Loans from the Royal Collection
Current loans to exhibitions from the Royal Collection
Every year hundreds of objects, including paintings, drawings and decorative arts, are lent from the Royal Collection to institutions across the UK and abroad for both short- and long-term display. The loans programme, administered by Royal Collection Trust, enables new audiences to enjoy works of art from the Royal Collection, as well as helping us to increase our understanding of these works.
For information regarding loan requests, please click or tap on the button below.
See a selection of current loans from the Royal Collection below.
2025 marks the centenary of Sir Alfred Munnings’s trio of paintings depicting the Ascot Procession from Windsor, commissioned by Queen Mary in 1925. The works were completed over the course of nearly a year while Munnings painted from a temporary studio in the stables at Windsor Castle. Royal Collection Trust has lent The State Procession to Ascot to a new exhibition at the Munnings Art Museum titled 'A Long, Glittering Line', where it will be shown alongside The Return from Ascot and Their Majesties’ Return from Ascot. The exhibition reunites the three paintings for the first time in decades. The display is enriched by rarely seen preparatory studies and sketches, archival photographs and documents, and excerpts from Munnings’s own writings, offering a window into the artist’s creative process and the royal commission that inspired it. Until 26 October 2025.
Learn more about The State Procession to Ascot in our Collection online.
A new exhibition at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. explores the parallel lives and careers of George III and George Washington. For the first time, George Washington’s papers from the Library of Congress will be displayed alongside archival material relating to George III from the Royal Archives and Royal Collection. These materials will shed light on their family, models of rule, shared interest in science and agriculture, and their role in the American Revolution. The works will be on loan until 27 September 2025.
A new exhibition at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, home to an almost complete set of plaster castes after the sculptures of Michelangelo, will celebrate the Renaissance master’s achievements as a sculptor. The plaster casts will be accompanied by new 3D-printed resin reproductions of Michelangelo’s remaining sculptures, allowing the visitor to experience Michelangelo’s sculptures together in one place. The largest number of Michelangelo’s drawings ever displayed in Denmark will also feature, including two sheets from the Royal Collection: a heroic red chalk drawing of a heavily-muscled figure and one of Michelangelo’s anatomical studies. Until 31 August 2025.
Take a closer look at the drawings in our Collection Online.
Two paintings have been lent to an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York, which examines how the biblical story of Queen Esther was interpreted by Rembrandt and his contemporaries in 17th-century Netherlands. Rembrandt and his Wife Saskia, attributed to Ferdinand Bol, draws visual parallels to the story of Esther. Like Saskia, Esther is often depicted sitting at her toilette, wearing an intricately decorated cloak and pearls. Also on loan is Willem de Poorter’s Mordecai Listening to The Conspiracy of Ahasuerus's Chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, which presents a rarely depicted scene from the Book of Esther: the moment that Mordecai overhears a conspiracy to assassinate King Ahasuerus. This painting has undergone full conservation treatment in preparation for the loan. Until 10 August 2025.
Six of Andrea Mantegna’s monumental paintings from the series The Triumphs of Caesar – considered to be amongst the finest achievements in Italian Renaissance art – have been loaned from the Royal Collection and can now be seen in a special display at the National Gallery. Other items from the Royal Collection are on long-term loan.
Take a closer look at Mantegna's paintings in our Collection Online.
