On Monday the boys and I took the no 29 bus to Trafalgar Square. We met my mother for lunch, then we all went to see the Vermeer and Music exhibition at the National Gallery. It was one of the loveliest exhibitions that I've seen. Trafalgar Square was chaotic, as it would be in August, but the exhibition was pretty much empty of visitors. I've moaned about over-crowding in exhibitions for so long yet there could have been tumbleweed blowing through this one. None of us asked for the audio guide. Looking at the exhibition without hearing any contemporary music might have been a bit dim, but then it left lots of space for contemplation and for exchanging thoughts. The Vermeers were beautiful and definitely rewarding beyond anything that is ever reproduced in print. I hadn't appreciated the importance or significance of music in Vermeer's paintings, and I knew nothing of the given and incredibly detailed technical analysis of Vermeer's pigments and palette. The work that has stayed in my memory wasn't a painting by Vermeer at all. It was a very small and quite haunting picture by Fabritius of a musical instrument seller's stall with a Delft streetscape beyond.
I made it - and there was a concert on, though I only caught the end of it. A lovely exhibition, and weren't the old instruments beautiful?
Posted by: Mary | 17 August 2013 at 05:18 PM
I do wish that I'd remembered this was on when I was in Leicester Square at lunchtime.
Posted by: Mary | 07 August 2013 at 03:15 PM