July 11, 2023 - London
National Gallery
 

With our unexpected stay in London thanks to British Airways, we had a full day to sightsee.  We decided to check out the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square since we've never visited that before.

Here's the famous Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.
   
One of the four monumental bronze lions at the base of Nelson's Column.
   
Looking at the National Gallery.  Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900.   Construction on the present building began in 1832 and it opened to the public in 1838. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history.
   
The Gallery's interior was very impressive.
   
Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, 1782, wearing the uniform of the cavalry division known as Tarleton's Green Horse    Tarleton fought throughout the American Revolutionary War and led the British Legion -- a force of American Loyalist cavalry and light infantry -- towards the end.
   
Mr. and Mrs. William Hallett ('The Morning Walk'), 1785.
   
Portrait of Cornelis van Diest -- a prominent citizen of Antwerp -- and his wife Lucretia Courtois:  1636-8.
   

Erasmus, 1523.  The humanist scholar rests his hands on a book with the inscription:  'The Labours of Hercules of Erasmus of Rotterdam'.  This alludes to his greatest achievements.

A Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist, and philosopher, through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture
   
'The Virgin of the Rocks', painted by Leonardo da Vince (1452-1519).  The Virgin holds out her hand above the Christ Child.
   
'The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb) , 1500  by Michelangelo.  The painting was never finished.
   
Another unfinished painting by Michelangelo:  'The Manchester Madonna', 1492, possibly as early as 1494.
   
'The Family of Darius before Alexander', 1565-7, by Paolo Veronese.
   
The only surviving large-scale drawing by Leonardo da Vinci called the Burlington House Cartoon after the building in which it was displayed when it was in the collection of the Royal Academy.
   

Equestrian Portrait of Charles I -- King of Great Britain; i.e., a united England, Wales, and Scotland -- about 1638-9 by Anthony van Dyck, a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy.

Charles I's attempt to rule without parliament led to civil war and ultimately his execution in 1649.  It's not always good to be the King; you have to be good at it.
   
'Belshazzar's Feast', about 1636-8 by Rembrandt.
   
The Gavron Room, typical gallery.
   
'Self Portrait at the Age of 34' , 1640 by Rembrandt, a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art..
   
'Anna and the Blind Tobit', about 1630.  By the great Rembrandt, it is the story of Anna, her husband and their son Tobias is told in the apocryphal Book of Tobit (Chapter 2).  God tested their faith by reducing them to poverty and blinding Tobit.  In the 17th century they were considered to be examples of piety in adversity.
   
Don Adrian Pulido Pareja, after 1647.  Pareja (1606-1667) was Captain General of the Spanish armies in the New World colonies.
   
Cardinal de Richelieu, 1633-40, by Philippe de Champaigne.   Armand-Jean du Piessis (1585- 1642), better known as Cardinal Richelieu, also known as "the Red Eminence", became a Cardinal in 1622 and then Chief Minister to King Louis XIII of France in 1624 until his death.
 
Richelieu sought to consolidate royal power and restrained the power of the nobility in order to transform France into a strong centralized state. In foreign policy, his primary objectives were to check the power of the Habsburg dynasty (reigning notably in Spain and Austria) and to ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648 after that conflict engulfed Europe.
 
Richelieu is known as the inventor of the table knife. Annoyed by the bad manners that were commonly displayed at the dining table by users of sharp knives (who would often use them to pick their teeth),[6] in 1637 Richelieu ordered that all of the knives on his dining table have their blades dulled and their tips rounded. The design quickly became popular throughout France and later spread to other countries.
 
Richelieu has frequently been depicted in popular fiction, notably as the lead villain in Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel The Three Musketeers and its numerous film adaptations [which is how I got to know him].
   
Impressive!
   
'The Fighting Temeraire tugged up to her Last Berth to be Broken Up, 1838, by Joseph Mallord William Turner.
 
The painting depicts the last journey of the Temeraire, a famous warship sold by the Royal Navy in 1838.  Turner contrasts the veteran ship, seen against the setting sun, with the modern steam-propelled tug.
 
