Elmira College United Kingdom and Ireland 2016: Feelin' 22

Day 22 from across the pond

The National Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery
Leicester Square
The View from The Shard

The National Gallery in London is home to thousands of pieces of art created through history. One of the many famous and talented artists that is featured in the museum is Vincent Van Gogh. HUM 1915 was lucky enough to see some of his work in person. Featured is oil painting titled "Sunflowers," created in 1888. Van Gogh made four paintings of sunflowers that year. He wrote to his brother about this one specifically, claiming the bunch of 14 gives a singular effect and he that slaved over the piece from sun up to sun down because the flowers died quickly. Van Gogh also associated the color yellow with hope and friendship. He thought this painting specifically represented gratitude and hung it in his guest room upon the arrival of his friend Paul Gaugin, another artist.

Brittany with Van Gogh's "Sunflowers"

Van Gogh's "Sunflowers"

Our next stop was the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery contains many new pieces, but what we were most excited about was to see the beautiful portraits of the monarchs that we studied. The art was divided by House, for example Tudor, Victorian, etc. This allowed the viewers to see how history was changing through the monarchy's wardrobes. The HUM 1915 class also got to see the crown jewels including, the orb, the scepter, and the crown in the paintings. This was exciting because we saw many of these in real life yesterday at The Tower of London.

Portrait of Elizabeth I

Inside room 14 of National Portrait Gallery

Next, we took a stroll through Leicester Square. This area is a major hub of London containing food vendors, shops, and theaters.

We concluded today's class with a trip to The Shard. From the 69th floor we looked upon the city of London seeing many major sites from a new perspective. Some of these sites included Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, The London Eye, Tower Bridge, the Olympic Stadium, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul's Cathedral. At a height of 800 ft, the class was able to see the surrounding 40 miles of London.