The Barber Institute in Birmingham is home to an internationally significant art collection. While the Institute is closed for major refurbishment (reopening in 2026) it has loaned 21 of its greatest paintings to the Courtauld Gallery in London. Fifteen of these have been given their own exhibition space on the third floor, while three others have been slipped into the permanent collection on the second floor, alongside similar works.

The 15 paintings in the main display have been carefully selected to convey the chronological range of the Institute’s collection and, at the same time, showcase successive styles and subjects in Western art. I divided them up into 9 classical or pre-modern works, and 6 modern. They are:

Classical

1. Giovanni Bellini – Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (around 1445-60)
2. Jan Gossaert – Hercules and Deianira (1517)
3. Frans Hals – A Portrait of a Man Holding a Skull (1612)
4. Nicolas Poussin – Tancred and Erminia (1634)
5. Peter Paul Rubens – Landscape in Flanders (1635-40)
6. Claude Lorrain – A Pastoral Landscape (1645)
7. Thomas Gainsborough – The Harvest Wagon (1767)
8. Élisabeth Vigée le Brun – Portrait of Countess Golovina (1800)
9. J.M.W. Turner – The Sun Setting Through Vapour (1809)

Modern

10. Gabriel Dante Rossetti – The Blue Bower (1865)
11. James McNeill Whistler – Symphony in White, Number III (1865-7)
12. Edgar Degas – Jockeys Before the Race (1879)
13. Claude Monet – The Church at Varengeville (1882)
14. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – A Woman Seated in a Garden (about 1890)
15. Max Pechstein – Still Life in Grey (1913)

On the second floor

16. Anthony van Dyck – Ecce Homo (1625)
17. Sir Joshua Reynolds – double portrait Maria Marow Gideon and her brother William (1787)

Gallery

I’ve chosen four of the eighteen to comment on. First the curators’ official commentary, then my opinion, in italics.

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness by Giovanni Bellini (around 1445-60)

One of the first Venetian landscapes and one of the earliest known paintings by Giovanni Bellini as he set off on his 60-year career. The subject is Saint Jerome (about 342-420 AD), an early Christian theologian, one of the four ‘Doctors of the Church’, who spent some time in the wilderness, fasting and praying, and around whom numerous legends accumulated, one of them being that he pulled a thorn from the paw of a lion before delivering a long sermon on the blessings of Christianity. As Jerome was a scholar, paintings of him were popular with high-class, humanist patrons. The theme brought together the worlds of religion and classical culture.

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness by by Giovanni Bellini (1445-60)

This painting epitomises some of the many reasons I dislike Italian renaissance painting, including the crudeness of the draughtsmanship and the crudeness of the Christian proselytising. But the main reason I am averse to Italian Renaissance art is the barren aridness of the landscapes. I love the lush green landscapes of the northern Renaissance, dotted with all kinds of wild flowers. Here there are no flowers. Maybe that’s a wheat field in the background but it feels like a desert, and this is emphasised by the raw (and improbable) contours of the saint’s hideaway. It feels arid and barren.

The Harvest Wagon by Thomas Gainsborough (1767)

This lovely painting shows a group of rustic figures travelling in a harvest wagon at the end of the working day. The figures are unusually prominent for Gainsborough’s landscapes and are the result of careful study. Two of the women are based on the artist’s daughters, Mary and Margaret, while the landscape is inspired by the countryside around Bath where Gainsborough lived. Unlike his commissioned portraits, Gainsborough painted such landscapes for his own pleasure or as a speculation. This picture was given to his patron and friend Walter Wiltshire when the artist moved to London in 1774, as thanks for the presentation of the grey horse shown here.

The Harvest Wagon by Thomas Gainsborough (1767)

The image has two major elements: the first thing which I saw and enjoyed was Gainsborough’s characteristically ‘feathery’ leafed trees. A few summers ago I went swimming every day at the lido surrounded by trees on Tooting Common and spent the best part of an hour looking up at the trees and leaves, admiring the complex patterns they made as they shimmered and waved in the sun. Gainsborough’s trees always remind me of that strong visual memory.

Then there’s the people. As the curators say, it has an unusually large number of people and their position is unusually dominant and this is emphasised by the lines of the composition, namely the way the figures beside and on the wagon form a diagonal on the right, and to some extent on the left, creating a sort of pyramid effect. This is echoed by the line of the rearing horse at the front. If you drew a line from the horse’s knee through its neck it would closely mirror the line of the woman reaching up on the right of the wagon. All this reaching and rearing give the picture a dynamism unusual in Gainsborough’s usually placid compositions and make it all the more pleasing.

