BECKMANN

Städel Museum

December 3, 2025 to March 15, 2026

Max Beckmann's work emerged in a world marked by crises and upheavals, transforming these experiences into a visual language that continues to fascinate today. His drawings form the most intimate part of his oeuvre: like a diary, they document Beckmann's artistic development and simultaneously served as a medium for observation, image-finding, and even image-invention. The Städel Museum now focuses on these works, presenting around 80 pieces from all phases of his career—from previously little-known drawings to outstanding masterpieces. They offer direct and profound access to Beckmann (1884–1950), one of the most important artists of the modern era.

The Städel Museum possesses one of the world's most outstanding collections of Beckmann's work and has dedicated itself to collecting, researching, and presenting his oeuvre for more than a century. In 2021, the museum received a remarkable boost through important long-term loans from the collection of Karin and Rüdiger Volhard. This, along with the publication by Hirmer Verlag of the three-volume catalogue raisonné of Max Beckmann's black-and-white drawings—with which Hedda Finke and Stephan von Wiese have filled one of the last major gaps in research on Beckmann's drawings—provides the impetus for this retrospective exhibition.

The core of the exhibition consists of drawings from the Städel Museum's own collection, supplemented by loans from renowned international museums and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin), and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig (Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig). Individual paintings and prints also offer insights into Beckmann's working process and the interplay of different media.

Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum, on the exhibition:

 “Max Beckmann, the Städel Museum, and the city of Frankfurt am Main have been closely linked for over a century. Despite the loss of almost all of the artist's works during the Nazi era, the museum today possesses a Beckmann collection of international standing. With the current exhibition, we are once again focusing specifically on Beckmann's drawings for the first time in over forty years. They open up a unique and fascinating cosmos of his work and make his artistic development directly tangible – not least thanks to the outstanding collaboration with Hedda Finke and Stephan von Wiese, the editors of the three-volume catalogue raisonné of his drawings.”

Curators Regina Freyberger, head of the Graphic Collection from 1800 onwards at the Städel Museum, Hedda Finke and Stephan von Wiese, authors of the three-volume catalogue raisonné of Beckmann's drawings, add: 

“The drawings are a key to Beckmann's work. Through drawing, he developed his distinctive visual language, captured what he saw and experienced, shaped his personal worldview, and transformed fleeting impressions into multifaceted, meaningful compositions. Over the course of his life, he produced more than 1,900 black-and-white drawings in pen, chalk, or pencil—not bound in sketchbooks—ranging from quick sketches to fully realized works. The exhibition presents a focused yet representative selection of these, which—supplemented by individual color works, prints, and paintings—makes the draftsman Max Beckmann vividly accessible.”

IMAGES

Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait, 1912

Max Beckmann, Evening Street Scene, 1913 (?)

Max Beckmann, Prof. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, 1915

Max Beckmann, Wounded Soldier with Bandaged Head, 1915

Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait While Drawing, 1915

Max Beckmann, Rimini, 1927

Max Beckmann, Flooded City, ca. 1928 (?)

Max Beckmann, Quappi with Candle, 1928

Max Beckmann, The Murder, 1933

Max Beckmann, Faust II, sheet 4, Faust: Our life’s a spectrumsheen of borrowed glory, 1943

Max Beckmann, Tram Stop, 1945

Max Beckmann, Champagne Fantasy (Magnifying Glass), 1945

Max Beckmann, Rodeo, 1949

Max Beckmann, Self-portrait with Fish, 1949

Max Beckmann, Portrait of Georg Swarzenski, 1950 

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames

 For the first time in 120 years, The Courtauld Gallery reunited an extraordinary group of Claude Monet’s Impressionist paintings of London in the major exhibition The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames, ran from 27 September 2024 to 19 January 2025.

