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The summer season at The Courtauld Gallery in London leads with a major exhibition of photographs by the acclaimed post-war photographer, Roger Mayne, alongside displays of drawings and small-scale models by Henry Moore, and avant-garde works by Vanessa Bell, from May to October 2024.
The first-ever photography exhibition at The Courtauld, Roger Mayne: Youth (14 June – 1 September 2024) reassesses the importance of Roger Mayne (1929-2014), through the lens of his evocative black and white images of young people. The exhibition brings together the works of the 1950s and early 1960s for which he is famous, alongside lesser-known images of his own children. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue positions Mayne as crucially important in the emergence of documentary photography as an art form in Britain in the years after the war.
A self-taught photographer, having discovered the medium while studying chemistry at Balliol College, Oxford, Mayne moved to London in 1953. Inspired by the work of the artist Nigel Henderson, among others, he became passionate about photographing human life as he found it. He quickly achieved widespread recognition for his powerful images of communities struggling with poverty against a backdrop of dereliction in London and across the UK. Renowned for his sustained portrayal of Southam Street, now long gone but then located on the northern fringes of Notting Hill, Mayne’s dedication to photographing this one locale over a six-year period – from 1956 to 1961- was, and still is, extraordinary in the history of photography.
Mayne’s photography in the 1950s and early ‘60s captured an exuberance and an uneasiness that embodied both the scars and hopes of post-war Britain. In documenting the lives of young people growing up in Britain, his images highlight the significance of children’s play and the identity formation of the teenager in the post-war years, revealing the tectonic shifts in society at that time. Highlights include Children in a Bombed Building, Bermondsey, London (1954) and one of his most famous images, A Girl Jiving in Southam Street (Eileen Sheekey), London (1957).
In 1962 a new chapter opened in Roger Mayne’s personal life, when he married Ann Jellicoe, a pioneering and well-established playwright. Their honeymoon in Spain left Mayne feeling creatively nourished by the vitality of the people he encountered there. With children and young people still at the forefront of this fresh strand of image-making, he judged the photographs from this trip to be ‘the best series of photographs I have yet done.’
Following the birth of his own children and a move to the Dorset countryside in the mid-1960s, family life and the local bucolic landscape became a new backdrop for Mayne’s lens. The imagery of the street was replaced by that of a growing and adored family.
This exhibition, curated by Jane Alison in close collaboration with Mayne’s daughter, Katkin Tremayne, features over 60 vintage photographs, some never exhibited before. While the two bodies of work, street and family, have a different tenor, they are united by Mayne’s radical empathy with his youthful subjects and his desire to create photographic images that enjoy a lasting impact, produced with great sensitivity and artistic integrity. With Mayne’s post-war subjects now in their more senior years, and today’s younger generation facing a myriad crises, Mayne’s deliberations on growing up, childhood, adolescence and family feel especially poignant and timely.
Vanessa Bell: A Pioneer of Modern Art
25 May – 6 October 2024
Project Space
Vanessa Bell (1879 –1961) was one of the leading artists associated with the Bloomsbury Group, the avant-garde community of artists, writers and philosophers who pioneered literary and artistic modernism in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century.
This display in the Project Space will celebrate The Courtauld’s significant collection of Bell’s work. Comprising 3 paintings, 1 woodcut and 8 works on paper, it will include her masterpiece A Conversation (1913-1916), as well as the bold, abstract textile designs she produced for the Omega Workshops, led by influential artist and critic Roger Fry in London, which aimed to abolish the boundaries between the fine and decorative arts and bring the arts into everyday life. The display will highlight one of the most cutting-edge artists working in Britain in the early 20th century.
Henry Moore: Shadows on the Wall
8 June – 22 September 2024
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery
Shadows on the Wall considers Henry Moore’s (1898 – 1986) celebrated Shelter drawings as the point of departure for a new reading of the artist’s fascination with images of the wall, during and immediately after World War II. From the London Underground, where Moore drew figures sheltering from the bomb raids, the walls of these spaces came to absorb his attention in an altogether new way, becoming scene-setters, and key components of his drawings. This fascination with the bricks and the presence of walls, their texture, mass and volume, became especially important following Moore’s project to illustrate the wartime radio play The Rescue, based on Homer’s Odyssey.
This exhibition suggests for the first time that the walls in his drawings offer a new way to understand some of his most distinctive and monumental Post-War sculpture projects. The exhibition was conceived by Penelope Curtis and organised in collaboration with the Henry Moore Foundation.
