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Raphael: From Urbino to Rome
20 October 2004 - 16 January 2005
Sainsbury Wing. Admission charge
Sponsored by Credit Suisse First Boston
This is the first major exhibition of paintings and drawings by the great Renaissance painter, Raphael (1483 - 1520), to be held in Britain. In little more than a decade (1500-1513), Raphael transformed himself from a competent master of provincial church decoration into one of the greatest painters who ever lived. His remarkably lucid compositions influenced Western art up to the 20th century.
Drawing on the rich holdings of the National Gallery's collection and major international loans, the exhibition will explore the meaning and historical context of Raphael's works, his techniques and how these developed. Highlights include the 'Alba Madonna' from National Gallery of Art, Washington, the 'Conestabile Madonna' from the Hermitage, the 'Saint George' and 'Saint Michael' from the Louvre and the 'Self Portrait' from the Uffizi.
The exhibition will follow Raphael's dramatic stylistic evolution from his origins in Urbino to his works produced under the enlightened patronage of Pope Julius II in Rome.
Art in the Making: Degas
10 November 2004 - 30 January 2005
Sunley Room. Admission free
Sponsored by ExxonMobil
Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) was one of the most experimental artists of the 19th century. Throughout his long career he constantly found new ways to use oil paint, chalk, pastel, essence and printmaking processes (in particular monotypes), often combining two or more media in the same work.
This exhibition is part of Art in the Making, the National Gallery's ongoing series of exhibitions on artists' techniques, and comprises in-depth examination of some twelve works by Degas. These will be complemented by x-radiographs, infra-red reflectograms and pigment analyses, with loans of works from Britain and abroad. It will reveal to a general audience, which has long loved this artist, just how complex Degas' working methods could be.
Caravaggio: The Final Years
23 February - 22 May 2005
Sainsbury Wing. Admission charge
Supported by the American Friends of the National Gallery as a result of a generous grant from Howard and Roberta Ahmanson
Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) was at the height of his fame as the most original and powerful painter of his day, when in May 1606, he killed a man in a duel. With a capital sentence on his head, he was forced to flee Rome, never to return. During the remaining four years of his life, Caravaggio's art underwent a dramatic transformation as he moved restlessly from Naples to Malta to Sicily. He continued to use intensely observed realism and dramatic lighting to endow his paintings with a compelling sense of actuality. However, the mood of the pictures became more introspective as he probed the human condition more acutely and with greater sympathy than ever before.
This exhibition will allow Caravaggio's profound late style to be fully appreciated for the first time. The exhibition has been organized by the National Gallery and the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale di Napoli.
John Virtue: London Paintings
9 March - 5 June 2005
Sunley Room. Admission free
Supported by The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation
John Virtue is the sixth National Gallery Associate Artist.Working in the National Gallery's studio, Virtue has made eleven paintings for this exhibition, four representing the London cityscape looking towards St Paul's Cathedral, four of the city from the roof of Somerset House and three from the roof of the National Gallery looking towards Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column. Executed solely in black and white, they are monumental works, the largest of which is over seven metres across. Virtue is a landscape painter whose relationship to the National Gallery collection runs deep, being inspired by Turner, Constable, Rubens and other painters of the great European landscape tradition.
Westminster Retable after restoration by the Hamilton Kerr Institute and before its return to Westminster Abbey
18 May - 4 September 2005
Lower Floor Gallery B.
Admission free
The Westminster Retable is widely recognised as the most important Gothic panel painting produced in the Anglo-French milieu in the late 13th century. Originally, it may have functioned as the high altarpiece of Westminster Abbey, produced under the patronage of Henry III or Edward I; after the Dissolution of the Abbey it served as part of a cupboard for the display of the royal funeral waxworks and only came to notice in 1725. Although damaged in the post-medieval period, enough survives of its extraordinarily refined and elegant paintings to stress its central place in the history of European art at this time. The painting illustrates Christ's miracles, his nature as Saviour of the World, and Saint Peter's witness to him.