These ravishing works have never been the subject of a UK exhibition. Begun during three visits to the capital between 1899 and 1901, the paintings depict Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. The series was unveiled in Paris in 1904 to great critical acclaim. Monet fervently wanted to show it in London the following year but the project fell through. The Courtauld Gallery will therefore realise Monet’s unfulfilled ambition of exhibiting this distinct group of works in London, just 300 metres from the Savoy Hotel where many of them were painted.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) is world renowned as the leading figure of French Impressionism, a movement that changed the course of modern art. Less known is the fact that some of his most remarkable paintings were made not in France but in London. They depict views of the Thames, capturing the river and its surrounding architecture as they had never been seen before, full of evocative atmosphere, mysterious light, and radiant colour. Monet came to London in the wintertime, fascinated by the effects of the London fog, a phenomenon produced by the city’s heavy industrialisation in the 19th century. In London, the fog took on a particular density and a variety of hues that occurred nowhere else. Monet’s paintings are undoubtedly amongst the most significant representations of the Thames ever made and embody the complexity of his practice, 40 years after his debut, as he pushed the Impressionist approach to the extreme.

Monet started the paintings during his three long stays in London in 1899, 1900 and 1901 and finished them in his studio in Giverny, north of Paris. While he eventually painted almost 100 views of the Thames, his most ambitious project to date, the exhibition focuses on the smaller group of 37 paintings that were presented at the unveiling of the series in 1904. Monet completed these works as a unit specifically for their public display and he considered them the finest representatives of his artistic project. They constituted, in his eyes, the true ‘Thames series’. After the show, the paintings were dispersed, purchased by collectors in France and abroad. 

The exhibition The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames will feature 21 paintings, 18 of which were in the 1904 unveiling, in an unprecedented effort to recreate the display that Monet himself put together and the experience he wanted his audience to have seeing these extraordinary works.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea

The Courtauld Gallery

13 February – 17 May 2026

The Courtauld will present the first ever exhibition dedicated to the seascapes of the major French Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859–1891). This ambitious exhibition will be the first devoted to Seurat in the UK in almost 30 years. It will chart the evolution of his radical and distinctive style through the recurring motif of the sea. It follows major Impressionist exhibitions at The Courtauld, such as Cézanne’s Card Players, The Morgan Stanley Exhibition: Van Gogh. Self-Portraits and, most recently, the acclaimed The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames, which was seen by a record 120,000 visitors.

The Courtauld holds the largest collection of works by Seurat in the UK. The artist is best known as the creator of the Neo-Impressionist technique, in which shapes and light are rendered by juxtaposing small dots of pure colour. Due to his early death at the age of 31, Seurat left a small body of work and exhibitions devoted to him are rare.

The exhibition will bring together 27 paintings, oil sketches and drawings from major private and public collections, made by Seurat during the five summers he spent on the northern coast of France, between 1885 and 1890. Working in port towns along the English Channel, including Honfleur, Port-en-Bessin and Gravelines, Seurat captured their seascapes and port activity in his distinctive Neo-Impressionist technique. He sought, in his words, ‘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’.

Georges Seurat, Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888, Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Georges Seurat, (1859-1891), Young Woman Powdering Herself, (1888-90), The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) © The Courtauld

• 
  
  
  
  Georges Seurat The Bridge at Courbevoie c. 1886-87 oil on canvas Samuel Courtauld, bequest, 1948 Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)
• 
  
  
  
  Georges Seurat Man Painting a bBoat c. 1883 oil on panel Samuel Courtauld, bequest, 1948 Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Giovanni Bellini’s “Pietà” Restored

From January 15 through April 19, 2026, the Morgan Library & Museum will display the painting Pietà (also known as Dead Christ Supported by Angels) (ca. 1470) by Giovanni Bellini (1424/26–1516), bringing this early Renaissance masterpiece to the United States for the first time. The exceptional loan of this masterwork from the Museo della Città in Rimini, Italy, follows a comprehensive conservation treatment made possible by Venetian Heritage, Inc. The painting will be on view in J. Pierpont Morgan’s study within the Morgan’s historic library, alongside some of the finest Renaissance art collected by Morgan himself, including paintings by Hans Memling and Perugino and sculptures by Antonio Rossellino.

Giovanni Bellini (1424/26–1516), Pietà (also known as Dead Christ Supported by Angels) (ca. 1470). Photography by Matteo De Fina, courtesy of Museo della Città “Luigi Tonini,” Rimini. 

“The Morgan is delighted not only to bring Bellini’s painting to the United States for the first time but also to unveil this masterpiece to the public following its eagerly awaited restoration, and for this we are deeply grateful to Venetian Heritage,” said Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “Our presentation will allow visitors to the Morgan to see how Bellini drew inspiration from the Byzantine iconic tradition of painting the dead Christ, and gave fresh life to this devotional subject through combining a sense of deep spiritual emotion with a new humanist classicism.” 

