Painters’ Paintings is at the National Gallery until 4th September. I went this week.
First, who are the painters? There are eight and you see the exhibition in reverse chronological order starting with Freud and finishing with Van Dyck. The filling in that sandwich is Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence and Reynolds. There is a self-portrait by each artist and then some of their own work juxtaposed with pictures by other artists that they bought. The idea is to see what they admired and how it influenced them.
It arose from Freud’s legacy of a Corot (above) to the National Gallery in gratitude to Britain for giving a home to his family when they fled Germany in the 1930s and that is one of the first pictures you see. The most significant aspect of Freud’s taste is his interest in the human form in his own pictures and those that he bought. Other artists do choose landscapes – not much still life – until at the end Van Dyck is again all portraits, either his own or by Titian.
There is a paradox in all this as artists do not necessarily have the cash to buy good art. Matisse got round this obstacle by pawning his wife’s engagement ring, it is said, to buy an impressive Cézanne. The National Gallery got round it by including Leighton and Watt both of whom could afford to collect. Freud only started buying really good stuff towards the end of his life.
The link between the artist and his collection becomes strained as the exhibition continues. Lawrence had 5,000 works, mostly Old Master drawings, Van Dyck owned a lot of Titians and the exhibition gives a flavour of this – not always the exact works that hung on their walls. Does this matter – probably not.
Degas had a large enough collection to merit two rooms packed with some of the best pictures in the show. It is well worth seeing, an almost overwhelming display of some of the best European art (only about two pieces of sculpture) produced in the last five hundred years. Allow at least an hour.
If you’re not too tired then go to the National Portrait Gallery next door. The BP Portrait Award is one of my favourite annual exhibitions. The curators choose work that is interesting. There’s not a dull portrait on the wall, although they arouse mixed emotions. The winning portrait would certainly not have been my choice. Here is my choice, a self-portrait by Eileen Hogan.
Does Leonard Rosoman ring a bell? He was a war artist in WW II and a volunteer fireman with his friend William Sansom.