Courtauld Gallery Summer Showcase: Bruegel to Freud - Master Prints

This summer come and take a peek at the one of the Courtauld Gallery’s best-kept secrets. We’re talking about its breath-taking collection of prints. The new exhibition, Bruegel to Freud, is an historical panorama of the discipline, showcasing the most remarkable and intriguing pieces from the Courtauld’s vast collection of over 20,000 prints.

The collection spans over 500 years, from early fifteenth century engravings of Christian scenes, via Pieter Bruegel’s Rabbit Hunt (1560) - the only print known the artist is known to have executed -, to lively works by the Impressionists and post-Impressionists and by Lucian Freud, the modern master of the medium.

What makes the exhibition so fascinating is how artists have historically taken advantage of the differences of the medium in relation to painting and other artistic techniques. Printmaking has allowed artists throughout the ages to reimagine often-depicted scenes, scale down monumental artworks, and capture scenes quickly and simply for reproduction. It has often also been a realm of experimentation – and this is true even of the earliest piece on display. Andrea Mantegna’s dynamic engraving of The Flagellation of Christ (1465–70) is widely acknowledged as having broken with the period’s traditional representations of the scene.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s fabulous nineteenth century depictions of vibrant Parisian entertainment, created using the new medium of lithography, are a particular highlight. Looking at The Jockey (1899), you can almost feel the mud flying from the horse’s feet.

As the exhibition points out, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse kept the vitality of printmaking alive in the twentieth century by experimenting with linoprints, lithography, engraving and etching. And Chris Ofili continues to reinvent the medium in the twenty-first century, with his playful and often intricately patterned prints.

Don’t miss this rare chance to see the Courtauld’s large but little-known collection of prints. You’ll see extraordinary pieces that challenged the norms of their times, exquisite detail and works you’ve never seen before by your favourite artists.