Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
HIDDEN GEMS OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY
Wilton Diptych
Room 53
An Allegory with Venus and Cupid
Bronzino. Room 8
Supper at Emmaus
Caravaggio. Room 32
A Young Woman standing at a Virginal
Vermeer. Room 25
The Avenue at Middleharnis
Hobbema
Room 21
Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat
Elisabeth Louise
Vigée le Brun. Room 33
Marriage à la Mode
Hogarth. Room 35
Portrait of Hermine Gallia
Klimt.
Room 44
After the Bath
Degas. Room 46
Boris Anrep's mosaics
See box opposite
and a Jewish star) bear down on Jesus. The painting that grabs most folks' attention,
however, is
Massys
is caricatured portrait of an old woman looking like a pantomime
dame. Nearby, in room 14, you'll find the gallery's only work by
Jan Bruegel the Elder
,
the tiny
Adoration of the Kings
, with some very motley-looking folk crowding in on the
infant; only Balthasar looks at all regal.
Claude, Poussin and Dutch landscapes
The English painter
J.M.W. Turner
left specific instructions in his will for two of his
Claude-influenced paintings to be hung alongside a couple of the French painter's
landscapes. All four now hang in the octagonal room 15, and were slashed by a
homeless teenager in 1982 in an attempt to draw attention to his plight.
Claude
's
dreamy classical landscapes and seascapes,
and the mythological (often erotic) scenes
of
Poussin
, were favourites of aristocrats on the Grand Tour, and made both artists
very famous in their time. Claude's
Enchanted Castle
, in particular, caught the
imagination of the Romantics, allegedly inspiring Keats'
Ode to a Nightingale
.
Nowadays, rooms 19 and 20, which are given over entirely to these two French
artists, are among the quietest in the gallery.
Of the Dutch landscapes in
rooms 21 and 22, those by
Aelbert Cuyp
stand out due
to the warm Italianate light which suffuses his works, but the finest of all is, without a
doubt,
Hobbema
's tree-lined
Avenue at Middelharnis
. The market for such landscapes at
the time was limited, however, and Hobbema quit painting at the age of just 30.
Jacob
van Ruisdael
, Hobbema's teacher, whose works are on display nearby, also went hungry
for most of his life.
Rembrandt and Vermeer
Rooms 23 and 24 feature mostly works
by
Rembrandt
, including the highly theatrical
Belshazzar's Feast
, painted for a rich Jewish patron. Look out also for two of Rembrandt's
searching self-portraits, painted thirty years apart, with the melancholic
Self Portrait
Aged 63
, from the last year of his life, making a strong contrast to the sprightly early
work. Similarly, the joyful portrait of Saskia, Rembrandt's wife, from the most successful
period of his life, contrasts with his more contemplative depiction of his mistress,
Hendrickje, who was hauled up in front of the city authorities for living “like a whore”
with Rembrandt. The portraits of Jacob Trip and his wife, Margaretha de Geer, are
among the most honestly realistic depictions of old age in the entire gallery.
Room 25 harbours
de Hooch
's classic
Courtyard of a House in Delft
,
and a (probable)
self-portrait by Carel Fabritius, one of Rembrandt's pupils. Fabritius died in the
explosion of the Delft gunpowder store, the subject of another painting in the room.
Also here is the seventeenth-century
van Hoogstraten Peepshow
, a box of tricks that
reflects the Dutch obsession of the time with perspectival and optical devices. Two
typically serene works by
Vermeer
hang here (or in a nearby room) and provide a
counterpoint to one another: each features a “young woman at a virginal”, but where
she stands in one, she sits in the other; she's viewed from the right and then the left, in
shadow and then in light and so on.
