London 2018: Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, Courtauld Gallery

There are many opportunities to view and appreciate art in London, in public museums, private collections, commercial art galleries and even on the streets, ranging from the old masters to modern and contemporary art to portraiture to pop and street art to architecture and design.  When we planned our itinerary for this trip, we tried to slot in a bit of everything so that we could experience the full gamut of what the London art scene had to offer.

We spent our third day in London down by Trafalgar Square, touring the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery.  Since we walked to nearby museums on our second day, this was our first chance to take the London Underground into Central London and I observed several interesting things along the way.  First of all, the plush, cushioned seats on the “Tube” are so comfortable and yet amazingly clean with no traces of spillage or food crumbs.  In fact all the stations and trains are kept spotless from what we could see.  I appreciated the arm rests that help prevent people “spreading” across multiple seats.  I’m not sure if it is by design or not, but it seems like the colours of the poles and the main colour scheme of the seats match the colour coding of the train lines.  For example, the thematic colour on the Picadilly line is blue, while the central line is orange and the District/Circle lines which seem to share a path and train for most of their route is Yellow (matching the Circle line).

We were extremely impressed with the timeliness, conciseness and clarity of the announcements made on the train, especially during a delay or outage.  On our subway system in Toronto, it seems like the crackling static on the public announcement system is always timed to occur at the most critical part of the message .. Delay at *#&@?!? Station.  We like the very upper-class British female voice that announces each station and the end destination of the train, but I must admit that on the Piccadilly line, we still giggle like juveniles when we hear this aristocratic voice repeatedly declare that “This is the train headed for Cockfosters”.  We are also repeatedly reminded both visually and verbally to “Mind the Gap” between the train and the platform.  In most cases, the gap is small but at some stations including Mansion House, the distance between the train and the platform is so wide that you could actually stick your foot through it if you don’t step carefully off the train.  While I am starting to get used to looking right (not left) for oncoming traffic when stepping into an intersection, the etiquette on the metro still confuses me.  On the escalator, you are told to keep right if standing and allow the people on the left to walk past.  This is the same as in North America.  But on the stairwells where people are coming both up and down, you are told to keep left.  I did not realize this on the first day and was almost barrelled over by several people running down for the train (and probably cursing "stupid tourist" under their breaths).  While we have run into the odd delay or closure due to accident, equipment failure or scheduled maintenance, the impact is minimal since there are so many transit lines going in every direction that it is not difficult to find an alternate route.

While we did visit the National Gallery on our previous trip to London, we have not been to the Portrait Gallery before, so this is where we started and intended to spend most of our time.  Open since 1856, the National Portrait Gallery holds a vast collection of portraits of important or famous British personalities including royalty, politicians, writers, artists, athletes, musicians, singers and celebrities.  The collection is comprised of paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, caricatures, miniatures and sculptures and spans centuries, concentrating on the 1400s to 1900s, with a smaller section representing current personalities.  The Portrait Gallery is laid out chronologically with the first floor covering 1400s-1837 (just prior to Queen Victoria).  As expected, there were many images of monarchs including what I thought looked like a rogue’s gallery of images of past kings and queens from William the Conqueror (1027-1087) to Mary I (1516-1558).  These portraits were probably a set, decorating the gallery or library of a single patron.  It was a strange sight to see a painting of a thin, young Henry VIII set next to his first wife Catherine of Aragon, as opposed to the traditional image of stout older Henry immortalized by Hans Holbein the Younger that we are used to seeing.  Similarly it was interesting to see images of young Queen Elizabeth I versus an older version of the monarch.  The latter portrait named “The Ditchley Portrait” has an interesting back-story as it was commissioned by her courtier Henry Lee as a gift and request for her forgiveness of his misbehaviour in living with his mistress.  Symbols of forgiveness in the painting include Elizabeth turning away from dark skies towards the light, and inscriptions including “She can but does not take revenge”.

In addition to Royalty, there is quite a selection noted personalities including a rare portrait of playwright William Shakespeare who needs no further description, architect Christopher Wren who rebuilt St. Paul’s Cathedral after it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, William Hogarth, the moralistic painter of satirical comic histories such as “The Rake’s Progress”, and pianist George Frideric Handel who performed “The Messiah”.  The odd pairing of two portraits depicting 3 foot 3 inches tall dwarf performer Joseph Bouwlaski and 728-pound former gaol-keeper Daniel Lambert, who billed themselves out as the smallest and heaviest man in the world respectively, is especially ironic since Joseph’s portrait is so much larger in size than Daniel’s.

