Zurbarán in London, the Carnegie International, Walter Sickert’s Ennui

The largest career survey of the great 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán since the 1980s opens this weekend at the National Gallery in London. It presents a more rounded perspective on an artist best known for his austere paintings of saints and other religious subjects. Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its co-curator, Francesca Whitlum-Cooper. The latest edition of the Carnegie International, held at the Carnegie Museum of Art and several other venues in Pittsburgh, also opens this weekend. This 59th iteration of the exhibition, which happens every four years, is called If the word we, and Ben speaks to the director of the museum, Eric Crosby. And this episode’s Work of the Week is one of the five painted versions of Ennui, made around 1914 by Walter Sickert. The painting features in the exhibition Walter Sickert: Working Notes at Charleston in Lewes in Sussex, UK, part of the organisation based in the former home of the Bloomsbury linchpins Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Ben talks to Robert Travers, the founder of the gallery Piano Nobile, who curated the exhibition in partnership with Charleston.

Zurbarán, National Gallery, London, 2 May-23 August; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 7 October-25 January 2027; Art Institute of Chicago, 28 February-20 June 2027

If the word we, 59th Carnegie International, 2 May-3 January 2027

Walter Sickert: Working Notes, Charleston in Lewes, 2 May–11 October 2026.

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