National Portrait Gallery

Last weekday of moseying around London on my own.

Today it is beautiful and sunny in London, but I chose to go to the National Portrait Gallery instead of read in the park. I've always wanted to go to the National Portrait Gallery but hadn't ever made it there. Yesterday I went to Trafalgar Square with the intention of going to it but ended up spending an hour in the National Gallery instead.

National Portrait Gallery = portrait paintings
National Gallery = any painting

One receives a thumbs up from me and one does not. You might ask - is there really a difference? And in my opinion there is a BIG difference.

To me, the national gallery is about art. The paintings there are by famous artists, but only interesting to those who actually appreciate art and art history. Due to a strike yesterday, over half the rooms in the National Gallery were closed. So the biggest deal thing that I saw was a painting by somebody somebody (see, already forgot) of Diana and Callisto. Diana is the goddess of the hunt (Artemis in Greek mythology, which I prefer) and her posse of maidens were all supposed to be virgins, but one of them (Callisto) was seduced by Jupiter (Zeus) and knocked up. The painting is about the moment that the handmaidens and Diana all realize she is pregnant and kick her out of their little club. I like Greek mythology and I was still like, whatever. The National Gallery does not get a thumbs up. It doesn't necessarily get a thumbs DOWN, I'm just not interested because I don't get art.

The National Portrait Gallery, on the other hand, to me is about history. Who are the important people that got painted, how did they want themselves depicted, what era of their life does the painting come from, etc. etc. I only had time today to walk through the Tudor period (Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I) through to the Hanovers (The Georges), spanning the 15th to 19th century. And to me, this was extremely interesting because it was like a historical gossip magazine. This dude got overthrown by that dude. This exiled king's grandson then led a army to try to reclaim the throne. This advisor to the King was executed when a Catholic monarch came to power, etc etc. It wasn't just kings queens and dukes either. There were galleries of poets, explorers, inventors, etc. I got to see the portrait of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, which I actually recognised from my English literature textbooks, except these were the real portraits that are hundreds of years old. Cool!

But the cutest anecdote of the day comes from the Gallery staff giving a talk to a class of schoolchildren around 10 years old. She was telling the children that when Henry VIII wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon, it angered her father, who was the King of Spain at that point. She asked them, "Who else do you think it upset? Do anyone of you remember? Someone from Rome?"

And one little boy immediately answered enthusiastically: "Julius Caesar??"

Cute.