First UK Show of Michaelina Wautier Opens at the Royal Academy, Running 27 March–21 June 2026
A major Royal Academy exhibition will introduce UK audiences to Michaelina Wautier (c. 1614–1689), one of the most ambitious Baroque painters working in 17th-century Brussels. The first UK exhibition devoted to Wautier opens 27 March 2026 in the Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries, continuing through 21 June 2026.
The exhibition presents the most comprehensive survey of Wautier shown to date, reuniting approximately 25 paintings spanning portraiture, still life, religious imagery and large-scale history painting—genres that were often restricted by the period’s expectations of women artists. Works by Charles Wautier will be included, alongside selected paintings by key contemporaries Peter Paul Rubens and David Teniers the Younger, placing Wautier’s achievements in wider context.
Opening rooms examine Wautier’s portraits, revealing an artist closely connected to Brussels high society and capable of capturing presence with striking psychological precision. Her Self-Portrait (c. 1650, Private Collection) will be displayed alongside Rubens’s Self-Portrait (c. 1638, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna), offering a focused comparison of how two contemporaries shaped artistic identity on canvas.
A central section addresses Wautier’s religious paintings, notable for their scale and compositional complexity, before the final gallery turns to her most daring innovations—including The Five Senses (1650), where Wautier breaks convention by depicting each sense through a different young boy engaged in everyday life.
The show concludes with The Triumph of Bacchus (c. 1655–59, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna)—a monumental mythological canvas in which Wautier inserts her own likeness among the bacchantes, meeting the viewer’s gaze. Two floral works will sit nearby as a pointed counterbalance to the audacity and scale of the finale.
The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, curated by Julien Domercq with Rina Sagoo assisting at the Royal Academy. Support is listed from Christian Levett and Musée FAMM, Jake and Hélène Marie Shafran, The Magic Trust, with additional supporters including Katherina Minardo Macht (Barrett) and William Strong Barrett.
Supported by the Rothschild Foundation. With additional support from the Athene Foundation, Katherina Minardo Macht (Barrett) and William Strong Barrett, the Delegation of Flanders to the UK and Ireland and VisitFlanders.
