Lady Elizabeth and her Sister by Anthony van Dyck, exhibited at the National Gallery, London
Lady Elizabeth and her Sister by Anthony van Dyck, exhibited at the National Gallery, London

From 18 June 2020 to 31 January 2021, the first ever large-scale exhibition drawn from the collection of London’s National Gallery will take place at the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. Through an extensive selection of 61 masterpieces from the gallery’s collection, the exhibition gives an overview of the history of European painting by exploring the reciprocal relationship between British and continental European art.

In this online tour, Christine Riding, the Jacob Rothschild Head of the Curatorial Department at the National Gallery, London, guides us through highlights of the exhibition, arranged in seven chapters.

Works introduced in the tour:

Chapter 1: Collecting the Italian Renaissance
Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, 1486

Chapter 2: Dutch Painting of the Golden Age
Johannes Vermeer, A Young Woman seated at a Virginal, About 1670–72

Chapter 3: Van Dyck and British Portraiture 
Anthony van Dyck, Lady Elizabeth Thimbelby and Dorothy, Viscountess Andover, About 1635

Chapter 4: The Grand Tour
Canaletto, Venice: A Regatta on the Grand Canal, About 1735

Chapter 5: The Discovery of Spain
Francisco de Goya, The Duke of Wellington, 1812–14

Chapter 6: Landscape and the Picturesque
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ulysses deriding Polyphemus – Homer’s Odyssey, 1829

Chapter 7: French Modern Art in Britain 
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888

(Filmed on 2 March 2020, at the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo)

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