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The Courtauld World-famous Gallery and international centre for the teaching, research and enjoyment of art history Look deeper, see further.
(1890)

Explore art across centuries and from around the globe.


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.
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Courtauld Members go free. ⁠
Until 6 September 2026 ⁠
🎟️ Book now https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-hepworth-in-colour/
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📷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

These photographs of works by Barbara Hepworth, taken by Paul Laib in 1933, are their only known documentation - these s...
12/08/2026

These photographs of works by Barbara Hepworth, taken by Paul Laib in 1933, are their only known documentation - these sculptures were all destroyed during the Second World War.

They were taken when Laib was photographing the studio that Hepworth shared with Ben Nicholson in Hampstead, London in the 1930s. Marked by a simplicity and focus on light and shadow, they create an interesting composition - in the second work, 'Figure' seems to have been lit by two lamps to create a pair of looming shadows, with a third light source highlighting the top edge.

See them on display in our current display in the Project Space.

Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs
Until 4 October 2026
Courtauld Members go free.

🎟️ Book now: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/hepworth-and-nicholson-the-hampstead-studio-photographs/

📷Paul Laib (1869-1958), Barbara Hepworth's Figure, 1933; Barbara Hepworth's Figure (Mother and Child), 1933; Barbara Hepworth's Carving, 1933. Vintage gelatin silver prints from the original glass plate negative. The de Laszlo Collection of Paul Laib Negatives, Courtauld Institute of Art. Barbara Hepworth © Bowness; Paul Laib © The de Laszlo Foundation

The painter hath made a finer story than the poet' 💬The Rome-based French painted Nicolas Poussin drew on one of the mos...
07/08/2026

The painter hath made a finer story than the poet' 💬

The Rome-based French painted Nicolas Poussin drew on one of the most famous poems of the Renaissance, Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso 1581, to create this dramatic scene.

It shows the moment when Erminia, a Saracen princess, discovers the wounded Christian warrior Tancred. She cuts her hair to bind his wounds; her use of a sword to do so is Poussin's invention. Cherubs bearing torches and arrows indicate that the pair will soon be united in love.

When this painting was purchased in 1717 by the artist James Thornhill (whose murals adorn the walls above the grand staircase at Hanbury Hall in Worcestershire), it became the first work by Poussin to enter an English collection. Encountering it then, one contemporary viewer declared:

''The painter hath made a finer story than the poet'

It was one of also one of the first paintings to enter the Barber collection, in 1938 – a year before the Barber’s galleries opened.

Explore a selection of exceptional paintings from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham , on view while the Barber undergoes a major refurbishment project.

Courtauld Members go free. ⁠

Until 31 August 2026 ⁠

🎟️Included with Gallery Entry. Book now: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-the-barber-in-london-highlights-from-a-remarkable-collection/

📷Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Tancred and Erminia, around 1634, oil paint on canvas. The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham

The Courtauld Institute has a limited number of places available on our BA History of Art degree programme for September...
07/08/2026

The Courtauld Institute has a limited number of places available on our BA History of Art degree programme for September 2026 entry through UCAS Clearing.

Our BA programme offers teaching across an unrivalled breadth of periods and cultures. You will study art and architecture from across the globe, from late antiquity to the present, from Byzantium to the Early Modern Islamic World, and from contemporary China to Black art histories.

Applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis, and we will consider your academic record, personal statement, and reference. If you feel inspired by the power of art to inform our view of the world today and would like to be considered for a space on this programme, we want to hear from you.

Find out more: courtauld.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/ucas-clearing/

The Courtauld Institute has a limited number of places available on our BA History of Art degree programme for September...
07/08/2026

The Courtauld Institute has a limited number of places available on our BA History of Art degree programme for September 2026 entry through UCAS Clearing.

Our BA programme offers teaching across an unrivalled breadth of periods and cultures. You will study art and architecture from across the globe, from late antiquity to the present, from Byzantium to the Early Modern Islamic World, and from contemporary China to Black art histories.

Applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis, and we will consider your academic record, personal statement, and reference. If you feel inspired by the power of art to inform our view of the world today and would like to be considered for a space on this programme, we want to hear from you.

courtauld.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/ucas-clearing/

06/08/2026

There's only one month left to see The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Hepworth in Colour ✨ ⁠
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★★★★★ “A dazzling fresh take on a genius” - The Times ⁠
★★★★★ “Compelling” - London Standard
★★★★”Ravishing sculptures” - The Guardian
⁠
Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) is best known for her abstract sculptural forms inspired by nature and the rugged seaside landscapes of Cornwall, where she lived and worked.
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This summer, explore a less familiar aspect of her work, the artist's lifelong fascination with colour, which she used in highly original and unexpected ways.⁠
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This focused, research-driven exhibition unites her innovative sculptures with colour of the 1940s for the first time, displayed alongside the most important drawings from that decade, and includes major examples of her work with colour from the 1950s and 1960s. ⁠
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⏰Until 6 September 2026 ⁠
🎟️ Book now: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-hepworth-in-colour/
⁠
Courtauld Members go free.

Now back on display after a recent loan to Charleston and the Museum of Somerset is Roger Fry's Blythburgh Estuary 🏞️Whe...
04/08/2026

Now back on display after a recent loan to Charleston and the Museum of Somerset is Roger Fry's Blythburgh Estuary 🏞️

When Roger Fry painted this view of the marshes in Blythburgh, East Suffolk, he was better known as a scholar of Italian Renaissance Painting. In the following years, he became one of the strongest advocates of modern french painting.

With its rhythm of dark trees against a watery twilit landscape, it reflects Fry's interest at the time in the European movement of Symbolism, where mood and mystery are expressed through a flattening of shapes.

See it on display in the Bloomsbury Room on your next visit.

📷Roger Eliot Fry (1866-1934), Blythburgh, The Estuary, 1892-93. Private Collection. On long-term loan to the Courtauld Gallery, London. Image: Courtauld

This work, Tides II, belongs to a group of exceptional wooden carvings made between 1943 and 1948, whose complex pierced...
04/08/2026

This work, Tides II, belongs to a group of exceptional wooden carvings made between 1943 and 1948, whose complex pierced interors Barbara Hepworth painted in shades of a similar light blue.

It replaced a similar sculpture which had cracked almost immediately, because of the poor-quality wood Hepworth had had to use due to wartime restrictions.

Its colour scheme expresses her concept of "carving into colour", with the holes themselves painted. The central curve seems to echo the artists's later observation that:

"[The] incoming and receding tides made strange and wonderful calligraphy on the pale granite sand" 🐚

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), Tides II, 1946, plane wood and paint. Collection of Rachel Kidd, on long loan to The Hepworth Wakefield. Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

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