Meet The Curator: Michaelina Wautier At The RA

It’s a spring of women at the Royal Academy of Arts, where Rose Wylie’s The Picture Comes First marks the first time a female painter has presented a solo exhibition in Burlington House’s hallowed halls. Opening just a month later, the spotlight is also on forgotten Belgian painter Michaelina Wautier – a 17th century trailblazer rediscovered as recently as the 90s.

Below, find the Royal Academy’s Senior Curator Julien Domercq’s guide to the exhibition, including highlights to see and the cocktail to debrief over afterwards.

Michaelina Wautier At The RA: Curator Julien Domercq’s Guide

Michaelina Wautier, Self-portrait, c. 1650. Oil on canvas, 120 x 102 cm. Private collection

Overview

This exhibition brings together the largest group of paintings by the 17th century artist Michaelina Wautier ever assembled. A prominent artist around 1650 in Brussels, she was then forgotten for nearly three centuries, until a Belgian art historian came across her large and imposing painting The Triumph of Bacchus in the storeroom of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in the 1990s. 

The show celebrates the great artist that she was, presenting some works for the first time in Europe, such as her series The Five Senses, which was rediscovered in 2019. We know almost nothing of Michaelina Wautier’s life and work – only a handful of documents relating to her survive – and so it’s her paintings that act as evidence as to who she was and how she worked.

The Background

The exhibition is the result of a close collaboration with our friends and colleagues at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. They own The Triumph of Bacchus, which is central to the exhibition, both due to its size but also its subject matter: a scene of pagan debauchery, full of nude male bodies, the sort of painting a woman would not have been expected to paint at the time!

Michaelina Wautier, Saint John the Evangelist, c. 1656–59. Oil on canvas, 69 x 60.5 cm. The Parity Project

What Is On Display?

The art on display presents the richness and variety of Michaelina Wautier’s practice. At the time, most artists would focus on a particular genre; this was even more true of women painters, who were often limited to what were seen as the ‘minor’ genres of still-life and portraiture. She excelled in both, painting soulful portraits with dexterous and free brushwork, and even learned a different way of working to paint her delicate and precise flower paintings. 

After meeting her self-portrait, which presides over a first gallery of portraits, visitors then enter a second room that presents her religious pictures, some of which she signs and dates, adding the inscription ‘invented and made’ in Latin. She must have been conscious she was transcending the limitations usually imposed on women artists when she painted them. 

The final section of the exhibition celebrates the works that are the most uniquely hers: The Five Senses, the monumental The Triumph of Bacchus, that she signs not with her name, but with her own likeness, a bare breasted bacchante, looking straight at us!

If you come to the exhibition, you’ll see that some of the portraits seem to exchange glances from canvas to canvas. Some works echo one another in a harmonious display, while others bring about intriguing juxtapositions. This was notably the case when we brought in works painted by her brother, Charles Wautier, with whom she lived her whole life and most likely shared a studio.

Highlights

There are many highlights, as Wautier’s works are so rare and still not very well known. A key picture is her confident Self-Portrait at the easel which greets the visitor, as well as the amazingly soulful portraits of her brother Pierre and of an Italian Jesuit Missionary who spent most of his life in China. 

Then there’s her beautiful work The Education of the Virgin, in which she depicts a sweet little girl learning to read rather than the future mother of Christ, and then of course The Five Senses series, the amazing Boys Blowing Bubbles that comes to us from Seattle, and The Triumph of Bacchus that ends the exhibition on a high.

Gallery view of the Michaelina Wautier exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (27 March
– 21 June 2026), showing The Triumph of Bacchus, about 1655–59. On loan from
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery. (© David Parry/Royal Academy of Arts)

The Takeaway?

You’ll be surprised that such a great artist – who painted so beautifully and boldly, was able to capture the inner lives of people on canvas, and had a great sense of humour – could be forgotten for so long. 

While You’re There…

We’ve recently re-opened the RA’s Fine Rooms in Burlington House, where you’ll be able to see works from our collection in the setting of beautiful 18th century interiors that haven’t been open to the public for a while. It’s free and open from 11am to 4pm Tuesday to Sunday, and till 9pm on Fridays.

You can have lunch at the RA Café or grab a coffee and refreshments at the RA Courtyard Café now that sunny days are upon us. Friends of the Royal Academy have access to The Keeper’s House – now home to a vibrant new dining experience by acclaimed chef José Pizarro, and on theme with the Spanish sitters of some of Michaelina Wautier’s portraits! 

Beyond Burlington House, Soho has some of my favourite restaurants in London, including the brilliant Koya udon counter restaurant on Frith Street, and Mountain on Beak Street with its crab omelette. 

VISIT

My favourite time to visit is late on a Friday, when we’re open till 9pm. You can then wrap things up with one of Alessandro Palazzi’s legendary martinis at Duke’s.

Michaela Wautier runs until 21 June 2026 at the Royal Academy (Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD). Tickets are £15pp, and Friends of the RA go free.

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