‘A Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity’: Europe’s Biggest Exhibition of James McNeill Whistler in 30 Years Will Open in London This Week

2026 has already been a blockbuster year for art exhibitions in London. The capital has had new shows on Tracey Emin, Elsa Schiaparelli, David Hockney, Georges Seurat, Zurbarán and Henry Moore – and the year isn’t even at the halfway point. Still to come are huge exhibitions on the likes of Frida Kahlo, Anish Kapoor and – opening this week – James McNeill Whistler.

Whistler was one of the 19th century art world’s greatest names and has been described as the first contemporary artist. Born in the US, Whistler lived, studied and worked across four continents; his body of work is diverse, ranging from oils and watercolours to etching and printmaking. He re-wrote many of the rules of art, and was an early adopter of the ’art for art’s sake’ mantra. And yes, sigh, it was also a Whistler that featured in the Mr Bean film Bean.

London’s new James McNeill Whistler exhibition will be at Tate Britain, with the gallery saying it is a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity to see the full breadth of his painting, drawing, printmaking and design’. Showing off 150 artworks, it’ll apparently be the biggest retrospective of Whistler’s work in all of Europe in three decades.

Tate’s Whistler exhibition will examine the artist’s teenage years for the first time, as well as showing statement landscapes, domestic interiors, self-portraits and abstract experiments. And yes, Bean-heads, it’ll have the iconic ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Mother’.

But the show won’t just contain Whistler’s art. It’ll also have notebooks, easel, paint palette and brushes, as well as the artist’s collections of east Asian ceramics, Japanese prints and furniture. The exhibition will run from this Thursday, May 21, until September 27.

You can find out more and book tickets on Tate’s website here.

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