The National Gallery’s new director, Gabriele Finaldi, is interviewed in the Art Newspaper this week, where he discusses his vision for the institution in relation to other British institutions.  “As time moves on, 1900 seems increasingly remote and less related to how we think about periods of history and art history,” he says.  “In artistic terms, nothing very special happens in 1900, but the 1880s and 90s are a remarkably fertile period that push forward new modes of expression, with Cubism very soon afterwards. It is slightly frustrating to reach 1900 and then not go on.”  (more…)

As a new wave of strikes start outside the National Gallery, the museum has been forced to close a substantial portion of its galleries.  The protests also come as Gabriele Finaldi prepares to take over for Sir Nicholas Penny as museum president. (more…)

Following a number of walkouts and week-long protests, the staff at London’s National Gallery has announced its first full strike this August.  “Our members in the National Gallery have been engaged in a heroic struggle to defend the functions of a national institution,” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said in a statement. “They have taken 52 days strike action so far and are prepared to take more. Accordingly, we have served the employer with notice today of more sustained action in August.” (more…)

A collection of 62 artworks, among them pieces by Van Gogh and Monet, have been donated to the National Gallery of Art from the estate of museum benefactor Paul Mellon, who passed away in 1999.  Of particular note is the Van Gogh piece Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, created shortly after the artist cut off his ear, and suffered a break in his friendship with Paul Gauguin.  “It’s this very emotionally wrought period of time,” says curator Kimberly Jones. “I think this still life, of all the still lives, is the most Gauguin-like in terms of the pallete, the symbolism.  I can’t help but wonder, looking at this, if Paul Gauguin’s presence isn’t being very much felt in this painting.” (more…)

An article in The Guardian traces the history of Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings, as two of the original versions of the still life are preparing to go on exhibit at London’s National Gallery.  Originally received quite poorly by the art establishment, the works occasionally caused heavy contention among artists and critics exhibiting alongside “the laughable pot of sunflowers by Mr. Vincent.”  The article also discusses the artist’s long relationship and correspondence with his brother Theo.  “Always continue walking a lot and loving nature,” Van Gogh once said to his brother, “for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.” (more…)

The Financial Times continues its ongoing “Breakfast with the FT” series with Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, talking about the challenges of public interest, his opinions on contemporary art, and the role he sees the National Gallery taking in education and advocacy.  “I don’t believe art up to the present should be taught at university,” he says. “Because of consumer demand, the explosion of teaching of contemporary art now is colossal – and it is achieved at the expense of older art. We at the National Gallery should do more to become a magnet for scholarship.” (more…)

The upcoming show on the work of Vincent Van Gogh, held next year at London’s National Gallery, will reunite two of the surviving versions of the artist’s iconic Sunflowers.  Painted in 1888, one of the canvases is on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, while the other was purchased by the National Gallery in 1924.  “It will deepen every visitor’s appreciation of the artist,” said  Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery. (more…)

South-African born artist Susanne du Toit has been awarded the prestigious BP Portrait Award at a ceremony in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The piece was part of a series of portraits of the artist’s family; where she allowed her son to find his own pose, as long it allowed her to depict his hands, as she considers them an essential element of character. This year’s panel of judges was comprised by the painter and assistant to the late Lucian Freud, David Dawson; Sarah Howgate, an NPG curator; Victoria Pomery, director of Turner Contemporary in Margate; the writer Ali Smith; and Des Violaris, BP’s director of UK arts and culture. (more…)

The National Gallery in Washington, DC has announced a renovation to its East Building that will add 12,260 square feet of exhibition space, as well as a rooftop sculpture garden.  The new spaces will host a selection of modern art from the Gallery’s collection, including a room potentially dedicated to Mark Rothko.  “This gift to the nation by these generous donors will enable us to exhibit more art from our ever-growing modern collection in spaces that will be at once spacious, airy and contemplative.”  said director Earl A. Powell. (more…)

The late Lucian Freud has left a number of works from his collection, including a late work by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot and several sculptures by Degas, to Great Britain as a token of gratitude for the country’s welcoming of his Jewish family, who fled Nazi Germany in 1938.  The Corot work is now on view at the National Gallery, in room 41.  “Although we have a very strong collection of Corot’s works, we have no example of a late figure painting like this,” says National Gallery director Nicholas Penny. “Its rough-hewn monumentality and abrupt transitions anticipate Picasso’s exercises in the classical manner and make it one of the most modern looking pictures in the collection.” (more…)

A portrait attributed to the Venetian master Titian has been discovered in a remote basement room of the National Gallery in London.  The discovery of the painting, depicting Doctor Girolamo Fracastoro, was acquired by the museum in 1924, and positions the National Gallery as one of the leading collections of Titians in the world. (more…)

William Turnbull in 1956 via The Guardian

Artist William Turnbull has died at the age of 90. His diverse artistic production included abstract painting, figurative and minimalist metal sculpture. He was considered a forerunner to the Pop Art movement and was one the Abstract Expressionist’s earliest adopters. His work is part of major public collections including the Tate, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others.  (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports that Nicholas Penny, the director of London’s National Gallery, described the temporarily-installed works by Yinka Shonibare and Elmgreen & Dragset in Trafalgar Square as “antagonistic to the architectural character of the square”, making the plinth like “a stage, which can be used ironically, farcically [and] inappropriately”. (more…)

James Stourton, chairman of Sotheby’s UK, to leave company to pursue a 2016 completion of a biography on Kenneth Clark, a controversial director of the National Gallery in London. Contrasting other opinions in the art world, Stourton calls Clark the “grandest of grandees in the art world.”

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Leonardo da Vinci, St. Jerome (circa 1482). Image via the Vatican Museum.

The National Gallery‘s Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan brings together the most comprehensive display of surviving paintings and drawings by the artist to date, as only a small number of da Vinci’s works remain accounted for. While da Vinci’s interests included painting and sculpture, anatomy, engineering, and music, the National Gallery defines the scope of the show to drawings and paintings dated primarily within the 1480s and 1490s—the period in which da Vinci was the court painter to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza.

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani: Lady with an Ermine (1489–1490). Image via the Czartoryski Museum.

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Two 17th-century paintings by Nicholas Poussin were reportedly vandalized yesterday in the National Gallery in London.  A 57-year-old man, presumably French, sprayed Poussin’s 1634 “The Adoration of the Golden Calf” with a canister of red paint and according to a by-stander, he “seemed proud of what he had done” and made no attempt to escape the scene.

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