The National Gallery

A giant in the history of Spanish art, Francisco de Zurbarán was one of the great painters of 17th-century Seville

Step into the world of George Stubbs, the visionary British painter. Marvel at his monumental portrait of a rearing racehorse, ‘Scrub’. In the 1750s, Stubbs spent 18 months in a remote barn in Horkstow, Lincolnshire. Hidden away, he devoted his time to studying and drawing the anatomy of horses. What resulted was the most thorough study on the subject for almost a hundred years. Incredibly, Stubbs’s pictures of horses are still some of the most accurate ever painted, all while capturing their unique characters. In this exhibition, you’ll meet one of these horses, Scrub. Painted by Stubbs around 1762, we see Scrub rearing in a landscape backdrop — notably without a rider. In a nearby room is another monumental horse painting by Stubbs, this time of Scrub’s now famous contemporary, ‘Whistlejacket’. Painted around the same time, they would be the first life-size portraits to depict horses without a rider in British history. The paintings changed the spirit of equine art forever. ‘Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse’ will focus on the creation of ‘Scrub’, which will be joined by other paintings and drawings by the artist. Join us in Spring 2026 to get a closer look at Stubbs’s groundbreaking work.

Until 8 February 2026 Sainsbury Wing See paintings by artists including Seurat, Van Gogh, Signac and Pissarro Connect the dots as you experience the world's most significant collection of Neo-Impressionist art. When critics first saw Georges Seurat’s new style of painting, they thought it might bring about the death of painting itself. But what was it about artists like Paul Signac, Anna Boch, Jan Toorop and Henri-Edmond Cross, that ruffled so many feathers? Neo-Impressionists painted in small dots of pure colour. Viewed from a distance, the colours blend to create nuanced tones and an illusion of light. Now known as pointillism, this technique simplified form and played with colour in an entirely new way, verging on the edge of abstraction. Alongside this exciting approach to colour, their style went hand-in-hand with radical political ideas. They captured late 19th-century European society through luminous landscapes, portraits and interior scenes, while also depicting the struggles faced by the working class, in reaction against the industrial age. Most of the paintings we’re exhibiting were collected by Helene Kröller-Müller, one of the first great women art patrons of the 20th century. She assembled the most comprehensive ensemble of Neo-Impressionist paintings in the world. Collected with the aim of being publicly accessible, these works now form part of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, which Helene Kröller-Muller founded. See these radical visions of pure colour for yourself in Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists. This exhibition is a collaboration between the National Gallery and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo