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selenakThe weather changed from warm but cloudy to cold but sunshine. That's England. It's also my day for the National Portrait Gallery. Which I love visiting when I'm in London. It's never as crowded as the National Gallery, and I find portraits fascinating.
Some new arrivals since I was here last are an oil on canvas of Ian McKellen, by Clive Smith, very recent since it was painted during his acting in "Dance of the Dead" with Helen Mirren. It's completely straight forward, like a pass-port photo - i.e. Ian McKellen's head (and just eough of the shoulders to make it obvious he's wearing an open blue shirt), white background, and comes across as vaguely impressionistic. Very intense, too; one of those portraits where you get the impression of them gazing back, no matter which angle of the room you approach them from.
Another new arrival is Fiona Shaw, who went for the opposite approach (or the painter did) - it's a huge frame as opposed to the small canvas, and she's depicted slumming it in her underwear. I'm amused at the small biography - female Richard II blah Medea blah awards left and right blah Aunt Petunia in Harry Potter films. It's probably going to be the fate of quite a lot of British actors. Their great tragic roles listed with appearing in HP as the ultimate accolade. Reminds me of reading the TS Eliot bio in "Cats" programms: Wasteland blah Nobel Prize blah posthumously winner for best musical script for "Cats".
Going upstairs and starting with the Tudors, seeing Richard III brings Josephine Tey to mind, irrestibably, and "The Daughter of Time" which created many a Ricardian. Having recently visited Florence and having seen Vasari's portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, I see she's right about a vague resemblence between the two. Though the monarch who really looks like an Italian cast in the wrong period and costume is Charles II., some rooms later. (He's also portrayed as spectacularily ugly but interesting-looking as Lorenzo was supposed to according to the descriptions, but those early Renaissance painters couldn't stop idealizing him.)
I'm more at home with the Tudors than with the Stuarts, yet this time I spent more time in the Restoration rooms, probably because I hastened through them all the other times. It's odd, I can't recall a single thin-lipped person being depicted, or someone with those angular faces you find in the late Plantagenet and then in the Tudor period en masse. As if everyone who could afford to have their portrait painted had gone with the flow of times, i.e. in sensual overkill after 30 years of Puritanism. It's not quite the masses of flesh one sees in Rubens, but it's definitely England-gone-Barque.
(Probably why the English still haven't gotten rid of the monarchy. They remember Cromwell and the no theatres, no sex, no fun attitude the last time the republic was around.)
One room is devoted to diarist Samuel Pepys and his circle of aquaintances and friends. Strange, but I never could bring myself to liking Pepys. Everyone else seems to be charmed. It's probably due to comments like, regarding whether a certain noble should marry his mistress - "Nobody puts on the hat he shat in". As far as English journal writers are concerned, I'm a Boswell girl. Who was just as profligate as Pepys but, one century later, gives the impression of actually liking women when he's not having sex with them as well. Also, he's such a fanboy, not just with Dr. Johnson but with Rosseau and Voltaire and every other interesting person and/or celebrity he could gatecrash, with the gift of getting great conversation out of them all.
Later, when I've arrived among the Victorian artists, my eyes are irresistably drawn to the Brontes. Not just because I like them as writers. I like Dickens as well, and Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, all of whom are present here, and painted by much more skillful and professional artists. But Branwell Bronte's portrait of his sisters has its own magic, and as often as it's reproduced, no copy in a biography or postcard or memorabilia can give you the sensation of vulnerability and intensity the original has. At the same time, there's a sense of transcendence in the way Anne and Emily look at something outside the frame of th picture we can't see; Charlotte in her dowdy not-to-be-messed depiction is the only one who comes across as somewhat grounded in reality, but the way she hides her hands makes her vulnerable as well. And then there's Branwell himself, wo was originally there with his sisters. The outlines of his figure can be seen now the columm which he painted over the self-portrait has paled. Of course the symbolism is inescable today - washed-out, dissappearing Branwell - but neither he or the girls could have known when he painted this. They were still a quartett then.
Some new arrivals since I was here last are an oil on canvas of Ian McKellen, by Clive Smith, very recent since it was painted during his acting in "Dance of the Dead" with Helen Mirren. It's completely straight forward, like a pass-port photo - i.e. Ian McKellen's head (and just eough of the shoulders to make it obvious he's wearing an open blue shirt), white background, and comes across as vaguely impressionistic. Very intense, too; one of those portraits where you get the impression of them gazing back, no matter which angle of the room you approach them from.
