National Gallery - a display of the rich person............

 'The Nation's Gallery. The story of European art, masterpiece by masterpiece.'                                        

www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Taking the opportunity to visit (for free) with my son the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square on Saturday 12 February 2022 was a worthwhile experience. There are some stunning art works on display. Only one though is of a worker or, in this case, a peasant woman. Not surprisingly it was painted by Van Gogh.

Back in 2018 I wrote this short piece:- 

https://writemark.blogspot.com/2012/07/wot-no-workers.html

Part of the article included 

Of course, this removal of the rural labourer is not unique in the history of the ruling class in the countryside. 

Even 18th century landscape painter, Gainsborough said “Damn gentleman, there is no such set of enemies to a real artist in the world as they are!” His favourite of all his paintings was ‘The Woodman’ , an old labourer standing beside a bundle of faggots. Such paintings didn’t sell and his heavy debts meant he would have found it unwise to ‘stray from the happy peasant’s cottage door to its wet and squalid interior.’ (the Long Affray by Harry Hopkins) 

Gainsborough stuck to the rich and their habitats, all suitably bathed in light. This at a time when more than 50% of the population of England lived in the countryside, and from which the wealth of the nation was ultimately founded. In the Netherlands, Van Gogh showed the faces of these people - the yokels, clod-hoppers and bumpkins - but not in England as to do so would threaten to reveal the naked weapon of class rule in the countryside. 

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                Lady Jane Grey prior to her execution. She was Queen for just 9 days. 

The Duke of Wellington.

The perils of child birth. Whilst the man of the house is lively in this painting his clearly exhausted wife, surrounded by her seven children, looks many years older than him.  It seems reasonable to assume that the mother in this era would have had a number of other children that did not survive child birth or the first few years of infancy.