Still Life With Vegetables

The Greats: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland

An exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, viewed 9^th January 2016.

When I stepped into the final chamber, it was like a swarm of some glittering, humming insects clinging to the left hand wall. It drew me to it and there I stood with my friend Laura, gazing at a rendition of poplar trees beside a river. No deeper topic or focus, no great range of shades and those primarily green and blue. Yet I could not take my eyes away. It felt as if Poplars on the Epte, painted by Claude Monet in 1891, was rewiring my optic nerves.

There is nothing quite like seeing a work of art in the original. This is because no matter how carefully a print or photograph was taken, whatever pains were expended on the colours and tonal qualities, the paper stock and scale, it bears a relation to the original similar to that which canned fruit or vegetables bear to fresh. I find it's the same with music: no matter how much I love a recording, it is still canned music. All those glorious coffee table books in my library are canned art. This exhibition was a farmer's market.

I have never been to the National Gallery of Scotland. Neither, it seems, have I managed to see much Monet. And it was far from the only treasure in this compact yet wonderfully varied display, that commenced with a tiny piece of parchment on which Leonardo da Vinci had sketched a dog's paw. Some wonderfully curly dog with big, strong toes: a hunting hound, I have no doubt.

On the end wall of the same room was Mars, Venus and Cupid by Paolo Veronese, dated "about 1580". This was the wall and, in addition, clearly a studio piece with the models draped in textured fabrics and posed against a backdrop as lively as any stage set and bearing no little resemblance to 1890s photographic portrait. There was another dog, a little spaniel playfully mauling the child god, but the difference between this and the da Vinci could not have been more marked. Moreover, the tension between large and small, vision and composition, ran through the exhibit like currents.

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