National Gallery Mop Up

National  Gallery in the November Sun

Well last Tuesday was the final visit to London's National Gallery for the rather excellent 2017 CityLit Course, Looking at Paintings  (still two more lessons to go but at Tate Modern and Britain).

Having visited the 'Genre's as proscribed by the French Academy  it was bit of a 'mop up' of works looking at the truly impressive Ambassadors by Holbein (complete with its own Memento Mori skull), the satisfying Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of  Martha and Mary by Diego Velasquez (nice how this connected with last week's painting of 'Fire' by Joachim Beuckelear ).

Paolo Veronese's 'Four Allegories of Love

So much to see

Little messages

Amongst the Paintings we'd not captured so far were  The Ambassadors (Holbein) was the most impressive, we also spent time looking at  Paolo Veronese's 'Four Allegories of Love' which I wasn't too sure about.

The painting is not helped by the deterioration of the smalt  and for me  it would be good to see them all  as they should have been exhibited (high on a ceiling).

Animals -Stubbs's  WhsitleJacket 

Also good to see Martha and Mary having a sulk - Velasquez 

We were also interested in Animals and Stubbs's  Whistlejacket from 1762 - oddly this painting doesn't look at all dated (perhaps because of the lack of background or other objects/people save for the horse) - Although the fashion was to show jsut the animal I can't help but wonder if it's finished.

George Stubbs was born in Liverpool and lived to the ripe old age of 81.

We took a look too at the floor mosaics at the Gallery entrance (not strictly paintings!) they are by the Russian born Artist and Poet Boris Anrep, the mosaics show 'The Labours of Life, The Pleasures of Life, The Awakening of the Muses and The Modern Virtues'.

One of Anrep's mosaics