National Gallery Of Art: The Exciting Conclusion

Wednesday was an administrative day (we got haircuts), and Thursday we had a wonderful lunch in Greenwich with friends Howard and Jenni, from Newbury, whom we met on our 2017 Afrika campaign. But Friday it was back to the grind, to finish the National Gallery, and possibly more.

As I said in the previous post, Whistlejacket is perhaps the most 
prominently hung painting in the museum; this from the rotunda,
looking down the long corridor, the only painting you can see

Now in the Big British Room that was closed on our previous
visit...I am restraining and limiting myself to just this one Turner,
Dutch Boats in a Gale, 1801; of the 300 oil paintings, 30,000
sketches and watercolors, and 300 sketchbooks in the Turner
Bequest, the National Gallery has only a few, including his
pairings with Claude and Canaletto, already seen on this blog,
as well as The Fighting Temeraire, currently on loan to the 
Tate Britain, where the preponderance of the Bequest resides

Joseph Wright, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768;

one of the very greatest classics of British art, pregnant with meaning

and history; Boyle's Restoration era "air pump" enabled much

experimentation and learning in the physics of the time, and in

the development of science as we now know it; a century later,

air pumps were nearly commonplace and did not require specialists

to operate and interpret; nonetheless, experimentation continued, 

here determining what happens to a bird when it is deprived of air;

a painful experiment for some, especially the bird; Leviathan and

the Air Pump is a classic in the history and philosophy of science that

I once read in the way back...

George Stubbs' Whistlejacket, 1762; Stubbs specialized in equine portraiture,
and this is perhaps his most famous; acquired by the National Gallery for
£11MM, which was a lot of £s back in 1997; Whistlejacket was named for
a popular cold remedy, gin and treacle (British will flavor gin with anything);
lost just four races in his career; a popular favorite

Constable's very famous The Hay Wain, 1821

Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hallett, 1785

The Big British Room, as I call it, Vicki studying the Constable

Moving right along into the National Gallery's collection of
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings...Cezanne's 
Hillside in Provence, 1890

Monet's Snow Scene at Argenteuil, 1875; we like

Monet, Bathers at La Grenouille, 1869

Monet, Water Lilies, done after 1916 at Giverny, along with
the larger set of Water Lilies now at the Orangerie; one can see
why it was not included

Renoir, The Umbrellas, 1881; must have been
in Normandy

Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres, 1884

Seurat, The Channel at Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe, 1890;
included here mostly because we camped there in 2015

Van Gogh, Van Gogh's Chair, 1888; compare 
Gauguin's chair, also by Van Gogh, now in
Amsterdam, I think; all kinds of meaning suggested
about these two

Van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888

Van Gogh, A Wheatfield, with Cypresses, 1889; you have to 
have been through a mistral, the seasonal high winds of Provence,
to fully appreciate this painting, one of his last

We never miss a Berthe Morisot, one of the few female Impressionists,
here her Summer's Day, 1879

Monet, The Beach at Trouville, 1870; our favorite French beach,
in the north; mostly for the outstanding seafood market; what's
interesting about this is you can actually see, lower right, specks
of sand that flew onto the canvas as he was painting

I thought a fitting end to our National Gallery visits might be one
of Monet's Thames scenes...

But our thoughts were already on the Chunnel and the Eurostar
and the Gare du Nord...and Paris!