| Current exhibition:
Dutch Landscapes
30 April 2010 – 9 January 2011
This exhibition brings together 42 remarkable works, including paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, Nicolaes Berchem and Meyndert Hobbema.
The fine detail and meticulous finish of Dutch landscapes appealed to British taste. The ability of Netherlandish artists to depict mood and emotion through the landscape of their homeland or the Italian countryside influenced the great British painters John Constable and JMW Turner. On seeing a seascape by Willem van de Velde the Younger, Turner remarked, ‘Ah! That made me a painter’.
Forthcoming exhibitions:
Marcus Adams: Royal Photographer
25 February - 5 June 2011
Over 100 photographs are brought together in an exhibition to celebrate the work of Marcus Adams (1875-1959), who devoted 50 years to photographing children.
Adams overturned the long tradition of formal royal portraiture and between 1926 and 1956 created a unique record of two generations of royal children, presenting a new, relaxed image of royalty. Vintage prints from almost all the royal sittings are included, many formerly part of the personal collection of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. The centrepiece of the exhibition is a charming group of photographs of the very young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret taken in the late 1920s and 1930s.
The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein
17 June 2011 - 15 January 2012
The 15th and 16th centuries were a time of dramatic change in Northern Europe. Monarchs vied for territorial power, religious reformers questioned the central tenets of the church and scholars sought greater understanding of their world.
Against this backdrop, artists produced works of extraordinarily diverse subject matter and superb technical skill. This exhibition brings together over 120 works by the greatest Northern European artists of the period. Among the highlights are prints and drawings by Albrecht Dürer, mythological paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, and preparatory drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger displayed alongside the finished oil portraits. | 
