Close Encounters of the Museum Kind

John Constable:  Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, erected in the grounds of Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire, by the late Sir George Beaumont , 1833-6, National Gallery, London   Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827) was a well-known art collector and amateur painter. He had been a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), who had died twenty years earlier, and Beaumont now honoured this friendship by erecting a stone cenotaph to Reynolds’ memory in the grounds of his estate, in the year 1812. The memorial was inscribed with verses dedicated to Reynolds, by William Wordsworth, and placed at the end of an avenue of lime trees. On either side of this avenue were placed busts of Michelangelo and Raphael, two of Reynolds’ artistic heroes. John Constable (1776-1837) the landscape painter was another of Beaumont’s friends and sometimes came to stay with him. In 1823 Constable made a pencil sketch of the memorial to Reynolds. Beaumont  died in 1827, and in 1833 Constable be...

Nicolas Lancret, A Lady in a Garden having Coffee with Children , c.1742, National Gallery, London. One of the treasures of the National Gallery in London is  A Lady in a Garden having Coffee with Children  by the French artist Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743) The lady in Lancret’s painting appears to be giving her little girl a canard , a lump of sugar soaked in coffee – which some French mothers like to do even today. Canard is the French word for a duck, and the sugar lump dipped in coffee must be an allusion to a duck diving under the water. Lancret’s picture is a charming family scene, with a touch of humour, painted in the delicate colours of the Rococo style. The lady’s dress acts as the focus of the picture, and its colours of reddish orange and greenish blue are distributed in small touches throughout the painting: red flowers, blue sky, blue water. The composition is carefully constructed, with the family group forming a broad pyramid, balanced on the other side by a c...