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This painting shows ‘Two Ladies of the Cholmondeley Family, Who were born the same day, Married the same day, And brought to Bed [gave birth] the same day’. Identical at a superficial glance, the lace, jewellery and eye colours of the ladies and infants are in fact carefully differentiated. The identity of the women is unclear.

• On display in Exiles and Dynasties 1545–1640, Historic and Modern British Art, Room 1

David Hockney moved to Los Angeles from London in 1964. This is one of several paintings he made of swimming pools there. It would become a defining image of sun-lit, clean-contoured southern California. Hockney was interested in using paint to capture fleeting moments. He explained: ‘When you photograph a splash, you’re freezing a moment and it becomes something else. I realise that a splash could never be seen this way in real life, it happens too quickly. And I was amused by this, so I painted it in a very, very slow way.’

• On display in In Full Colour, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Room 19

The children lighting lanterns are Dolly and Polly Barnard. John Singer Sargent was friends with their father, illustrator Frederick Barnard. Sargent painted it in a garden in Broadway, a village in south-west England where Sargent stayed in the summer of 1885. Sargent wanted to paint from real life. There were only a few minutes each evening where the light was right. He would place his easel and paints, pose the models beforehand, and wait for the right moment to start.

• On display in Art for the Crowd: 1815–1905, Historic and Modern British Art, Room 8

Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ (1833) describes a heroine confined to a tower and cursed to die if she looks directly upon the outside world. By using a mirror, she embroiders scenes of passers-by. When the Lady glimpses the Arthurian knight Sir Lancelot she falls in love and defies the curse. Out in the cold world, on the point of death, she frees a boat to seek him. Pre-Raphaelite clues foretell her fate: swallows fly low as the wind blows her hair and extinguishes the candles.

• On display in Art for the Crowd: 1815–1905, Historic and Modern British Art, Room 8

This painting depicts the funeral of Turner's friend, the artist David Wilkie. Wilkie died of typhoid in 1841 as he returned from the Middle East. Fearful the disease would spread, the Governor of Gibraltar refused to allow his body ashore and Wilkie was buried at sea. Turner imagines a funeral carriage on the ship’s deck, symbolising the public funeral Wilkie should have had. The painting was criticised for the blackness of its sails. Turner replied that he wished he could have made them blacker.

• On display in Turner and His Critics, JMW Turner, Room 32

Francis Bacon titled this work after the figures often featured in Christian paintings witnessing the death of Jesus. But he said the creatures represented the avenging Furies from Greek mythology. The Furies punish those who go against the natural order. Bacon first exhibited this painting in April 1945, towards the end of the Second World War.

• On display in Fear and Freedom 1940–1965, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Room 16

According to Pasmore 'This picture is a completely independent abstract painting and not a landscape abstraction. The title was given after it was painted, to form a poetic metaphor.' It develops a theme explored in a series of paintings made between 1968 and 1976, following Pasmore's move to Malta.

• On display in Living Gardens, JMW Turner, Room 39

This large oil painting depicting a young girl wearing a red hooded coat and black boots. Her image is repeated across the canvas five times, three of which clearly depict the repetition of her face. The image is of Katz as a child and is taken from a photograph taken by a family friend around 1987-8. The multiple exposure is included in the original photo. Katz herself had no memory of posing for the photograph but was captivated by the strangeness of this image. Her life-size painting sets up a relationship with the viewer, inviting them to study the central figure and its vibrations across the canvas. The multiple images of the artist as a child can be read as evoking the changing nature of memory.

• On display in The State We're In 2000–now, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Room 28

Jessica Dismorr’s art reflects her interest in cities and their modern architectural forms. Here, simplified elements suggest arches, piers and girders, suspended in a dark, undefined space. Dismorr removes these symbols of industry from their usual contexts and places them in an abstract composition to celebrate their form rather than their function. Dismorr was associated with the vorticist group, which emerged before the First World War and aimed to make art suited to the modern world.

• On display in Modern Times 1910–1920, Historic and Early Modern British Art, Room 13

The Pleasure Principle 1980–9 is a set of forty-four colour cibachrome photographic prints depicting scenes of leisure and enjoyment in Britain in the 1980s. The subjects of the photographs range from youth culture and sport to political associations and countryside hobbies. In each case, Steele-Perkins highlighted what he considered to be specifically ‘British’ pursuits and activities, prompting a reflection on the state of British society.

• On display in Chris Steele-Perkins, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Room 20