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National Art Gallery


The Second stop during our museum day in London was the National Art Gallery. Now, I have the biggest soft spot for art galleries and art itself. I WISH I had the ability to paint masterpieces like these individuals but unfortunately for me, I struggle drawing stick figures. So, to make up for my lack of talent, I like going to galleries and seeing how artists use theirs and seeing their wonderful creations. My all-time favorite painter is Vincient Van Gogh, I love his medium and the use of individual strokes and colors in his paintings. Lucky for me there was a few of his pieces on display here so I finally got to see his work in real life.

The whole gallery was gorgeous, I wish I could've stared at each painting for hours. There were so many different artists on display and all types of paintings. There were landscapes, self-portraits, flowers, cities, people, places, and so much more. I personally love nature, so I was always drawn to paintings that incorporate that within their art. One of my favorite rooms was an exhibit where every wall had detailed paintings of flowers. The detail and realism were astonishing, some of them looked like photographs it was


incredible. It's just fascinating to me to see how differently people paint the "same thing". Like when it comes to painting people, some artists use intense realism while others take a more abstract approach. Seeing all the different styles and mediums is something I enjoy analyzing when looking at art. I am in no way a critic or know nearly enough about art to even consider myself one, but I know what I like and what I don't and there were a lot of paintings in there that I loved.

As I was walking around looking at everything, I again found myself relating my experience to a poem called The Municipal gallery Revisited by William Yeats. This was one of his later poems written in 1937, but it is a reflection about art, memory, and national identity. Like me, Yeats walks through the gallery encountering portraits of revolutionaries, patriots, and friends. The significance of this poem and this experience is that he was not just seeing paintings like I was, he was re-experiencing history, honoring sacrifice, and trying to grapple with the gap between idealism and reality. The poem itself is pretty long but I loved and resonated the most with were these lines:

"Heart smitten with emotion I sink down,

My heart recovering with covered eyes:

wherever I had looked I had looked upon

My permanent or impermanent images"


I think these lines really capture the essences of an art museum, the first too especially. There is so much emotion in the walls of a gallery, between the emotion of the paintings themselves as well as the emotions of the people looking at the art.  The whole gallery was just such a cool experience, and I would love to go back and spend more time soaking up all the different emotions these artists were trying to portray in their beautiful and unique paintings. 

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