Week 4 looking at Paintings - National Gallery again

National Gallery -A Gallery that's hard to fault or imagine better

Back with the excellent Julia Musgrave who is leading the CityLit looking at Paintings course yesterday and again the National Gallery.

Portraits this week and I reckon they're great -although in the hierarchy of paintings we see Portraits below History (in the Hierarchy of Genres) - this  seems to me to be pretty arbitrary anyway.


Something we didn't really unpick was when a picture becomes a portrait - is it just a single figure, looking at Portrait definitions it seems that head and upper body should dominate. 



The power plays involved in portraiture were very evident in our tour, our first painting was Portrait of Pope Julius II by Raphael (of which there are several versions)  and the fact that it was commissioned by the sitter who was probably the most powerful man in Europe means that it is his message that is at the forefront - what I loved here was finding out about how the work at one stage had a blue background - this made it almost like a Pop Art picture (to me anyway).

Julia also highlighted some of the other detail which reflected Julius's family and his extravagance (the rings on his fingers).

Nonnius a clever Doctor 

Looking at the painting of Christina of Denmark by Hans Holbein (the Younger) we were educated to the fact that Holbein had been dispatched to capture a likeness of the young widow so that Henry VIII could weigh up the possibility of her being his next wife (she was luckily spared this fate) - the court Painter was being used as a sort of dating app (a primitive Tinder).


The painting of Ludovicus Nonnius by Rubens  reveals another function of earlier portraits, here the items placed around the sitter show his standing - he was accomplished and intellectual, a doctor and in the painting we can see his learning (the books)  and the bust of Hippocrates (showing the medical associations) -  The artist shows his skill (perhaps a little showily) with the foreshortened book.


Klimt's portrait of Hermine Gallia was another highlight and reflects changes to portraiture that were apparent with the introduction of photography - the subject was an important figure in Austrian society prior to the period of Nazi rule.

Not the bling sometimes associated with Klimt

Women are (as so often) the subject more often than the painter but some subjects were influential - like Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame (by Francois Hubert Drouais (1727-1775) - here we see a painting of a clever woman with many interests.

There was a painting that stood out - it was a Self Portrait of an assured woman - smiling, this was Self Portrait in a Straw Hat by  Elisabeth Vigee le Brun.

 Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame

An early 'Selfie'

For me seeing a portrait now I am interested to know about  who commissioned the work and what other indicators are included in the work to help us understand the message being made by the work - perhaps odd that we didn't visit the National Portrait Gallery next door for this week 4?

And lovely biscuits

On the subject of Art - I really like the lovely Gaufrette biscuits from Beniko not too sure on what Hokusai connection is..

Lovely biscuits