Visiting this weekend? The Textile Fair is taking place from 6 – 8 November

All visitors, including members, must pre-book their tickets.

If you’d like to visit the fair, book your tickets here, there’s an option to purchase for just the Fair, or a Fairs and Gallery ticket to get access to all Compton Verney has to offer.

If you don’t wish to visit the fair, you can purchase a general admission ticket (reduced to £0 for members when you log in), but please note the ground floor galleries are accessible to Fair ticket holders only.

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Painting Childhood:
From holbein to freud

16 March 2019 – 16 June 2019

Children have always fascinated artists. This is a celebration of some of the most iconic paintings of children produced over the past 500 years.

Through stunning portraits, amusing genre scenes and touching ‘fancy pictures’, this exhibition explored the creative process and the specific challenges posed by painting children: from how to capture the fleeting moments of youth to how to encourage young subjects to sit still.

Painting Childhood © Compton Verney, photography by Jamie Woodley (5)

About the
exhibition

The exhibition addressed themes including royal portraits, play and learning, and the fantasy and reality of children’s lives.

It concludes with a series of paintings, sketches and sculptures by Stanley Spencer, Louise Bourgeois, Jacob Epstein and Lucian Freud. These offer deeply personal insights into the place of family within an artist’s life, and the ongoing dialogue between biography and creativity.