Hello, I'm Christine, and I work in the Curatorial Department at the National
Gallery, and today, from home, I'm going to talk about some paintings in our
collection that are linked by kindness, and I chose this theme in honour of all
the compassion and generosity that people have shown each other during
these extraordinary times, towards family friends and neighbours, and in many, many
cases, complete strangers, so we'll be looking at how painters have represented
acts of kindness, and how arts and artists have supported charities
hospitals and good causes. So the first painting is the Good
Samaritan by Jacopo Bassano, painted in the early 1560s.
Now Bassano was an Italian artist who focused mainly on religious subjects and
his paintings are expressive and dynamic. In the background, we can see a city
under brooding skies, and in the far distance, the pale light of dawn casting
shadows over the hazy landscape. And in the foreground, look at the figure in red,
the Samaritan. He has a full beard and balding head, with tufts of hair sticking
up, and absolutely magnificent eyebrows, and a sunburnt nose. This is so realistic,
this has to have been a real person that Bassano painted. So the story of the Good
Samaritan was a very popular subject for European artists from the medieval
period onwards, and it's a parable from the New Testament of the Christian Bible,
and a parable is a simple story with a moral or spiritual message. And Jesus
tells this story in response to the question, 'who is my neighbour?'
So the story of the Good Samaritan is this. A man on the road from Jerusalem to
Jericho is set upon by robbers. He's beaten, stripped, and left for dead. Three
people come across him. The first two pass by without stopping. The last, a Samaritan,
takes pity, tends his wounds with wine and oil, lifts him onto his mule, takes
into a nearby inn to recover his health, and before continuing on his
journey, the Samaritan leaves money with the innkeeper to pay for his care, and
comfort. And I think it's really moving, the way the Samaritan is shown very, very
gently, but with lots of effort, lifting the injured man up, who looks completely
weak and disorientated. So the answer to the question 'who is my neighbour?' is: my
neighbour is the person who shows kindness and compassion. Now one of the
previous owners of Bassano's Good Samaritan was Joshua Reynolds, the
celebrated 18th century British painter, and Reynolds included this painting in
an exhibition in 1791, which was a fundraising event for the benefit of his
old servant, Ralph Kirkley, and I imagine that
Reynolds hoped that including the Good Samaritan might encourage people to be
even more generous. So we have at the National Gallery this beautiful portrait
of Lady Coburn and her three eldest sons, by Reynolds. Now undoubtedly, the painting
is about wealth and privilege. I mean, just look at the rich fabrics, the red
silk above her head, and the gold mantle trimmed with ermine on her lap.
But it's also, I think, a very, very tender image of a mother's love for her
children. So Reynolds based his portrait on this painting called 'Charity', by the
Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck, and it was painted in the late 1620s. Now
charity is one of the three virtues, faith, hope, and charity, and I'm sure many
of you will have attended a wedding ceremony which included a reading from
some Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, with the famous lines, 'love
is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.' And
I'm not surprised it's so popular. It's such a beautiful passage, and the last
line is 'and now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these
is love'. In older versions of the New Testament, it's not love
in the text, but the word charity. So there's obviously been a bit of movement
between the words charity and love, because at the time Bassano, van Dyke,
and Reynolds were painting, the meaning of charity was the love of God,
combined with the love of fellow man, or, love of one's neighbour, and in the past,
charity was often represented in art as a woman, or mother, nursing children, which
is presumably why Reynolds was interested in Van Dyke's painting. Now
children are precious, full of life and promise, but they are vulnerable, and in
Van Dyke's painting, the children probably represented faith, hope, and love.
And they all rely on the support and protection of charity, and you can see
them clinging to, and reaching for, the woman, as she looks up to heaven for
strength and inspiration. The blue of her robe relates to heaven, the white is
purity, and the red is earth. So the suggestion seems to be that acts of
kindness and compassion bring the spiritual and the everyday together. So
it's easy to imagine how Bassano Good Samaritan, and Van Dyke's Charity would
be very much at home in a Cathedral Church or Chapel, but such images can
also be found in hospitals, which often begin as part of a religious institution
or from private philanthropy. And just two examples from the NHS are the hospitals
of Saint Bartholomew's or Barts and Guy's Hospital in London.
