31 artists in the museums, in order of birthArtists to see in London
The most famous artists in the museums of London, and where to stand in front of their work: who they were, what they made, and the museum it hangs in.
- 31
- Artists, in order of birth
- 68
- Works to look for
- 10
- Museums that hold them
- 1390
- The earliest born: Jan van Eyck
Artists to see in London
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All 31
Painter, 1390 to 1441
Jan van Eyck
The National Gallery has The Arnolfini Portrait, the most studied painting in northern Europe, and a head of a man in a red turban that may be Van Eyck himself.
Early Netherlandish painting. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1397 to 1475
Paolo Uccello
The National Gallery has one of the three panels of Uccello's Battle of San Romano, a tournament of rocking-horses and broken lances, and his small Saint George and the Dragon.
Early Renaissance. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1415 to 1492
Piero della Francesca
The National Gallery has Piero's Baptism of Christ, as still and clear as a morning in the hills where he was born, and his late Nativity.
Early Renaissance. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1430 to 1516
Giovanni Bellini
The National Gallery has Bellini's portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan, the face of the Venetian state at its height, and his early Agony in the Garden.
Venetian Renaissance. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1445 to 1510
Sandro Botticelli
The National Gallery has Botticelli's Venus and Mars, the god of war asleep while satyrs play with his armour, and the Mystic Nativity, the only picture he signed.
Early Renaissance. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1452 to 1519
Leonardo da Vinci
The National Gallery has the second Virgin of the Rocks, which Leonardo worked on for nearly twenty years, and his great chalk drawing of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.
High Renaissance. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter and sculptor, 1475 to 1564
Michelangelo
Michelangelo left few paintings on panel, and two of them, both unfinished, are in the National Gallery. The Royal Academy has the only marble by him in Britain.
High Renaissance. 2 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1483 to 1520
Raphael
The Victoria and Albert Museum shows the seven great cartoons Raphael made for the tapestries of the Sistine Chapel. The National Gallery has his portrait of Pope Julius II and the tiny Madonna of the Pinks.
High Renaissance. 3 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1488 to 1576
Titian
The National Gallery has Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, one of the most joyful pictures of the Renaissance, and the dark Death of Actaeon of his old age. The Wallace Collection has his Perseus and Andromeda.
Venetian Renaissance. 3 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1497 to 1543
Hans Holbein the Younger
Holbein painted his greatest picture in London, and it is still here: The Ambassadors, in the National Gallery, with the portrait he made for Henry VIII of a possible bride.
Northern Renaissance. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1571 to 1610
Caravaggio
The National Gallery has three Caravaggios, one from each part of his short career, with The Supper at Emmaus of 1601 at their centre.
Baroque. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1577 to 1640
Peter Paul Rubens
The National Gallery has Rubens's Samson and Delilah and the landscape of his own country house, Het Steen. Its companion, The Rainbow Landscape, is in the Wallace Collection, and his only ceiling still in place is in Whitehall.
Baroque. 3 works in 2 museums
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Picture: APK, CC BY 4.0
Sculptor, 1598 to 1680
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
The Victoria and Albert Museum has Neptune and Triton, the one large marble group by Bernini outside Italy, carved when he was in his early twenties.
Baroque. 1 work in 1 museum
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Painter, 1599 to 1641
Anthony van Dyck
Van Dyck came to London to paint Charles I and gave the English court the look it is remembered by. The National Gallery has the king on horseback, and the National Portrait Gallery has the painter's last self-portrait.
Baroque. 3 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1599 to 1660
Diego Velázquez
The National Gallery has the Rokeby Venus, the only nude by Velázquez to survive, with his Philip IV. The Wallace Collection has The Lady with a Fan.
Baroque. 2 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1606 to 1669
Rembrandt
The National Gallery has more than twenty Rembrandts, among them two self-portraits painted twenty-nine years apart and Belshazzar's Feast. Kenwood House, on Hampstead Heath, has one of the greatest of all his self-portraits.
Dutch Golden Age. 3 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1632 to 1675
Johannes Vermeer
Three of Vermeer's thirty-odd paintings are in London: two young women at a keyboard in the National Gallery, and The Guitar Player at Kenwood House.
Dutch Golden Age. 2 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1697 to 1768
Canaletto
Canaletto painted Venice for English visitors and then spent nine years in London painting the Thames. The National Gallery has The Stonemason's Yard, his masterpiece, and a room of his views.
Venetian view painting. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1697 to 1764
William Hogarth
Hogarth told stories in sets of pictures, like plays, and London has both of the great ones: Marriage A-la-Mode at the National Gallery and A Rake's Progress at Sir John Soane's Museum.
Rococo, satire. 3 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1724 to 1806
George Stubbs
The National Gallery has Whistlejacket, Stubbs's life-size portrait of a rearing Arabian stallion on a bare ground, one of the best-loved pictures in the building.
