Built up over 400 years by the Cavendish family and their descendants, The Portland Collection is vast and varied. The World’s Mine Oyster: Art, Nature and Collecting the Globe explores the stories behind the collection for the first time, revealing how the Cavendish family saw and used the natural world, both at home and across the world. 

For the first time in its history, the Fondation Beyeler will devote an exhibition to Paul Cezanne, a pioneer of modern art and one of the most important artists in the museum’s collection. The exhibition will focus on the last and most significant phase of the artist’s career, highlighting key themes of his later years, among them still lifes, portraits, landscapes and bather scenes. Bringing together around 80 oil paintings and watercolours, the exhibition will bring to life Cezanne’s groundbreaking work as regards form, light and colour – the qualities that have inspired and influenced artists for generations and through to the present day.

Madonna and Child with Saint John the Evangelist, thought to be lost for centuries, was newly identified during a recent conservation treatment that removed a layer of overpaint on the canvas, revealing the remarkable figure of Saint John the Evangelist in the foreground of the picture plane. The reemergence of the figure—after perhaps centuries of being overpainted—made clear that this is the seminal painting described in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists as the work that launched the young Florentine artist’s career. [...]

Stephan Wolohojian, John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge of the Department of European Paintings, added: “Paintings by Rosso are exceedingly rare, numbering only about two dozen, and many of his most celebrated works remain undocumented or unfinished. The discussion of this painting in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, often described as the first book of art history, gives the work the added distinction of having been part of art-historical discourse since the discipline’s inception. Executed on canvas and preserved in remarkably good condition, it is the artist’s earliest recorded painting to survive. This work will anchor The Met’s collection of 16th-century religious paintings, an exceptional and complementary group that elucidates key developments in painting for private devotion during the first quarter of the 16th century in Italy.”

This research will examine the collecting, knowledge production, and documentary practices of Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818), one of the most important antiquarian collectors of her time. It will interrogate Banks’s holdings at the British Library and elsewhere from a critical archival perspective, exploring these dispersed collections – and the taxonomies she devised for them – as maps of the social, intellectual, and imperial networks she inhabited.

This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Lucy Brownson and Prof Elizabeth Shepherd at UCL Department of Information Studies (UCL:DIS), and Felicity Myrone, Maddy Smith and Dr Alice Marples at the British Library.  The student will spend time with both UCL:DIS and the British Library and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK.

Ary de Vois’s The Artist as Lover (c. 1660s) is an oil on copper painting by the celebrated Leiden school fine painter. Vois’s elegant works are marked by practically invisible brushwork, sharp attention to detail, and enamel-like finishes. A miniature that may once have been paired with a pendant portrait of his wife, this work is the first by Vois in the collection and one of only a few self-portraits in the National Gallery’s repository of Dutch paintings.

This doctoral project investigates the overlooked contributions of migrant labour to British craft and design during the long eighteenth century (c.1688–1837). Drawing on the V&A’s rich collections, uncatalogued departmental card indexes, and external archival sources, the project will reconstruct the creative communities that shaped Britain’s material culture. Using historical, curatorial, and digital humanities methods, the student will uncover both visible and invisible ‘migrant hands’ that contributed to furniture-making, textiles, metalwork, ceramics, and other craft industries.

The project will be jointly supervised by Dr Adam Crymble (UCL), Dr Spike Sweeting (V&A), Dr Jin Gao (UCL), and Dr Jenny Saunt (V&A). The student will spend time at both UCL and the V&A and will join the wider national cohort of CDP-funded researchers.

In Spring and Summer 2026, Nationalmuseum will present a major exhibition on sculptor and draughtsman Johan Tobias Sergel (1740–1814) Sergel was a central figure in Swedish art during the late 18th century and is also considered one of the most important sculptors of his time on an international scale.

The exhibition offers a comprehensive view of Sergel’s life and art—from his early years in Stockholm in the 1760s, through his extended study trips to France and Italy, to his commissions for King Gustav III upon his return to Stockholm. One of the goals of the exhibition is to place Sergel’s life and work in a broader cultural and historical context. His relationships with leading Swedish cultural personalities and political authorities of the time are given significant attention, and his career is portrayed against the backdrop of life in 18th-century Stockholm, Paris, and Rome. Sergel maintained an extensive international network, and the exhibition highlights how important these connections were to his artistic development.

