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Monet's love of architecture tops the National Gallery's exhibition line-up

Monet, Degas, Bellini… see what’s coming up at the central London gallery.
Monet, Degas, Bellini… see what’s coming up at the central London gallery. Monet, Degas, Bellini… see what’s coming up at the central London gallery.

Art lovers will get a glimpse into Claude Monet’s love of architecture in a new exhibition exploring the lesser-known side of his painting.

Best known for his balmy, green-hued pictures of natural landscapes, the upcoming National Gallery collection will unveil more than 70 Monet pieces depicting famous global structures.

London’s Houses of Parliament, Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Bridge are among the artist’s monuments of choice, as well as Rouen Cathedral and Paris’ Gare Saint-Lazare.

The exhibition, running at the central London gallery from April 9 to July 29 next year, will trace the father of impressionism’s lauded career before his death in 1926.The display was announced on Tuesday as part of the gallery’s unveiling of exhibitions for the next two years.A collection by the famous ballerina painter, Edgar Degas, will open in September, featuring paintings from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.

Marking 100 years since the artist’s death, it promises a range of some of his finest and boldest work depicting Parisian life.This will be followed from November by a display of Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s stunning paintings of Finland’s Lake Keitele.From February to May, the gallery will celebrate the 400th birthday of Bartolome Esteban Murillo by showing two of the Spanish artist’s self-portraits together for the first time in three centuries.

Both opening next June, a Thomas Cole exhibition will explore the mid-19th century American painter’s influence on European art, while Ed Ruscha: Course Of Empire will cast Cole’s vision of the rise and fall of civilisation into a modern light.The works of Italian Renaissance artists Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna will be brought to life in October 2018 with a series of paintings, drawings and sculptures comparing the related artists.Finally, the gripping, shadowy paintings of 16th-century portraitist Lorenzo Lotto will be unveiled in November 2018, along with some of his own trinkets and belongings featured in the paintings.