Once again I scraped in to an exhibition just before they rang last orders, going today to see Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice at the National Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery's small, free exhibition of World War I portraits. Both finish tomorrow, so it is slightly mean of me even to tell you that they were good. Perhaps I should say they were both quite meh, and reassure you that you've done well if you've missed them. Of course, anyone who has already gone would know that I was either a very dodgy critic, or a fibber.
I had reconciled myself to missing both of them. I've been busy, it's been hot, too hot to risk getting on a London train unless you have to, you can't see everything. I was going to go on Thursday, but accepted the invitation to the plant propagation day instead. Then yesterday I began to relent, and checked the availability of tickets for the Veronese on line. Only the eleven-thirty entry slot was sold out, while the rest had tickets available in quite reasonable numbers, over forty for some slots, and none fewer than fifteen. By this morning it was cooler, and although the ticket website wouldn't let me check availability again, possibly because it was the penultimate day of the exhibition (though it would have been too late to post them out yesterday as well), I decided to take a chance.
Colchester's traffic was light and running amazingly freely, and the train was on time with lots of empty seats, and I began to feel as though fate was smiling upon me when I arrived at the National Gallery and found Veronese tickets on sale for immediate admission. I'd been fully prepared to buy one for later in the day, and go away to amuse myself elsewhere in the interim. I think we can conclude that, while the show has received enormous critical acclaim, late Renaissance Italian painting is not in fashion and doesn't count as a Must See with the broader art viewing public. Late Turner, I wouldn't fancy my chances on the second to last day, while as for Hockney, Freud or Leonardo da Vinci, forget it unless you bought tickets in advance six weeks previously. Veronese, who he?
He painted saints and the Holy Family in multiple combinations and a joyous muddle of contemporary and imagined Biblical clothing and architecture. Also portraits, mythological and allegorical scenes, and episodes from the Old Testament. Many of the paintings are huge, intended to function as altar pieces or to hang in the palazzos of Venice's monied classes. Sometimes his wealthy patrons steal into the Biblical scenes. His crowds are complex and cleverly composed, with great swirling masses of servants, onlookers, children, horses and dogs surrounding the central protagonists, plus angels and chubby cherubs where the story requires them. He was very good at dogs, making me think he must have liked them, and humanity generally. They are enormously colourful, energetic, exuberant paintings, absolutely fizzing with energy after four hundred and fifty years, and unashamedly opulent and sensuous. Veronese was absolutely brilliant at doing luxurious fabrics, jewels, and hair, and this must have been part of his appeal to his rich clients. The portraits make full use of these skills, and are also psychologically convincing. Oh, and he could do hands. You don't get short-changed on hands with a Veronese. I was glad I'd bothered to go.
The Great War portraits were interesting too, though covering more familiar ground. Then I returned to Liverpool Street via Somerset House, because I'd read somewhere that they had an exhibition of pictures by Beryl Bainbridge, and yes, that is the same Beryl Bainbridge who wrote the unsettling and now out of fashion novels, and kept a stuffed buffalo in her hall. She was untutored in painting and writing both, and talented at both, and chose the writing as her day job because she was offered a book deal at a critical moment. The pictures were as quirky, lively and odd as I remember the books being, not that I've read one for ages (but I might now). They were hung in a peculiar section of underground rooms and corridors which also seemed to lead to real and important people's offices, so if you hung around there for long enough you might bump into Deborah Bull. It was not the best exhibition space I'd ever been in, on the other hand, it was very nice of Somerset House to offer me a free Beryl Bainbridge exhibition at all. I now feel rather bad that I didn't summon the energy to go and see Viktor Popov: Genius of the Russian Soul while I was there, since it ends on the eighteenth, but Russian art is really the Systems Administrator's thing and not mine. You can't see everything.
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