The curators tell us that the complicated composition of the people derives from an unexpected source, namely Peter Paul Rubens’s Descent from the Cross, which Gainsborough copied around this time. Fascinating to learn, my own personal spin would be that it shows Gainsborough translating 17th century European ideology (Catholic Christianity) into an Enlightened and very English painting of sensibility.

Portrait of Countess Golovina by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1797-1800)

Vigée-Lebrun was Marie Antoinette’s favourite artist but when the French Revolution broke out she fled to Russia. Here, in the late 1790s, she befriended the countess Varvara Nikolaevna Golovina (1766–1821). She described Golovina as a ‘charming woman’ who was a talented musician and artist, and a lover of literature. The spontaneous and informal pose conveys Golovina’s lively intelligence and a sympathetic engagement between the two women. The compact octagonal format and the simple setting, with just one diagonal shaft of light behind the figure, reinforce the portrait’s intimacy.

Portrait of Countess Golovina by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1797-1800)

This is the standout image of the show, which is why it appears on the poster and all the promotional material. It is stylised and sentimentalised but, nonetheless, everything about it is exceptional. The extremely simple backdrop with the one shaft of light across it reminded me of the stark, early classical paintings of contemporary French painter Jacques-Louis David. I wonder if they knew each other and if there was any influence.

The Blue Bower by Gabriel Dante Rossetti (1865)

The model for this amazingly colourful and sensual painting was Rossetti’s mistress, Fanny Cornforth. The cornflowers at the front refer to her name and the passion flowers suggest her fiery character. But the image is more a hymn to beauty than a portrait. A bower is a private setting for lovers and Rossetti has decorated it with exotic elements suited to a frankly amorous encounter. The tiles combine a Chinese cherry blossom motif with an Arabic shape and at the front is a Japanese stringed instrument, the koto.

The subject derives from 16th-century Venetian portraits of courtesans by artists such as Titian but instead of Titian’s relatively loose handling of paint, Rossetti treats every element of the picture with a Pre-Raphaelite attention to detail. Rossetti’s work is a celebration of sensuality and aesthetic indulgence that went against the grain of Victorian narrative painting and, indeed, morality, triggering much moralising criticism.

The Blue Bower by Gabriel Dante Rossetti (1865)

It certainly is a visual orgy of sensuality, of soft velvet, sumptuous furs and flowing auburn hair. But what really stands out is the way the subject is no frail and feeble Victorian heroine but a big, strong figure, filling the canvas; after a while you realise the central feature is her strong, wide, rippled neck. It is a bower of bliss but built for muscular encounters.

A bit more about Barber

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts was founded as a university gallery in 1932, the same year as The Courtauld Institute of Art and its collection. Both were intended to encourage the study and public appreciation of art.

The Barber was founded by Hattie, Lady Barber (1869–1933) in memory of her husband, Sir Henry Barber (1860–1927), a wealthy Birmingham property developer and lawyer. Lady Barber did not herself possess a significant collection of art. Instead, she created an endowment that allowed its directors to acquire works ‘of that standard of quality required by the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection’. For for nearly 100 years this founding vision has shaped a carefully selected collection of major works that represent key developments in the history of Western art.

The Institute’s holdings now include some 160 paintings, dating from the early Renaissance through to the late 20th century, more than 800 works on paper, as well as sculpture, decorative arts and one of the most important caches of Roman, Byzantine and Medieval coins in the world.

Lady Barber’s bequest also financed the construction of an elegant, Grade-1 listed building on the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston campus. Designed by the architect Robert Atkinson (1883–1952), it opened to the public in 1939 with just 14 paintings on display. Intended as a nucleus for the arts and a social hub for the University, the Barber also has an Art Deco concert hall at its heart, as well as a lecture theatre and art history library, and houses the University’s Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

Promotional video

Curator’s highlights

Highlights explained by curator Dr Chloe Nahum, Bridget Riley Art Foundation Curatorial Fellow at The Courtauld.

Related links

• The Barber in London: Highlights from a Remarkable Collection continues at the Courtauld Gallery until 22 February 2026
• Barber Institute website

Related reviews

• Courtauld Gallery reviews
• The Art of the Northern Renaissance by Craig Harbison (1995)
• Gainsborough’s Family Album @ the National Portrait Gallery (January 2019)
• Gainsborough: A Portrait by James Hamilton (2017)
• Pre-Raphaelite Sisters @ the National Portrait Gallery (December 2019)
• Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian avant-garde @ Tate Britain (September 2019)
• Women artists reviews
• Women, Art and Society by Whitney Chadwick (2012)