A Trip To The National Portrait Gallery

I took the day off today to head to London and to potter around the National Portrait Gallery. It’s all very well keeping busy in retirement, going for long walks every day, painting most days, reading books in between and resisting the temptation to slob out on the sofa all day binge watching Tipping Point but you can still end up settling into a routine and wondering where your life’s gone. So I decided that I needed to start having the odd one-off, non-routine day every now and then. So that’s why I’ve not been painting today.

I made it all around the gallery in just under three hours but could have spent longer and did indeed go back round afterwards to take another look at some of my favourite pieces. I didn’t learn anything about painting but enjoyed seeming other people’s work. It felt like a history lesson at times, learning about all these famous subjects and, thanks to the skills of the artists, feeling in many cases that I’d met them face to face.

A worthy day out. Although a day in London chasing ducks would also have been worth it, just to get me out of the studio.

Anyway, let’s answer all your questions. Here we go…

Did I see portraits of any mathematical physicists? Yes!

Did I see any paintings of graduates of Christ’s College? Yes! Jan Smuts was in the background of one painting as an afterthought but there was also this one:

Did I see any paintings of actuaries! Yes!

Did I see any selfies by famous artists? What, like David Hockney, Tracey Emin or L.S.Lowry? Yes!

Did I see my portraits that looked like someone other than the subject? Well, unless this was meant to be Sonia from Eastenders, yes!

Did I see portraits of anyone I’ve painted? Yes! A terrible Stephen Hawking, passable versions of Amy Winehouse and Sir Winston Churchill and a truly magnificent Sir Bobby Charlton. All better than my versions, although my Churchill is better than the Hawking that I saw today.

Anything weird? Well, there were these:

What about weird sculptures? Yep.

Anything else to report? Well I quite liked this one:

And there’s this one. Lord Balfour pulling that poker face that doesn’t betray how his right arm has become detached:

This one that looks like a nightmare Elizabethan period strategy away day. Hold that pose guys while he completes the portrait, then we’ll get straight on to the ice breaker.

There were a lot of Tudor and Stewart portraits, many of them ones that I’d seen before. This one of Charles II was my favourite:

This one was the first painting I saw. I turned to the guy next to me and told him it must be AI generated. There’s no way that Henry VII, Guy Fawkes and three of Henry VIII’s wives were all in the same room at the same time. I was wrong. It was real and none of the people I thought I recognised were right.

This one was impressive. No cheating by putting down blobs for faces in the background. They’re all individual portraits.

Falklands veteran Simon Weston. Inspiring.

A self portrait of the artist painting a nude figure. Can’t remember who the artist was. Sorry!

Dame Judi Dench!

Another selfie by an artist I can’t remember the name of. In this one the artist is dressed like Andy Warhol.

A couple of portraits superimposed on each other, creating a sense of movement. Nice.

A bust of Henry Cooper.

And finally, this one of the recently departed Jane Goodall which I remember being painted on Portrait Artist Of The Year.

And those are all the photos I took. A day well spent.