National Gallery
In a bid to get out of Oxford for the day, and to get a bit of culture, we went to the National Gallery yesterday. There were a couple of good exhibitions: Thomas Jones and Bosch and Bruegel.
Jones was a Welsh artist of the late 18th century, who travelled all over Italy painting landscapes. He started off with a typical (and to me rather uninteresting) 18th century âRoman ruins adorned by decorative goats and and milk maidsâ style of painting, but gradually moved to a strikingly-modern architectural style. A series of paintings in Napoli show peeling stuccoed walls, faded shutters and hanging laundry. He really captures the strong, heavy sunlight and dark shadows perfectly, and the images would not look out of place in a modern photographerâs work.
Good job we're not all the same!…