"There's an Art Gallery Two Blocks Away / And We've Finally Been There"

Today during lunch I went to the Courtauld Gallery, just down the street from my office. For months – make that years – I’ve thought I should go there, or to the National Gallery or the Portrait Gallery, both of which are a 10-minute walk down the Strand. (Maybe 15 if I’m working on my New Year’s resolution to wear more of my cute – read, uncomfortable -- shoes more often.) But then I have to file something by wire opening (2 p.m. GMT, often stretched to 3 p.m.), or it rains, or I have an errand to run, or I want to go to the gym, or the shoes are too uncomfortable, or…

But today – spurred by a weekend of Let Me Count the Ways This Job is Ruining My Life – I decided I absolutely needed to start taking my lunch hour for myself if I could, and that I ought not shop, because I might just quit and go freelance and then what will I do with the frillionth pair of shoes I’ve hoovered up because I deserve them, dammit. Besides, maybe I should, um, save the money or something.

As luck would have it, entry to the gallery was free today, but had I had to pay, it would have been well worth the five quid. Manet’s Dejeuner Sur l’herbe and A Bar at the Folies Bergere (in reproductions, I had never noticed the legs hanging off the trapeze in the upper left corner), Monets, Renoirs, Pissarros, Degas paintings and sculptures, Seurats (including a study for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte)… I wasn’t so enamored of the Derains and Matisses, which bring back unpleasant memories of an unsuccessful art history paper I wrote my freshman year of college, but I just might go back every Monday (free between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.) to visit the Impressionists, plus the Van Goghs and Picassos.

My one complaint: Some of my fellow patrons. What is with the need to comment on every piece of art one sees? (My other pet peeve is when two people stand for ages in front of a painting in a very crowded exhibition, yammering about what they did the night before. Hello, that’s what the coffee shop is for.) Today, standing in front of Degas’ Two Dancers on the Stage, I heard a man say to his female companion: “He was a very, very good artist.” Then on to the Pissarro: “He was also a very good artist.”

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Speaking of pet peeves, can someone please explain to me why tourists like to block the whole of Covent Garden watching people pretend to be statues? I cannot get to the Tube, or to Boots, or to get some lunch because crowds of people are standing around watching other people stand perfectly still. What is the appeal? Next are they going to be photographing paint drying?