Bellini’s powerful and melancholic Pietà shows youthful angels contemplating the wounds of Christ’s dead body as they arrange it for veneration. In contrast to other versions of the subject, the angels in this painting do not wail uncontrollably; instead, the work’s poignancy derives from their sad, pensive preparation of Christ’s body. Bellini spent the entirety of his long career in his native city of Venice, producing altarpieces, paintings for private devotion, portraits, and secular scenes. 

For small devotional works like this painting of the dead Christ, he built upon a long tradition of Byzantine icon painting well known in Venice. He also incorporated sculptural models and an interest in the forms of ancient Roman art, which he had learned from his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. The resulting style was distinctly modern but also timeless. 

This presentation will coincide with the exhibition Caravaggio’s “Boy with a Basket of Fruit” in Focus, creating a remarkable opportunity for audiences to experience two pivotal moments in the history of Italian painting. 

Caravaggio’s “Boy with a Basket of Fruit” in Focus

The Morgan Library & Museum will present Caravaggio’s “Boy with a Basket of Fruit” in Focus, celebrating the extraordinary loan of this important early masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) from the Galleria Borghese in Rome. On view from January 16 through April 19, 2026, the exhibition showcases what can be considered Caravaggio’s first masterpiece alongside a group of ten works that place the painting in context, from the artist’s influences to those he influenced. 

Trained in his native Lombardy, Caravaggio brought to Rome a tradition of naturalism that stretched back to Leonardo da Vinci’s work in Milan. He combined this tradition with a revolutionary approach to painting that shattered the illusion of art and celebrated the artifice of the studio. Boy with a Basket of Fruit (ca. 1595), in which these key elements of Caravaggio’s art come together for the first time, marks the beginning of a revolution in Italian painting. 

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610), Boy with a Basket of Fruit, ca. 1595. Oil on canvas. Galleria Borghese, Rome © Galleria Borghese / ph. Mauro Coen.

“Caravaggio captures the imagination in a way that almost no other artist can,” said Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “We are exceptionally fortunate to be able to bring this masterpiece from the Galleria Borghese to share with visitors in New York for the first time in the twenty-first century, accompanied by works that illuminate his impact on the field of painting.” 

“Boy with a Basket of Fruit marks a turning point in Italian painting,” said John Marciari, Charles W. Engelhard Curator, Department Head of Drawings and Prints, and Director of Curatorial Affairs. “It is a linchpin between the naturalism of Caravaggio’s sources and his radical interventions in exposing the artifice of painting. To see this painting in context is to understand the revolution it represents.” 

With his parted lips, flushed ears, and shirt slipping from his shoulder, the boy in the painting is far from the idealized figures typically depicted in Roman painting at the time. Caravaggio painted neither a god nor a saint, but an artist’s model, captured on the canvas and seemingly offered to us for examination, much like the fruit the boy presents to the viewer. 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593), Four Seasons in One Head, ca. 1590. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Paul Mellon Fund

The exhibition juxtaposes this remarkable work with some precedents for its naturalism, including earlier paintings from Milan, such as Four Seasons in One Head (ca. 1590) by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527– 1593), on loan from the National Gallery of Art. 

Other precedents include Boy Drinking (ca. 1583) byCaravaggio’s slightly older contemporary Annibale Carracci (1560–1609). A significant loan from a private collection, this painting has never been on public view. 

Also exhibited are two works by Caravaggio’s early mentors and influences: a drawing by Simone Peterzano (ca. 1535–1599), who was the young Caravaggio’s teacher in Milan, and 

Giuseppe Cesari, known as the Cavaliere d’Arpino (1568–1640) Study of a Young Man, ca. 1594–95 Black chalk The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of János Scholz, 1979.47. Photography by Steven H. Crossot. a study by Giuseppe Cesari (1568–1640), in whose studio Caravaggio worked in Rome. Although Caravaggio would eventually turn away from preparatory drawings in favor of painting directly on the canvas, these works provide context for his training. 

