He must have been a pencil squeezer.
He didn't do the Mona Lisa,
That was an Italian geezer."
For the last four months the National Gallery (nga) in Canberra has been showing 'Masterpieces from Paris' an exhibition of 112 paintings from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The tour of the works has been set up to pay for renovations to the French Gallery, and after Australia the paintings move on to Tokyo and San Francisco - how nice of us all to fund the French building works...times must be tough!
Last weekend was the culmination of the exhibition and the gallery was open for 32 consecutive hours to allow people who hadn't yet visited (such as me!) to have a view.
With the kids tucked up in bed, and Amy babysitting I headed off into the night. It was odd going to an art gallery at 9pm, but the nga had laid on a fair amount of entertainment, bands, musicians etc and the place had a real buzz to it.
The majority of paintings were really spectacular, and equally I guess a few wouldn't have got a second glance if they'd not had the artists name next to them. I've read that despite the billing, not all the paintings on view were strictly post impressionist (but that's probably a bit snobby).
Hoards of people crowded round the Van Goughs, Monets and Cezannes, which were inevitably favourites, I also liked a couple of the pointillism pictures, but couldn't imagine what it must have been like painting thousands of tiny dots on a canvas.
It's great that things like this come to Canberra - apparently it's added $94 million to the local economy and has been seen by 470,000 people. Au revior Masterpieces from Paris!
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