If the Paintings Could Talk (National Gallery of London (Paperback))

The book has a modest aim -- not to impress us with scholarship and art criticism, but to tell us the extraordinary stories behind some of the paintings in the permanent collection of London's National Gallery.I was reminded of what many paintings go through to survive wars, conflagrations, confiscations, mutilations, floods, and caprices of fashion. It's a bit of a miracle when these highly perishable works find their way into a great museum. And it's fascinating how often through the centuries they are misplaced, misattributed, and misunderstood.The writing is lively, and the stories entertaining. All sorts of fun factoids emerge, like why Pope Julius II sports a beard in Raphael's portrait, who's really getting married in Van Eyck's Arnolfini wedding portrait, which Monet paining is peppered with sand from the beach where it was painted, why Velasquez used long handled brushes, how certain Anatolian rugs got named after Lotto and Holbein, which paintings were painted to show off technical prowess or to annoy rivals...The stories are alternately informative, gossipy, touching, inspirational, or humorous. There are random whimsical quotes throughout. My favorite was from Mark Twain describing a Turner as "a tortoiseshell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes."This is a delightful book and whets my appetite for a trip to the National Gallery.

Will make your museum visit sooooo much more interesting. So great to get good insightful and interesting details about the history of these incredible works. Buy it.

A beautiful book about some of the paintings you can find at the National Gallery in London. The descriptions focus more on anecdotes or scarcely known facts rather than an artistic analysis of each work.

Fascinating look behind the scenes at the National Gallery, lots of interesting stories about the paintings. This book is easy to pick up and read about a few paintings and put down. Great fun, very pleased.

This little book is a wonderful idea in every respect - it introduces most of the masterworks (and also quite a few less known works) of the National Gallery in London, but not in dry, scientific way, but through anecdotes that give a new angle and a new identity to the paintings. The book is beautifully done, with good if sometimes rather small color reproductions and an elegant layout. It can serve as a souvenir book to the Gallery but also as a first introduction to art and its history for young people and old. Highly recommended!

Un libro semplice e di facile lettura con un sacco di aneddoti su quadri più o meno noti. Se siete stanchi delle solite 'storie' dell'arte o dei cataloghi dei vari musei, questo libro può rappresentare una lettura fresca e piena di curiosità non riportate in altri testi di impostazione più classica.

Ein durchaus hübsches, unterhaltsames und interessantes Buch voller "Geschichtchen" über Meisterwerke, allerdings hauptsächlich über das "Rundherum". Um das Buch genießen zu können, sollte man schon etwas über die angesprochenen Werke wissen, z.B. aus dem sehr empfehlenswerten Buch von K. Clark "One Hundred Details from the National Gallery London".

There can be few books that wear their erudition as lightly as this one, yet there can be no doubt that Michael Wilson knows a lot more than he tells us. He draws on one aspect of each picture that lends itself to a focused essay that feels very spontaneous, and gives further life to pictures you know but possibly know little about. The reproductions are varied in size, with each chapter marked by a full-page detail. I wanted it for one painting in particular which I hoped would be illustrated; in fact it is shown complete, but small, with a huge detail (Adolph Menzel's An afternoon in the Tuilieries), but I'm very glad to have his commentary, which places it side by side with Manet's version of the same scene and talks about their different emphases. The commentary on van Gogh's chair is also illuminating, tracing its origin to an illustration of a chair belonging to Charles Dickens, while also pointing to another pair, this time the same painter's likeness of Gauguin's chair. This leads him to trace their similarity and parting of the ways, all evinced in these two images. It is fascinating stuff, and leads you to flit around reading other commentaries as the pictures take your eye. The pages are almost without any shine, unusually for heavily illustrated books, and it is altogether very pleasing as an object, being like a large paperback novel in size. Having it seems to draw even more advantage from having free access to this wonderful museum.

This is a really entertaining book, full of anecdotes and interesting details about selected paintings from our wonderful National Gallery's.This is isn't for academic study - it is a compilation of snippets to intrigue you about the works you love. A brilliant book.

This was a gift and was very happily received to my friend.