'We came to London'
August 1 2012
Picture: National Gallery
A reader writes:
I took your advice and went to the National Gallery with my two girls this morning.
Not (much) wishing to reignite the old controversy about Tate Britain's woeful hang of historic British art, but I couldn't help thinking as I wandered through room 35 and the Sackler Room what a great job the NG has done in its display of the British 'greats' - Turner, Constable, Wilson, Gainsborough, Hogarth etc. And effortlessly contextualised within the European old master tradition, too (something, through no fault of its own, Tate can never do). For the time being, at any rate, the National Gallery is the place to go to see great British painting.
However, at £3.70 per bun, I wasn't surprised that the cafe was totally empty.
Bit of a random point this, but I've never entirely understood the rationale for taking the best British art away from the national collection. You wouldn't go around the Louvre, and expect to have to go somewhere else to see the Poussins. Yet that is what we do in London, with Turner. I have this vain hope that one day we'll leave Tate Britain to focus on what it wants to focus on - art from c.1900 onwards - and re-integrate the best of British art with the National Gallery. The National will eventually want to turn the large building it owns behind the gallery, the Trafalgar Hotel in Orange Street, into a new gallery - and there'll be plenty of room for the best of British art.
