Celebrating the 200th birthday of London’s National Gallery 2

In the first of these two articles celebrating the two-hundredth birthday of London’s National Gallery, I showed some of its more famous works and personal favourites up to the end of the eighteenth century. Although the Tate Gallery is better known for more recent paintings, particularly those of British artists, the National Gallery must still be high on the list for anyone in London wanting to see paintings from the nineteenth century. Here are some of my personal favourites.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Winter Landscape (c 1811), oil on canvas, 32.5 x 45 cm, The National Gallery (bought, 1987), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

I’ve been writing recently about Caspar David Friedrich and the German Romantic artists. While most of their paintings are in Germany, in 1987 the National Gallery bought Friedrich’s Winter Landscape from about 1811. This is notable as being one of the last oil paintings attested to use the blue pigment smalt. Perhaps the artist found it more suitable for its subtle colour transitions.

While the Tate’s collection of paintings by JMW Turner is the most extensive, several are in the National Gallery, and worth the journey through London.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), Dido building Carthage, or The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire (1815), oil on canvas, 155.5 x 230 cm, The National Gallery (Turner Bequest, 1856), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

Turner’s Dido building Carthage, or The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire from 1815 is overtly inspired by Claude Lorrain. Dido is seen on the left bank, dressed in blue. On the opposite bank is the monumental tomb of her husband Sychaeus.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up (1839), oil on canvas, 90.7 × 121.6 cm, The National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

Turner’s Fighting Temeraire is one of his most famous later paintings, and has proved a challenge to the conservation scientists at the National Gallery because of the artist’s presumed use of asphalt, which can inhibit the oxidative drying of linseed oil.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1844), oil on canvas, 91 x 121.8 cm, The National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

Turner painted his pre-Impressionist Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway in 1844, only five years after this railway bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead was brought into use.

John Constable (1776–1837), The Hay Wain (1821), oil on canvas, 130.2 × 185.4 cm, National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

The gallery also has several of the best paintings of John Constable, including his most famous work, The Hay Wain from 1821. Amazingly, this failed to find a buyer when originally exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. It did, though, attract attention from some of the French visitors, including the artist Théodore Géricault. The following year, Constable exhibited it at the British Institution and asked 150 guineas (£157) for it, but it again failed to sell.

John Constable (1776–1837), The Cornfield (1826), oil on canvas, 143 x 122 cm, The National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

Constable’s Cornfield (1826) is a view inspired by Gainsborough, looking down Fen Lane in East Bergholt, to the north of the River Stour, although its distant church is an invention of the artist.

Édouard Manet (1832–1883), Music in the Tuileries (1862), oil on canvas, 76.2 × 118.1 cm, The National Gallery, London, and the Hugh Lane, Dublin. Courtesy of National Gallery (CC), via Wikimedia Commons.

Édouard Manet’s Music in the Tuileries from 1862 is one of ten paintings shared between the National Gallery in London, and the Hugh Lane in Dublin, as part of the Hugh Lane bequest, as explained here. This is currently in Dublin.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), The Umbrellas (c 1881-86), oil on canvas, 180.3 x 114.9 cm, The National Gallery (Sir Hugh Lane Bequest, 1917), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s The Umbrellas, from about 1881-86, is another of the bequest, although this is currently in London.

Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Corner of a Café-Concert (1878-80), oil on canvas, 97.1 x 77.5 cm, The National Gallery (Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1924), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

Manet’s Corner of a Café-Concert from 1878-80 was bought by the gallery in 1924.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Bathers at la Grenouillère (1869), oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm, The National Gallery, London. WikiArt.

In 1869, Claude Monet and Renoir painted together at a popular resort on the River Seine near Paris. Monet’s Bathers at la Grenouillère is his early statement of his Impressionist agenda, a plein air oil sketch originally intended to be turned into a finished painting, and another major work in the National Gallery.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), La Yole (The Skiff) (1875), oil on canvas, 71 x 92 cm, The National Gallery (Bought, 1982), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s La Yole (The Skiff) of 1875 was bought as recently as 1982.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Côte des Bœufs, Pontoise (1877), oil on canvas, 114.9 x 87.6 cm, The National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

Camille Pissarro’s Côte des Bœufs, Pontoise from 1877 is another canonical Impressionist landscape painting in the collection, this time from a period when Pissarro was probably in company with Paul Cézanne at Pontoise.

Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (1879), oil on canvas, 117.2 x 77.5 cm, The National Gallery (Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1925), London. Image courtesy of and © The National Gallery.

Edgar Degas’ final version of his portrait of Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando from 1879 was bought in 1925.

The National Gallery also has nine paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Still Life: Vase with 15 Sunflowers (1888), oil on canvas, 93 x 73 cm, The National Gallery, London. WikiArt.

Perhaps the most popular of all its paintings is his Still Life: Vase with 15 Sunflowers, known as the fourth version of this series, which has the most remarkable background of them all, with a unique metallic sheen that has to be seen.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), A Wheatfield, with Cypresses (1889), oil on canvas, 72.1 × 90.9 cm, The National Gallery (Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1923), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

Van Gogh’s Wheatfield, with Cypresses from the following year is unusual for his use of ultramarine blue mixed to form green.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Hillside in Provence (1890-92), oil on canvas, 63.5 x 79.4 cm, The National Gallery (Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1926), London. Courtesy of and © The National Gallery, London.

Despite its reputation for stopping short of the more modern styles to be found in the Tate, the National Gallery has thirteen paintings by Paul Cézanne, including his Hillside in Provence from 1890-92, with its emerald greens and pale turquoise sky.

This has been quite a journey, from Duccio in the early fourteenth century to Cézanne at the end of the nineteenth, all in a single public collection. Read more about the history of the National Gallery here.