On the next floor covering 1837-1959, Queen Victoria and her beloved husband and Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha were quite well represented.  There was a marble bust of 22-year-old Queen Victoria standing next to an oil painting of the Queen after her coronation in 1938. Nearby is an oil painting of the Prince Albert  which was specially commissioned for the gallery, based on a previous painting completed in 1859, a couple of years before his death.  Most stunning and romantic is the full-sized marble sculpture of the pair, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes.  The most interesting “portrait” is really more of a tableau which depicts an imaginary scene with real historical figures.  It shows Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, receiving an ambassador from East Africa, to whom she is presenting a bible.  When asked how Britain became so powerful, she replied that the secret of England’s power is in the bible.  This is based on an unsubstantiated anecdote that was well known in the 1850s.

In comparison to the previous floor of earlier historic personalities, in this section of 19th and 20th Century portraits, I recognized more names if not always their faces.  There were many portraits of famous authors including one of the three Bronte sisters (Charlotte who wrote Jane Eyre, Emily who wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne whose works I had not heard of) that is considered one of the highlights of the gallery, but is in such bad condition that you can see crease lines across the canvas.  Reading the write-ups attached to the portraits, I also recognized Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) , James Joyce (Ulysses), and Virginia Woolf (Mrs Dalloway).  In fact, there were two portraits of Virginia Woolf currently on display.  One was a photograph of her at age 20, while the second was a oil painting created 10 years later by her sister Vanessa Bell, depicting Woolf knitting.

In addition to authors, there were many other noted personalities in this section.  I was surprised to once again come across the name of Swedish Opera Singer Jenny Lind.  Until a few months ago, I had never heard of her, but since then, I’ve watched the movie “The Greatest Showman” which featured her, walked by her home in Earl’s Court East on our first day’s tour of the neighbourhood, and now she shows up again!  We also saw a painting of an elderly but distinguished-looking evolutionist Charles Darwin, a photograph of actor Charlie Chaplin in his iconic “Little Tramp” persona, and a bronze bust of playwright George Bernard Shaw with his trademark bushy beard in full display.  One of the most surprising portraits that I spotted was that of a relatively young (42 years old) and svelte Winston Churchill. Previously, I had only seen the iconic images of him in his latter years.  I had the same feeling that I did earlier when viewing the young Henry VIII or seeing a portrait of young Mao at the Military Museum in Beijing years ago.

The final section of the Portrait Gallery was the smallest and dealt with current personalities (both living and dead) who are still well known in popular culture today.  As always, the British Royal Family is represented with regal paintings of Queen Elizabeth II holding one of her beloved corgis, and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.  It was interesting to see a painting of Princess Diana without a matching one of Prince Charles.  Even today, years after her death, she still seems to be the more beloved figure in that union.   There is a very touching oil painting of Prince William and Prince Harry depicted in regimental dress uniform, seemingly in midst of an intimate conversation.   This 2009 work by Nicola Jane Philipps is the first official oil portrait of the two princes and perfectly captures the comradery and affection between the two brothers.

This final category contained many faces that would be globally recognizable by most people.  There was current pop star and singer Ed Sheeran, that “other ginger who is not Prince Harry”, as well as portraits of young Paul McCartney and Elton John.  McCartney’s painting was created at the height of Beatlemania by a friend of his brother Mike, and so it is innocuously titled “Mike’s Brother”.  We also saw a beautiful photograph of Cate Blanchette and a powerful bronze sculpture of Nelson Mandela that exudes magnetism yet a peaceful calm.

Heading to the National Gallery from the Portrait Gallery, we had to walk through Trafalgar Square, one of the few times that we would be in a crowded tourist area during our 3-week “Off the Beaten Path” tour of London.  The square was bustling with people enjoying the sunshine, buskers performing their acts, and some sort of peace rally with participants waving flags of various nationalities and a street artist drawing flags in chalk on the ground.  We also noticed a new sculpture that was not there during our last visit.  It is called “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist”, completed in 2018 by Michael Rakowitz as a project to recreate over 7000 archaeological artifacts looted from the Iraq Museum.  This sculpture in particular represents the “Lamassu”, a winged deity that guarded the Nergal Gate near Mosul, Iraq.  The work is actually a temporary exhibit, part of the “Fourth Plinth” project which has commissioned a different sculpture on this pillar in Trafalgar Square every 1-3 years since 1999.  When we were there in 2000, the sculpture was called “Regardless of History”, by Bill Woodrow, depicting a head crushed between a book and the roots of a tree.  Since then, the sculptures have included a large glass bottle containing Nelson’s ship, a blue rooster, the skeleton of a riderless horse and more.

