Art history in today's news

Two young men look out from a round wooden panel, side by side, as they have for almost nineteen centuries. On 11 October 2026 the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, Cairo, unveiled the newly restored Tondo of the Two Brothers , one of the most famous portraits to survive from Roman Egypt. After three weeks of work by Egyptian and Italian conservators, the painting is getting ready for its first trip abroad: an exhibition of Fayum portraits at the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, opening in November. Portrait of a Young Woman in Red , Roman Egypt, 90–120 CE. Encaustic on limewood with gold leaf, 38.1 × 18.4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1909. A mummy portrait of the same tradition as the Cairo tondo. Fine-art print available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts What: Restoration of the Tondo of the Two Brothers , a Roman-period mummy portrait Where: Egyptian Museum, Tahrir Sq...

Paris has its Zurbarán. Since 7 October the Louvre has been showing Zurbarán (1598–1664) in the Hall Napoléon, a major exhibition of the Spanish Golden Age painter organised with the National Gallery in London and the Art Institute of Chicago. After its summer run in London, the show is in Paris until 25 January 2027, and then moves to Chicago. Among the loans in the London display was one of the quietest pictures Zurbarán ever painted: a lamb with its legs tied, lying on a stone ledge. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei , c. 1635–1640 (oil on canvas, 38 × 62 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid). Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → Quick facts What: Zurbarán (1598–1664) , exhibition Where: Musée du Louvre, Hall Napoléon, Paris When: 7 October 2026 – 25 January 2027 (after London, 2 May – 23...

Today, 18 October, is the feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters. Luke is the only Gospel writer who tells the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus lost in Jerusalem and found three days later in the Temple, sitting among the teachers. One of the most ambitious Victorian paintings of that scene, William Holman Hunt’s The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple , hangs today in Birmingham. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple , 1854–1860 (oil on canvas, 85.7 × 141 cm, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → Quick facts What: The feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of painters When: 18 October The story: Luke 2:41–52, the boy Jesus found in the Temple, told only in Luke’s Gospel The painting: William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple ...

Two of the greatest portrait painters in British history lived a few streets apart in London and spent their careers competing for the same sitters, the same walls and the same reputation. On 16 October 2026, Art History News announced a new book about them: Gainsborough and Reynolds: The Art of Rivalry in Georgian London by the art historian Jacqueline Riding, due from Yale University Press in February 2027, ahead of the 300th anniversary of Thomas Gainsborough’s birth. Thomas Gainsborough, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , 1783. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Fine-art print available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts What: Gainsborough and Reynolds: The Art of Rivalry in Georgian London , a double biography by Jacqueline Riding (400 pages) Where: Yale University Press When: Announced 16 October 2026; publication due 16 February 2027 Who: Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) and Sir Josh...

A painting seized from a Jewish family in Amsterdam in 1940, and seen by visitors to a Munich museum for half a century, has become the most expensive work sold during London’s Frieze Week in five years. On the evening of 14 October 2026, Wassily Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben ( The Colourful Life ), painted in 1907, sold at Christie’s London for £31,560,000 with fees, about 1.8 million, after almost six minutes of bidding. It was offered by the heirs of Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann, to whom it was restituted in 2023. Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VIII , 1923. Oil on canvas. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Public Domain artwork. Not the painting sold at Christie’s, but where the path that began with Das bunte Leben led; the link opens this painting as a print in the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🎨 Get Kandinsky’s Composition VIII as a print → Quick facts What: Wassily Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben ( The Colourful Li...

A painting that normally hangs in the Treaty Room of the White House is crossing the Atlantic. From 16 October 2026 the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam shows James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne , a night view of the River Thames painted between 1875 and 1878, as part of a two-venue retrospective of the American artist. Beside it hangs Whistler’s most famous picture, Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother , often called the “Mona Lisa of the 19th century”. James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne , 1875–78. Oil on canvas, 50.6 × 76.7 cm. White House Collection, on loan to the Van Gogh Museum. Public Domain. The link opens this painting as a print in the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🌙 Get Whistler’s Thames as a print → Quick facts What: James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne (1875–78), on loan from the White House collection Where: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, with a companion show at The Mesdag C...

A bunch of flowers that could never have bloomed at the same time, painted on an oak panel in Antwerp more than four hundred years ago, is one of the stars of London’s art week. Frieze Masters opens in Regent’s Park on 14 October 2026, and on the Hauser & Wirth stand Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Still Life of Flowers in a Stoneware Vase , painted around 1607–08, hangs beside a brand-new canvas by the British painter Flora Yukhnovich, made in direct response to it. Behind the flowers lies a darker story: a Rothschild picture taken in 1939, kept in Prague for decades and returned to the family only in 2016. Jan Brueghel the Elder, Flowers in a Basket and a Vase , 1615. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Open Access / Public Domain. A sister work to the still life shown at Frieze Masters; the link opens this painting as a print in the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 💐 Get Brueghel’s flowers as a print → Quick facts Wh...

A month after thieves cut through a fence and lifted four paintings off the walls of Renoir’s last home, the two pictures they managed to carry away are safe again. On 12 October 2026 the Marseille prosecutor announced that DNA left on a protective cover had led police to the suspects, and that Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano and Young Woman at the Well had been found hidden behind a wall built under a staircase. Both are now being examined in a conservation laboratory in Marseille before they go home to Cagnes-sur-Mer. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano , undated, probably 1910s. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, on deposit at the Musée Renoir, Cagnes-sur-Mer. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. The link opens this painting as a print in the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get Renoir’s Cagnes as a print → Quick facts What: Recovery of two Renoir paintings stolen from the Musée Renoir Wh...

“I am such a lazybones when it comes to writing,” Claude Monet confessed to the critic Théodore Duret in December 1880. Yet more than 3,200 of his letters survive. A new book, Claude Monet: A Life in Letters , published by Thames & Hudson for the centenary of the painter’s death, gathers around 420 of them, written to 93 people between the age of eighteen and the end of his life. The Art Newspaper reviewed it on 8 October 2026. Claude Monet, Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, 1899. Oil on canvas, 92.7 × 73.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (29.100.113). Public-domain artwork. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts What: Claude Monet: A Life in Letters , about 420 letters to 93 correspondents, with profiles, introductions and notes; 552 pages, 156 colour illustrations Where: Thames & Hudson (London and New York); US edition on 10 November 2026 When: Reviewed by The Art Newspaper on 8 October 2026; Mo...

The State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg has finished the first full scientific restoration of Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Ninth Wave (1850). Work began on 25 May 2026 and took four months. In the 120 years the museum has owned the canvas, only minor conservation had been done. The painting returns to view in the Benois Wing on 16 October, as the centre of a retrospective of more than 200 works marking the 210th anniversary of the artist’s birth. What comes back is not a different picture. It is the same sea, with the varnish that had been sitting on the sunrise taken off. Ivan Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850. Oil on canvas, 221 × 332 cm. State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Ж-2202. Image: public domain. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts What: First comprehensive restoration of Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Ninth Wave (1850) Where: State Russian Museum, Benois Wing, Saint Petersburg When: Restoration 25 May–early...