HMS Temeraire was a 98-gun second-rate ship of the line of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. Launched in 1798, she served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, mostly on blockades or convoy escort duties. She fought only one fleet action, the Battle of Trafalgar, but became so well known for that action and her subsequent depictions in art and literature that she has been remembered as The Fighting Temeraire.  At the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October, the ship went into action immediately astern of Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory. During the battle Temeraire came to the rescue of the beleaguered Victory, and fought and captured two French ships, winning public renown in Britain.
 
The painting continues to be held in high regard: it was voted Britain's favourite painting in a BBC radio poll in 2005[3] and it appears briefly in the James Bond movie Skyfall.
 
John Ruskin foreshadowed the fate of Temeraire's wood in an essay which claimed that "Perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveller may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on its rugged wood, and even the sailor's child may not answer nor know that the night dew lies deep in the war rents of the wood of the old Temeraire."
   

'The Umbrellas', about 1881-6, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

This bustling Paris street in the rain is typical of the scenes of everyday modern life beloved by Renoir and the impressionists.

Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau."
   
Another Renoir, 'The Skiff", 1875.
   
Of course, if you're talking Impressionists, you know there's going to be a Monet:  'The Water Lily Pond', 1899.
   
And another Monet:  'Snow Scene at Argenteuil', 1875.
   

Of course, there must also be a Van Gogh:  this is one of five versions of 'Sunflowers' on display in museums and galleries across the world.  We saw one of them earlier in this Germany trip -- in the Munich Neue Pinakothek.  We saw another in the Amsterdam Van Gogh museum a few years ago.  Van Gogh made the paintings to decorate his house in Arles in readiness for a visit from his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin.

‘The sunflower is mine’, Van Gogh once declared, and it is clear that the flower had various meanings for him. The different stages in the sunflower’s life cycle shown here, from young bud through to maturity and eventual decay, follow in the vanitas tradition of Dutch seventeenth-century flower paintings, which emphasise the transient nature of human actions. The sunflowers were perhaps also intended to be a symbol of friendship and a celebration of the beauty and vitality of nature.

The sunflower pictures were among the first paintings Van Gogh produced in Arles that show his signature expressive style. No other artist has been so closely associated with a specific flower, and these pictures are among Van Gogh’s most iconic and best-loved works.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853 – 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterized by bold colors and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was beginning to gain critical attention before he died at age 37, by what was suspected at the time to be a suicide.  During his lifetime, only one of Van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.
   
'Fruit Dish, Bottle and Violin', 1914 by Pablo Picasso.  I don't see it; I don't get it.
 
Picasso (1881-1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century
   

'Harvest:  Le Pouldu', 1890 by Paul Gauguin.

Gauguin (1848 – 1903) was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements. He was also an influential practitioner of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.  While only moderately successful during his lifetime, Gauguin has since been recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism.
   
The dome of Room 34, the central octagon of the Barry Rooms.
   

'Time orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty', 1746, by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni.

The winged figure of Time, who holds an hourglass, orders his wizened female companion Old Age to disfigure the fresh-faced features of Beauty.
   
'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey', 1833 by Paul Delaroche.
 
Lady Jane Grey reigned as Queen for nine days in 1553 until deposed by supporters of the Catholic Queen Mary.  She was beheaded at the Tower of London.  Think politics is rough now?
   

Portrait of the great Duke of Wellington by Francisco Goya

Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of London, is depicted after his liberation of Spain from French occupation at the Battle of Salamanca in 1812.  Three years later he would defeat Napoleon at Waterloo, with a little help from the Prussians.

In August 1961 an unemployed bus driver, Kempton Bunton, stole Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, in what remains the only successful theft from the gallery.  Four years later, Bunton returned the painting voluntarily. Following a high-profile trial, he was found not guilty of stealing the painting, but guilty of stealing the frame.
   
Great art gallery, just what you would expect in London.  The place was jammed; lot  of people, maybe because the price is right.  Donut.
   
 
   
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