London Museums

We spent a week in London, reminding ourselves of the masterpieces in the public collections.

Monday we strolled along Oxford Street, to and from the Wallace Collection. The furniture with gold marquetry by A.C. Boulle was our discovery. On the lookout for Gainsboroughs as we prepared for our Frick exhibition, I was delighted to not only see his “Perdita,” but listen to a guide dig into her relationship with the Crown Prince. Somehow we missed “The Swing” by Fragonard until we got to the gift shop, at which point I got directions back to the second floor where it hung over an ornate bureau. Perhaps no picture encapsulates a period more than this one does for the French rococo. It was interesting to read that Fragonard intentionally adopted a rococo style that he had left behind for the purposes of this commission. Indeed, the style looks more like Francois Boucher, 30 years Fragonard’s senior, than a typical Fragonard–but no one notices because “The Swing” is so closely identified with Fragonard. It is a perfect trademark for the Wallace.

I was eager to see the “rehang” at the National Gallery, but I didn’t remember the old hang well enough to make the comparison. The impression remains of moving from one textbook piece to another. In one small connecting gallery with only six works, you find Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire” and “Wind, Rain and Speed” on one wall, Constable’s “Hay Wain” and “Cornfields” facing it. Enough said! The NGA has more works by Gainsborough than any other artist, and although most aren’t on display my all-time favorite, “A Morning Walk,” is. Happy memories bubbled up when I saw paintings that Patrick Noon had borrowed for Minneapolis in his Crossing the Channel show, including Delaroche’s “Execution of Lady Jane Grey” and Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of “Charles William Lambton.” Van Eyck’s “Arnolfini Portrait” is so familiar from reproductions that it is remarkable to see it in person (and realize, as with “The Swing,” how small it is). But the gems of the National Gallery for me have always been, and always will be, the two great Piero della Francescas: “The Baptism” and “The Nativity.” Time stands still when standing in front of them.

I was drawn to the British Museum by its special exhibition, “Early Nederlandish Drawings,” and was not disappointed. One drawing alone was worth the short walk: a silverpoint “Portrait of a Young Woman” by Rogier van der Weyden from 1440. The British Museum’s Prints and Drawing department contains more than a million objects; among them is the only known drawing in existence by van der Weyden.

We knew what we would see at the Courtauld Gallery, but it is still astonishing to walk in and see the most famous paintings by Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, van Gogh, Gauguin and others cheek-to-cheek. Maybe the most memorable painting from the entire Impressionist era is “A Bar at the Folies-Bergere,” Manet’s last great work. The more you look at it, the more you want to look, and the more you see.

On our last day we returned to the National Gallery to see the Dutch rooms I had missed, as well as Rubens’s “Lady with a Straw Hat” which I fell in love with on my first visit, many years ago. Our object, however, was the National Portrait Gallery, which tells the story of English history as much as English art. Curiously, two of my favorites, for their subject as well as artist, were by “foreigners.” John Singer Sargent painted a handsome full-length portrait of the infamous Lord Balfour, and Jules Bastien-Lepage captured a sprawling Henry Irving, whom we had just seen Ralph Fiennes impersonate in the West End.

There was so much more to be seen in London; one week was not enough.