The Senior Researcher, Old Master Paintings will serve a core member and research specialist for the Old Master Paintings department in New York. They will manage the research workflow and produce cataloguing at the highest level for all Old Master Paintings sales, both at auction and private sale.

They will work closely with our network of colleagues in Europe and cultivate their role as a full and active member of the global Old Masters departments.

Close co-operation and good communications with colleagues in the Old Masters and greater Global Fine Arts departments. Using national and international networks to ensure a consistent, client-focused message, delivering a high standard of active client management.

Gainsborough will be the subject of a landmark exhibition marking the 300th anniversary of the artist’s birth. The show will bring together 120 works in a once-in-a-generation tribute to this quintessentially Georgian artist. Reflecting the rich variety of his practice, it will explore the contrast between the glamourous society portraits that made his name and the creative chaos in which he worked behind the scenes.

The Tudors reigned over a period that saw the birth of modern Britain, and in turn, that of British painting. Tate’s first major presentation of Tudor art in 30 years, this exhibition will bring a fresh perspective to this profoundly transformative period. Over 150 exceptional oil paintings, miniatures, works on paper, sculptures and decorative art objects will be brought together, including iconic portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

The Royal Collection contains an unparalleled collection of nearly 8,000 paintings and 3,000 miniatures.

Our team of talented Paintings Conservators is responsible for all conservation activities relating to the paintings displayed within the Royal residences as well for loans from the Paintings collection.

Immersing yourself in this fascinating collection, you will assess condition, carry out and document conservation treatments using the most appropriate methods and materials.

A book is eligible where it meets these criteria:

It is on the subject of British art history, conceived broadly to include fine arts, decorative arts, architecture, collecting and patronage, in Britain or by a British artist.

It was published in hard copy by any publisher during the preceding calendar year (1 January to 31 December 2025).

Titles may be nominated for the prize by their author(s), publisher or any associated organisation. There is no limit on how many submissions can be made by each entrant.

Discover the relationship between John Bradby Blake (1745-1773), an English botanist who worked as a supercargo for the East India Company in the 1770s, his Chinese interlocutor Whang At Tong 黃遏東, and Mak Sau 麥秀, the botanical artist Bradby Blake commissioned to document plants native to Canton.

The exhibition will explore the exchange of botanical knowledge shared between Canton (now Guangzhou) and London between 1766-1773, displaying a collection of Chinese botanical art and research for the first time in Britain since it was commissioned 235 years ago.

Featuring 30 botanical paintings by the artist Mak Sau 麥秀 together with herbals, maps, models, a portrait of Whang At Tong 黃遏東 by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), and watercolours and drawings of Canton from the V&A, Seeds of Exchange will tell the story of a little-known international botanical collaboration.

FT Weekend is seeking an art director to steer Life & Arts and House & Home into the future.

You will enjoy thinking about how to best present a range of stories, from theatre reviews to essays on world events both online and in print. From commissioning illustrations to creating secondary elements that entice readers to scroll deeper, you will need to think about all parts of the Life & Arts and House & Home offering. Working on H&H and L&A is a collaborative process from start to finish, and you will need to enjoy working closely with editors, picture editors and production experts.

Created on the north Kent coast, where the painter had decamped to escape depression and the pressures of London, it is, in effect, a tribute to Maria and an acknowledgement of the grief that Christina and Dante share—Christina, by contrast, expressed her feelings in the poem An October Garden. As his younger brother William would write a decade later, the portrait had a positive effect: “The experiment turned out a complete success. [Dante] perceived at once that nothing but an effort of will was needed to enable him to continue working at his art.”

The portrait, one of only two solo portraits he created of his sister in later life, was recently acquired by the National Trust and forms part of “The Rossettis – Siblings and Spouses,” an exhibition at Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton, a city in the English Midlands. Wightwick Manor was bestowed to the National Trust in 1937 by Rosalie and Geoffrey Mander, whose devotion to collecting Victorian art has made the property a significant place to see Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts work.