Image: Courtauld Gallery, London (works: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham)
A major selection of paintings from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham is on view at the Courtauld Gallery in London through 31 August 2026. Announced by the Barber as a “last chance” to see ‘The Barber in London’, the display presents highlights from the university gallery’s collection while the Barber undergoes a major refurbishment project.
The Courtauld says ‘The Barber in London: Highlights from a Remarkable Collection’ is installed in the Katja and Nicolai Tangen 20th Century Gallery on Floor 3, with viewing times listed as 10:00 to 18:00 and last entry at 17:15. The display is included with gallery entry, or with the Permanent Collection + Exhibition ticket, and the Courtauld describes it as an extended display rather than a short-term loan exhibition.
The Barber Institute was founded as a university gallery in 1932, the same year as the Courtauld and its collection, according to the Courtauld’s exhibition page. Both institutions were intended to encourage the study and public appreciation of art, and both now hold major European art collections. The Courtauld notes that the Barber and the Courtauld Gallery are among the finest collections of European art in the country.
The exhibition brings together several of the Barber’s best-known works, including Frans Hals’s 'Portrait of a Man Holding a Skull' around 1610–14, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s 'Portrait of Countess Golovina' from 1797–1800, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s 'The Blue Bower' from 1865, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s 'Woman in a Garden' from 1890. The Courtauld also says that a handful of paintings with strong links to its own collection are embedded in the permanent collection displays.
Among those is Joshua Reynolds’s monumental double portrait 'Maria Marow Gideon and her brother William' from 1786–87. The Courtauld’s exhibition page also includes image listings for other works from the Barber collection, among them Claude Monet’s 'The Church at Varengeville' from 1882, Edgar Degas’s 'Jockeys before the Race' around 1878–79, Joseph Mallord William Turner’s 'The Sun Setting through Vapour' around 1809, James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s 'Symphony in White No.III' around 1865–67, and Giovanni Bellini’s 'St Jerome in the Wilderness' around 1445–60.
The Barber’s own mailing list referred to the installation as a five-star exhibition of some of its greatest works. The London display is presented as a way to see a substantial part of the Birmingham collection during the Barber’s closure for refurbishment, with the exhibition remaining open at the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, until the end of August 2026.
