Painter’s Paintings at the National Gallery

These “themed” exhibitions (as opposed to those of a single artist or movement) have mixed results in my experience.  Often the theme is a little weak and seems to be just something to fill the calendar.  This one is not like that. Its good but even the bad one’s have the same thing that this one has in the it exposes you to artists and possibly whole genres that you weren’t previous aware of.  This has happened to me several times, the Delacroix exhibition introduced me to Redon.

The conceit behind the National Gallery's latest offering is paintings owned by famous painters.  They have included with the displays some works by the painters themselves that allows you to see their influences.  There is a large variety of things on display.

First up on display was Lucien Freud and you are confronted from the kick off with a self portrait.  I find this piece a bit murky with the subject being too similar to the background for my taste but I did like the thick crusty paint particularly on the gouty nose.  I’ve never been that fond of Freud.  He did have some very good things in his collection though.

There was a very sweet pen and ink birthday card sketch by Frank Auerbach showing them hanging out in the café.  I have said this before of Auerbach he is much better in sketch form, when he is not hiding behind layers of paint.

There were Cezannes.  I think Cezanne is rapidly becoming one of my favourite painters.  I like his trees and the way he uses them to frame the images.  I like his soft blurred use of green and blue shadows and ill defined edges and blurred features of people. There was a good example of this there call the Afternoon in Naples where the job of the framing trees is instead taken by a curtain and leaning servant.  Incidentally who lets someone serve them tea post coital?  Only in art it would seem.

Corot is an artist that was floating around on the edge of my consciousness before but I’d never really encountered before.  There was portrait there, classical ¾ pose, a very dark background and an enormous sleeve bursting out into foreground. 

There were some sculpture on display.  I don’t engage emotionally with figurative sculpture (although I do like abstract work).  I don’t know why,  they don’t draw me in, in the way that painting do.  I often think it is a shame that the classical sculptures on display in places like the V&A no longer have the colour on them they would have in antiquity. I digress, back to the show.

A small Constable portrait.  Not seen a Constable portrait before.  It was interesting to see the ways it was similar to Cezanne,  blue shadow and blurred suggested features (the ear particularly).  I can see a consistency in taste here in Freud’s taste.

The next room and an array of impressionists.  Two Matisses, one self portrait, large areas of colours and stark lines, very blocky and opposite that the portrait of Greta Moll which is softer and more pastel colours done with quick vigorous strokes.  They sit either side of a good Matisse sculpture, enormous and hulking called Back III.  Another Cezanne of bathers under the traditional trees, made up of small blobs of colours in different planes. 

Dominating the room was a large Degas done in various shades of red with blue/purple as shadow.  This is all about the texture with a good use of naked canvas as highlight points, almost like watercolour (but it is in fact I think oil paint).  The two figures morph out of the background. I like this very much.   There were also a couple of dull Picasso’s grey and boring but all about the composition.

I shall being to skip along more quickly and only comment on matters that attracted my attention one way or another.

Gauguin had a very nice portraits of flowers which appealed to me greatly.  The flowers were simplified and geometric in strong good complimenting colours.  The shape was nicely reflected in the pattern on the pot.  I always wonder in these portraits if the colours painted were per-selected in the flowers or altered on painting to make a better composition.

Manet – Execution of Maximillian. Very large.  This is an extraordinary piece made all the more evocative by the fact that it is incomplete.  Parts of Maximillian disappear off to the left, the panels that complete them having being lost to history.  What makes for a good impact is the anonymity of the firing squad contrasted by the homely, warm looking late middle aged man, calmly loading his rifle.

The next room had two collections that of Lord Leighton and Watts.  I had not encountered Leighton before but I am glad I did.  I really liked his work and will have to go to Leighton House.  There is a good avuncular portrait of him.  A man with an excellent beard. 

The stand out pieces were four long narrow works by Corat representing four  different times of day.  They are painted on wood.  Long narrow trees almost for the whole painting frame, with bury energetic leaves,  the centre view which in each one is different but thematically linked.  I am glad these pieces are all together as they do play well off each other.  I stood there for several minutes trying to work out which one I preferred but my mind refuse to fix on each one.

Opposite these are the work of Antony Watts.  Not a man I had heard off before and while technically very competent I found them quite dull.

Van Dyck collection next.  Many people greatly like Van Dyck and there was on display a powerful picture by him of a grey stallion called the Horse of Achilles, all steam and vigour which I liked.  His portraits though while excellent in a number of ways I find dull.  I can’t relate to these scowling dark clothed Dutchmen, no matter how excellently rendered. What I did like was his almost grey scale painting of Cano and Ubaloo, just black, white and shades of blue. 

New painter was encountered here, for me anyway, that of Reni and the idea, which I shall steal, of painting oil on copper which gives a lovely warm golden to the piece. 

Depictions of the gospels in art canoften be dull. There is a worthiness that seeps into many of them..  There was here though a piece by Bellini called by The Agony in the Garden.  There was a Delacroix type use of colour with the blue tunic of the main figure broken up by red. In the background a strange ghostly figure. I like the odd landscape it is all in.

The shows finishes off with a large Titian.  Finish on a high.