A feast of art at the Courtauld Gallery and the Wallace Collection

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The Wallace Collection and the Courtauld Gallery, both major galleries in London, have each announced three significant exhibitions scheduled for 2013.

From 6 February to 12 May 2013 ‘Murillo at the Wallace Collection: Painting of the Spanish Golden Age’will highlight the religious work of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–82), one of the finest Spanish painters of the Baroque, and a slightly younger contemporary of Velasquez (1599–1660). The Wallace has an extensive collection of Murillo’s art as well as paintings by his contemporaries and associates, which will be included in this exhibition. This will be augmented by a rarely seen Murillo from Wrotham Park, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, which is a companion piece to three of the finest in the Wallace. This is a great opportunity to get to know the work of Murillo well, particularly as it will coincide with another exhibition of Murillo at the Dulwich Gallery.

From 20 June to 15 September the Wallace will be showing ‘The Discovery of Paris: Watercolours by Early Nineteenth-Century British Artists’. This will contain over 60 paintings from the period 1802–40, including many paintings from other galleries in Britain, France and Canada. This period starts from the Peace of Amiens of 1802–3, a gap in the Napoleonic War, which allowed British artists to travel to Paris again after being unable to do so for over a decade. Then when the War was over after Waterloo in 1815, again Paris could be visited. Paris became a magnet for British painters including Turner (1775–1851), David Cox (1783–1859) and Richard Parkes Bonnington (1802–28). This exhibition should be a feast of colour and an education.

‘The Male Nude: Eighteenth Century Drawings from the ParisAcademy’ will be at the Wallace from 24 October to 19 January 2014. This will show nearly 40 drawings of the male nude taken from the collection of the Parisian equivalent of the Royal Academy, the École nationale superior des Beaux-Arts, featuring artists such as Rigaud (1659–1743) and Boucher (1703–70).

The Courtauld Gallery will be starting the year, from 14 February to 26 May, also in Parisian mode with ‘Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901’. In 1901 Picasso (1881–1973) became 20 years old, moved to Paris, had his first major exhibition, suffered the death of his closest friend, Carles Casagemas, and underwent the transition from a promising Spanish painter to an outstanding modernist artist. The Courtauld has successfully scoured the world to find 20 paintings from this year, from among others, the State Pushkin Museum in Moscow, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition will include The Blue Room (The Tub), probably the first of his blue period paintings, The Absinthe Drinker, The Child with a Dove, Harlequin and Companion, Casagemas in his Coffin. This exhibition will be a must-see for all students and admirers of Picasso, and an opportunity for those still puzzled by Picasso to get to know his work from the beginning.

Picasso will be followed by Gauguin, ‘Collecting Gauguin: Samuel Courtauld in the 1920s’, in which the Gallery will reproduce Samuel Courtauld’s original collection of Gauguin works, by augmenting works from its existing collection with others which had escaped, to Birmingham and Edinburgh for example. Among the paintings will be Martinique Landscape of 1887, Nevermore of 1897, and Te Rerioa (The Dream) also of 1897.

The Courtauld year will end the year, 17 October to 12 January 2014, with another exhibition featuring the early work of a great artist, this time Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), ‘The Young Dürer: Drawing from the Figure’.There will be drawings from 1490, when he was an apprentice of 19, to 1496, when at 25, fresh from his first encounters with Italy, he was emerging as a master artist. Once again there will be borrowings from around Europe, including the Self-Portrait of 1491, which is at Erlangen, for what should prove to be an informative and exciting exhibition.

Reporting by Dennis Wardleworth.

Independent Art Historian.

Dorset, UK.