Page 59 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Europe

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and Botticelli. Perhaps the most
famous of the Northern
European works is The Arnolfini
Marriage by Jan van Eyck (1434).
Most of the gallery’s other
exhibits are housed on the first
floor of the main building.
Among the 16th-century
paintings, The Adoration of the
Kings (1564) by Flemish artist
Pieter Brueghel the Elder is
notable. Christ Mocked (1490–
1500) by Hieronymus Bosch is
included in the Netherlandish
and German section. The superb
Dutch collection gives two
The Trafalgar Square facade of the National Gallery rooms to Rembrandt. Annibale
Carracci and Caravaggio are
Blake (1757–1827). His work collection was started in 1824 strongly represented among the
was imbued with a mystical when the House of Commons Italian painters. Spanish artist
intensity, a typical example agreed to purchase 38 major Diego Velázquez’s only surviving
being Satan Smiting Job with paintings. These became the female nude, The Rokeby Venus
Sore Boils (c.1826). England’s core of a national collection (1647–51), is one of the most
great 19th-century landscape of European art that now popular and well-known of
artists, Constable and Turner, ranges from Giotto in the 13th the 17th-century works of
are also well represented. century to the 19th-century art. The great age of 19th-
John Constable’s famous Impressionists. The gallery’s century landscape painting
Flatford Mill, painted in 1816–17, particular strengths are in is perhaps best represented
is one of his many depictions Dutch, Italian Renaissance, and by Constable’s The Hay Wain
of the Essex countryside. The 17th-century Spanish painting. (1821), a masterpiece of
Clore Galleries, open since The gallery’s paintings are changing light and shadow.
1987, house the works of hung in chronological order. In the Impressionist section,
J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), In 1991, the modern Sainsbury Renoir’s Boating on the Seine
whose paintings were left to Wing was added to the main (1879–80) demonstrates the
the nation some years after his Neoclassical building (1834–8) free, flickering touch used by
death on condition that they to house the impressive Early the movement’s artists to
were kept together. His Renaissance collection (1260– capture the fleeting moment.
watercolor A City on a River at 1510). The Leonardo Cartoon Other 19th-century highlights
Sunset (1832) is a highlight. (c.1500), a chalk drawing by include Van Gogh’s Sunflowers,
The Tate also has on display Leonardo da Vinci of the Virgin Monet’s Waterlilies, Rousseau’s
many works by the 19th-century and Child, St. Anne, and John Tropical Storm with Tiger, and
Pre-Raphaelites, including J.E. the Baptist, has been moved Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières.
Millais’ Ophelia (1851–2), as well from here to a more prominent Lesser paintings of all periods
as the works of several modern position near the Trafalgar are displayed on the lower floor
and contemporary artists, such Square entrance. Other Italian of the main building. The better
as Henry Moore and David painters represented include of the gallery’s two restaurants
Hockney. The Tate’s exhibitions Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, is located in the Sainsbury Wing.
change frequently to explore as
much of the collection as possible.

6 National Gallery
Trafalgar Sq WC2. Tel 020-7747 2885.
1 Charing Cross, Leicester Sq,
Piccadilly Circus. @ 3, 6, 9, 11 & many
others. Open 10am–6pm daily (to
9pm Fri). Closed Jan 1, Dec 24–26.
7 via Sainsbury Wing entrance.
8 - ∑ nationalgallery.org.uk
London’s leading art museum,
the National Gallery has more
than 2,300 paintings, most
on permanent display. The Bathers at Asnières (1884), by Georges Seurat, in the National Gallery

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