Into the 19th Century At The National Gallery

We took the weekend off, but on Monday were back at what has become a favorite, the National Gallery of Art. Surprises were awaiting us, both outside and inside the museum...

Many things happen at Trafalgar Square, and this morning it was
a demonstration/rally by the Extinction Rebellion...people who
don't want to become extinct or don't want their species to become
extinct...the whole concept of species is problematic, some say,
particularly if you drop the morphological conception and embrace
an evolutionary one; just FYI; anyhow, they were unhappy
about lots of things, particularly climate and government; so are we

Their messaging was not helped by the arrival of a loud group
of drummers, same species, we think, who inadvertently (?)
drowned out the rally's speakers; we repaired to the museum

Picking up more or less where we left off, 17th and
18th centuries...this is Rembrandt's wife Saskia van
Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume; portraits in
costume were a thing in 1635; or maybe they
just sort of got off that way...Vicki asks, what's
the point of being married to a great artist if he 
doesn't make you look beautiful?

Rembrandt, Woman Bathing in a Stream, 1654;
the National Gallery has a dozen or so Rembrandts,
including the usual self portraits; I have posted this
and the previous one to show that he did in fact
paint other things than himself

Franz Hals is one of our favorite painters...the subjects, the
demeanors, the colors, the brushwork...in museums you 
usually see his single portraits, except in the Hals Museum in
Haarlem, where many of his "men in black" group portraits
reside; the National Gallery has a dozen or so Hals, too,
but this non-"men in black" group portrait, Family Group in
a Landscape, 1647, is a bit of a rarity; IMHO; the museum
notes the landscape itself may not be by Hals; Vicki notes
how tired the mother of seven looks...

A more typical Hals, Portrait of a Man in his Thirties,
1633; we've seen a few serious or even sad-looking
Hals paintings, but most are quite relaxed, happy, or
even boisterous...the sitters knowing that, with his
brush technique, it won't take very long...

We are not much into still lifes--"daid thangs" we call them--
but this Still Life with Drinking Horn, by Willem Kalf, 1633,
is beautiful and pulls out all the stops of Dutch still lifes...
detail, vivid color, abundant symbolism, perspective, things
hanging over the edge, reflections...plus it's seafood with,
hopefully, a glass or two of pinot blanc or a muscadet...

The National Gallery has a couple Vermeers (there are not very
many), this A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, 1670; not 
among the better Vermeer's we've seen

Adrian van der Velde, Golfers on the Ice Near Haarlem, 1668;
this is the game of kolf, which the Dutch played on ice; I had friends
in Montana who always looked forward to spring golf, in heavy
boots and down jackets, when the snow had melted but the water
hazards were still frozen; "you can get a really good bounce off
the hazard" they'd explain

Yes,  I know we've already seen the Canalettos, but this Regatta
on the Grand Canal, 1740, is worth looking at because...

It shows Canaletto's lousy waves; maybe this lack of care for 

something nobody cared about is how he was able to do so many

paintings...

 

Among the many Hogarths, perhaps the most notable is the 1745 set

entitled Marriage a la Mode; this is only #1, where the marriage

is being arranged; it's entirely downhill from there, so I'll spare you

the remaining five; but it's an excellent example of Hogarth's

social commentary

So the big hall, where you get fully into 18th and 19th century
British paintings, including some of the big format ones, was
closed that day; and here I discover why: Stubbs' Whistlejacket
had been taken down and now was being re-hung; the hall was
open and back to normal when we returned a few days later; and
Whistlejacket was probably the most conspicuously hung painting
in the entire museum; it cost $18MM back in 1997

Not a Claude, not a Turner...Claude-Joseph Vernet's A Landscape
at Sunset, 1773

Show-stopper: Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun's
Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782; alluding quite
overtly to Rubens' portrait of Susanna Lunden
160 years earlier; there were few female artists,
and they were not regarded well...one wonders
how many treasures like this were lost, or never
painted

Francois-Hubert Drouais' Madame Pompadour
at Her Tambour Frame, 1763; Louis XV's main
gal

Nicolas Lancret, Wardrobe Malfunction, 1739; aka The Four
Times of Day: Morning

Henri-Pierre Danlous, The Baron Besenval in His
Salon de Compangie, 1791, Besenval had been
military commander of Paris at the fall of the
Bastille, imprisoned briefly, then retired to his
estate to contemplate his art collection; he died
before the Deluge really broke...

Goya's Duke of Wellington, 1812-1814; famous
painter portrays famous general after the latter's
victory at Salamanca, ousting Napoleonic forces
from Spain

Paul Delaroche's dramatic The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 
1833; huge, almost life-sized

Not to end on a downer, Franceso Hayez, Susanna at Her Bath,
1850; where are the dirty old men in this picture?!

After another exhausting day of art appreciation, we walked
over to Leicester Square and then Covent Garden...encountering
the Extinction Rebellion again, now engaged in a sit-in and lie-in
(note top of van)

More speeches, more drumming, lots and lots of police, but
not that many demonstrators, really

Yours truly, sporting his newly acquired Extinction
Rebellion sticker (since discarded), enjoying an
afternoon snack at Santa Nata; the nata every bit
as good as one would get in Lisbon or Belem...that's
one of the neat things about London...there are people
from all over the world, doing their things, cooking
their cuisines...