Unmissable masterworks

In my humble and not remotely biased opinion any London visitor should not miss a single artwork in this fine town. If though, your visit isn’t to last a number of years and you need to limit the number of artworks you ingest; here’s a selection our own most unmissable masterworks:

Mark Rothko - Four Seasons mural series
 
The regular Arts attendee understands the vital importance of experience in art viewing. When Rothko presented his Four Seasons mural series to the Tate Gallery in 1969, he requested for the art works a room of their own. Rightly so it would seem, the artworks having since been described as ‘the treasure of Tate Modern’.
 
The paintings are darker in colour and mood than his previous works and Rothko wanted them to be deeply contemplated, away from distractions. Jonathan Jones commented in the Guardian earlier this year, that almost everyone who enters the room is immediately drawn to sit, almost as if emotionally burdened by the paintings.
 
The paintings were originally commissioned in the late 1950s for a restaurant in New York, but recognising that a restaurant might not be the ideal location for them, Rothko withdrew from the commission. He eventually gave the works to the Tate, expressing a love for English artists- particularly Turner- and the paintings arrived in London on the morning of his suicide. Whether or not this matter of biography informs your viewing experience is your prerogative.
 
George Stubbs - Whistlejacket
 
Similarly- from the floor grilles to décor- the National Gallery’s Sackler Room is a beacon of nineteenth century styling, and complements the works within. This room is not to be bypassed for the simple reason that when one embarks on an artistic pilgrimage of London; one does not neglect the English masters. On entering, an art fan can barely believe Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed, Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’s’ An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, John Constable’s The Hay Wain, and George Stubbs’s Whistlejacket all within a few metres of each other.
 
Subbs’s Whistlejacket is the unmissable painting here. Whistlejacket was born in 1749 and grew to be one of the best-known racehorses of the day. It was his owner, the second Marquess of Rockingham who commissioned Stubbs’s painting.
 
The colossal painting depicts the image of a single horse standing alone for one of the first times in history. Contemporaries suggested that it was an unfinished equestrian portrait of George III but shadows beneath Whistlejacket's back feet suggest the contrary. The void that should contain landscape or people speaks volumes in its simplicity. The painting is all at once a thorough record of Whistlejacket, a perceptive capturing of the spirit of the animal, and a wildly innovative use of canvas.

Willam Scrots - Edward VI
 
Handily, unmissable masterpiece number three is hung just around the corner, in the National Portrait Gallery. It is one of the finest examples of optical illusion known to this day, let alone the Tudor period. Willam Scrots’s Edward VI was recognised as one of the most remarkable examples of anamorphosis of the day, despite many existing, and today is as incredible to kids as to adults.
 
Anamorphosis is a technique created to display the ability of the artist and entertain the viewer. This image of Edward is incomprehensible until viewed from the right. This painting might have been produced as an amusement for the young Prince.
 
Little is known of Scrots’s early life but it is known that he travelled to England in 1545 and the following year became court painter to Henry VIII in succession to Hans Holbein. It is believed that his annual salary was double what Holbein had been receiving. Interestingly, Holbein had painted The Ambassadors in 1533, in which he included a distorted shape of a skull lying diagonally across the bottom of the painting.
 
Unknown - A man stabbing a woman with a knife
 
The Wellcome Collection is a short tube ride up the Northern line from Charing Cross (National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery). This collection is one of the most bizarre you will see. Enter the room of the 'Medicine Man’, and behind all natures of medical equipment, sexual devices and torture implements you’ll find a number of artworks including such twisted delights as ‘Sequah on Clapham Common’ (an education on quack doctor culture) and ‘A Toothdrawer concealing the dental key from the patient’ (a study of the horrifying dental practice employed into the 1900s).
 
Not the highlight, but as good a summation of the collection as any, A man stabbing a woman with a knife shocks. Not a subject much recorded through history, this image is naïve in its rendering, making it all the more unusual to us regular arts attendees who are used to a certain finish from works of its period. Henry Wellcome selected artworks for their content, rather than their quality, and as such each art work displayed fascinates.
 
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino - The Raphael Cartoons

Your final must-see is through the atrium of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and to the left. The Raphael Cartoons were commissioned by Pope Leo X in 1515 and are overwhelming in size, skill and renown. Raphael has been widely regarded as one of the greatest painters in history and the Raphael Cartoons have been some of the most famous and imitated paintings in the world.

Their magnificence is understandable since they are full-scale designs for tapestries later made to cover the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel. They are perfect examples of High Renaissance art works, displayed in a worthy space. The Raphael Gallery is enormous and dimmed, making our viewing experience all the more ‘sacred’, and the room is always silent. The tapestries were woven between 1516 and 1521, and a century later the cartoons were brought to England by the Prince of Wales. From 1865, they have been on loan from the Royal Collection to the V&A.
 
 

Author: Emma Wright