Among art exhibitions 2026, Seurat and the Sea (13 February – 17 May 2026) at Courtauld Gallery, London lands like a clarifying gust off the Channel: brisk, bright, and quietly revolutionary. The Courtauld frames it as the first exhibition devoted entirely to Georges Seurat’s seascapes (and the first major UK Seurat show in almost 30 years) inviting a rethink of an artist long pinned to Parisian leisure scenes.
Among art exhibitions 2026, Seurat and the Sea (13 February – 17 May 2026) at Courtauld Gallery, London lands like a clarifying gust off the Channel: brisk, bright, and quietly revolutionary. The Courtauld frames it as the first exhibition devoted entirely to Georges Seurat’s seascapes (and the first major UK Seurat show in almost 30 years) inviting a rethink of an artist long pinned to Parisian leisure scenes.
February 13, 2026
Seurat arrives in public memory with a park: parasols, promenaders, and that famous stillness engineered in A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Yet this exhibition argues that his true studio had tides. Between 1885 and 1890, Seurat returned summer after summer to the northern coast of France: Grandcamp, Honfleur, Port-en-Bessin, Graveline, treating each port as a new experiment in weather, distance, and attention.
He even gave the mission a perfect line: he came to the coast to “cleanse” his eyes of studio days in Paris, chasing “bright light, in all its nuances.”
Courtauld Gallery brings together 26 works for the Seurat and the Sea exhibition — paintings, oil sketches, and drawings, then spotlights a collector’s dream: the complete Port-en-Bessin group (1888) and the Gravelines series (1890), shown as a sequence of decisions rather than isolated icons. You can watch Seurat simplify the world into geometrical lighthouses, masts, horizon lines.
Part of the thrill is the passport stamp energy of the lender list. Works arrive from institutions including MoMA, the Musée d’Orsay, and the National Gallery of Art (plus a long roll call of museums and collections across the US, Europe, and Australia). For anyone curating a list of art exhibitions worth travelling for, this one belongs near the top.
And yes, the dots matter, but science serves the sea. Neo-Impressionism’s “pure colour” marks, set side by side, rely on optical mixing to heighten luminosity and contrast, turning water into a vibrating surface rather than a painted fact.
Then comes the Seurat detail that feels almost couture: the frame as finale. In key works, he treated the border as part of the image’s optics, using coloured touches to control how the painting meets the room — an artist styling the wall itself.
Practical grace note: due to demand, the Courtauld Gallery extends the Seurat and the Sea exhibition's Friday opening until 20:00 throughout the run (usual hours 10:00–18:00), so London gets a weekly late-night tide of Seurat light.
