The National Gallery Year Ahead Round Up 2024 and 2025

VAN GOGH: POETS AND LOVERS
Until 19 January 2025

To mark its 200th anniversary the National Gallery is staging its first exhibition of the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers marks the centenary of the Gallery’s acquisition of the artist’s Sunflowers and Van Gogh’s Chair (1888), two of its most famous pictures, in 1924. Groups of Van Gogh’s most ambitious canvases and works on paper explore the artist’s creative process and his sources of inspiration. Dwelling on Van Gogh’s time in Arles and Saint-Rémy in the South of France (1888-90), the exhibition investigates the artist’s fascinating practice of turning the places he encountered into idealised spaces in his art, thus crafting a deeply resonant and poetic framework for his oeuvre.

DISCOVER CONSTABLE AND THE HAY WAIN
Until 2 February 2025

The National Gallery is staging Discover Constable and The Hay Wain, devised around The Hay Wain (1821) by John Constable (1776 –1837). This is the first loan exhibition held at the National Gallery on this artist and the first to explore the social, political and artistic context of the English landscape at the time of 'The Hay Wain’s' production. The exhibition explores how the English landscape was changing physically and politically at the turn of the 19th-century, and how this was understood and represented (or not) by artists at this time. It also looks at where Constable was in his career in 1821 when he produced The Hay Wain and his process of building final works from sketches and studies produced over many years.

Art Road Trip

10 May 2024 – 10 May 2025

Since May 2024 and until May 2025, our travelling art studio programme, Art Road Trip, is visiting 18 places across the UK, working with 24 local arts organisations to create community-led arts projects. In each location, we’re designing events for people with the least access to creative opportunities and the arts, reaching thousands of people over the course of the year to bring art and ideas inspired by the National Gallery Collection right to where they live. You can find out where Art Road Trip is and who they are working with at any given time on our website.

PARMIGIANINO: THE VISION OF SAINT JEROME
5 December 2024 – 9 March 2025
Press view: 3 December

This winter, as part of our 200th anniversary year, the National Gallery celebrates Parmigianino’s Madonna and Child with Saints (1526‒7) which returns to public view for the first time in a decade, following meticulous conservation treatment. A masterpiece of 16th-century Italian painting, it was presented to the Gallery two years after our foundation in 1826.

Also known as ‘The Vision of Saint Jerome’, a title acquired in the 19th century in response to the unusual depiction of the apparently sleeping saint, the altarpiece will be displayed for the first time alongside a selection of some of the most important preparatory drawings. This exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to encounter the artist at work, from initial concept ideas to final designs, and delve into the mind of one of the most innovative artists of the Renaissance.

KATRINA PALMER: ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

11 December 2024 – 28 February 2025
Press view: 10 December

Katrina Palmer, a London-born and based artist, is the National Gallery’s Artist in Residence 2024. Palmer has been invited to respond to the collections of the National Gallery and Touchstones Rochdale. She began her residency in December 2023 and has been working over the course of a year in the National Gallery’s on-site artist’s studio, benefiting from the close proximity to the collection and archives.

CENTRE FOR CREATIVE LEARNING
Press view 24 February 2025; opening 3 March 2025

Part of our Bicentenary capital projects will be a transformed Centre for Creative Learning, allowing us to be far more ambitious with our educational offer and become the nation’s art classroom. This has been designed by Lawson Ward Studios after consultations with and input from children, teachers and families on how they want to use the space and what they want it to look like, to inspire lifelong learning and creativity.

SIENA: THE RISE OF PAINTING 1300 – 1350
8 March – 22 June 2025
Press view: 5 March

Paintings by some of the greatest Italian artists of the 14th century will be reunited at the National Gallery in 2025 - having been dispersed throughout the world for centuries. Some of the most innovative works in the Western painting tradition, many of which were part of larger ensembles before they were separated, are being brought back together. These influential and precious paintings, many in gold ground, will be among the highlights of a rarely staged exhibition of art of the first half of the 14th century. Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300‒1350, which marks the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery and celebrates the earliest pictures in its collection, will open in spring 2025.

JOSÉ MARÍA VELASCO: A VIEW OF MEXICO
29 March – 17 August 2025
Press view: 26 March

The first monographic exhibition in the UK devoted to José María Velasco (1840–1912), Mexico’s most celebrated 19th-century painter, will take place at the National Gallery early next year.  José María Velasco: A View of Mexico coincides with the 200th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UK and Mexico. Velasco is famed for his monumental paintings of the Valle de México, the area surrounding Mexico City, the nation’s capital. Painted during decades of tremendous social change, his precise yet lyrical works depicted Mexico’s magnificent scenery and rapid industrialisation.

