The London Traveler

The National Gallery’s new exhibition showcases the work of Pompeo Batoni  – an eighteenth century Italian painter whose speciality was portraits of foreigners ‘doing the Grand Tour’.

One of his sitters wears a spectacular kilt and plaid that quite takes your attention away from the fine Roman ruins against which he is posed. The British tourist away from home was just as easily recognisable in the eighteenth century as he is now!

But even if you’re not particularly interested in eighteenth century tourists, Batoni’s paintings are a fascinating record of what really drove the art world in the eighteenth century. He highlights Classical sculptures such as the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon, which had a huge influence on Neoclassical art – and shows the landscapes of ancient Rome. These weren’t completely value-free souvenirs – they showed Roman art and architecture as models worthy of imitation.

And there’s a certain crispness and precision to the way Batoni paints that is truly classical – far from the sfumato, the torrid brushwork and moody shadows of the Roman baroque. It’s rather an intriguing little byway of art – Batoni has been dismissed as a ‘postcard painter’ for far too long, and this exhibition at long last shows us how he developed from a religious painter in the Italian tradition to a portraitist of charm, and some acuity.

The exhibition  is open till May 18th at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square. Entry costs £8.

At the same time you can catch up with a nice little free exhibition in Room 1 of the National Gallery, showing landscape oil sketches from the nineteenth century. (It’s on till April 6th.) These landscape sketches were hardly ever intended to be exhibited – they were a way for artists to practise their skills and to build a portfolio of landscape themes that they could then use in larger paintings.

But in fact, because the artists were painting from nature, these sketches are actually more striking than many of the ‘finished’ paintings based on them. They were made quickly, responding to momentary stimuli like the effect of light on water, the movement of wind in the trees, a sudden shaft of sunlight on a wall. They are spontaneous and fresh.

And all that spontaneity is really rather a nice contrast to Batoni’s somewhat pompous sitters – a little sorbet to clear the  palate.

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