A tour around the exhibition which showcases “the forgotten century” as Charles describes it.  A highlight will be Venice: The Volta di Canal at Night with the Festivities in Honour of Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, 7th October, 1838 by Carlo Grubacs (1802-1870). This torch lit view on the Grand Canal depicts the ceremonial barge carrying Ferdinand Emperor of Austria to a ball at Palazzo Foscari, following his coronation as King of Lombardy and Venice in Milan. The painting has a spectacular provenance from the Corsini Family in Florence for whom it was presumably painted.
Venue: Charles Beddington Ltd

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An introduction on how to match works of art with the perfect frame.
Venue: Paul Mitchell gallery
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An allegorical painting by Albert Ernest Harnisch (1843 Philadelphia – 1918 Rome) dating from the late 1870s, which was most likely in preparation for a series of frescoes intended to decorate the apartment of the American writer Anne Hampton Brewster (1819-1892) in Rome.

Venue: Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery, 18 Cecil Court
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An introduction on how to match works of art with the perfect frame.
Venue: Paul Mitchell gallery
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Late night opening at Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery, 18 Cecil Court for The Burlington Magazine July issue launch.

Venue: Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery, 18 Cecil Court
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An introduction on how to match works of art with the perfect frame.
Venue: Paul Mitchell gallery
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A highlights tour around galleries selling British art from the 17th to 20th Century in St. James's followed by brunch.
Venues: Various galleries
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A highlights tour around galleries selling British art from the 17th to 20th Century in St. James's followed by brunch.
Venues: Various galleries
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Dr Helena Cuss and Dr Elizabeth Pergam will be discussing refugee art dealers in 20th Century London.

The Nazification of much of Europe from 1933-1945 prompted the flight of many art dealers who had supported the artistic avant-garde in their native countries. Britain and the USA became the main host countries, creating overlapping networks of émigré art dealers with pre-existing ties, whether of business, friendship, family or experience of a common trauma that spanned Continental Europe, Britain and North America. Of the fifty art dealers who moved to Britain, approximately half were involved in modern and contemporary art, considerably bolstering London’s hitherto limited opportunities for living artists. This conversation will introduce the colourful and diverse characters who animated the city’s modern art world from the 1930s onwards, as well as reflecting on the new commercial strategies and artistic interests with which they helped to transform London – dubbed a ‘cosmopolis’ in a 1964 exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery – into a global art capital.

Helena Cuss is an independent art historian, curator and research consultant. She recently completed her PhD at Kingston University on the role of refugee art dealers in the internationalisation of the twentieth-century London art market, and in 2024 curated the exhibition Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London at Ben Uri Gallery. Prior to this, she was Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, where she contributed to exhibitions including David Hockney: Drawing from Life, Gainsborough’s Family Album, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, Love Stories: Art, Passion & Tragedy, Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits and curated the display Everyday Icons: Collecting Popular Portraits.

Elizabeth A. Pergam is Co-Chair of the Society for the History of Collecting. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of collecting, the market, and the transatlantic art trade.

Image credit: Charles and Kay Gimpel, 1950s. Courtesy of Gimpel Fils Archive.

Organised in collaboration with The Society of the History of Collecting.
Venue: Colnaghi
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A wonderful opportunity to enjoy a string quartet concert featuring music inspired by Cubism surrounded by Cubist works of art. Re-Imagining Cubism at Ben Elwes Fine Art brings global perspectives on Cubism to the UK for the first time. It introduces the art world to Swedish Cubo-Futurist Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (1884-1965), otherwise known as GAN, whose powerful work is virtually unknown outside his home country.

Venue: Ben Elwes Fine Art
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Shared Ownership of art works is becoming more and more popular among museums and institutions. What problems does it present and what opportunities?

The panel members will include representatives from museums and institutions, but also the legal and insurance world.
Venue: SAL
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An overview of the different strategies that specific types of Latin American private museums use to operate. It will consider their ambivalent position as institutional validating entities and market forces simultaneously, and how they have transformed the perception of specialised and non-specialised audiences, moving collections from private to public walls.

The talk will be presented by Lassla Esquivel, a UK-based historian, researcher and curator specialising in contemporary art and the art market. Her expertise and research interests are currently focused on emerging art markets whilst investigating private museums' models and their role within the art market. In 2016, she founded Periferia Projects, a curatorial platform that links emerging markets in Latin America with the UK and Europe to promote collaborations between galleries, artists and institutions.

