Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... The National Gallery is not short of big, attention-grabbing showpieces, but there are also small, unassuming pictures that can stop you in your tracks and compel your attention just as effectively. One that I often return to is this still ... Read More...
National treasures
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... When you enter room 56, tucked away in the farthest reaches of the Sainsbury Wing, chances are there’ll be a cluster of visitors obscuring your view of The Arnolfini Portrait. You might feel a bit sorry for the room’s ... Read More...
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... A rather racy pair of treasures this week. Hilaire-Germaine-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is considered to be one of the founders of Impressionism (he exhibited with Monet et al) but in fact he rejected the label – calling himself a ‘Realist’ – ... Read More...
Nige continues our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... The National Gallery is not short of fine Venetian paintings, having a clutch of great Titians (including the ruinously over-restored Bacchus and Ariadne), and glorious Veroneses and Tiepolos, all full of sumptuous colour, painterly verve and joie de ... Read More...
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... Just as Breugel’s irreverent Adoration of the Kings is an enjoyably startling incongruity amongst the National’s religious scenes, so An Old Woman is a bit of a surprise amongst its numerous portraits of noblewomen and alabaster-skinned beauties. Painted in about 1513 ... Read More...
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... In a room full of paintings, why does a particular one leap out? Practically every painting in the National Gallery would probably leap out if it were instead displayed in a common-or-garden gallery, so a painting housed here must ... Read More...
Originally sited at 100 Pall Mall – a private townhouse – the National Gallery opened in its current Trafalgar Square premises in 1838. Being situated in the ‘very gangway of London’ is a key element of the National’s raison d'être. As Mr Justice Coleridge wrote in 1857, the Gallery should ... Read More...
