What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors — visitors with prebooked, time-slotted tickets, mind — queue outside and in the rain? Why are its cloakrooms still closed and umbrellas forbidden? My husband had to stash his behind a balustrade on Orange Street. Why, with a 1:45 ticket, were we not through the doors until 2:05? Why make your harassed marshals, doing the best they can, shout ticket times and field questions from furious picture-fanciers? Lousy sort of freedom this. The V&A, by the way, is just as bad.
I used to roll my eyes at the ‘it’s your collection’ shtick given to every schoolchild, but then they closed the gallery and then they made you book and then they made you wait outside on stormy Sunday afternoons and now I think: ‘Yes, it is my bloody collection and I used to bloody walk right in.’
Bellotto was considered the booby prize, but within a year he was the highest-paid artist at the Saxon court
Anyway, once you’re in, you’re in and it’s glorious, as the National Gallery always is. Straight to Room One for one of those little, laser-focused exhibitions that the NG does so well. Remember Bartolomé Bermejo, Louis-Léopold Boilly and Jan Gossaert’s ‘Adoration’? Winners all. Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited gathers five paintings not seen together since the 1750s. Two are owned by Manchester Art Gallery, one by the National Gallery since it was saved for the nation (that means you!) in 2017, one by the Earl and Countess of Derby and one by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. What an elegant quintet they make.
Bernardo Bellotto (1722–80) was the nephew of Canaletto, the great view painter of Venice and, in a later phase, the Thames.
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