Like the rest of our first vacation to London in 2000, our first visit to the National Gallery was done in a rush.  We spent the morning at the British Museum, wolfed down a granola bar for lunch on its steps before rushing off to the art museum.  We got there just in time to catch up to the guided tour that was starting to walk away.  On that tour, we received an in depth discussion of Jan Van Eyck’s painting Arnolfini Portrait amongst other works, but afterwards, we were left with just about 1.5 hours to see the works for ourselves.  Since there was not enough time to see everything, we chose to follow the sheet of recommended highlights, stopping in front of each piece to listen to the description about it on the audio guide.  Unfortunately the National Gallery is huge and it took time to traverse from room to room.  So when it became clear that I could not get through the list of highlights before closing time, I sat down on a bench and just listened to the commentaries on the audio guide while looking at the image on the highlight sheet.  It was therefore clear on this second visit to London that we needed to return to the National Gallery.

Armed with our smart phones, we found out that this time we would not require an audio guide since we could download the SmARTify app, which seems to be supported by many of the art museums around the world.  You use the app to scan the piece that you are looking at, and if the app recognizes it from within its image repository, it will bring up more information about it for you to read.  In some cases, the posted write-up in the museum was just as good, but other times, you might get a lot more background about the work that you are looking at.  As it turns out, you don't have to be standing in front of the actual art work.  You can scan a photo or image from the Internet and the Smartify app still works.

We found that we were not as interested in some of the more famous masterpieces owned by the National Gallery, such as Van Gogh’s sunflowers or works by Picasso and Monet, since we had already seen these works or equivalents either in traveling exhibitions that came to our local art gallery or in our previous visits to other cities like Paris and Amsterdam where there are entire museums dedicated to the works of these artists.  Regardless, we still found works that interested us.

One of the masterpieces that we concentrated on this time was The Ambassadors (1533) by Holbein the Younger.  In preparation, we had watched a YouTube video which provided a great analysis of the symbolism depicted in the painting.  The painting depicts 29-year-old Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador to Henry VIII on the left, lavishly dressed in furs, velvet and satin to denote his wealth.  He stands beside his friend 25-year-old Georges de Selve, the Bishop of Lavaur.  Their ages are inscribed on the dagger that de Dinteville holds and the book that de Selve rests his arm upon.  The objects surrounding the two men reflect on the state of the nation.  A broken string on the lute refers to the religious turmoil facing Europe with Henry VIII trying to separate from the Church in Rome.  An open book with a hymn by the monk Martin Luther may be a plea for Christian harmony, as is the tiny crucifix in the top left corner. The most interesting part of the painting is the distorted image on the floor in the centre of the painting.  Looking at it straight on, it is indiscernible but if you peer at it from the right side, apparently you see that the image is actually a diagonally-distorted anamorphic skull, a symbol of human mortality.  Understanding all the imagery and symbolism makes this painting so much more interesting than one might initially think.

A set of four paintings by Paolo Veronese form the “Four Allegories of Love”, each one concentrating on a specific aspect of love.  The first is titled “Happy Union” and features Venus, the Goddess of Love handing a couple a laurel wreath, signifying virtue, while the woman holds an olive branch symbolizing peace.  Cupid (love) and a dog (fidelity) stand at her feet.  The next painting is called “Respect” and shows a man resisting the temptation of a sleeping naked woman, despite Cupid’s urgings to proceed.  The third called “Scorn” shows Cupid beating a prone man with a stick while two women look on.  The partially clad woman represents carnal lust while the clothed woman carrying an ermine represents chastity.  The fourth painting is titled “Unfaithfulness” and depicts a naked woman holding the hands of two men as she tries to pass a secret note to her lover on the left.  Cupid is again found in the painting, this time looking rather suspiciously or accusingly at the interactions.

