National Gallery

Editor's Pick Award

Our Editors awarded this travel blog entry for providing relevant information that may be useful and inspiring for other travelers.

view of trafalgar square from the museum entrance

View more photos 

Today I went to the National Gallery since I didn't get to go to their yesterday.  A friend invited me to go to the Museum of Garden History but I decided I may go there another time.  The National Gallery is located at Trafalgar Square.

Today's lunch was a GoodFella's 3-cheese pizza.  I ate quickly since I woke up late, yet again.  The day was bright outside my window, but I put on an undershirt anyway because looks can be deceiving.  In this case, today was actually pretty warm in comparison with the past few days. 

I initially set out on the correct bus heading in the wrong direction.  "Trafalgar Square" was in the title of the bus but I guess it mean that it was coming from there?  I'm not sure why it was in the heading next to the bus' number.  Anyway, I got off and caught the correct bus in the correct direction.  I got to the National Museum around 1.00 PM.  I snapped a couple of pictures of Trafalgar Square and headed into the museum.  I picked up a map at the front desk knowing that I'd be lost otherwise.  They had split the museum into several different sections: 1200-1500, 1500-1600, 1600-1700, and 1700-1900.  I visited all four sections and saw amazing art pieces!  I overheard a tourguide mention that the gallery had over 2500 originals.  None of the pieces on display were replicas.  Some of the paintings even had their original frames!  All pieces of interest were paintings.  They had some small figurines but were definitely not the centerpiece of the museum.

view of the museum from trafalgar square

View more photos 

I thought it would be a repeat of going to the Tate Modern because to me...art is art is art.  But this was much different since paintings were not so abstract or "representative".  Most every painting was a portrait, nativity scene, biblical reference, or scenic portrait of the painter's hometown.  As with the Tate, photography was not allowed so I don't have any pictures of inside the gallery.  But the architecture in the show rooms was amazingly elegant.  They had tall over-arching ceilings with huge pillars and large empty rooms with a bench in the center as furniture.  I found these benches very useful when paintings were large (some had a dimension over 15 feet!).

I was wow-ed by the colors, textures, techniques, and shear size of many of the paintings.  One was a life-size painting of a stallion which was so realistic and brilliant.  The captions sometimes pointed out a bit of history of the piece or things that the viewer may not immediately catch (symbolism of an artifact that the portrayed held or something like that).  I saw people furiously scribbling in note pads notes about the paintings or even small sketches of it.  I didn't feel guilty because anything I sketched wouldn't do justice to the painting itself.  On top of that, I wouldn't even be able to recognize the painting from anything I drew up.

tons of pigeons in the square!

View more photos 

I spent 4 hours checking out the four time periods.  To me, they all seemed very similar to each other.  At one point I thought to myself "Were some of these paintings made before Jesus was born?  Did they simply draw him up as imagined in the Old Testament?!"  But I realized that all dates were A.D., duh!  For that matter, it was amazing to me how many paintings were religious in nature (I would say 1 of 4).  I was about to leave the museum, but I noticed on the map a 5th section called Manet to Picasso.  I have heard of Picasso, but I was thinking "What's a Manet?" as if it were a trail, path, or something similar (basically a noun)!  Just a clue as to how art-retarded I am.

The exhibit was great!  I spent another 1.5 hours in 3 small rooms cramped with art pieces from famous painters such as van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Rembrandt, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Seurat, and Poussin.  Their paintings were even more spectacular than those upstairs in the main exhibits.  They managed to be more colorful and somehow solicited a feeling in me when I stood in front of the pieces.  There was a complementary one-hour video being played in a small cinema that I sat in.  They explained brief histories of each artist, groups of artists (i.e. Impressionists), and light analyses of certain art pieces.  After watching the video, I went back into the exhibit area feeling a little more educated.  I could see, first-hand, what the narrator of the video was talking about when he went over techniques.  Also, I was able to differentiate nuances, such as brushstrokes, in styles among artists. 

I didn't leave the museum until it was dark outside!

View more photos 

I picked up a couple of souvenirs to bring home and made a donation to the museum.

I caught the bus home and made pasta w/chicken in a spiced tomato sauce that Sacha gave me.  I also heated up some nan bread.  Tonight, Laurenda's friend is having a birthday party at a club in Leicester Square.  We're all getting on the guest list (getting in free and we don't have to wait in line) so it should be a great night.  Tomorrow is a football match at 2 PM in North Dulwich, our home field.