For two visits running, I walked straight past these helmets on my way to see the Lewis Chessmen. I would slow down for a minute, take a photo through the glass, and …
Museums & Art
Here is the thing nobody puts in the caption. Almost nobody really sees the Rosetta Stone. I have stood in front of it twice at the British Museum in London, six years …
Everything else at the National Gallery was, if I am honest, a warm-up. I had come for one painter. Van Gogh has pulled at me for years, and with a trip to …
- London
The Lewis Chessmen: A Grumpy Medieval Court at the British Museum
by Bubblyby Bubbly 8 min readI have stood in front of the Lewis Chessmen more than once, and not one of them has ever looked pleased to see me. They are small, carved from walrus ivory, more …
- London
The Post-Impressionists at the National Gallery: A Word Invented in London
by Bubblyby Bubbly 8 min readThe word post-Impressionism was invented in London, by an Englishman, about a group of French painters who never once used it themselves. In November 1910 the critic Roger Fry took an open …
I have stood at the edge of Monet‘s pond in Giverny, watched the water lilies wrap around me in the Orangerie in Paris, and then, not expecting it at all, found the …
- London
Manet, Not Monet: A Cut Canvas Reunited at the National Gallery
by Bubblyby Bubbly 6 min readA small public service before we start: this is Manet, with an ‘a’, Édouard Manet, and not Claude Monet, with an ‘o’. The two are forever muddled, and I will come back …
The National Gallery in London turned two hundred in 2025, and to mark it the whole collection was rehung and a few new works came in. One of them is this pastel …
- London
Canaletto’s Venice: From the National Gallery to the Real Thing
by Bubblyby Bubbly 9 min readBefore I had ever been anywhere, I knew Venice from paintings. Gold light on green water, gondolas tipped like commas across a canal, a city that looked too lovely to be a …
What I have always respected about Rembrandt is that he told the truth. Where so many painters flattered, smoothed and arranged, he set down what was in front of him, including his …
- London
The Northern Renaissance at the National Gallery: Oil, Detail and the Divine in the Everyday
by Bubblyby Bubbly 9 min readFor a long time I thought the Renaissance was an Italian story, and mostly a Florentine one. Botticelli, Michelangelo, the great dome over Florence Cathedral. It was only once I began visiting …
Walk into the medieval and early Renaissance rooms at the National Gallery in London and the walls turn to gold. Almost every panel is religious: a Virgin and Child, a saint, a …