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!

Return To The British Museum Again

[We resume our regularly scheduled programming...] 

Still the Elgin Marbles and other Greek stuff we wanted to see, mostly ancient ceramics, were closed. They have been closed since early July, when we arrived. So we contented ourselves again looking at more jewelry, armor, and other things. At least we're getting a fair sense of the encyclopedic nature of this vast museum. Such a contrast with, for example, the National Gallery of Art, which is strictly paintings, strictly European, strictly Medieval to 1900. But still wonderful. And so is the British Museum. Encyclopedically.

A cut-steel chatelaine or belt hook, with needlework
tools, Victorian; I trust you already have one of these,
Tawana

Incredibly carved brooches and such

Bejeweled too; in case you are looking for gift ideas for Vicki,
she really liked this one

Moving right along...an art deco stainless steel corn set...yes,
for corn on the cob...the pitcher to pour melted butter and salt
and pepper shakers; note how I cleverly composed this shot
so that Vicki and I are mirrored on the sides of the pitcher and
shakers...worthy of a Dutch still life!

Steel dress sword (lower), snuff box, and watch owned by the
historian Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall, etc.)

All sorts of stuff

Gold medallion of Henry VIII; given only to close personal buds;
inscribed "Your pal always, Hank"

Ditto, Anne Boleyn's daughter

Weapon favored by bad guys, a crossbow, reminding me of
happy times in Volterra

Hand-held mortar, 16th century; seriously; as Frederic the Great

once said, God favors the larger calibers

Breastplate for beer drinker

Nice solid gold champagne coolers; "ice pails"; as the museum
description said, these are the only ones of any age that were
not melted down...

This is a pole axe; you do not want to be pole-axed

Three incredible models--olive, mother of pearl, ivory--of the
Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, made for the tourist, I mean pilgrim,
trade there in the 17th century; helpful models, indeed

Forbidden zone...one of the several halls we were pining to see,
closed off

Mise a jour intermediaire

Nous sommes a Paris. Our rental in Bloombury ended August 31st, and this morning we hopped the Eurostar to Paris for the beginning of a two month, more or less, rental in the 2e arrondisement. Rue Saint Denis. Much more to follow. But first I have to do the eight or ten posts remaining from London, a visit we very, very much enjoyed. 

France: countryside south of Calais, 200 mph. Can't decide 
whether this is more Turner or Monet.

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...