Paintings on the move

Pictures on loan to the National Gallery

The National Gallery is hugely grateful to lenders across the world for loans to our collection. Many of these lenders are based in the UK.

View a list of recent loans at the Gallery

Case study: 'Hercules and Deianeira'

Jan Gossaert, 'Hercules and Deianeira', 1517 © The Barber Insititute of Fine Arts, The University of Birmingham 

The National Gallery’s current exhibition Jan Gossaert’s Renaissance features a coldly sensual painting of Hercules and his wife Deianeira, painted in 1517. The painting is included in the section on erotic nudes and is shown alongside a range of smaller surviving nudes that Gossaert made of classical subjects.

Hercules has put down his club, resting from his Twelve Labours – or tests of endurance – some of which are represented in reliefs below. Although Hercules was admired for his strength, here the emphasis is on his vulnerability to female powers of seduction.

Acquisition details

This painting by Gossaert is now in the collection of the Barber Institute, University of Birmingham. Robert Wenley, Head of Collections and Learning, explains how this painting came into the museum’s collection:

Jan Gossaert’s ‘Hercules and Deianeira’ was purchased by the Trustees of the Henry Barber Trust for the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, in 1946. It came from the celebrated Cook collection, at Doughty House in Richmond, Surrey, having been bought by Sir Francis Cook (1817–1901) in 1879. The Cook collection included at least three other works attributed to Gossaert, although these are no longer all accepted as being by him.
 
The Barber Institute was founded by Dame Martha Constance Hattie Barber (1869–1933) in 1932. She was the widow of Sir (William) Henry Barber (1860–1927), a Birmingham solicitor and property developer, who had helped endow the University of Birmingham at its foundation. Lady Barber died childless in 1933, leaving the entire Barber fortune to the Henry Barber Trust. This was to be used to fund a new building for the Institute, world-class public music concerts, and a world-class art collection.
Robert Wenley, The Barber Institute