Posts Tagged ‘National Gallery’
Nymph-tastic!
The JW Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy has long been on the summer agenda. We left it until the week before closing, which probably explains why it was quite tediously packed to start with.
Beautiful, beautiful stuff though. Inevitably, the Lady of Shalott was there and was superb. The picture I really wanted to see, Echo and Narcissus (usually at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool) was there, which was especially pleasing. The colours, composition and lines were lovely to look at.
There were also some new favourites: Consulting the Oracle, Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus and Hylas and the Nymphs. Fabulous stuff and makes me want to look out my copy of Ovid’s Metamorphosis again.
Then along to the Corot to Monet landscapes at the National Gallery. I haven’t looked at landscapes for ages and many of these had a very satisfying quality, with lovely use of light.
In the NG shop I picked up The National Gallery in Wartime, about the arrangements for preserving the collections in the event of sustained bombing. The social history and photographs look wonderful and I look forward to reading it.
