'National Gallery in Miniature' Heading to China in 2023
Works by Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Monet, and more will show at the Shanghai Museum and two other venues in Asia.
Vincent Van Gogh, Long Grass with Butterflies (1890), Oil on canvas 64.5 × 80.7 cm. © The National Gallery, London.
The exhibition Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery will tour Asia in 2023 and 2024. It will make its first stop at Shanghai Museum from 17 January to 7 May 2023 before heading to two other venues that have yet to be announced.
Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery in London, described the exhibition as 'the National Gallery in miniature'.
It includes 52 paintings from the institution's collection that span the period from the Italian Renaissance in the 1500s to Post-Impressionism in the late 19th century.
Highlights include Sandro Botticelli's Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius (around 1500), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's Boy bitten by a Lizard (about 1594–5), Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn's Self Portrait at the Age of 63 (1669), Vincent van Gogh's Long Grass with Butterflies (1890), Claude Monet's Irises (1914–1917), and J. M. W. Turner's The Parting of Hero and Leander (before 1837).
Many of these works will be showing in China for the first time.
Shanghai Museum's director Dr Chu Xiaobo stated that the museum, which primarily houses pre-modern Chinese art, is 'proud of embracing and demonstrating other civilisations and arts across the globe in the past half century.'
He described the exhibition as 'a feast for the eyes and the soul as well.'
Over 700 000 people visited the National Gallery's previous tour to Japan and Australia, which launched at Tokyo's National Museum of Western Art in June of 2020 after pandemic-related delays.
'The Gallery has an important role to play in promoting the UK's globally recognised position as a centre for culture and the arts, and we remain passionately committed to cultural exchange internationally,' Dr Finaldi said in a statement.
Touring exhibitions ensure these works are still seen while The National Gallery operates with limited exhibition space. The Gallery is currently undergoing renovations costing an estimated £25–30 million (US $28–34 million) in the lead up to its bi-centenary in 2024. —[O]