Both have artworks on the subject of the Good Samaritan, and Guys even has the
Samaritan Ward, and many of you will know the Samaritans, the charity that gives
emotional support for people in distress. Now this all relates to my next painting,
which is 'The Finding of Moses' by Orazio Gentileschi, from the early 1630s. Now
Orazio was an extremely successful Italian artist who was fêted by many
European courts. And this painting was commissioned by King Charles I,
for his Queen Henrietta Maria, while Orazio was living in London. It is an
extremely large painting, and incredibly flamboyant. It's about
three meters in length, with life-size figures, nine women surrounding a baby in
a basket, and in the background, we can see a wood, and to the right, the view to a
river and gentle hills beyond. So the finding of Moses is a very recent
addition to our collection. You may remember we had a public appeal last
year to raise the money to acquire it, and this was not long after we managed
to buy this fabulous self-portrait by Orazio's daughter Artemisia, and in
both cases we were only able to do this because of the generosity of so many
people. So the biblical story, the finding of Moses, comes from the book of Exodus,
and is set in Egypt. The Pharaoh decrees that all newborn sons of Hebrews should
be killed. For safety, baby Moses is hidden in bullrushes by his mother on
the banks of the River Nile, while his sister Miriam keeps watch. Now Orazio
shows the moment when Pharaoh's daughter, dressed in fabulous yellow, who has come
to the river to bathe, is presented with Moses by the kneeling woman on the right,
while her companions point to the river bank where he was found.
Meanwhile Miriam, in green, gestures towards her brother, while presenting the
woman in red, her mother, and therefore Moses mother, as his nurse. Pharaoh's
daughter takes Moses back to the palace, and adopts him, so this act of kindness
not only saves a vulnerable child, but Moses himself grows up to be an
extraordinary person involved in some of the most important and memorable
episodes in the Bible. In the case of Orazio's painting, the subject of Moses,
may well have been appealing because of the birth of Queen Henrietta Maria's
eldest son, the future Charles II. But as with the Good Samaritan, the story
of Moses the biblical foundling also became associated with hospitals which
cared for abandoned children. Now the Foundling Hospital in London, established in
1739, had artists as governors and received works of art as gifts for
display, including paintings representing Moses,
and two British artists in our collection were linked to the Foundling
Hospital in this way: William Hogarth and Thomas Gainsborough, and appropriately,
they're also two of the best painters of children in Western art. And here we have
Hogarth's wonderful portrait 'The Graham Children' of 1742, and also Gainsborough's
portrait of his daughters, Margaret and Mary, chasing a butterfly, from the
1750s. And both of these paintings I just think
are magical, but both paintings also suggest the brevity of childhood, and the
vulnerability of children. The cat is a hidden danger in Hogarth's portrait, and
the fragile butterfly needs to be handled gently, both of these paintings
came into the National Gallery's collection eventually by gift. Now I'm
going to finish with one of the virtues I mentioned earlier, on not charity but
hope, and the way the rainbow has become a symbol of hope and solidarity during
the current crisis, and also as a thank you to NHS and frontline workers. On
Thursday the 30th of April, just before 8 p.m. when we all clapped for our carers,
I saw a double rainbow from my flat. I then tried to find a rainbow in the
National Gallery collection, and I was about to give up, when a colleague of
mine sent me this, which was really kind of them. It's a sketch by the
post-impressionists Georges Suerat, painted in 1883 as a study for his famous
'Bathers at Asnières', which, by the way, is also at the National Gallery. Bright, calm
and peaceful, it's an image I hope of happier times to come. If you're
interested in learning more about art history, click here, and here. Thank you
for watching, take care, and we'll see you next time.