Salman Toor paints queer South Asian men in bars, cabs, bedrooms, and at parties—figures caught in the private texture of lives that straddle cultures. The paintings are small, warm, and technically rooted in the Old Masters—Baroque light, 18th-century atmosphere—yet have the compositional logic of Manet. Toor’s The Bar on East 13th (2019), one of the principal works in this show, is a direct response to the Courtauld’s own A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)—which makes the venue just right for this presentation of Toor’s first solo museum show in Europe. It presents 19 paintings never before seen in Britain, and a separate display of drawings. —Elena Clavarino