Seduced By Art : Photography Past and Present Tickets

Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present
The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London
31 October 2012 - 20 January 2013

View Old Master painting through a new lens with ‘Seduced by Art', the National Gallery's first major exhibition of photography. This groundbreaking show explores the relationship between historical painting, early photography of the mid-19th century, and some of the most exciting work being done by photographers today - including Sam Taylor-Wood, Tacita Dean and Richard Learoyd.

The exhibition includes almost 90 photographs alongside selected paintings from the National Gallery's collection. It features new photography and video especially commissioned for the exhibition and on public display for the first time, plus works rarely seen in the UK.

Paintings and early and contemporary photographs are presented together according to traditional genres - portraiture, still life, the nude, and landscape. The show contrasts beautiful and provocative religious imagery by 19th-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and contemporary artist Helen Chadwick, with spectacular battlefield tableaux by Horace Vernet from 1821 and Luc Delahaye's work of 2001. Martin Parr's acerbic work is displayed alongside Thomas Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews, while photographs by Craigie Horsfield and the Victorian artist David Wilkie Wynfield show the Baroque influence of Anthony van Dyck.