Organised in collaboration with The Society of the History of Collecting.
Venue: SAL
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This panel will discuss how art museums and institutions have coped with the challenges climate change presents in all its variations. How can we all work together to cope better with the effects of the changes?

 The expert panel includes representatives from the museums and institutions world,  leaders of new initiatives to help support institutions as well as experts in insurance, storage and transportation.
Venue: SAL
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In the anniversary year, this talk will have some of the foremost Turner experts discussing why this British artist hasn't lost any of his importance.

Moderated by the Burlington’s editor Christopher Baker, who looked after the National Gallery of Scotland’s Turner collection in his previous job, the panel of art historians includes Dr Jacqueline Riding, former curator of the Palace of Westminster, Gillian Forrester, who has written several books on Turner, and Nicola Moorby, curator of British Art 1790-1850 at Tate.
Venue: Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House
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A tour by the deputy archivist to see some of the hidden art at Fortnum & Mason, including works by Bouguereau, HM King Charles III, a 16th century tapestry, 18th century Chinese prints, Murial Pemberton, and Roger Bissiere. You will also see reproductions of Edward Bawden's original work in store, but also some of his original catalogues from the archive collection and the ones by Rex Whistler, which are usually hidden away.
Venue: Fortnum & Mason
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An introduction on how to match works of art with the perfect frame.
Venue: Paul Mitchell gallery
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If you had to live with a single work of art in your collection forever, which would it be? If you could acquire a work of art at this moment, regardless of budget or availability, what would you choose? If you had a second chance to purchase a work of art, which was the one that got away?

Join Country Life contributor Patrick Monahan and a group of distinguised panelists to answer this and other pressing art collecting questions!

Patrick Monahan, a native New Yorker who writes for Country Life and Vanity Fair, is consulted by collectors and museums on both sides of the Atlantic and who helped arrange the loan of Lord Leighton's 'Flaming June' from the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico to the RA last year.

The panelists include Tom Edwards (Abbott & Holder), Will Elliott (Colnaghi Elliott) and Cheska Hill-Wood (David Messum Fine Art).

Media partner Country Life magazine is supporting this entertaining evening and proceeds from ticket sales for this talk will be going towards The Society of Antiquaries of London's 'buy a square foot of Burlington House fundraising campaign'.

Tickets £25 including a drink.
Venue: Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE

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An introduction on how to match works of art with the perfect frame.
Venue: Paul Mitchell
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The Art Output of a Royal Limner

With the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, Nicholas Hilliard lost his most important patron. This change could have unsettled him, but her successor, king James VI of Scotland, renewed his position as ‘His Majesties lymner’; and Hilliard was the first artist in England to whom James gave a sitting. As a key figure in the transition from Elizabethan to Jacobean art, Hilliard was tasked with presenting images of royal stability during a transformative period in Britain's history. Portraits of James I, made in the early 17th century, reflect the merging of Tudor traditions with the new priorities of the Jacobean era, as miniatures remained central to the court as instruments of statecraft.

In this talk, Karen Hearn will look at one of the most important portrait miniatures on display during Classic Art London – a portrait by Nicholas Hilliard of King James I/VI, dated 1609 (possibly a gift of King James I and Queen Anne of Denmark to Robert Sidney (1563-1626), 1st Earl of Leicester.)

The talk will last for 20 minutes and will be followed by questions, a chance to handle the artwork and light refreshments.

Karen Hearn FSA was the Curator of 16th & 17th Century British Art at Tate Britain from 1992

to 2012, and is now an Honorary Professor at University College London. She writes, teaches,

and broadcasts on art made in Tudor and Stuart Britain.

For her first major Tate exhibition, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor & Jacobean England 1530–

1630, in 1995, she received a European Woman of Achievement Award. She subsequently

curated shows there on Marcus Gheeraerts II, Van Dyck, Rubens and, at the NPG, Cornelius

Johnson. Her book Portraying Pregnancy accompanied her 2020 exhibition of ‘pregnancy

portraits’ at The Foundling Museum in London.

She is a co-author of Art & Court of James VI & I, the book of the current exhibition (closes 14

September 2025) at The Portrait gallery in Edinburgh, and has written extensively on portrait

miniatures.

Venue: The Limner Company at Guy Peppiatt Fine Art

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