In the National Gallery

Upon being released from orientation at 4pm on Friday, we took a 3 minute walk to the National Gallery and spent a little under an hour there before going home on the tube. It is a free museum and I intend to spend lots of time there. I've never found myself particularly attracted to art musuems, but then again, I've never lived so close to such a good one. One of my favorite parts about going to such a renowned musuem is stumbling across paintings I actually recognize and studying them closely.

While in the Gallery, I found a series of paintings I specifically enjoyed were by Francesco Guardi [Wikipedia, National Gallery's page] There were many urban landscapes, especially Venice. His attention to detail on the buildings make the scenes pop out to me and become much more real. He also did a number of 'architectural caprices', or made-up landscapes, that usually included ruins of arches. Neither his Wiki page nor the National Gallery's page truly captures the vividness of the prints I saw while in the Gallery, so I'll try to find some pictures online which can truly convey the image as I saw it.

On a side note, as we exited the National Gallery, an ingenious advertisement passed by. Six or seven men had a large sign on their backs, reaching perhaps 3 feet above their heads. Think of it as cutting off the front of a sandwich board, and extending the back upwards. It was the same sign repeated many times, and they were jovially talking amongst each other and the signs were jostling around among each other making its way through the crowd. It was quite interesting to see, although maybe somewhat ineffective because I don't remember what brand the advertisements were for. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture in time, but I'll look out for it and try to get a picture if I see it again.

Picture: Near the London Centre on the way to the National Gallery (in background)