artfirstprimo at the National Gallery

Welcome back art lovers. I hope those of you able to attend my 11:30 tour of the National Gallery on Friday morning 4th November enjoyed it.  If you missed it or just want a reminded of which pictures we looked at so you can visit them again with a friend, here's a reminder list of those paintings:

We started with the small but perfectly formed Jan van Eyck (active 1422-died 1441) painting - The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434.  This exquisite painting in oil by the Netherlandish master has many mysterious conundrums contained within its fastidiously detailed composition.  van Eyck was not only famous in the Netherlands and of course Bruges, where he painted this image, but he was also famous in Italy; where he was once hailed as the inventor of oil painting.  Italian artist had been egg-white for centuries as a binding agent for paint pigments, while Netherlandish artists such as van Eyck had not only perfected the use of oil, but taken it to a degree of sophistication that has arguably never been surpassed.

The next painting on my 11:30 tour was by the brothers Antonio (about1432-1498) and Piero (about 1441-before 1496) del Pollaiuolo.  The Pollaiuolo painting, a large-scale single panel altarpiece was called, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, completed in 1475.  The Pollaiuolo altarpiece is one of the most securely documented paintings in the National Gallery and a superb demonstration of Renaissance manipulation of mathematical perspective, it was also painted in the very year of Michelangelo's birth.

Also on the 11:30 tour was a painting by Claude Lorrain (1604/5?-1682) called, Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648.  Claude's ability to create realistic light effects in his paintings and his ability to infuse previously anodyne landscape and seascape subjects with mythological subjects helped to popularise such subjects and bring him a host of admires who were inspired by his works longs after his death, including John Constable who was a life-long admired who famously strove throughout his life to reproduce light in his paintings as Claude had done in his.

The 11:30 tour then moved on to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) The Judgement of Paris, probably painted between 1632-5.  Rubens was obsessed with this subject from Greek mythology, The Judgement of Paris, and painted eight times throughout his life from 1600 to 1640; for reasons unknown apart from his last version painted just before he died.

The 11:30 tour finally ended with Paul Gauguin's (1848-1903) Faa Iheihe, 1898,a late painting from his last years in Tahiti. Gauguin's now legendary time in the South Pacific was recently the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London.  This one of Gauguin's last paintings like many of his Tahitian paintings attempt to capture as Gauguin says "A long lost barbarian luxury".  However, while his wife Mette Sophie Gadd was back in her native Denmark with their five children, Gauguin wrote to his fellow painters in Paris boasting "I'm sowing my seed everywhere".

If you missed my subsequent 14:30 tour it or just want a reminded of which pictures we looked at so you can visit them again with a friend, here's a reminder list:

My 14:30 tour of the National Gallery began with a painting by Dieric Bouts (1400?-1475) called 'The Entombment, prob 1450's.  A rare image being the only entombment subject by this artist in existence, and also painted on the rare support of linen.  This was followed by two paintings of the same subject, one by Giovanni Bellini (active about 1459, died 1516) The Agony in the Garden, about 1465 and another by Andrea Mantegna (about 1430/1-1506) also called The Agony in the Garden, about 1460.  These images hang next to each other in the National Gallery, Sainsbury wing, not only because they are of the same subject, but also because Mantegna married Bellini's sister.

The NG 14:30 tour then went on to look at Jean-Honore Fragonard's (1732-1806) Psyche showing her Sisters her Gifts from Cupid, 1753.  The story in this picture comes from the pen of the Roman author Lucius Apuleius; c. 125 – c. 180.  This painting was followed by the hugely theatrical painting by Paul Delaroche (1795-1856) called The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833, depicting an event that had taken place two centuries earlier, and dramatised by Delaroche in such a way as taking certain artistic liberties with this historical event, which saw the 16 year old Lady Jane Grey rule England for just nine days before being beheaded on the 12th February 1554. 

The 14:30 tour finally ended with that Finish occasional Impressionist Akeseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) with his painting called Lake Kaitele, 1905, the only painting by a Finnish artist in the National Gallery's Permanent Collection. Not only was this picture painted some time after Impressionism had officially ended back in 1886, nut it also feature a subject matter no French Impressionist painted would ever tackle - a scene inspired by Finnish folk lore.

Just half an hour after these tours I also gave a free ten minute talk at 16:00 in room eight of the National Gallery on Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, commonly referred to as Il Parmigianino - 1503-1540.  This High Renaissance painting of a Madonna and Child with a young John the Baptist squeezed into the edge of the composition is actually on loan from a private collection rather than forming part of the National Gallery's Permanent Collection.  Parmigianino was born in Parma hence the name, and painted in the same period as Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo, indeed he was mostly influenced by Michelangelo's late style of painting, retrospectively referred to as 'Mannerism'.

But for now I m signing out until my next report from the world art, hope to see you all there.