The National Gallery’s 'The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil' by Monet travelling the UK in 2025-27

The work selected for the first year is Monet's The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872), a work which has left the Gallery only once in the last 20 years. Monet depicts a tranquil scene of a winter day on the outskirts of the small suburban town of Argenteuil, not far from Paris. Although the town was already partly industrialised and a popular location for sailing and leisure boating, Monet only hints at this developing bustle with a few scattered buildings behind a screen of trees. Instead, he focuses on an intimate moment by the river. The orderly composition, variety of brushstrokes and reflection in the water are all regular features of Monet’s work. 

Since its inception in 2014, The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour has reached 400,953 people across the UK. Our National Touring programme, including The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour and other travelling exhibitions, has now reached 1,467,618 people since 2014. As part of our ongoing commitment to sharing the collection, this exhibition partnership, made possible by the generous support from Hiscox, offers four UK museums and galleries outside of London the opportunity to work with the National Gallery for three years and display three major artworks from the collection. For this edition of the Masterpiece Tour, partners will each connect with a local community organisation to support the exhibition or public programme related to the selected painting each year. Each partner will develop their own display to explore and draw out themes most relevant to them and their communities. 

The Sainsbury Centre is the first museum in the world to recognise formally the living lifeforce of art, fostering the power of art to explore cultural dialogue and exchange. A radical new exhibition programme investigates the biggest questions people have in their lives today, such as ‘What is Truth?’ and ‘Why Do We Take Drugs?’. The  display will tie into the 2025 season which explores the question ‘Can We Stop Killing Each Other?’. The painting will be located within a reflective space for contemplation as part of the exhibition experience. As part of their community programming, the Sainsbury Centre will use this space of sanctuary to further develop and research trauma-informed cafes as a part of their Compassionate Museum programme. These will be co-created with a range of partners working in the field of mental health and support for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

The exhibition with South Shields Museum and Art Gallery continues the National Gallery’s partnership with North East Museums, following Constable Visits Jarrow in 2023 and National Treasures: Turner in Newcastle at the Laing Art Gallery in 2024. In South Shields, the focus will be on bringing together Monet’s work with other landscape works from the South Shields collection and connecting with the local natural area. The exhibition will also feature artworks created as part of the ground-breaking engagement programme with the families of pupils experiencing Emotion-Based School Avoidance.

Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool will combine their expertise in hosting contemporary art exhibitions with the display of the Monet. Drawing on their approach to showing local, national and international art in the heart of the North West, the Monet will be exhibited alongside a solo exhibition by North West- based artist Louise Giovanelli, who is one of the most celebrated painters of the current generation. There will also be an Annual Schools exhibition following workshops responding to Monet’s work, and the artwork will also be embedded in their existing work with the pARTnership, a creative and professional development project for adults with learning disabilities.

The Ferens Art Gallery exhibition will be co-curated with Flourish, Ferens Art Gallery’s creative group for children and young people, organised with and for disabled and neurodivergent visitors. Together, they will create a multi-sensory immersive space that is an olfactory, acoustic and tactile experience. The exhibition will showcase select works from the Ferens’s vast collection alongside contemporary responses from Flourish to enable visitors to see and experience art from a new and inclusive perspective. 

National Gallery Director Sir Gabriele Finaldi said: ‘The National Gallery’s collection belongs to all of us. It is part of our duty and our honour to look after these paintings and to bring them to where people are, not just expect them to come to us. Partnering on touring exhibitions does so much more than bring beloved paintings from the collection to other places in the UK - it supports the whole country's cultural ecosystem, connects people with paintings that belong to us all, and allows us to learn and expand our own practices and interpretations through the creativity of our partner organisations and their communities. That over one million people have visited these exhibitions in the last decade proves the desire to engage with our collection is growing, and we look forward to welcoming the next million visitors across the UK.’

Director of the Sainsbury Centre, Jago Cooper said: ‘Founded in the 1970s to radically change both who and how art is enjoyed in the UK, the Sainsbury Centre is delighted to be delivering on that museum mission 50 years on. This Masterpiece Partnership will help bring our approach to art to a wider national audience, as visitors come to experience the Monet painting in this unique context. We look forward to welcoming everyone here, to experience our Living Art approach that uses innovative experiential and technological pathways to help bring art to life. The emotion and empowerment that people feel using these new approaches here is perhaps why we have been nominated for the European Museum of the Year Award this year’.