Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Rubens
Three adjoining rooms, known collectively as room 29, are dominated by the
expansive, fleshy canvases of
Peter Paul Rubens
, the Flemish painter whom Charles I
summoned to the English court. The one woman with her clothes on is the artist's
future sister-in-law, Susanna Fourment, whose delightful portrait became known as
Le Chapeau de Paille
(
he Straw Hat
) - though the hat is actually made of black felt
and decorated with white feathers. At the age of 54, Rubens married Susanna's younger
sister, Helena (she was just 16), the model for all three goddesses posing in the later
1630s version of
The Judgement of Paris
. Also displayed here are Rubens' rather more
subdued landscapes, one of which, the
View of Het Steen
, shows off the very fine
prospect from the Flemish country mansion Rubens bought in 1635.
Velázquez, El Greco, Van Dyck and Caravaggio
The cream of the National Gallery's Spanish works are displayed in room 30, among
them
Velázquez
's
Rokeby Venus
, one of the gallery's most famous pictures. Velázquez is
thought to have painted just four nudes in his lifetime, of which only the
Rokeby Venus
survives, an ambiguously narcissistic image that was slashed in 1914 by suffragette
Mary Richardson, in protest at the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst.
Another Flemish painter summoned by Charles I was
Anthony van Dyck
, whose
Equestrian Portrait of Charles I
, in room 31, is a fine example of the work that made
him a favourite of the Stuart court, romanticizing the monarch as a dashing horseman.
Nearby is the artist's double portrait of
Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart
, two dapper
young cavaliers about to set out on their Grand Tour in 1639, and destined to die
fighting for the royalist cause shortly afterwards in the Civil War.
Caravaggio
is art is represented in the vast room 32 by the typically salacious
Boy
Bitten by Lizard
, and the melodramatic
Supper at Emmaus
. The latter was a highly
influential painting: never before had biblical scenes been depicted with such
naturalism - a beardless and haloless Christ surrounded by scruffy disciples. At the
time it was deemed to be blasphemous, and, like many of Caravaggio's religious
commissions, was eventually rejected by the customers. One of the most striking
paintings in this room is Giordano's
Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone
,
in which the hero is dramatically depicted in sapphire blue, with half the throng
already petrified.
British art 1750-1850
When the Tate Gallery opened in 1897, the vast bulk of the National's British art was
transferred there, leaving just a few highly prized works behind. Among these are
several superb late masterpieces by
Turner
, two of which herald the new age of steam:
Rain, Steam and Speed
and
The Fighting Temeraire
, in which a ghostly apparition of the
veteran battleship from Trafalgar is pulled into harbour by a youthful, fire-snorting tug,
a scene witnessed first-hand by the artist in Rotherhithe. Here, too, is
Constable
's
Hay
Wain
, painted in and around his father's mill in Suffolk, as is the irrepressibly popular
Cornfield
. There are landscapes, as well as the portraits, by
Thomas
Gainsborough
- his
feathery, light technique is seen to superb effect in
Morning Walk
, a double portrait of a
pair of newlyweds.
Joshua
Reynolds
' contribution is a portrait,
Lady Cockburn and her
hree Sons
, in which the three boys clamber endearingly over their mother. And finally,
the most striking portrait in the whole room is George Stubbs' pin-sharp depiction of
the racehorse Whistlejacket rearing up on its hindlegs.
More works by Gainsborough and Reynolds hang in room 35, including the only
known self-portrait of the former with his family, painted in 1747 when he was just
20 years old. On the opposite wall are the six paintings from
Hogarth
's
Marriage
à la Mode
, a witty, moral tale that allowed the artist to give vent to his pet hates:
bourgeois hypocrisy, snobbery and bad (ie Continental) taste. In the ornate, domed
FROM TOP
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
P.49
; TRAFALGAR SQUARE
P.35
; THE NATIONAL GALLERY
P.38
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