My un-birthday continues as my mind works reality into a progression of gifts (free swimming lane; excellent cup of tea in the café; delicious menu del dia; a glimpse of sunshine etc) as well as an actual gift, the catalogue from the National Gallery’s exhibition of Poussin and The Dance, which I have now read. It always helps the process when so many of the pages are illustrations!
I have a soft spot for Poussin, even though I often find his paintings repulsive in their Classical, static, theatricality. He was the first painter that I studied in the History of Art section of my O Level Art. The list of French painters we were asked to consider stretched from Poussin to Picasso – even though Picasso was Spanish, born in Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain (though Catalonia claims him, and Picasso himself said that his soul was Catalan) though I think that the course talked of French Painting rather than French painters, so with the amount of time he spent in France, and the importance of his early work being completed in France, they might have a claim as well. I might add that all the painters were white and male – surely something that would not be tolerated today!
The Catalogue of Poussin and The Dance is something that can be held in one hand and the essays which make up the academic content of the tome are very readable and approachable.
As is usual for me, the art that I find the most engaging is the preparatory work of sketches. There is one compositional sketch where you have to keep telling yourself that this artist was born in 1594 – because the sketch looks like something that could have been produced by an artist from one of the -isms of the early twentieth century!
The catalogue ends with a concentration on A Dance to the Music of Time, which was painted in the 1630s, and is now in The Wallace Collection in London.
If you have not been to The Wallace Collection, then you should go. It is free, it’s in the centre of London and it has treasures – as well as an excellent café in the refashioned courtyard. I always enjoy pointing out that The Wallace Collection and the building in which it is situated (Hertford House, Manchester Square) was given to the nation in an astonishing gesture of generosity by the FRENCH widow of Sir Richard Wallace in 1897.
Just remember that when the Brexiteer cretins start bad-mouthing our closest neighbours.
Go to the Wallace Collection website at:
https://www.wallacecollection.org/art/collection/history-collection/
to get a flavour of what is FREE for you to visit in real life.
I am conscious, as I urge others to go to see a collection, that I have not been to an art gallery for far too long. Admittedly in this benighted country, national collections are not free to view, and I am sure that if many Conservatives had their way (as they did under the odious Heath) they would impose museum charges. In my view FREE ENTRY TO NATIONAL COLLECTIONS is a right, there should be no restrictions for a person to view what is a distillation of their heritage. To get a sense of the range of FREE entries to places of wonder that I greedily visited when I was resident in Wales, check out:
It is about time that I revisited MNAC in Barcelona which, even if it is not free, I do have a very reasonably priced season ticket, so I am never under the obligation of “having to see everything” when I go there to “get my money’s worth”!
One thing that reading about Poussin has prompted me to do, is think about reading A Dance to the Music of Time sequence by Anthony Powell, in all its volumes.
I have one or two of the novels lurking on my bookshelves, but I have never started it because I hadn’t collected the “full set” – a specious reason for literary inactivity, but one I think I will begin to remedy.
If I can find the books in the grotesque disorder of my so-called library! Whatever, it is always fun searching and I will probably end up reading something entirely different, having been seduced by the magic of long closed pages.