Another new arrival is Fiona Shaw, who went for the opposite approach (or the painter did) - it's a huge frame as opposed to the small canvas, and she's depicted slumming it in her underwear. I'm amused at the small biography - female Richard II blah Medea blah awards left and right blah Aunt Petunia in Harry Potter films. It's probably going to be the fate of quite a lot of British actors. Their great tragic roles listed with appearing in HP as the ultimate accolade. Reminds me of reading the TS Eliot bio in "Cats" programms: Wasteland blah Nobel Prize blah posthumously winner for best musical script for "Cats".
Going upstairs and starting with the Tudors, seeing Richard III brings Josephine Tey to mind, irrestibably, and "The Daughter of Time" which created many a Ricardian. Having recently visited Florence and having seen Vasari's portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, I see she's right about a vague resemblence between the two. Though the monarch who really looks like an Italian cast in the wrong period and costume is Charles II., some rooms later. (He's also portrayed as spectacularily ugly but interesting-looking as Lorenzo was supposed to according to the descriptions, but those early Renaissance painters couldn't stop idealizing him.)
I'm more at home with the Tudors than with the Stuarts, yet this time I spent more time in the Restoration rooms, probably because I hastened through them all the other times. It's odd, I can't recall a single thin-lipped person being depicted, or someone with those angular faces you find in the late Plantagenet and then in the Tudor period en masse. As if everyone who could afford to have their portrait painted had gone with the flow of times, i.e. in sensual overkill after 30 years of Puritanism. It's not quite the masses of flesh one sees in Rubens, but it's definitely England-gone-Barque.
(Probably why the English still haven't gotten rid of the monarchy. They remember Cromwell and the no theatres, no sex, no fun attitude the last time the republic was around.)
One room is devoted to diarist Samuel Pepys and his circle of aquaintances and friends. Strange, but I never could bring myself to liking Pepys. Everyone else seems to be charmed. It's probably due to comments like, regarding whether a certain noble should marry his mistress - "Nobody puts on the hat he shat in". As far as English journal writers are concerned, I'm a Boswell girl. Who was just as profligate as Pepys but, one century later, gives the impression of actually liking women when he's not having sex with them as well. Also, he's such a fanboy, not just with Dr. Johnson but with Rosseau and Voltaire and every other interesting person and/or celebrity he could gatecrash, with the gift of getting great conversation out of them all.
Later, when I've arrived among the Victorian artists, my eyes are irresistably drawn to the Brontes. Not just because I like them as writers. I like Dickens as well, and Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, all of whom are present here, and painted by much more skillful and professional artists. But Branwell Bronte's portrait of his sisters has its own magic, and as often as it's reproduced, no copy in a biography or postcard or memorabilia can give you the sensation of vulnerability and intensity the original has. At the same time, there's a sense of transcendence in the way Anne and Emily look at something outside the frame of th picture we can't see; Charlotte in her dowdy not-to-be-messed depiction is the only one who comes across as somewhat grounded in reality, but the way she hides her hands makes her vulnerable as well. And then there's Branwell himself, wo was originally there with his sisters. The outlines of his figure can be seen now the columm which he painted over the self-portrait has paled. Of course the symbolism is inescable today - washed-out, dissappearing Branwell - but neither he or the girls could have known when he painted this. They were still a quartett then.
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Date: 2003-06-20 03:51 pm (UTC)The Daughter of Time was a memorable book. :-)
I did visit the National Gallery next door, though. There were two paintings in particular I could have sat there watching for hours.
- "The Virgin of the Rocks" by Da Vinci. It's something about the angel. And the virgin. And the composition. So splendid. Reproductions don't do it justice. I don't think Leonardo needs an explanation, though.
- "Saint Mary Magdalene Approaching the Sepulchre", by Savoldo. I must admit that this is partly due to the nod to it there was in the Millennium episode "Anamnesis". She's so... I want to keep looking into her eyes.
I love "A Girl at a Window" by Louis-Léopold Boilly, and "Lake Keitele", by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, too. I bought postcards of those. (There were no postcards or reproductions of the Savoldo, unfortunately.)
The National Gallery is...
Date: 2003-06-21 01:37 am (UTC)Yes, the NPG is so worth it.
Postcards: they have the entire thing, all the paintings, on CD Rom now for the NPG, so I presume they will for the NG as well!