 

Rutilio Manetti (1571–1639) A Life Study: A Monk Sleeping Against a Pile of Books, ca. 1616 Red chalk The Morgan Library & Museum, 2019.102. Photography by Janny Chiu 

The installation also includes a selection of works that document the powerful impact Caravaggio had on Roman art, including.A Life Study: A Monk Sleeping against a Pile of Books (ca. 1616) by Rutilio Manetti (1571–1639) and 

Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1587–1625) Basket of Fruit, ca. 1620 Oil on canvas The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Errol M. Rudman, 2020, 2020.263.5.

Basket of Fruit (ca. 1620) by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1587– 1625). 

These show the ways in which the artists who followed Caravaggio continued to reveal the fiction of art, from highlighting the real-life models who sat for them to emphasizing the imperfections in the subjects of their still-life paintings. 

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) Portrait of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, ca. 1632 Red chalk over graphite The Morgan Library & Museum, IV, 176. Photography by Steven H. Crossot. 

The exhibition concludes with the Morgan’s remarkable portrait drawing of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577–1633) by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). Borghese, the collector largely responsible for the Galleria Borghese, was the early owner of Boy with a Basket of Fruit, which has been part of the Borghese collection since 1607. 

Caravaggio’s “Boy with a Basket of Fruit” in Focus is curated by John Marciari, Charles W. Engelhard Curator, Department Head of Drawings and Prints, and Director of Curatorial Affairs. 

MORE IMAGES

Attributed to Marco d’Oggiono (ca. 1467– 1524) Girl with Cherries, ca. 1491–95 Oil on panel The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1890, 91.26.5. 

Francesco Rustici, known as Rustichino (1592–1626) Head of a Youth, ca. 1620 Black and white chalk on light brown paper The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of János Scholz, 1979.50. Photography by Steven H. Crossot. 

Masterpiece by Claude Lorrain on public display for first time in 100 years

 

Image credit: Claude Lorraine, 'Les Bergeres Musiciens - Pastoral Landscape with Shepherds Playing Music by a River ', oil on canvas, c1637. From the Schroder Collection.o

The Holburne recently opened two new galleries, displaying works on long-term loan from the Schroder family collection. While the lower ground floor sparkles with Renaissance silver, a small but exquisite collection of paintings form the 17^th-Century Gallery on the first floor.

An undoubted highlight, Pastoral Landscape with Shepherds Playing Music by a River was painted around 1637 by the renowned master of the ideal landscape, Claude Gellée – better known as Claude Lorrain, or simply Claude (1604/5–1682).

Claude is widely credited with pioneering landscape painting, emphasising harmony, light and classical serenity. His work had a profound influence on the development of landscape art, particularly in Britain; J.M.W. Turner even bequeathed two of his masterpieces to the National Gallery on the condition they hung beside Claude’s paintings.

Largely self-taught, Claude developed his style through close observation of nature and light, sketching outdoors from dawn to dusk to capture atmospheric effects with remarkable sensitivity. The countryside around Rome was scattered with ancient ruins, which he often incorporated in his poetic and idealised landscapes.

Pastoral Landscape with Shepherds Playing Music by a River is recorded in Claude’s Liber Veritatis—a book of ink-and-wash drawings where he meticulously reproduced each of his paintings, often noting the buyer and destination, which is housed at the British Museum. The annotations on the page reveal that this picture was painted for Etienne Gueffier (1576-1660), French envoy in Rome, c1637-8.

The painting was last publicly exhibited exactly 100 years ago, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Dr Chris Stephens, Director of the Holburne said: “This painting represents the most important individual loan in the museum’s history. There are few – if any – works of this quality outside London. It is thrilling for the Holburne and for Bath to house a display of such international standing.”

The painting by Claude is displayed in the Holburne’s new 17^th-Century Gallery, presenting highlights from a larger collection of 17th-century art assembled by Baron Bruno Schroder (1867–1940) and his wife between 1913 and 1928. Other works on display include portraits by Justus Sustermans (1597–1681) and Cornelis van der Voort (1576–1624); landscapes by Aert van der Neer (1603/4–1677) and Jan van Goyen (1596–1656); and an exquisitely decorated scagliola table attributed to Fistulator workshop, from the mid-17^th century.

Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection | Possibilities of an Island. Thinking in Images

19.12.2025 to 03.05.2026
Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg

The world is turbulent and difficult. How fortunate that there are islands! Outside, in the open air, or inner imaginary ones that we can find just about anywhere – in our heads, at home or somewhere else. Art collections, particularly private ones, are islands of a special sort. Not governed by considerations of public accountability, they are subject to the highly personal criteria of the collector alone. Consequently, they provide a place of retreat, far from the world, that facilitates independent thinking in images.

To mark the hundredth birthday of Dieter and Hilde Scharf, Possibilities of an Island explores the passion for collecting shared by the couple and their daughter Julietta Scharf. It is the first presentation to show a substantial selection of those works that are not part of the holdings that were entrusted to the Nationalgalerie as a long-term loan and that have been on display in a dedicated building as “Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg” since 2008.

Building on the renowned collection put together by his grandfather Otto Gerstenberg (1848–1935), Dieter Scharf established a foundation in 2001, from which he selected a group of some 350 works for the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg. His focus as a collector was on Surrealism, but he cast his net wide enough to include the movement's precursors and successors. Spread over the two floors, the galleries offer a broad panorama of fantastical art, ranging from works by Goya, Piranesi and Redon to Jean Dubuffet's Art Brut.

Surrealism and Beyond

Thematically, Possibilities of an Island goes beyond the expanded concept of Surrealism of the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg. Setting the tone right from the outset are two emblematic floor pieces by the Swiss artist Kavata Mbiti: the white acrylic resin sculpture “Möglichkeiten einer Insel I” (“Possibilities of an Island I”), which lent its title to the exhibition, and, in stark contrast to it, the black three-part wooden sculpture, “Kiel” (“Keel”). While the former recalls the soft, fluid shapes dreamt up by Jean Arp or Hans Bellmer and seems to embody the idea of a self-generating and self-propelling semi-abstract form, the latter conjures up scary images of sharks, their dorsal fins emerging ominously from the water as they circle around an island.

But where there is danger, there is also hope of rescue or salvation – and indeed, the exhibition offers a whole archipelago of ‘possible islands’, each with its own theme. Subdivided into twelve chapters, it explores ways of countering the threats and impositions of everyday life through art: by escaping into idylls, into the private sphere or into another age, by putting together a visual world of our own, through complex systems, by fleeing into fantasy or by adopting an ironic attitude towards what we are most afraid of – death.

The exhibition presents a selection of some 150 paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints, sculptures and objects by celebrated artists such as Alfred Sisley, Auguste Renoir, Egon Schiele, Max Beckmann and Hannah Höch, as well as by somewhat less well-known creators of darkly fantastical art such as Alfred Kubin, Léon Spilliaert and Unica Zürn.

IMAGES

James Ensor (Ostend 1860 – Ostend 1949), The Capital Sins Dominated by Death, 1904 (Les péchés capitaux dominés par la mort / Die Todsünden, vom Tode beherrscht) From the series The Seven Deadly Sins. Etching, 15.8 × 24.9 cm (sheet) 9.8 × 15 cm (plate) Julietta Scharf Collection.

Alfred Sisley (Paris 1839 - 1899 Moret-sur-Loing), Femme à l'ombrelle - Scène d'été, 1883, oil on canvas, 73 × 54 cm, Julietta Scharf Collection, acquired in 1927, photo: Julietta Scharf Collection

Kavata Mbiti (* 1976 in Nyon, Switzerland), Possibilities of an Island I, 2007, Acrystal, 50 × 110 × 55 cm, Julietta Scharf Collection, acquired in 2007, Photo: Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection / Simon Vogel

Auguste Renoir (Limoges 1841 – 1919 Cagnes-sur-mer), Comtesse Pourtalès (Femme en rose), 1877, pastel 64 × 48.5 cm, Julietta Scharf Collection, acquired in 1914, photo: Julietta Scharf Collection

Edgar Degas (Paris 1834 – 1917 Paris), Actress's Loge (Dancer at her toilette), 1874, etching, aquatint, 16 × 21.4 cm (plate), Julietta Scharf Collection, photo: Julietta Scharf Collection

Henrique Alvim Corrêa (Rio de Janeiro 1876 – 1910 Brussels), The Mars Flying Machine, illustration for "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells, Brussels, 1905, black chalk, pen and black ink with white chalk on wove paper, Julie Collection