Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition on Millet. Sarah Herring outlined Millet’s career and in particular the role of his paintings of rural life. She talked about both what influences him and then later how his work inspired the next generation of painters including Van Gogh. She also described the political landscape of the time and how these works were viewed the 1848 revolution. She then went though the paintings in the show emphasising how all but one are from British collections. I have since been to the exhibition and this was a really useful introduction as the show is quite small.

Useful online lecture from the National Gallery discussing the new still-life room created as a result of the recent rehang of the collection. Bart Cornelis, Curator of Dutch and Flemish Paintings 1600-1800 at the gallery and Sarah Herring, an associate curator there outlined the history of still-life painting and discussed the paintings they had chosen for the room to illustrate this. The room covers from the 17th to the 19th century. They then widened the talk out to point us at 20th century examples by Cezanne and Picasso in rooms 43 and 45. This was followed by a lively Q&A session ranging from the role of insects in these paintings, through the Roman frescos in Pompeii and a discussion of who bought this pictures.