Day 17: National Gallery & National Portrait Gallery

Day 16 I took the day off.  I tried to go for a walk around Regent's Park but it was miserable busy.  So onward!
A classroom trip to the National Portrait Gallery actually ended up being more interesting than I thought it would be.  The portraits were organized by time period and it was really cool to see how the faces went from being all very similar looking to distinct.  And how portraiture went from being people sitting in chairs in their fancy clothes to something more liquid as representing less the physical features and more a person's...genaisequa (I have no idea how to spell this French word), personality, vibe, aura.  You know, their Themness. Wow, I'm a Creative Writing person and that went too far for me.
Okay so anyways.  Here are a few of the portraits that I liked.

 Lady Colin Campbell by Giovanni Boldini (1897) Wish I could show this one how I saw it, 10 feet tall.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (England's Poet Laureate) by Samuel Lawrence

Walter Richard Sickert by Phillip Steer (1894)

So then we went around the corner and I can't describe the experience properly.  The sheer spread of artists present overwhelms the mind.  I almost worry about having so many in such close proximity. I saw Gauguin, Manet, Seurat, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, Degas, Vermeer, Cezzane, Turner, Van Gogh, Warhol, Sikert, Rembrandt, and Monet (who is one of my all time favorites)!!

Some that I really liked were: The Feast of Belshazzar by Rembrandt.  It was referenced in a play I saw.  It depicts the event from the Old Testament (Daniel) where, after he blasphemes, a mystical hand from heaven writes on the wall of the wicked Belshazzar during a feast the words "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" 'you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting'.

This beautiful work is called "The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up" and it is by Turner.  Apparently I missed his exhibit at the Tate Britain and I intend to go back and see it.  It is an unbelievable painting, much like Monets', almost better viewed from afar.  I just couldn't believe the colors and beautiful hazy effect.

The Hay Wain, John Constable, 1821

 Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh

 The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein 1533
This one is kind of cool.  So we have these two great philosophers will all their tools for art, music, science, math, and that good stuff.  Then, if you stand to the far right in front of the painting the dark elipse at their feet becomes a skull.  Its supposed to be a reminder of the totality of death.  No matter how smart we get we still die.

After this I don't really know what else to say.  There was so much beautiful art there and I am so grateful that I was able to see so much of the greatest manifestations of human potential.  Absolutely stunning and lovely.