{"id":5920,"date":"2014-05-04T05:53:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T05:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=5920"},"modified":"2018-08-28T07:28:59","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T21:28:59","slug":"looking-forward-looking-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=5920","title":{"rendered":"Looking forward, looking back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marianne at East of M\u00e1laga<\/a> says:\u00a0 take a photo of something (interesting), turn round, take a photo of what’s behind.\u00a0 In the National Gallery of Victoria there’s a room where 96 nineteenth-century paintings hang as they would have in that century in the Paris Salon or London’s Royal Academy: covering the walls, tightly packed above and beside one another.\u00a0 In the hierarchy of hanging, the curator’s preferences were hung at eye level;\u00a0 the least favoured were hung right up the top where they’re very hard to see.\u00a0 In this NGV display there were different priorities, with wide skies placed at the top and small detailed paintings low down and easier to study.\u00a0 In centuries past, none of the paintings were labelled or attributed to any artist.\u00a0 However, for the NGV’s visitors the information is available near the seats in the centre of the room, which is where you have to stand to see the top row of paintings.\u00a0 As I stood trying to look at and enjoy every single piece, I took a general photo of one wall, turned round and took a photo of the opposite wall.<\/p>\n

\"NGV<\/p>\n

My favourite on this side of the room, at the bottom left of the photo, beneath the writing on the wall, is An Interesting Story<\/em> by James Tissot.\u00a0 The two women are not really listening to this man and his ‘interesting’ shipping tale.<\/p>\n

\"'An
‘An Interesting Story’, James Tissot c1872, courtesy National Gallery of Victoria<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the opposite wall I was taken by the nude at the top right of the photo, La Cigale<\/em> (The Cicada or The Grasshopper) by Jules Lefebvre.\u00a0 It’s a representation of the cicada from La Fontaine’s poem,\u00a0La cigale et la fourmi\u00a0<\/em>(The cicada and the ant), in which the cicada sings all summer while the ant busily stores up supplies for the winter. The subject in this painting is standing naked in the wind while autumn leaves blow about her.\u00a0 When the painting was exhibited in the 1872 Paris Salon it was accompanied by a line from La Fontaine’s poem:\u00a0 Quand la bise fut venue (When the cold north wind blew). I felt a kind of pity for this woman in her lack of foresight.<\/p>\n

\"NGV<\/p>\n

\"'La
‘La Cigale’, Jule Lefebvre, 1872<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I found an amazing blog about James Tissot while I was reading up about my favourite works from this room:\u00a0 Lucy Paquette on The Hammock<\/a>.\u00a0 There you’ll find a large number of Tissot’s paintings, all of them brilliant.\u00a0 Check it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marianne at East of M\u00e1laga says:\u00a0 take a photo of something (interesting), turn round, take a photo of what’s behind.\u00a0 In the National Gallery of Victoria there’s a room where 96 nineteenth-century paintings hang as they would have in that century in the Paris Salon or London’s Royal Academy: covering the walls, tightly packed above … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Looking forward, looking back”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[26,358,597,598,2,599,600,7,8,21,568,601],"class_list":["post-5920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-photos","tag-art","tag-france","tag-james-tissot","tag-jules-lefebvre","tag-literature","tag-national-gallery-of-victoria","tag-nineteenth-century-paintings","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-postaday-2014","tag-salon-hang"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11389,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920\/revisions\/11389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}