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In case you weren’t already aware, 2026 is going to be a blockbuster year for art in London. There’s the city’s first major Frida Kahlo exhibition in eight years, a Renoir masterpiece making its UK debut, the first ever major British display of Ana Mendieta’s work, the largest Tracey Emin retrospective to date and a landmark Hockney show.
We’ll have to wait a several weeks or months for most of those shows, but there is one other hotly-anticipated exhibition that will open in London a lot sooner – in a matter of days, in fact.
Seurat and the Sea at the Courtauld will be the first UK exhibition on the great French post-Impressionist and the inventor of pointillism Georges Seurat in almost 30 year. It’ll also be the first ever show entirely dedicated to his lesser-known seascapes.
Between 1885 and 1890, a twenty-something Seurat spent each summer observing the port towns along the northern coast of France and putting paint to canvas to capture their seascapes, regattas and other oceanic activities. This exhibition will bring together 26 paintings, oil sketches and drawings produced by Seurat during that period, including The Beach at Gravelines (1890) and Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy (1888).
Seurat is most famous for his Parisian studies, but he said that he created these seascapes ‘to wash his eyes of the days spent in the studio [in Paris] and to translate in the most faithful manner the bright clarity, in all its nuances’.
The artist died in 1891 aged just 31, so he has a relatively small pool of work and dedicated exhibitions a pretty rare. The Courtauld holds the biggest collection of Seurat artworks of any British gallery.
Seurat and the Sea will be at the Courtauld from February 13 until April 12 2026. You can book tickets here.
ICYMI: Here’s when a new Fourth Plinth artwork will come to Trafalgar Square in 2026.
Plus: the Courtauld is opening two new gallery spaces.
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