National Gallery Lonon - Lessons From Going To The Museum

Hi all,

over the weekend I had the opportunity to visit the National Gallery in London. I was very impressed. If you ever have the chance to go, the collection really is a must for realists.

It was structured by centuries, and each room took you to a new century of painting. They displayed only the very greatest masters (Michelangelo, Leonardo, Vermeer, Rubens, Titian, etc). It was like travelling through time and seeing the evolution of painting.

I learned the following lessons:

By seeing the master painting up close it was incredible how much rendering detail I could observe and learn from that I would have completely missed on a photograph. It's one of the biggest takeaways of why I'll try to go to the museum more often.
Rythm: The rythms where just so much more apparent in real life than on photos.
Design decisons: By seeing the different painters one after the other, it really became clear how each one had their own particularity or strength. Vermeer is super subtle and sensitive with values. Some used very strong "egg effects" and chiaroscuro. Seeing them in comparison made that so much clearer.

Cool fact: The National Gallery puts their works in the public domain with HD quality pictures on their website. Great for master studies! https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/must-sees

I attached some photos I took of my favorites.

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