Royal Academy to Present First UK Exhibition of Baroque Painter Michaelina Wautier

The Royal Academy of Arts will present the first UK exhibition dedicated to the trailblazing Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier (c. 1614–1689), opening 27 March 2026 in The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries and running until 21 June 2026.

Active in 17th-century Brussels, Wautier was among the foremost artists of her time, producing work of unusual ambition and range—spanning portraiture, still life, religious subjects and large-scale history painting. Despite her success during her lifetime, her work was largely overlooked and frequently misattributed for centuries, with major reassessment accelerating in recent decades.

The exhibition will bring together around 25 paintings from across Wautier’s career, shown alongside selected works by her brother Charles Wautier and contemporaries including Peter Paul Rubens and David Teniers the Younger. A key early section focuses on Wautier as a portraitist, positioning her within Brussels high society and highlighting her ability to capture character and presence. Her Self-Portrait (c. 1650, Private Collection) will be shown in dialogue with Rubens’s Self-Portrait (c. 1638, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna).

Later galleries explore Wautier’s religious paintings—rare in scale and ambition for women artists of the period—before moving to some of her most inventive works, including the rediscovered series The Five Senses (1650), where each sense is embodied by a different young boy engaged in everyday activities.

The exhibition culminates with Wautier’s monumental The Triumph of Bacchus (c. 1655–59, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna), in which she includes her own likeness among the revellers. Two flower paintings will frame the canvas, underlining the tension between genre expectations placed on women artists and the daring scope of Wautier’s practice.

The show is organised in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and is curated by Julien Domercq (Royal Academy of Arts), assisted by Rina Sagoo. Support is noted from Christian Levett and Musée FAMM, Jake and Hélène Marie Shafran, The Magic Trust, and 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.