LONDON.- The National Gallery today announced the second painting which will be the focus of the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour 2025-27. The Marquise de Seignelay (1691) by Pierre Mignard will travel to our four partners between 2026 and 2027: South Shields Museum and Art Gallery (29 August 2026 – 8 November 2026); The Cooper Gallery, Barnsley (13 November 2026 – 20 February 2027); Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (27 February 2027 – 5 June 2027), and Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (11 June 2027 – 5 September 2027).

In this striking portrait, Mignard depicts the recently widowed Catherine-Thérèse de Goyon de Matignon-Thorigny, Marquise de Seignelay (1662–99), as a woman of cultural and international importance. She is portrayed as the sea-goddess Thetis, while her eldest son Marie-Jean Baptiste (1683–1712) is dressed as the Greek hero Achilles – Thetis’ son by the mortal Peleus. Her sumptuous robe is painted using ultramarine, a highly expensive blue pigment, as a show of her wealth and status. The extensive marine imagery references her late husband, the Marquis de Seignelay’s position as head of the French Navy. The landscape in the background likely represents the shores of Martinique, an island in the West Indian ocean which was purchased for the French crown by the Marquise’s late father-in-law in 1664.

The exhibition programme plans to highlight the unique strengths of the partner venues, with three located on the coast – an ideal context for exploring the maritime themes of the painting and deepening its resonance with their surrounding landscapes and local collections. At South Shields, the exhibition will be enriched through co-created elements developed with New Writing North’s Young Writers programme, students from South Tyneside College, and members of Our Voice Counts. The Cooper Gallery, Barnsley will co-produce its iteration of the exhibition with Next Big Thing, Barnsley Museums youth group, ensuring strong local engagement and creative collaboration. Grundy Art Gallery will shape its presentation by working for a 2nd year with Blackpool’s Young People’s charity The Magic Club. Grundy is working for all three years of The Masterpiece Touring Project with The Magic Club providing the opportunity for deep engagement over time. Ferens Art Gallery will further shape their presentation by working closely with community groups, drawing on local insights to inform and animate each exhibition, whilst providing a perspective which enriches our understanding of this painting.

The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour: Monet is currently on display at South Shields Gallery until 25 March. Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil is presented with works from the South Shields, Laing and Shipley art collections, and artworks co-created by EBSA (Emotionally Based School Avoidant) young people, teachers, and local organisations. It will then travel to Grundy Art Gallery between 28 March - 13 June, where it will be displayed alongside a new sonic art work produced by participants of Blackpool’s Young People’s charity, The Magic Club. Working with artist Kelly Jayne Jones, Blackpool’s young people have produced a sound-based response to their experience of Monet’s painting. The first round of the tour will then finish at Ferens Art Gallery, 19 June – 13 September, where the picture will be part of an exhibition co-curated with Flourish, Ferens Art Gallery’s creative group for children and young people. Organised with and for disabled and neurodivergent visitors, the show will present select works from the Ferens’s vast collection alongside contemporary responses from Flourish.

Since its inception in 2014, The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour has reached 401,000 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.

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.’

North East Museums Director, Keith Merrin said: ‘We’re delighted to be part of the next chapter of the Masterpiece Tour and to welcome this extraordinary painting to South Shields Museum & Art Gallery. Bringing a work of this significance to our communities reflects the shared commitment between partners to making world-class art accessible, relevant and inspiring. Since the launch of the Masterpiece Tour on 17 January, when the museum welcomed Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872), footfall to the museum has increased by over 70%, highlighting the strong appetite for high-quality art experiences amongst our community.’