Portrait of the Artist

Fantastic exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery looking at pictures of artists from the Royal Collection.

This was a nicely curated show setting up interesting themes such as nice contrast between introspective self-portraits and those painted for self-promotion, pictures of artists by their friends, artists in their studios and pictures of earlier artists to promote your role in the history of art.

However the well set up theme was knocked for six by the quality of the pictures on show! It included some of my favourite pictures such as the Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait and I was lucky enough to be there in time for a nice talk about the picture by one of the attendants. It was also lovely to see the two Zoffanys of artists at the Royal Academy and connoisseurs at the Uffizi. The later was quoted a lot in the recent course I did on classism so it was great to see it in the flash again.

I had been wondering for a while why the National Gallery had taken down the huge picture of the possession of the Cimabue through the streets of Florence by Lord Leighton which hung over the main entrance so I was delighted to spot it down the axis of the Queen’s Gallery! I hadn’t realised it was on loan to the National Gallery by the Queen. It was used here to illustrate an artist painting earlier artists, in this case both Cimabue and Giotto.

The show was full of a list of famous names! There was the self-portrait Ruben’s painted for Charles I, a great Rembrandt self-portrait, a wonderful picture of Joshua Reynolds in glasses as well as a Hockney and a Freud presented to the collection when they were awarded the Order of Merit.

My favourite picture in the show though was one of Landseer with two dogs! It was called “The Connoisseurs” and was a self-portrait with two beautiful dogs looking over each shoulder. OK I am a sucker for dogs in art so I was easily won over and I loved the way he painted the texture of the dogs’ fur and his beard.

Closes on 17 April 2017

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