We are down in London for a few days, visiting Ally and Cat. A while ago we asked Andrew to give us a tour of the National Gallery, to show us some of his favourite paintings. Today was the day, and we met him in the basement coffee shop of the Gallery before sallying forth on our tour. I had asked him not to prepare, we just wanted an informal tour from his perspective, and it was great fun. He took us to a couple of Medieval rooms that we had never even been in before, where we very much enjoyed all the gold leaf and the beautiful colours. Then it was on to the Northern Renaissance, quite a few of which we hadn’t seen before in our October trip - Andrew knows his way around the National Gallery extremely well. He then showed us a few more favourites before we all headed for lunch and a chat. My favourite new (to me) paintings of the day were both modernist; firstly “The Kien Valley with the Bluemlisalp massif”, painted by Swiss modernist Ferdinand Hodler in the summer of 1902. The bright, steep-sided valley, the dark green trees, the blue mountains and sky beyond, convey a beautiful scene captured in time. The other was painted in 1905 by Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela of Lake Keitele, which lies about 350 km north of Helsinki. The water is painted naturalistically, with different patterns where the breeze is touching it, and it’s stunning.
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