Category: Research

We are seeking a highly experienced and enthusiastic Senior Picture Researcher to work in our small, dedicated Publishing team overseeing picture research for National Gallery Global’s publications and merchandise. This unique role will also involve liaison with key National Gallery departments including Communications, Exhibitions and Digital, to facilitate clearance of exhibition loan images where required.

Reporting to the Publisher, the successful candidate will have extensive experience in picture research, ideally in a museum or gallery context, a high level of commercial focus, excellent negotiating skills and good knowledge of copyright law. Educated to degree level or equivalent, you will also have a keen interest in European art and excellent communication and IT skills.

For many decades, technical research into Rembrandt’s paintings has provided invaluable insights into his materials, techniques, and creative process. Through the combined efforts of art historians, conservators, and scientists, a steadily growing body of knowledge has transformed our understanding of his practice. Recent advances in imaging technologies and material analysis have further deepened this perspective, revealing new facets of Rembrandt’s working methods and shedding fresh light on his artistic innovations. Through fascinating case studies and in-depth investigations, the symposium will reflect on the interaction between art historians, conservators and scientists, highlighting the research methodologies employed to unravel complex art historical and scientific questions.

The ‘New Directions in Rembrandt Research’ symposium, which will consist of a full day of lectures from art historians, conservators and scientists, has been conceived and curated by Petria Noble. Recently retired from the Rijksmuseum, her contributions to Rembrandt studies, together with those of colleagues she has worked with over the years, have helped shape new directions in the field.

These Scholarships have supported the studies of graduate students in MA, MPhil and PhD programmes across the globe, with the aim of contributing to their academic and professional development. The Scholarship recipient will also be awarded a paid internship at The Klesch Collection lasting a minimum of 6 weeks, allowing them to gain experience in the daily operations of a private art collection. Candidates will be selected based on merit and the overall quality of the application.

Who can apply?

Applicants must have been accepted into a full-time Art History MA or PhD course of study worldwide, beginning the next academic year, and preference will be given to applicants who have completed their undergraduate degree in Art History. PhD students are welcome to apply for any year in their programme. Applications will be considered only from students who will focus/are focusing their studies on European and British painting of the Renaissance and Baroque periods (c. 1400–1700) and who intend to write their thesis or dissertation in this area.

We are looking to recruit a Curatorial Assistant who will work alongside the Director, Exhibitions Manager and the Assistant Curators in planning, managing and delivering our vibrant and engaging collections and exhibition programme.

The Research Associate will support an initiative to investigate the provenance of objects associated with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states.  

Under the guidance of the Executive Director of Provenance Research and Senior Research Associate, the Research Associate will review all collecting areas to identify relevant objects, and will locate any existing provenance documentation in the museum’s database, curatorial files, and archival records. 

As part of the cataloguing process, the Research Associate will identify individual objects or groups of objects for further examination and will carry out targeted in-depth provenance research into these objects using relevant archival records in both North America and Europe. 

Raphael’s fireplace fresco for Pope Julius II rediscovered - By Carmen C. Bambach

A Du Cerceau album at Harvard - By Dario Donetti

The possible origins of Velázquez’s ‘Christ after the Flagellation contemplated by the Christian soul’ - By Kevin Ingram

Pre-Raphaelites beyond England:the work of Gustave-Max Stevens - By Laura Fanti

René Lalique: the artist as curator - By Vera Mariz

The portraits of the young girl in a striking blue dress [Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam] and her parents [Rijksmuseum Twenthe] remained together for a long time, but eventually ended up in different museums. In the Rijksmuseum, the “girl in blue” became a public favourite. Yet to this day, we still do not know who the girl and her parents are. That is why Professor Frans Grijzenhout, known from the television programme Kunstraadsels, set out to discover the identity of the trio.

Supported by a generous grant from Art Fund, Chatsworth House Trust is seeking an exceptional early or mid-career researcher to undertake the inaugural Devonshire Research Fellowship, a ground-breaking role that will reimagine the potential of object-focused scholarship within a historic house context. [...]

This 18-month fellowship will investigate the provenance and journeys of objects relating to Ancient and Classical Civilisations within the Devonshire Collections. The Fellow will develop object biographies, trace histories of acquisition and circulation, and contextualise objects through their socio-political, material, and cultural histories.

