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Mon-Thu: 10-6pm; Fri: 10-9pm; Sat-Sun: 10-6pm

For the first time, Picasso’s ‘Woman with a Book’ (1932) from the Norton Simon Museum, California, will be brought together with the painting that inspired it, ‘Madame Moitessier’ by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Picasso first encountered the enigmatic ‘Madame Moitessier’ at an exhibition in Paris, in 1921, and was enthralled. Over the next decade, he repeatedly referenced Ingres in his art, and painted ‘Woman with a Book’, one of his most celebrated portraits, in homage to Ingres’s famous work.

For Ingres, a 19th-century French artist steeped in the academic tradition, the beautiful and wealthy Madame Moitessier represented the classical ideal. Wearing her finest clothes and jewellery, she gazes at the viewer majestically, the embodiment of luxury and style during the Second Empire.

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Trafalgar Sq Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN