The elements
- Past - Friday, 22 May 2026, 6.15 - 7.15 pm
- Past - Friday, 22 May 2026, 7.45 - 8.45 pm
- Past - Friday, 5 June 2026, 6.15 - 7.15 pm
- Past - Friday, 5 June 2026, 7.45 - 8.45 pm
- Friday, 19 June 2026, 1.30 - 2.30 pm
- Friday, 19 June 2026, 3.30 - 4.30 pm
- Friday, 3 July 2026, 1.30 - 2.30 pm
- Friday, 3 July 2026, 3.30 - 4.30 pm
Tickets
| Members: | £20 |
This event is available to those with a Member, Member & Guest, Exhibition or House Membership.
Please meet in the Sainsbury Wing Foyer to collect your headsets and meet your host for the guided walking tour.
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For centuries the elements, earth, water, air, fire, have been the pillar of human sciences. Throughout the collection, each element has been used to convey different meanings, emotions and techniques.
Expert guides Muriel Carré and Maurizio Patti will lead the tours throughout the collection. Choose your element or join all four.
Water has no shape. It flows and goes. Yet artists over the centuries have relished capturing its elusiveness, sometimes using it as a scenery for a story, sometimes imbuing it with symbolism and at other times trying to capture its natural, fleeting, ever-changing beauty.
This tour focuses on how artists have represented water in their works. Explore paintings by Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Canaletto, Constable, Turner, Monet, Seurat and many others who have taken up their brushes to capture this element.
Water has no shape. It flows and goes. Yet artists over the centuries have relished capturing its elusiveness, sometimes using it as a scenery for a story, sometimes imbuing it with symbolism and at other times trying to capture its natural, fleeting, ever-changing beauty.
This tour focuses on how artists have represented water in their works. Explore paintings by Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Canaletto, Constable, Turner, Monet, Seurat and many others who have taken up their brushes to capture this element.
Richard Long’s monumental 'Mud Sun', which greets visitors at the top of the Sainsbury Wing’s staircase, celebrates one of the most ancient and humble materials in art making: clay. It instantly creates a bridge between the past and the present.
This tour will follow the ancestral use of earth pigments, whose unique organic quality connects artworks to the land itself. It will look at the many representations of the land and soil, including Earth as God’s unique creation, a pastoral ideal, or simply as an expression of hard work and national identity. Artists as varied as Piero della Francesca to Joachim Patinir, Aelbert Cuyp and Claude have all celebrated our bountiful earth.
Richard Long’s monumental 'Mud Sun', which greets visitors at the top of the Sainsbury Wing’s staircase, celebrates one of the most ancient and humble materials in art making: clay. It instantly creates a bridge between the past and the present.
This tour will follow the ancestral use of earth pigments, whose unique organic quality connects artworks to the land itself. It will look at the many representations of the land and soil, including Earth as God’s unique creation, a pastoral ideal, or simply as an expression of hard work and national identity. Artists as varied as Piero della Francesca to Joachim Patinir, Aelbert Cuyp and Claude have all celebrated our bountiful earth.
In this elemental tour, discover the duality of fire. Maurizio Patti selects key paintings in the collection that both demonstrate the destructive and constructive force of fire which enables the artist to strengthen their subtle narratives and hidden messages within their final pieces.
In this elemental tour, discover the duality of fire. Maurizio Patti selects key paintings in the collection that both demonstrate the destructive and constructive force of fire which enables the artist to strengthen their subtle narratives and hidden messages within their final pieces.
All around us and perhaps the most elusive of the elements: air. Maurizio Patti expertly guides a tour through the collection discovering the magical presence of air and its ‘unveiling’ in paintings. Patti observes the techniques artists manipulate with this element, using it to underscore and reinforce the meaning of a story narrated in a picture.
All around us and perhaps the most elusive of the elements: air. Maurizio Patti expertly guides a tour through the collection discovering the magical presence of air and its ‘unveiling’ in paintings. Patti observes the techniques artists manipulate with this element, using it to underscore and reinforce the meaning of a story narrated in a picture.
Your hosts
Muriel Carré is an award-winning guide specialising in art and architecture. She studied English Literature and History at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, followed by a Master's degree in Art History at Christie's, London. Alongside teaching English Literature in France and abroad, Carré has worked for a contemporary art online magazine in Madrid. She now leads tours in English and French in all the major London museums and historic houses.
Maurizio Patti, originally from Cortona, Italy, is an expert guide and tutor. Patti has three degrees ranging from Languages and Visual Arts (Siena, Italy) to Philosophy and Theology, (University of Louvain, Belgium, London campus). Before moving to London in 1990, Patti worked as a teacher, interpreter and guide in Italy. Upon his arrival in London, Patti furthered his knowledge of visual arts through courses at the V&A , Tate, and City Lit. Patti is now an art expert and lecturer for Tate and the Institute of Tourist Guiding (History of Art). Patti presents guides in English, Italian, French and Spanish.