London to Show Unseen Tove Jansson Illustrations
More than 100 drawings by Tove Jansson will go on show in London in November at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration.
The exhibition is called Tove Jansson and her Families and is billed as the UK's first exhibition to focus on Jansson's illustrations. The details were reported in an exclusive published 16 September 2026. The Guardian
The show will include original art from The Moomins and the Great Flood, Jansson's first published book. It will also include a previously unseen sketch of Moominpappa with a giant shell, described as an early draft for the cover of Moominpappa at Sea — much like a trial version before the final print. The staging comes 25 years after Jansson's death. She wrote and illustrated the Moomin books between 1945 and 1977.
Those books have sold up to 30 million copies and have been translated into more than 60 languages. Sophia Jansson, Tove Jansson's niece and creative director of the Moomin Characters brand, speaks to the management of that estate. Paul Gravett is guest curator of the London exhibition. The timing is exact.
The illustration focus sets the project apart from earlier presentations. Britain's first major retrospective of the Finnish artist, meaning a large survey of her career, was held at Dulwich Picture Gallery and mainly showed Jansson's paintings. The Guardian The UK's first major exhibition dedicated to the Moomins and the life of Jansson had been scheduled to open in London in December 2016. A Paris exhibition was later planned to reveal never-publicly-seen archive material from Jansson, including Moomin sketches. The Guardian
London is not alone in programming Jansson this year. Moomin.com reports that several new Moomin and Tove Jansson exhibitions are on display around the world during 2026. Moomin.com The Nordic Museum's Moomins' Sea Adventures and Tove and the Sea exhibitions run from March 28 to September 6, 2026. Hull Museums scheduled The Wonders of Moominvalley event for Saturday 11 July 2026 from 2pm to 3pm. A separate Tove Jansson and the Moomins Exhibition is described as featuring rare archive treasures, interactive installations and playful spaces inspired by the Moomin universe.
The broader context here is a curatorial rebalancing. Painting has long dominated the retrospective format, while illustration is often treated as commercial or juvenile work despite its technical demands and mass circulation. A show built around more than 100 drawings reverses that hierarchy. It asks an informed viewer to judge draftsmanship, revision and print preparation on their own terms, not as footnotes to oil painting.
Looking at what this means for institutions, the family frame also does quiet work. Families can mean kinship, creative households, or the invented families of Moominvalley itself. For rights holders and public venues alike, that ambiguity is useful. It widens the audience without narrowing the scholarship, and it allows unseen archive sheets to carry weight that finished canvases already hold elsewhere. The distinction matters.
