today's jaunt was to the gallery my mother

used to take me to in my teenage years. . .

I want to go back and see this exhibition, mainly because the poster is so stunning, but today I just wandered about - it's a long time since I've been there and I wanted to see what I remembered, what I'd forgotten and what else there was to see. . .

my favourite room was the one with the Van Gogh paintings in it - I purchased a very small but very informative book about his life in the gift shop; a postcard of the painting I liked best wasn't on sale, but this is it:
.

it really doesn't translate to a screen very well, but in real life the colours are totally stunning and really really vibrant - it could have been painted yesterday. . . it was hung on a wall with six other pictures and I just sat back on the comfortable seat provided for exactly the purpose of sitting back comfortably and gazed at them

one of the beautiful things about the National Gallery is the stunning design of the halls and rooms, their light and height especially, and the immaculate planing that has gone into the way the pictures are arranged and hung

the colours of the walls change from room to room - one minute you are in a deep brick red room with Renaissance paintings, the next (well, not quite the next minute - quite a few minutes actually) a deep but warm grey for the Impressionists, the Dutch had a kind of eau-de-nil blue/green; there were rooms at the end of corridors that I didn't have time to venture down that were deep sunshine yellow-verging-on-orange; and sometimes I glanced along a corridor between rooms to the left and right which stretched into the distance and the arches of each juncture framed in a kind of architectural perfection the picture hanging way way in the distance on the wall at the opposite end of where I was standing. . .

. . .as if the whole building had been specifically built to show that picture to perfection

wonderful

10 comments:

Sorrow said...

Had me humming this tune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM
and being a tad bit envious...
I used to sit in the Met and lose myself in the blues of his skies...

Rimshot said...

add me to the seven deadly list...I'm green.

Rimshot said...

P.S.: http://theessentialshot.blogspot.com/

katherine. said...

what a wonderful outing....I like trying to imagine the wall colors...

my fave…at the Getty here in California…I have seen it several times….and just stood and stared…

Mel said...

Ohmy........what a gorgeous visit I just had. What I didn't get to see from the links, I got to envision by your words.

What an awesome place for sitting and daydreaming, though I think I'd be too much in awe, yaknow?

Though--I mighta hummed...

:-)

Way cool way to spend a Thursday afternoon!

Dave said...

Sounds just like my house.

I, Like The View said...

colourful, achitecturally desirable or full of very well hung things, Dave?

what were you humming Mel? (starry starry night?)

that's another beautiful one Katherine. . . I want to go to California now (even more than I did before!)

no need to be greean shot - just sit back and enjoy the jaunt too!

Sorrow if that's starry starry night, I'll smile hugely

I, Like The View said...

oooh!! I'm smiling hugely!!! thank you!!!

(-:

Dave said...

Lots of pictures, and well-decorated walls, of course.

Oh, and very well-hung.

KAZ said...

Ooh - those words and images had my mouth watering.
It's so difficult and expensive to visit London from here.
What a ridiculous state of affairs.