Romantic works of art to see on Valentine's Day

Take a Valentine-themed tour through London's museums

Fall head-over-heels in love with London’s most heartmelting art by following Ossian Ward and Eddy Frankel’s guide to Valentine-worthy works and pulse-quickening paintings, but beware the low scorers on our love-o-meter.

The Swing

The Swing – Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767 – Wallace Collection

The premise for this racily romantic rococo confection began like a particularly bad, blue joke: the lady on the swing with the frilly bloomers being pushed from behind by the bishop in the bushes. The painter eventually omitted the religious slight but positioned the Georgian gentleman who commissioned the picture in an even more compromising position, staring up at the stockinged legs of his young mistress.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

View 'The Swing' at the Wallace Collection.
Venus and Mars

Venus and Mars - Sandro Botticelli – 1485 National Gallery

Those Carry On folk had nothing on the early renaissance master of innuendo, Boticcelli. This saucy scene shows what happens when the gods of love and war make love not war, knackering the man from Mars to the post-coital point where even a blast from his horn or a poke from his own phallic spear can’t rouse the normally belligerent bloke.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

View 'Venus and Mars' at the National Gallery.
Disappointed Love

Disappointed Love – Francis Danby, 1821 – Victoria & Albert Museum

A surefire downer by Irish painter Danby, this melancholic maiden is surrounded by a discarded bonnet, shawl and a miniature portrait of her lover, while a torn-up letter floats away on the pond. Given that this predates the famous ‘Ophelia’ at Tate Britain (meaning it’s pre-Pre-Raphaelite), perhaps Millais was himself in the gallery when a visitor remarked that the poor girl in the picture was somewhat ugly. ‘Yes’, replied his associate, ‘one feels that the sooner she drowns herself the better’.

Romance rating: ♥

View 'Disappointed Love' at the V&A Museum.
Grow Love With Me

Grow Love With Me – Yoko Ono, 2012 – Serpentine Gallery

Whether bedding-in with John Lennon or protesting fracking, the peacenik antics of 80-year-old Ono are nothing if not life-affirming statements of intra-human love. If you’d like to seal the deal with her or anyone else you fancy, then why not purchase one of her ‘magic’ beans in a can (£26 from www.serpentinegallery.org), which, when planted, will reveal the word ‘Love’ on a leaf, having been laser-etched onto the seed pod. Aaaaah.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

View 'Grow Love With Me' at the Serpentine Gallery.
The Knight Errant

The Knight Errant – John Everett Millais, 1870 – Tate Britain

Every woman loves a knight in shining armour. Especially if they’ve been tied to a tree, naked. Pre-Raphaelite founder Millais knew that, and although it’s not clear how this poor damsel got into quite so much distress in the first place, or what the knight did with her afterwards, at this moment this is just about the most romantic thing imaginable.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

View 'The Knight Errant' at Tate Britain.
Nevermore

Nevermore – Paul Gauguin, 1897 – Courtauld Institute of Art

Gauguin’s downtime in Tahiti was filled with enough rumpy pumpy to make Caligula blush. As well as the four children he had with his French wife, he had innumerable offspring with an impressive array of local indigenous women. So if he did anything in his life, apart from paint, it was love. A lot. And surely that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

View 'Nevermore' at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Red-figured wine bowl

Red-figured wine bowl, Greek – about 420-400 BC – British Museum

You’d expect your wife to at least consider moving on if you’d been gone for twenty years on some epic journey. But when Odysseus returned from his, you know, odyssey to find Penelope being courted by a variety of suitors, he wasn’t best pleased, and killed the lot of ‘em. If that’s not love, we don’t know what is.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

View at 'Red-figured wine bowl' the British Museum.
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust – Pablo Picasso – 1932 Tate Modern

At the age of 45, and married to the raunchily named Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, Picasso fell in love with seventeen-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter. When she accidentally walked in on Pablo with another mistress, Dora Maar, the two women demanded that he choose between them. He had a better idea, and instead had them fight each other for him. What a gent.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥

View 'Nude, Green Leaves and Bust' at the Tate Modern.

The Swing – Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767 – Wallace Collection

The premise for this racily romantic rococo confection began like a particularly bad, blue joke: the lady on the swing with the frilly bloomers being pushed from behind by the bishop in the bushes. The painter eventually omitted the religious slight but positioned the Georgian gentleman who commissioned the picture in an even more compromising position, staring up at the stockinged legs of his young mistress.

Romance rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

View 'The Swing' at the Wallace Collection.

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