Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art

Clever exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the art of Delacroix and how he influenced later generations of artists.

As ever it was well worth taking the audio tour particularly as the gallery seemed to have done away with the lovey little booklets they used to produce with the picture descriptions in them. This was leading to huddling around the labels. Please back the booklets, they were really innovative helped the flow around the shows. The audio told you a lot more about why Delacroix was so influential talking about dates of major exhibitions and his writings.

I liked the theming of the rooms, keeping pictures of a similar subject together. I think my favourite was the flower room which also seemed to have much brighter light levels and was a blast of colour. It included a very strange early Van Gogh I’d not seen before of a vase of flowers.

The real surprise in the show were two pictures by Bazille, an Impressionist who died at 29 in the Franco-Prussian War. I’d heard of him but I’m not sure I’d ever seen anything by him before. There was a stunning picture of a woman being dressed by two maids.

The whole show was an interesting look at what influences artists and I liked the fact that such a wide range of artists were shown in the same room highlighting the influence rather than the artist.

Closes on 22 May 2016.

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