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Art maketh the man
Aug. 29th, 2006 10:30 amA few years ago I was wandering through the Victoria & Albert museum one afternoon. The V&A is a remarkable building - there are numerous little galleries tucked away in unconsidered places with treasures to be found in them and on this particular afternoon I was wandering amongst canvasses of lesser known works of art when I turned a corner and found myself face to face with this famous picture:
It was an odd experience. It's a very famous and popular picture - at university I copped off with at least one dippy pre-raph wannabe gothette with a poster of it hanging on her wall - and the gallery it was hanging in was completely deserted. I could have whipped it out of the frame, stuck it under my coat and taken to my heels before anyone knew any different.
I'd be the first to admit that there's a lot to dislike about living in London. It's full of Southerners, the whole place smells of fresh urine after 11pm on any given evening, it's run by Ken Livingstone and there's alway the lurking fear that some delightful youngster will take a liking to my MP3 player and stab me for it. However, one of the things to like about London is the way it is littered with world-famous art and architecture. You can turn a corner and unexpectedly find yourself confronted with something which you've known from childhood in pictures, freely available for all to enjoy but without the attendant fuss which would be attached if they were to be found in, say, Paris of New York.
Very often, as soon as you get away from the main tourist thoroughfares there will only be you or a very few people there.
So ti was that yesterday afternoon I took a wander around the Wallace Collection. It's something I'd been meaning to do ever since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
colonel_maxim told me about it in relation to one of his more outrageous schemes a few years ago. What attracted me was his description of the large collection of European, Persian and Indian arms and armour, and so I didn't realise that there is also an extensive art collection attached which includes a number of lesser known works by people like Reynolds, Gainsborough and Rembrandt, plus the delightfully-named Jan Weenix whose entire oevre appears to have consisted of painting dead rabbits. Not much of a living, but he seems to have gone about it enthusiastically.
And then I turned a corner and unexpectedly found myself in a deserted gallery with this famously cheerful fellow:
And let me tell you - the picture I had on my pencil case at school doesn't do justice to the original. The artist manages to capture the essense of someone whom you're sure would be tremendsouly good and funny company, complete with mischeivous twinkle in his eye.
With that in mind, that's my question to you lot today - what's your favourite random 'find' in the city - something that's famous, but people don't really seem to know about the original?
It was an odd experience. It's a very famous and popular picture - at university I copped off with at least one dippy pre-raph wannabe gothette with a poster of it hanging on her wall - and the gallery it was hanging in was completely deserted. I could have whipped it out of the frame, stuck it under my coat and taken to my heels before anyone knew any different.
I'd be the first to admit that there's a lot to dislike about living in London. It's full of Southerners, the whole place smells of fresh urine after 11pm on any given evening, it's run by Ken Livingstone and there's alway the lurking fear that some delightful youngster will take a liking to my MP3 player and stab me for it. However, one of the things to like about London is the way it is littered with world-famous art and architecture. You can turn a corner and unexpectedly find yourself confronted with something which you've known from childhood in pictures, freely available for all to enjoy but without the attendant fuss which would be attached if they were to be found in, say, Paris of New York.
Very often, as soon as you get away from the main tourist thoroughfares there will only be you or a very few people there.
So ti was that yesterday afternoon I took a wander around the Wallace Collection. It's something I'd been meaning to do ever since
colonel_maxim told me about it in relation to one of his more outrageous schemes a few years ago. What attracted me was his description of the large collection of European, Persian and Indian arms and armour, and so I didn't realise that there is also an extensive art collection attached which includes a number of lesser known works by people like Reynolds, Gainsborough and Rembrandt, plus the delightfully-named Jan Weenix whose entire oevre appears to have consisted of painting dead rabbits. Not much of a living, but he seems to have gone about it enthusiastically.And then I turned a corner and unexpectedly found myself in a deserted gallery with this famously cheerful fellow:
And let me tell you - the picture I had on my pencil case at school doesn't do justice to the original. The artist manages to capture the essense of someone whom you're sure would be tremendsouly good and funny company, complete with mischeivous twinkle in his eye.
With that in mind, that's my question to you lot today - what's your favourite random 'find' in the city - something that's famous, but people don't really seem to know about the original?
