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.

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.