty miles away, having a day out in the country. The composition shows Pissarro’s quick, confident touch to render figures and trees, as well as his growing interest in the complexity of depicting space.

Pissarro was a committed member of the Impressionist group and - did you know? - the only one to take part in all eight of their exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886.

Now back on display in the LVMH Great Room - see it in person on your next visit to the Courtauld Gallery.

📷 Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), The Village Fete at L'Hermitage, c.1878, oil on canvas. Courtauld Gallery (Samuel Courtauld Trust) © Courtauld

29/08/2026

Friday night plans? Join us for a special late night opening to see The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Hepworth in Colour after hours on Friday 4 September 🌙

★★★★★ “A dazzling fresh take on a genius” – The Times
★★★★★ “Compelling” – London Standard
★★★★ “Ravishing sculptures” – The Guardian

Tickets are selling fast - grab yours now: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-hepworth-in-colour/

⏰ Open until 20:00 on Friday 4 September 2026. Hepworth in Colour is open until 6 September 2026.
💛 Courtauld Members go free

Did you know that working in bronze marked a turning point in Barbara Hepworth's sculptural practice?It allowed her to i...
27/08/2026

Did you know that working in bronze marked a turning point in Barbara Hepworth's sculptural practice?

It allowed her to immerse herself in colour, after a gap of about eight years, in the late 1950s. Her close collaboration with the Morris Singer Foundry led to the development of a variety of innovative patinas encompassing a wide range of colours, especially greens, and her favourite - a blue-green like that of oxidised copper.

This work, Sea Form (Porthmeor) made in 1958 and named after a beach in St Ives, has a mottled green patina with flecks of white. Its surface has been described as though "salted from long immersion in seawater".

See it on display in The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Hepworth in Colour.
⁠
Courtauld Members go free. ⁠
Until 6 September 2026 ⁠
🎟️ Book now: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-hepworth-in-colour/
⁠
📷Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Sea Form (Porthmeor), 1958, bronze. Tate: Presented by the artist 1967. Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

A dreamlike mezzotint 🪟Like her husband, Mark Balakjian, Dorothea Wight favoured mezotint printing, prizing the dreamlik...
25/08/2026

A dreamlike mezzotint 🪟

Like her husband, Mark Balakjian, Dorothea Wight favoured mezotint printing, prizing the dreamlike quality it lent her images. Here, she depicts a tranquil landscape framed by a bay window.

But are we inside or outside?

On closer inspection it appears we are on the outside of a house, gazing at a landscape within - calling into question whether we are seeing a real or imagined landscape, dissolving the distinction between interior and exterior.

Discover the world of Dorothea Wight and Marc Balakjian's London Printmaking Studio in our current display, Studio Prints: An Artists' Workshop, until 13 September.

Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery⁠
Included with Gallery Entry. Members go free. Book now - https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-studio-prints-artists-workshop/
⁠
📷Dorothea Wight (1944-2013), Dawn of a New Season, 1978, mezzotint. Accepted under the Cultural Gifts Scheme by HM Government from the archive of Studio Prints gifted by the Balakjian family and allocated to the Courtauld Gallery, 2024. © Dorothea Wight.The Balakjian Estate

★★★★★ “A dazzling fresh take on a genius” – The Times⁠★★★★★ “Compelling” – London Standard⁠★★★★ “Ravishing sculptures” –...
24/08/2026

★★★★★ “A dazzling fresh take on a genius” – The Times⁠
★★★★★ “Compelling” – London Standard⁠
★★★★ “Ravishing sculptures” – The Guardian⁠
⁠
If you haven't seen The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Hepworth in Colour yet - it's your last chance! 🔵⁠
⁠
Closing on 6 September, experience the first exhibition to explore Barbara Hepworth's lifelong fascination with colour, which she used in highly original and unexpected ways. Explore her early innovative sculptures with colour of the 1940s, united for the first time, major examples of her work with colour from the 1950s and 1960s, and some of the most important drawings from the period.⁠
⁠
Book now: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-hepworth-in-colour/

On Friday 4 September, experience the exhibition after hours, with the Gallery open until 20:00.⁠
⁠
Courtauld Members go free.

📷️ Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red, 1943, Wood, paint and strings on a painted wooden base. Wakefield Permanent Art Collection (The Hepworth Wakefield), Barbara Hepworth © Bowness, Image © The Hepworth Wakefield. Photo: Mark Heathcote.

Throughout her life, Barbara Hepworth continued to adapt the painting techniques she had learned while sharing a studio ...
21/08/2026

Throughout her life, Barbara Hepworth continued to adapt the painting techniques she had learned while sharing a studio with Ben Nicholson in London in the 1930s, such as the use of razor blades to scrape back layers of paint.

This work was made using that technique. Hepworth explained:

"Each surface I rubbed down or scraped down until I got the hardness and depth that I required. [....] As I worked, I used an infinite number of razor blades as well as brushes and pencils [...]. This gave me great flexibility and approximated more to a carving technique."💬

See it on display in The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Hepworth in Colour, and don't miss the accompanying display of photographs from Hepworth and Nicholson's London studio in the Project Space.
⁠
Courtauld Members go free. ⁠
Until 6 September 2026 ⁠
🎟️ Book now https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-hepworth-in-colour/
⁠
📷Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Oval Form, 1956, oil and pencil on board. Collection of Rachel Kidd, on long loan to The Hepworth Wakefield. Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

Tall trees swaying in the breeze 🍃The Jas de Bouffan was a rural estate just outside Aix-en-Provence owned by Paul Cézan...
18/08/2026

Tall trees swaying in the breeze 🍃

The Jas de Bouffan was a rural estate just outside Aix-en-Provence owned by Paul Cézanne’s father. The artist painted many views of the house, grounds and farmworkers from 1866 until 1899, when the estate was sold.

This painting was worked with short, parallel brushstrokes, a technique Cézanne favoured in the 1880s. It creates a shimmering effect particularly well suited to this scene. The leaves of the tall trees seem to rustle in the breeze.

See it on display in the LVMH Great Room on your next visit, part of the largest collection of works by Cézanne in the UK.

🎟️Book now - https://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/
💛Courtauld Members go free

📷️Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Tall Trees at the Jas de Bouffan, c.1883, oil on canvas. Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) © Courtauld

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