We will have a number of late Spring and Events, details of which will be up on our Events page in due course.

22nd February - 7th July
Tate Britain

This magnificent exhibition, staged in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, explores Sargent’s artistic process in his use of costume and textiles to produce his celebrated portraits of fashionable high society figures at the turn of the twentieth century. The portraits are shown alongside more than a dozen dresses and accessories, many of which were worn by his sitters, such as the extraordinary beetle costume worn by Ellen Terry in her role as Lady Macbeth, or the House of Worth fancy-dress costume chosen by Sargent for his portrait of one of his favourite sitters, Sybil Sassoon, Countess of Rocksavage.

Image: John Singer Sargent

Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess d’Abernon,

1904 Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama

Details

23rd March - 23rd June
Ashmolean Museum

This exciting exhibition brings together some of the finest drawings of the Flemish masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many of which come from the remarkable collections of the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp. Works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck are shown alongside drawings by lesser known artists and range from quick studies to elaborate compositional drawings for paintings, colourful designs for triumphal arches and monumental tapestries to elaborate sheets made to celebrate friendships. Many are shown alongside related works for which the drawings were made, and the artworks which inspired them. The exhibition explores the personal connections and networks forged between these artists, often resulting in collaborations.

Image: Jordaens - Odysseus. Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp

Details:

16th May - 13th October
Tate Britain

This ambitious exhibition will follow the careers of women artists over a period of four hundred years. Well-known figures such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Beale, Mary Moser, Julia Margaret Cameron and Gwen John will be shown alongside others who are only now being discovered. It will include oil paintings, watercolours, pastels, sculptures and photography and trace the varied careers and works of these trailblazing artists.

Image: Ethel Sands, tea with Sickert, 1911 Photo Tate (Matt Greenwood and Seraphina Neville)

Details

22nd March - 8th September
Fashion and Textile Museum

Barbara Hulanicki’s legendary Biba store created a vision of colourful opulence and style that transformed the fashion scene in the 1960s and 70s. It began life as a small mail-order company in 1963 and developed into the famous emporium with its diverse and exotic departments housed in Derry & Toms , the splendid art deco building on Kensington High Street. The exhibition will celebrate the Biba look with archival items of clothing and materials, photographs and film.

Image:

Details

1st March - 30th June
Royal Academy of Arts

This exhibition celebrates the life and work of Angelica Kauffman (1741 - 1807), whose fine portraits and pioneering history paintings made her one of most famous female artists of the later eighteenth century. It explores her rise to fame in London, her role as one of the founding members of the Royal Academy and her later career in Rome where her studio became a hub for the city’s cultural life.

Image: Angelica Kauffman, Self-portrait at the Crossroads between the Arts of Music and Painting, 1794. National Trust Collections © National Trust Images/John Hammond

Details