The programme of displays in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery is generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.
Roger Mayne: Youth
14 June – 1 Sep 2024
Courtauld Friends and Patrons tickets on sale: 19 March
Public on sale: 21 March
Friends get free unlimited entry to all exhibitions, access to presale tickets, priority booking to selected events, advance notice of art history short courses, exclusive events, discounts and more. Join at courtauld.ac.uk/friends
The Courtauld Lates
24 May 2024; 14 June 2024; 30 Aug 2024The Courtauld Gallery
Over 18s only. £5- £14
The Courtauld Gallery will be open for late-night access until 22:30 on the first and last Friday of each of its temporary exhibitions as part of its Courtauld Lates series – giving visitors the chance to enjoy an evening of world-class art, cocktails, music, and performances surrounded by The Courtauld’s collection of masterpieces at Somerset House. Book now: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/the-courtauld-lates-frank-auerbach-2/
Morgan Stanley Lates at Somerset House with The Courtauld
26 June 2024. Further dates to be announced.
Free to under 25s
Taking place three times per year, The Morgan Stanley Lates celebrate and explore the best of The Courtauld and Somerset House’s cultural programmes. Now with expanded programming for 2024 this includes exhibitions, installations, talks, performances, food pop ups and more.
The Courtauld Gallery
Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 0RN
Opening hours: 10:00 – 18:00 (last entry 17:15).
Weekday tickets from £10; weekend tickets from £12
Temporary Exhibition tickets (includes entry to our Permanent Collection and displays) – Weekday tickets from £13; Weekend tickets from £15.
Friends and Under-18s go free. Other concessions available.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
About The Courtauld
The Courtauld works to advance how we see and understand the visual arts, as an internationally renowned centre for the teaching and research of art history and a major public gallery. Founded by collectors and philanthropists in 1932, the organisation has been at the forefront of the study of art ever since through advanced research and conservation practice, innovative teaching, the renowned collection and inspiring exhibitions of its gallery, and engaging and accessible activities, education and events.
The Courtauld cares for one of the greatest art collections in the UK, presenting these works to the public at The Courtauld Gallery in central London, as well as through loans and partnerships. The Gallery is most famous for its iconic Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces – such as Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. It showcases these alongside an internationally renowned collection of works from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through to the present day.
Academically, The Courtauld faculty is the largest community of art historians and conservators in the UK, teaching and carrying out research on subjects from creativity in late Antiquity to contemporary digital artforms – with an increasingly global focus. An independent college of the University of London, The Courtauld offers a range of degree programmes from BA to PhD in the History of Art, curating and the conservation of easel and wall paintings. Its alumni are leaders and innovators in the arts, culture and business worlds, helping to shape the global agenda for the arts and creative industries.
Founded on the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to engage with art, The Courtauld works to increase understanding of the role played by art throughout history, in all societies and across all geographies – as well as being a champion for the importance of art in the present day. This could be through exhibitions offering a chance to look closely at world-famous works; events bringing art history research to new audiences; accessible and expert short courses; digital engagement, innovative school, family and community programmes; or taking a formal qualification. The Courtauld’s ambition is to transform access to art history education by extending the horizons of what this is and ensuring as many people as possible can benefit from the tools to better understand the visual world around us.
The Courtauld is an exempt charity and relies on generous philanthropic support to achieve its mission of advancing the understanding of the visual arts of the past and present across the world through advanced research, innovative teaching, inspiring exhibitions, programmes and collections.
The collection cared for by The Courtauld Gallery is owned by the Samuel Courtauld Trust.
About The Henry Moore Foundation
The Henry Moore Foundation was founded by the artist and his family in 1977 to encourage public appreciation of the visual arts. Henry Moore Studios & Gardens is the former home and workplace of sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986). From 1940 until his death in 1986, Moore lived and worked in rural Hertfordshire where he acquired over 70 acres of land and set up various studios, creating the ideal environment in which he could make and display his work and cater to an international demand for exhibitions. Now open to the public, Henry Moore Studios & Gardens offers a unique insight into the artist’s working practice and showcases a large selection of Moore’s renowned monumental sculptures in the landscape in which they were created. It also presents an annually changing programme of events, which further illuminate the life and work of the sculptor and is home to the Henry Moore Archive, one of the largest single-artist archives in the world.