Trafalgar Square is a special place. The architecture and views are breathtaking. The National Gallery, the church of St. Martins in the Fields, Canada House, and more, all surround the Square. From the right place you can look down Whitehall and see Big Ben.

In the heart of the Square is the National Gallery, a huge, Neoclassical building. I have visited the gallery a few times and only last weekend, on my most recent visit, did I start to feel oriented in the gallery. I love that feeling of getting lost in an art gallery; of wandering around and exploring and building a map of where things are. I also love the feeling of looking back and realising it is getting easier to find your way because you have visited a place a few times before.

I studied the architecture of the new Sainsbury Wing in the V&A course I did last year. [1]

Visiting now, following my studies, I came to see the building. with a new perspective. My first perspective is as it always is when I see beautiful architecture: wow. Then I thought “I studied the new building!” I started to appreciate the architecture more.

I noticed the columns that I had until then only studied on the screen. I find myself looking at columns in architecture more. I now know the difference between an Ionic and Corinthian column; learning about architecture feels like learning languages of design.

Inside the gallery, I noticed a few paintings I had seen before only on a computer screen. That’s Hay Wain by John Constable! I thought with excitement as I noticed the painting. The gallery is also home to Turner’s Rain, Steam, and Speed, a painting I first learned about through a blog post. I studied the painting with great excitement. What can I see that I don’t remember from looking at it first? Many details stood out: the bridge feels darker in the real painting; there is a person in a boat in the bottom left of the image. The boat is tiny in comparison to the scale of the bridges.

I went to the National Gallery with new perspectives: of architecture, of seeing paintings I had only until then seen on a computer screen.

When I visited the Rembrandt room I said to myself I thought I knew Rembrandt’s work. I had seen paintings by him before, understood that he used dark backgrounds to highlight the subject of the painting. But I knew so little: of Rembrandt’s difficult life, of his changing artistic style over the years, of how expressions were his subject.

On reflection, studying a work of art involves a lot of “take twos”: of looking and looking again to gain a better understanding of a painting, either in one sitting (looking around a work and coming back to different features) or across multiple sittings. Impressions of art change with time, too: with knowledge of the artist, the time period in which the work was painted, growing knowledge of how others painted similar subject matters, my own new experiences since I last saw the painting, and the context in which a painting is seen (location, digital vs. physical).

As I learn more, I know more of what to look out for in a work of art. I am learning to distinguish details that are significant in painting: how colour is used, perspective, theme, brush-stroke, symbols. I recently learned that anchors are the symbol of hope in some paintings.

I will soon be starting my first art history block in school where I’ll be learning how to use a visual analysis toolkit to analyse a painting. I am excited to learn and apply what I learn when I visit galleries in the future.

In a lecture this week we were asked to say what we saw in a painting as a light introduction to visual analysis. One person noted the presence of a dog under a table. The lecturer then said they had looked at the painting many times through the course of their teaching and never noticed the dog. This makes me think about how we all see different things, and how much there is to see even in art we already know.

This is my (very late) submission for the June 2025 IndieWeb Carnival on the topic “Take Two.”

[1]: The Sainsbury Wing has a storied, tumultuous history; then-Prince Charles publicly criticised one of the proposals for a redesign in May 1984. Today, the Sainsbury Wing houses a wonderful collection of medieval art.

Rain, Steam, and Speed learned about through a blog post _June 2025 IndieWeb Carnival on the topic “Take Two.”_ 1]: [The Sainsbury Wing has a storied, tumultuous history

Jamesg

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