William Hogarth is known for his moralistic paintings that provide satirical social commentary on the evils of sin.  We first saw his famous “A Rake’s Progress” series at the John Soane Museum on our first visit to London.  Here at the National Gallery, we found “Marriage A La Mode”, a series of six paintings telling a story which warns of downfall that can come from vanity and greed.  A marriage of convenience is arranged between the son of a bankrupt earl and the daughter of a rich merchant seeking nobility.  The couple engage in heavy spending, gambling, drinking, partying and other vices, both having affairs with the earl’s son contracting venereal disease (denoted by a large black spot on his neck).  The wife is caught with her lover in her bedroom and the lover fatally stabs the earl’s son before climbing out the window.  The lover is caught and hanged while the wife takes poison in grief after learning of her lover’s fate.  This set of paintings skewer the excesses of upper class 18th century society and warns of the disastrous results of an ill-considered marriage for money instead of love.

My favourite exhibit at the National Gallery turned out to be a special program for school children ranging from ages 4-11 called “Take One Picture”.  Various grade school classes are brought in to view and discuss a work of art, and then use that as inspiration back in the classroom to create their own art pieces.  The current subject painting was Penelope With the Suitors (1509) by Pintoricchio, based on Homer’s tales of Odysseus (also known as Ulysses) and his Odyssey or long journey home from the Trojan Wars.  While he was away 10 years fighting in the war and another 10 years trying to make it back home, his loyal wife Penelope has been fending off suitors trying to replace her presumed lost husband.  Pintoricchio depicts a scene where Penelope sits at her loom weaving a funeral shroud for her father-in-law.  She has told the suitors that she cannot entertain any marriage proposals until she has finished her project, but secretly each night, she pulls apart her work from that day, making this a never-ending project and a stall tactic while she waits for her husband’s return.  The children from various schools took inspiration from different parts of the painting.  One class focused on Penelope as a woman of power and cleverness and drew portraits of other women in history who had the same traits.  Another class was intrigued by the weaving and learned to weave their own works of art.  Yet another group concentrated on Odysseus’s ship and made their own miniature ships out of twigs, wire, wet tissue paper, string and tape.  Then there was the class that noticed the cat sitting on a checkered floor in the foreground of the painting and from that, created a chess board with clay pieces shaped like cats.  We were so impressed by how creative and artistically accomplished these grade school children were in interpreting this painting.

Somerset House was originally the site of a Tudor palace built in 1552 for the Duke of Somerset.  It stood on the Strand overlooking the Thames River, but that structure was demolished in 1775 and rebuilt by Sir William Chambers as a Neoclassical building.  Today, it is an arts centre but you can still tour the historic parts of the complex including remnants of the old Tudor palace.  Unfortunately Somerset House was closed and the tours cancelled for the duration of a large photography exhibition.  Instead, we visited the Courtauld Gallery, situated in one of the wings the edge of the courtyard of Somerset House.  This is a relatively small art gallery compared to the National Gallery, with most of its works received as private donations to form the Courtauld Collection.  Despite its modest size, it holds some well-known Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, as well as other important works from the Renaissance through to the 20th century.   The collection is presided over by the Courtauld Institute of Art, known as one of the leading experts in the study of Art History and Conservation.

The highlight for us was seeing Édouard Manet’s iconic A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1881), depicting Suzon, an actual world-weary barmaid and prostitute (as denoted by Manet’s signature bowl of oranges) who worked at the Folies-Bergère in Paris.  This establishment was a beer hall for the middle-class, depicted as impressionistic blobs in the background.  It provided the patrons with music and circus entertainment, as can be seen by the legs and green shoes of a hanging trapeze artist in the top left corner.  Suzon’s melancholy, detached gaze is particularly striking and clearly conveys how she feels about her lot in life.  There has been great debate over whether the man whose reflection you can see on the right is actually speaking to Suzon or whether this is a deliberate optical illusion created by Manet since the angles and perspectives seem to be off.  While we have seen reproductions of this image on everything from tote bags to fridge magnets, it was quite the thrill to see the real thing up close.

Other impressive works included Cezanne’s The Card Players (1892), one of five paintings that the artist created on the same topic, a second version of Manet’s controversial Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe (1863), which was actually rejected by the Paris Salon, and a study for George Seurat’s Le Chahut.  We saw another version of this study in the Albright Knox museum in Buffalo but would like one day to see the original Le Chahut, which is in the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands.  I particularly liked Raoul Dufy’s The Passers-By (1906), which required so few brush strokes to produce the charming scene of strollers in a seaside park, probably in Normandy.