Restoration of the Retable has been generously supported by the Getty Grant Program and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Stubbs and the Horse
29 June - 25 September 2005
Sainsbury Wing. Admission charge
George Stubbs was not only the greatest of all British horse painters but arguably the greatest painter of horses in the history of European art. Stubbs and the Horse is the first exhibition to focus solely on this theme in his work. Assembling some of his finest paintings and most beautiful anatomical drawings, the exhibition explores the social, cultural and intellectual environment in which they were produced, providing a fascinating insight into the importance of the horse in 18th-century British culture. It also reunites paintings commissioned by Stubbs's highly cultivated patrons, such as the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, for whom the National Gallery's great painting Whistlejacket was made.
The exhibition will include Stubbs's 'sublime' paintings of horses attacked by lions and his classically inspired, frieze-like studies of mares and foals at stud farms, as well as riding portraits, conversation-pieces and scenes from the stableyard and racecourse.
The exhibition is organised by the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, in association with the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and the National Gallery, London.
Rubens: From Italy to Antwerp 1600-1616
26 October 2005 - 15 January 2006
Sainsbury Wing. Admission charge
The exhibition tells the remarkable story of Rubens's dramatic ascension from working as a pupil of a minor Antwerp artist, to become the dominant international painter of his time. It will be the most thorough explanation of the flowering of his genius ever attempted. The story traces his hesitant beginnings in Antwerp (1598-1600) to his eight-year study trip to Italy (1600-1608), where he embraced the Renaissance greats of Michelangelo and Raphael and the revolutionary style of Caravaggio. A dazzling group of Genoese portraits from 1606 marks Rubens's irresistible bravura with the brush. These offer the exciting opportunity to focus on works that are by his hand alone, undiluted by any workshop assistance.
The culmination of the show is a group of heroic images Rubens created from his ambitious amalgam of sources on returning to Antwerp (1609-1614). These include 'Samson and Delilah' and 'The Massacre of the Innocents', works that were last seen together in Rubens's studio.
Tom Hunter
7 December 2005 - 12 March 2006
Sunley Room. Admission free
Tom Hunter's new work for this exhibition takes as its subject the lives of the ordinary residents of Hackney, as reported in local newspapers. These often startling stories are told in carefully staged photographs derived from Renaissance paintings. Hunter's reputation has been established with a series of engaging, puzzling and provocative photographic reworkings of paintings from the past. Tom Hunter won the Kobal Photographic Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in 1998. His winning work, 'Woman reading a Repossession Order', was a beautifully crafted photograph based upon a painting by the 17th-century Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer.
Touring Exhibitions:
Raphael's 'Madonna of the Pinks': The Virgin and Child in Renaissance Italy, on Tour from the National Gallery, London
National Museum & Gallery of Wales, Cardiff: 3 July - 19 September 2004.
The McLellan Galleries, Glasgow: 29 January - 10 April 2005.
The Bowes Museum, County Durham: 16 April - 26 June 2005
Following the acquisition of this exquisite masterpiece from the Duke of Northumberland in 2004, a nationwide tour of Raphael's 'Madonna of the Pinks' is taking place. Throughout its tour of the UK, the picture will be exhibited alongside two representations of the same theme, also from the National Gallery: Ghirlandaio's 'Virgin and Child', and Titian's 'The Virgin and Child'. The painting will return to London for the National Gallery's major Raphael exhibition (20 October 2004 - 16 January 2005).
The painting was purchased with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Art Collections Fund, the American Friends of the National Gallery, the George Beaumont Group and through public appeal. The nationwide tour is part of the National Gallery's commitment to broadening access to its collection, ensuring that its paintings are seen by as many people as possible.
The Stuff of Life
Bristol Museums and Art Gallery: 14 January - 3 April 2005
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne: 16 April - 3 July
2005. National Gallery, London: 14 July - 2 October 2005
Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and in London by The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation
In paintings the most ordinary objects can carry the most extraordinary significance. This exhibition of paintings from the 16th century to the present day focuses on the depiction and meaning of objects in art and will explore the development and aims of still life paintings as well as the various roles objects play in art.
These range from their use as attributes and symbols to the 20th-century appropriation of the 'ready-made' object as a work of art. Works include Van Gogh's famous 'Chair' and Velázquez's 'Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary', in which the still life objects in the foreground assume a religious significance. Works by Steenwyck, Chardin and Sam Taylor-Wood will explore artists' long-standing preoccupation with the transience and fragility of things. This is the fourth exhibition in
the National Gallery's Touring Partnership organised in collaboration with Bristol Museums and Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne.
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