I finally got around to spending a few hours in the National Gallery yesterday afternoon, after a visit with a few students to the Saatchi Gallery. It's difficult to convey how striking the space is, even apart from the paintings on the walls: the main galleries have high, even soaring ceilings, and the walls of all the rooms are painted or upholstered in rich, highly saturated colors.

I skipped the medieval galleries, I'd like to say because I was short on time and want to return for an extended consideration of just those rooms, but really because my taste in visual art is pretty firmly bourgeois. Holbein to Turner is where it's at. Mancestral, I know.

Anyway, as I said, this was a quick trip, where I allowed myself to look at the paintings that interested me most and enjoy them, rather than worry about contextualizing or analysis the artworks or my own response to them (thanks, Bourdieu! And I'll have you know I spelled "Bourdieu" right on the first try). The setting encourages this, I think: compared with, say, the white walls and plain lines of the Tate Modern or the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery seems designed to promote appreciation rather than analysis.

Here are a few of the paintings that struck me the most.


Mr and Mrs Edwin Edwards (1875), by Ignace-Henri-Theodore Fantin-Latour.
She looks like such a badass.


Self Portrait, about 1645, by Salvator Rosa
Bought the postcard of this one. Check out the inscription, which means "be quiet, unless you have something to say that's better than silence." He looks like a philosophy grad student.


Saint Margaret of Antioch, 1630-4, by Francisco de Zurbaran
I am beginning to believe I have a thing for portraits where the subject looks directly at the viewer.


Cognoscenti in a Room hung with Pictures, about 1620. This is a genre of painting that's always appealed to me. I like the combination of intertextuality-- many of the paintings are identifiable as works by prominent Flemish artists of the period-- combined with the fantasy setting and the miniaturization of what would have been massive canvases.


Allegory of Grammar, 1650 by Laurent de La Hyre
Surely there must be other depictions of grammar from this period, but I've not seen them, and as such I'm not quite sure how to interpret this one. Why is she watering plants?


A Scene on the Ice near a Town, about 1615, by Hendrick Avercamp
It's all about the red sash of the woman in the lower left corner.

Looking over this, it appears I could be said to have a thing for early seventeenth century painting.

Dates for my diary, as they say

Things I mean to do in the near future, in no particular order:

- Indian Highway, contemporary Indian art at the Serpentine Gallery
- The Photographers' Gallery, finally open in their new location
- GSK Contemporary at the Royal Academy of Art. I also mean to see their collections more generally, and the Byzantine art exhibit they've got on right now.
- Adrian Tomine at the Institute for Contemporary Art
- Too Much is Not Enough, a group show about fandom, at the Transition gallery
- The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising. They've got an exhibit on right now about 60s candy packaging, what could be better?
- Films of Fact, vintage science documentaries at the Science Museum.