The Wallace Collection's Smallest Treasures
We invite you to explore a real treasure of our collection: our beautiful miniatures. In the museum, they are displayed behind glass in cabinets but they were in fact intended to be viewed at very close quarters, and to be held, carried and worn.
They are very intimate in character and are enormously rewarding when examined in close detail. They reveal the individual styles of the artists who created them (including some notable women artists) and their remarkable skill in depicting scintillating surface detail and conveying personality and mood, all on a tiny scale.
Spectacle in Venice in the 18th Century
The Wallace Collection holds an impressive collection of vedute, or topographical views, of Venice by Canaletto and Guardi, and by artists working in Canaletto’s circle. In this talk, Dr Lelia Packer discusses a selection of these works in order to explore Venice as a major tourist destination during the 18th century. What did visitors come to see? What did they do during their visit? And, most importantly, how was the city recorded in paint for them?
David Roberts' Travels
Join Dr Akemi Luisa Herráez Vossbrink (Enriqueta Harris Frankfort Curatorial Fellow) and discover the Scottish artist, David Roberts, through a selection of his works held in the Wallace Collection.
To learn more about Roberts, you can watch our linked talk, where Dr Herráez Vossbrink is joined by Professor Claudia Hopkins, Director of Durham University’s Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art, to discuss Roberts's travels throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
The Swing
Jean-Honoré Fragonard's treasured rococo painting The Swing has recently undergone gentle cleaning and conservation. Yellowed varnish has been removed, which has revealed Fragonard's original colour palette and has emphasised the painting's original depth and composition. Learn more about the story behind The Swing with Dr Yuriko Jackall.
Frans Hals and the Male Portrait
Lelia Packer, Curator of Dutch, Italian, Spanish, German and Pre-1600 Paintings, explores male portraiture as part of the exhibition Frans Hals: The Male Portrait (22 September 2021 – 30 January 2022). The exhibition celebrated Frans Hals’s most famous and beloved painting, The Laughing Cavalier, in the first ever show to focus solely on Hals’s portraits of men posing on their own.
Learn more about this landmark exhibition with our free online talk, Frans Hals and The Male Portrait, available now on YouTube, and via our virtual exhibition.
Watteau, 300 years later
Head of Curatorial and Curator of French Paintings, Dr Yuriko Jackall, invites you to take a close look at the work of Antoine Watteau whose paintings are as alluring and mysterious today as they were three centuries ago.
Learn more about Watteau with our free online talk, Watteau at 300, available now on YouTube.
Rubens's Great Landscapes
Our Curator of British and Flemish Paintings, Lucy Davis, explores the ways in which Rubens developed the tradition of landscape painting and how oil sketches were an important part of his creative process.
Learn more about Rubens's great landscapes with our free online talk, Rubens: Reuniting the Great Landscapes, available now on YouTube.
Philip IV’s Court
Our Enriqueta Harris Frankfort Curatorial Assistant, Natalia Muñoz-Rojas, explores the Wallace Collection's masterpieces attributed to Velázquez and his school, the history behind the Habsburgs and the Spanish Empire, and the splendid artworks of the Court of Philip IV.
Tune into Natalia Muñoz-Rojas's free online talk, Velázquez or Mazo? Philip IV Court Painters, now live on YouTube.
