149 Paintings You Really Should See in Europe — Great Britain and Ireland
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About this ebook
This chapter from Julian Porter’s essential companion to all the major European museums and galleries discusses some of the greatest paintings to be found in the museums and galleries of the United Kingdom and Ireland. His passion for art began with the seven years he spent as a student tour guide in Europe. In this segment he visits London, Dublin, and the university towns of Cambridge and Oxford and discusses works by masters such as Constable, Turner, Waterhouse and many more.
In the usually pretentious arena of art connoisseurs, Porter’s voice stands out as fresh and original. He finds the best of the best, which he describes with entertaining irreverence, and spares you hours of sore feet and superfluous information.
Julian Porter
Julian Porter is a litigation lawyer whose other passion in life is art. He’s had a lot of fun looking at art and wants to share his enthusiasm with others. He has lectured in galleries from Madrid to St. Petersburg. He lives in Toronto.
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149 Paintings You Really Should See in Europe — Great Britain and Ireland - Julian Porter
1
GREAT BRITAIN
AND IRELAND
British and Irish galleries are fun. Not only do they contain some of the world’s greatest paintings, but these paintings are often housed in settings that make the overall experience of visiting the galleries a multilayered treat.
The National Gallery just may be the world’s foremost art museum. It is literally in the very middle of London, on Trafalgar Square. The view from the gallery overlooking the Thames and the parliament buildings is stunning. There are two entrances — the Sainsbury entrance on the left as you face the gallery, and one in the centre. If you leave by the centre door you look down toward Westminster and the vast scene of a city in motion — the square before you is always full of people.
And get this — the gallery is free. Just imagine that, if you worked nearby, every day at noon you could step in and have a rendezvous with a different painting. What a glorious opportunity!
Then there’s the recently renamed Tate Britain, which reminds me of why I wrote this book. It offers sumptuous and varied fare in the work of many important artists. In my list of favourites, I note paintings by Millais, Waterhouse, and Whistler as well as Turner. The gallery has so many Turners — from large to small, in several media — that it cannot display them all at once, so they are on rotating permanent exhibition.
Go to the back of the gallery and up a staircase to a study centre that has special exhibitions and many of Turner’s sketchbooks (bequeathed by him to the nation) on view. Be sure to look at some of them.
The museum also has a marvellous video demonstration by Michael Chaplin, a contemporary painter, that shows how Turner prepared his medium and painted watercolours. It explains how he would have mixed colours, worked with wet paper, how he scratched
watercolour surfaces, and how his drawings were done.
It conveys Turner’s techniques for drawing, painting, using graphite, chalk, pencil, and a variety of brushes. It also explains the development of colours for artistic practice and when they were invented. It is the best demonstration I’ve seen on how art is created. Lasting a total of twenty minutes, it’s a crash course on watercolour. The room has eight drawing tables with paper and pencils, and before you is a Turner sketch. Try to copy it, and keep your work. You will be amazed by what you have learned in such a short time and delighted by your new-found appreciation of the artistic process.
The Queen’s Gallery on the left side of Buckingham Palace (facing it) is a superb gallery. In most galleries, the attendants are little pools of sloth calculating their next time off. Here the attendants, all proud to represent Her Majesty, are quick, courteous, and efficient. This gallery, with its rotating collection, offers the quintessential British experience of art.
The Wallace Collection offers, in my opinion, a mixed experience. Its luncheon under a glass-covered canopy over a courtyard is memorable. However, as pleasant as the site is, the collection of paintings is almost lost in the middle of the mumbo jumbo of china, armour, furniture, small sculptures, snuff boxes, swords, rifles, daggers, bowls, medals, plates, vases, bronzes, and Limoges enamels. Some of the glassed-in tiered paintings are stacked in dark rooms without clear identification. It can all be a hopeless mess unless you know what you seek.
You can, nonetheless,