The forensic eye: Rubens and Van Dyck

Disappointing workshop at the National Gallery talking about how to look at a picture.

I’d hoped the talk would focus particularly on the brush work of Rubens and Van Dyck as they were in the title and the description had talked about brushwork however this was just part of the afternoon. We did talk a bit about their style and had interesting photos of details to compare and then spot the works by these artists.

However the bulk of the talk was about how to look at pictures and the elements to look at and think about when looking however the examples veered away from the named artists to compare different eras and styles. This looked at composition, subjects, clothes and much more than brush work. I’d looked forward to a more detailed session. It would have been a good introduction to looking at art but I was hoping for something a bit more advanced.

We then finished with a fun session in the Italian 17th century gallery comparing photos of details of other works by the artists in the gallery with the pictures there to work out who painted what. It was really hard particularly as the artists were very similar! From wanting something more advanced we seemed to move to expert territory in one jump!

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