NGV Collection

I found the NGV collection really varied on many levels, and I must admit I found it hard to choose particular individual pieces as highlights, when to me it was more a "room" full of works that might be the highlight collectively. However, I chose a few works that impressed me one way or other.

The first was seeing the religious carvings of wood and stone from the early 16th century. Just looking at them so closely, I felt as though the artist so long gone, and survived this long by these works of art, is still speaking to us about his life and culture that was so very different from ours today. It just impacted me that this thing before me was lovingly carved by the hands of another human from an incredibly long past time. caption

The Carved Passion of Christ Altar Piece.
It just makes one say "wow"! Incredible, the intricacy of the carving, attention to detail, is amazing. in our culture, people don't do this sort of thing. The way this was created to tell a story, not only does it open up like a book, or an unfolding doll's house, you can imagine people just wanting to sit before it and take it all in with devotion. Apparently made in special studios in Antwerp to be sold "off the shelf" to chapels etc. This one dates back to 1511.

I Love "October" by Bastien Lepage, 1878
His paintings of rural life, depicting peasants with dignity, while revealing their hardships with a sense of the reality of life on the land. This one depicts the potato harvest in the bleakness of Autumn in his own native village north of Paris.Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French, 1824-98
St. Genevieve provisioning.
Paris Under Siege.
Distemper, pencil and chalk on canvas. In this case, distemper is a paint mixture of pigment and glue of some kind. It looked to me like

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French, 1824-98
St. Genevieve provisioning.
Paris Under Siege.
Distemper, pencil and chalk on canvas. In this case, distemper is a paint mixture of pigment and glue of some kind. It looked to me like black paint applied with a brush or a stick.
This massive three piece canvas display was created as full size preparatory designs for one of Paris city's great civic buildings, the Pantheon, to tell the story of Paris under siege. If you look closely at these canvases you can see the meticulously drawn out grid that he used to position his images correctly. It must have been an incredible task, these are huge. I noted that his drawing skills are confident and well practiced, with strong, flowing, unwavering lines. I felt this work could easily take place amongst today's modern artists as a black and white rendering just as it is.