Painters Paintings at the National Gallery.

I am not sure what I made of this exhibition.  It gathers together paintings previously owned by great painters, and goes some way to analyse why these people collected the images they did.

I did some content analysis of the exhibition.  The exhibition reviewed the works collected by Freud, Matisse, Degas (2 rooms - contemporaries and masters), Frederick Lord Leighton, Watts, Lawrence (2 rooms) and Van Dyck.  I wondered whether no female artists were included as collectors because they were insufficiently affluent to be collectors, or because the exhibition curators had excluded them?  Each room commenced with a self portrait by the artist.  There was a predominance of portraiture, usually of a single person - again I am not sure whether this is a curatorial choice or collectors preference.

I liked a lot of the work collected by Freud and Matisse, and loathed a lot of the stuff collected by Lawrence and Reynolds (Presidents of the RA, whose Old Master collections are the foundation of the NG).  Notably, Freud and Matisse had a significant proportion of portraits of women.

No	Collector Painter	Male	Female	Nude?	Self Portrait	Other Genre
	Freud
1	Freud	1			1
2	Freud	1
3	Cezanne	1	1	Both
4	Freud		1	Yes
5	Auerbach	2
6	Corot		1
7	Degas		1
8	Constable		1
		5 men	5 women	3 nude	1 self portrait	0 other
	Matisse
1	Matisse	1			1
2	Gaugain	1
3	Matisse		1	1
4	Cezanne		3	3
5	Matisse		1
6	Degas		2
7	Matisse		1
8	Signac					Landscape
9	Cezanne		1
10	Picasso		1
11	Picasso		1
		2 men	11 women	4 nude	1 self portrait	1 landscape
	Degas (Room 1)
1	Degas	1			1
2	Blanche	1
3	Manet		1
4	Sisley					Landscape
5	Gaugain					Flowers
6	Pisarro					Landscape
7	Forain	6	1			Tribunal
8	Manet	8
9	Jeanniet	7		6
10	Degas	5	14	5
11	Cezanne	1		1
		29 men	16 women	12 nude	1 self portrait	2 landscp 1 flowers 1 tribunal
	Degas (Room 2)
1	Degas				1
2	Ingres	1
3	Degas	1	1	1
4	Degas		1
5	Ingres	1		1
6	Ingres	1
7	Ingres	1
8	Ingres	1
9	Degas					Skyscape
10	Delacroix					Skyscape
11	Degas		2
12	Degas	2
13	Corot					Landscape
14	Andreiu					Still Life
15	Delacroix	1	1	2
16	Delacroix	1
17	Delacroix	1
18	Ricard	1
19	Rousseau					Landscape
		12 men	5 women	4 nude	1 self portrait	2 skyscp 2 landscp 1 still life
	Leighton
1	Leighton	1			1
2	Corot					Landscape
3	Corot					Landscape
4	Leighton					Landscape
5	Leighton					Landscape
6	Corot					Landscape
7	Tintoretto	1	1	1
8	Watts					Landscape
		2 men	1 woman	1 nude	1 self portrait	6 landscp
	Watts
1	Watts	1			1
2	Machietti	1
		2 men			1 self portrait
	Lawrence (President RA)
1	Lawrence	1			1
2	Raphael	1	2
3	Reni	Multiples	Multiples
4	Lawrence	3
5	VD Groes	12	1
6	Carracci	10	1
7	V Dyck	1
		38 men	14 women		1 self portrait
	Reynolds (President RA)
1	Gainsborough		1
2	Rembrandt	Multiple
3	Poussin	Multiple
4	Bourden	Multiple
5	V Dyck	3
6	Bellini	3
7	Bassano	3
8	Michaelangelo		1
9	V Dyck					Animal
10	Reynolds	1			1
		40 men	2 women		1 self portrait	1 animal
	Van Dyck
1	V Dyck	2
2	V Duck	2
3	Titian	9
4	V Dyck	1			1
5	Titian	1
		15 men			1 self portrait

Assume where ‘multiple’, counted as 10

Just shows, the most popular subject in this exhibition was men.  I don't know if this is also restricted by the media of oil on canvas.  There was very little pastel (only a couple of skycapes), despite Degas being a key collector.  None of his theatre or ballet work was on display.  Further thought to follow.