British painting. 1 work in 1 museum
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Painter, 1727 to 1788
Thomas Gainsborough
The National Gallery has the pictures by which Gainsborough is known: Mr and Mrs Andrews in their Suffolk fields, his two small daughters chasing a butterfly, and The Morning Walk.
Rococo, British portraiture. 3 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1775 to 1851
J. M. W. Turner
Turner left his pictures to the nation. The National Gallery has The Fighting Temeraire and Rain, Steam and Speed, and Tate Britain has the rest: some three hundred paintings and thousands of drawings.
Romanticism. 3 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1776 to 1837
John Constable
The National Gallery has The Hay Wain. The Victoria and Albert Museum has the full-size sketch he made for it and the largest collection of his work, and Tate Britain has Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows.
Romanticism. 3 works in 3 museums
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Painter, 1832 to 1883
Édouard Manet
Manet's last great painting, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, is at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House. The National Gallery has the fragments of his Execution of Maximilian.
Realism and Impressionism. 2 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1839 to 1906
Paul Cézanne
The Courtauld Gallery has the finest group of Cézannes in Britain, with one of his Card Players. The National Gallery has one of the three great Bathers he was painting when he died.
Post-Impressionism. 2 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1840 to 1926
Claude Monet
Monet first painted the Thames as a refugee in 1871, and the picture is in the National Gallery with his Bathers at La Grenouillère and the footbridge over his lily pond.
Impressionism. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1853 to 1890
Vincent van Gogh
The National Gallery has Van Gogh's Sunflowers and the yellow chair he painted for himself at Arles. The Courtauld Gallery has the self-portrait with a bandaged ear.
Post-Impressionism. 3 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1859 to 1891
Georges Seurat
The National Gallery has Bathers at Asnières, the first of Seurat's great canvases, painted at twenty-four. The Courtauld Gallery has Young Woman Powdering Herself.
Neo-Impressionism. 2 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1869 to 1954
Henri Matisse
Tate Modern has The Snail, one of the last and largest of the paper cut-outs Matisse made when he could no longer stand at an easel.
Fauvism. 1 work in 1 museum
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Picture: LPLT, CC BY-SA 3.0
Painter and sculptor, 1881 to 1973
Pablo Picasso
Tate Modern has Picasso's Weeping Woman, painted in the months after Guernica, and The Three Dancers, which he kept for forty years and sold to the Tate himself.
Cubism. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1928 to 1987
Andy Warhol
Tate Modern has Warhol's Marilyn Diptych, fifty Marilyn Monroes printed in the weeks after her death.
Pop art. 1 work in 1 museum
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When they lived
Each bar is a life, from birth to death, on one line of time. 597 years separate the birth of Jan van Eyck from the death of Andy Warhol, and 7 of the 31 were alive at the same moment, in 1488.
- Jan van Eyck1390 to 1441
- Paolo Uccello1397 to 1475
- Piero della Francesca1415 to 1492
- Giovanni Bellini1430 to 1516
- Sandro Botticelli1445 to 1510
- Leonardo da Vinci1452 to 1519
- Michelangelo1475 to 1564
- Raphael1483 to 1520
- Titian1488 to 1576
- Hans Holbein the Younger1497 to 1543
- Caravaggio1571 to 1610
- Peter Paul Rubens1577 to 1640
- Gian Lorenzo Bernini1598 to 1680
- Anthony van Dyck1599 to 1641
- Diego Velázquez1599 to 1660
- Rembrandt1606 to 1669
- Johannes Vermeer1632 to 1675
- Canaletto1697 to 1768
- William Hogarth1697 to 1764
- George Stubbs1724 to 1806
- Thomas Gainsborough1727 to 1788
- J. M. W. Turner1775 to 1851
- John Constable1776 to 1837
- Édouard Manet1832 to 1883
- Paul Cézanne1839 to 1906
- Claude Monet1840 to 1926
- Vincent van Gogh1853 to 1890
- Georges Seurat1859 to 1891
- Henri Matisse1869 to 1954
- Pablo Picasso1881 to 1973
- Andy Warhol1928 to 1987
Which museum holds whom
Each block is an artist with work on show in that place. The National Gallery has European painting to about 1900, and Tate Modern takes over from there. British painting is at Tate Britain, and the Courtauld Gallery and the Wallace Collection, small and unhurried, hold some of the most famous pictures in the city.
The National Gallery27 artists
The Courtauld Gallery4 artists
Victoria and Albert Museum3 artists
The Wallace Collection3 artists
Tate Modern3 artists
Kenwood House2 artists
Tate Britain2 artists
Royal Academy of Arts1 artist
National Portrait Gallery1 artist
Sir John Soane's Museum1 artist
How to read this page
The choice of artists is this site's: the most famous of those whose work is on show in the museums of London that it covers. They are in order of birth, which is not a ranking.
A work is listed where it is normally on show. Museums move their works between rooms, lend them and take them down for conservation, so before a special journey check with the museum.