Magic and Mess: The Artist's Studio Revealed

Coming up this Autumn

Leighton House presents Magic and Mess: The Artist's Studio Revealed (31 October 2026 – 21 March 2027), exploring the 19th-century artist's studio as a place for artmaking and as a source of inspiration. 

Featuring works by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, placed in the heart of Frederic Leighton’s former home and studio, Magic and Mess is the final exhibition to mark the museum’s centenary, developed in collaboration with the Tavolozza Foundation and the Katrin Bellinger Collection, one of the world's leading collections dedicated to the study of artists at work.

Presented across Leighton House’s two exhibition galleries and bringing together 56 rarely-seen paintings, drawings and photographs, this new exhibition will offer a behind-the-curtain look at the studios where some of the period’s most celebrated works were conceived, whilst uncovering overlooked studios of lesser-known painters in all their messy glory.

Leighton House, one of the most famous studio-houses of the nineteenth century provides a uniquely appropriate setting for the exhibition. Magic and Mess will invite visitors to move between the exhibition galleries and the historic house, stepping inside the extraordinary studio and spaces created by Leighton himself, relating them to the images within the exhibition

“When I started collecting in the late 1980s, I was fascinated by the mystique of the creative process that is so intrinsic to the artist’s studio.  Working with museums like Leighton House allows me to share my passion with others, expand research on the collection and provoke new and unexpected conversations between the works displayed in the exhibition.”

Katrin Bellinger, collector

The exhibition will be accompanied by a specially commissioned film and a fully illustrated catalogue published by Paul Holberton Publishing, with essays by curators James Hall, Anita Sganzerla, Hannah Lund and Daniel Robbins, alongside Rachel Esner, Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Amsterdam.

Plan your visit

Magic and Mess: The Artist's Studio Revealed

31 October 2026 - 21 March 2027

At Leighton House. Included with admission. The Tavolozza Drawings Gallery is free to visit.

Tickets will be released for pre-booking shortly. Sign up to our museums e-newsletter for all of the latest updates.

Acknowledgments

Magic and Mess: The Artist's Studio Revealed is supported by the Tavolozza Foundation, the museum's Exhibition Circle and The Friends of Leighton House.

The programming for 100 Years of Leighton House, including related exhibitions, has been generously supported by the DCH Foundation, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, Leighton House’s Exhibition Circle and The Friends of Leighton House. The promotion and outreach for 100 Years of Leighton House has been supported by the CORA Foundation.