Tour the National Gallery in London from your living room

Taking a curated look at the collection of one of the world’s greatest galleries is now free and easier than ever – because, you can do it from your living room. In a major new digital program, the Gallery is publishing videos here whereby art curators, professionals and experts take fans and would-be visitors through some of the world’s most beloved works. Now, you can join Dr. Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, the Gallery’s Associate Curator of Paintings 1600-1800, who talks about paintings from the Gallery’s collection that celebrate domestic activities such as playing music and card games. Among the works Dr Whitlum-Cooper discusses are Chardin’s The House of Cards, Manet’s Eva Gonzalès, Degas’s Combing the Hair (‘La Coiffure’) and Vermeer’s Young Woman Standing at a Virginal.   But that’s not where it ends. As many people under lockdown are finding comfort in nature around their homes and in their gardens, another upcoming episode in the series looks at three expansive rural landscapes in the collection that take us from morning to night. As well as Rubens’s A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning and Corot’s The Four Times of Day; Night this talk includes that most treasured evocation of the British countryside, Constable’s The Hay Wain.  A series of online tutorials on ‘slow looking’ develops the Gallery’s mindfulness programme by showing online visitors how to look at pictures in depth and explore hidden details. The first of these asks us to take a closer, slower look at Turner’s Rain Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway. It’s a great new digital age that means our favourite… Read More