Masterpieces from the National Gallery

“Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London” was the first large-scale international exhibition drawn from the collection of London’s National Gallery, bringing 61 paintings to Japan, all of which were being seen there for the first time. The show offered a panoramic survey of European painting across seven themes, from the Italian Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age through Van Dyck’s British portraiture, the Grand Tour, the discovery of Spain, and French modern art in Britain. Highlights included Van Gogh’s Sunflowers travelling outside Europe for the first time, Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait at the Age of 34, Turner’s Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, Carlo Crivelli’s The Annunciation with Saint Emidius, and Vermeer’s A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal.

The exhibition was originally scheduled to open at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo in March 2020, but Japan’s early COVID-19 restrictions forced a delayed reopening until June 2020. After closing in Tokyo in October 2020, the show transferred to the National Museum of Art, Osaka, opening on 3 November 2020 under pandemic conditions that required advance timed-entry booking. The Osaka leg was organised jointly by the National Museum of Art, the National Gallery, The Yomiuri Shimbun, and Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation, with Canon and Daiwa Securities Group as principal sponsors.

Vermeer’s painting, known both as A Lady Seated at a Virginal and A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, dates from around 1670–72 and was bequeathed to the National Gallery through the Salting Bequest in 1910. It belongs to a pair of late works, its counterpart showing a woman standing at the same instrument. In both compositions the virginal functions as an emblem of love and refined accomplishment. The Osaka showing placed the canvas among some of the National Gallery’s most celebrated pictures, offering Japanese audiences a rare chance to encounter the breadth of the London collection in a single display.