As a pilot for a new Fellowship programme, this role places equal value on scholarly rigour and public impact. You will co-create research with communities, embed lived-experience perspectives, and work closely with cross-departmental teams to shape outputs that will inform interpretation, programming, and a major forthcoming exhibition in 2029.

The largest house in America and an example of Gilded Age magnificence, Biltmore opens its doors for a tour of both its grand and belowstairs rooms in the first book on the iconic residence in more than thirty years.

George W. Vanderbilt created one of the greatest self-sustaining American country estates of the late nineteenth century—at its center, Richard Morris Hunt’s splendid 250-room French Renaissance château. Beyond the acres of gardens designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and the imposing castle exterior lies one of the most notable private collections of fine and decorative art in the nation. Discover the wealth of treasures assembled in the historic rooms: paintings by Monet, Renoir, Sargent, and Whistler; Renaissance tapestries; rare books; and exquisite French and English furniture.

As exhilarating as a lungful of oxygen: that’s how some of his contemporaries felt about John Constable’s paintings. Others, though, were baffled by his uncompromisingly fresh and realistic treatment of the natural world. Susan Owens follows Constable through the seasons, tracing the rhythms and resonances of the artist’s year to offer a vivid, unconventional perspective on this beloved figure.

Whether in London in May, preparing pictures for exhibition and longing for the Suffolk spring, or painting boat-builders and waiting to be married in a particularly gloomy September, Constable’s life and work were unusually shaped by the yearly cycles of weather and agriculture, as well as by the often competing demands of the art world. Raised in Suffolk and trained to manage his father's land, his rural background had an enduring impact on his painting. His was the approach of one who knew the laneways, ploughs and millponds he painted intimately, and who understood the countryside as a place of both labour and natural phenomena.

Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowships, Beinecke Visiting Senior Fellowships, and Leonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellowships support research in the history, theory, and criticism of the visual arts of any period or geographical area.

For the Leonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellowship, we especially encourage applications that contribute to scholarship in understudied areas.

We welcome applications from scholars in any discipline whose work examines art or artifacts or has implications for the analysis, interpretation, and criticism of visual art or visual culture.

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8–1543) is renowned as an outstandingly realistic painter—the acme of Renaissance naturalism. In fact, he was a purveyor of cunning ambiguity. Holbein’s Wit: Pictorial Ingenuity in Renaissance Art reveals the artist at play, juggling the uncertainties and paradoxes that arise in the enterprise of imitation. Spanning Holbein’s career in Basel and London, and encompassing his portraits, devotional paintings, and designs for prints and the decorative arts, the book explores this celebrated artist’s subtle pictorial wiles. Holbein was immersed in the multi-faceted world of Renaissance ingenium or ‘wit’, which could mean innate talent, mental acuity, generative capacity, and a person’s unique nature. In dialogue with witty patrons such as Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More, Holbein advanced an ingenious kind of artmaking characterised by visual jokes, puns, and internal contradictions. Responding to humanism’s literary conceits with an inventive pictorial language, he upended conventional assumptions about naturalism and the status of painting to assert the worth of an autonomous artistic intelligence.

The Burlington Magazine is pleased to announce its ninth annual scholarship to provide funding over a 12-month period to those engaged in the study of French 18th-century fine and decorative art, enabling them to develop new ideas and research that will contribute to this field of art historical study. [...]

Applicants must be studying, or intending to study, for an MA, PhD, post-doctoral or independent research in the field of French 18th-century fine and decorative arts within the 12-month period the funding is given (i.e. September 2026 – August 2027). [...]

£12,000 is awarded to one recipient per year and applies to a 12-month period.

Scientific tests involving artificial intelligence on the paintings conducted by Art Recognition, a Swiss company that collaborates on research with Tilburg University in the Netherlands, has been unable to detect any of Van Eyck’s brushstrokes. It has concluded that the Philadelphia picture was “91% negative” and that the Turin version was “86% negative”.

Till-Holger Borchert, one of the leading Van Eyck scholars and director of the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen, said the Van Eyck findings supported scholars who had suggested that both versions were studio paintings – produced in the artist’s workshop but not necessarily by him.