NEW CONNECTIONS
November 2000

This one-day practical art course made connections between two contrasting National Art Collections; the National Portrait Gallery and the Wallace Collection at Hertford House. The course was intended for confident amateur artists with an interest in Western European painting.

The morning session was devoted to discussing reasons for making art collections, whether public or private, and the ways in which these collections are displayed and interpreted. Using Brooks's painting as our starting point we viewed portraits in the NPG, identifying key works and looking at what we considered made a 'good' portrait. Course participants made portrait drawings in any part of the Gallery which they then took with them to the Wallace Collection to develop in the afternoon.

The afternoon session commenced with a study of the two Van Dyck portraits seen in the Brooks's painting and how they came to Hertford House. Paintings of landscape and interiors were then discussed as these were used to create a setting for the portrait drawn in the morning. In this way the drawings literally became the artistic connection between the two establishments.

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