THE CARRACCI CARTOONS: MYTHS IN THE MAKING
10 April – 6 July 2025
Press view: 8 April

Coinciding with the re-hang of our collection, the National Gallery will present the Carracci cartoons (about 1599) in Room 1. This is a rare chance to see these works which, at nearly four metres wide and two metres tall and in the delicate medium of charcoal and white chalk, are not often displayed. The works came into the National Gallery collection in 1837 as part of a gift by Lord Francis Egerton. They were initially made in preparation for the painted ceiling in the gallery of one of Rome’s greatest Renaissance palaces, the Palazzo Farnese.

NG200: WELCOME
Press view 8 May 2025; opening 15 May 2025

A suite of capital projects that will benefit all those who visit the Gallery. Sensitive interventions to our building will reshape the National Gallery for its third century and the next generation of visitors. In May 2025 a transformed Sainsbury Wing entrance, public realm and visitor amenities along with a new Supporters’ House, designed by a team led by Selldorf Architects, will open, drawing on the building’s heritage while providing a more inspiring and sustainable experience for our millions of visitors every year.

JEREMY DELLER’S THE TRIUMPH OF ART 26 July 2025

A new commission by Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller, rounding off the National Gallery’s Bicentenary celebrations. The Triumph of Art marks how festivals are part and parcel of art, culture and civic life, and that art and artists can be catalysts of collaboration and joy, with a year of talks, workshops and procession-style performances, happening in partnership with arts organisations all over the UK. The role art plays in our public collections, cultural spaces and museums is the new work’s main theme. Deller has drawn inspiration from the Renaissance painter Titian’s wild processions of the Roman gods, as in his famous Bacchus and Ariadne (1520‒23), as well as folklore, dances, plays, rave culture and popular arts – all culminating in a celebratory performance in Trafalgar Square in July.

MILLET: LIFE ON THE LAND
7 August – 19 October 2025
Press view: 5 August

The first UK exhibition in nearly 50 years dedicated to Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) will open at the National Gallery in autumn 2025. The show coincides with the 150th anniversary of Millet’s death – by which time his works were well known in the UK and beginning to be eagerly collected by an enthusiastic group of British collectors, resulting in a significant body of his work in UK public collections. Millet: Life on the Land will present around 13 paintings and drawings from British public collections. It will include the National Gallery’s The Winnower (about 1847‒8), and the exceptional loan of L’Angelus (1857‒9) from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

RADICAL HARMONY: HELENE KRÖLLER-MÜLLER’S NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS
13 September 2025 – 8 February 2026
Press view: 10 September

The first-ever exhibition dedicated to the Neo-Impressionist art movement at the National Gallery will take place in the autumn of 2025. Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists will show works largely drawn from the outstanding collection of the German art collector Helene Kröller-Müller (1869‒1939), at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, in the Netherlands. The exhibition will show radical works of French, Belgian and Dutch artists, painted from 1886 to the early 20th century. These include Anna Boch (1848‒1936), Jan Toorop (1858‒1928), Théo van Rysselberghe (1862‒1926) and Paul Signac (1863‒1935) and Georges Seurat (1859–1891) himself. One of the first great women art patrons of the 20th century, Kröller-Müller, assembled what is probably the world’s greatest and most comprehensive collection of Neo-Impressionist paintings just two decades after these works were painted.

Notes to editors

Images:

Vincent van Gogh, 'Sunflowers', 1888, Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73 cm © The National Gallery, London

Parmigianino, 'The Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Jerome', Oil on poplar, 342.9cm x 148.6cm © The National Gallery, London

José María Velasco, 'Vista de la fábrica de hilados La Carolina (Puebla)', 1887, Oil on canvas, 76.6 × 107.8 cm © National Gallery of Prague / photo by Andrea Rývová

Agostino Carracci, 'Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot', about 1599, Charcoal and white chalk (a grey wash applied later over the whole) on paper, 202.5 × 398.8 cm
© The National Gallery, London

Jean-François Millet, 'L’Angélus', 1857-9, Oil on canvas , 55.5 x 66 cm
© Musée d'Orsay, Dist. Grand Palais Rmn / Patrice Schmidt

Publicity images can be obtained from https://press.nationalgallery.org.uk/

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The National Gallery

The National Gallery is one of the greatest art galleries in the world. Founded by Parliament in 1824, the Gallery houses the nation’s collection of paintings in the Western European tradition from the late 13th to the early 20th century. The collection includes works by Artemisia Gentileschi, Bellini, Cezanne, Degas, Leonardo, Monet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Renoir, Rubens, Titian, Turner, Van Dyck, Van Gogh and Velázquez. The Gallery’s key objectives are to care for and enhance the collection and provide the best possible access to visitors. Admission free. nationalgallery.org.uk

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