National Gallery scheme brings canvas art to the masses
Published on: 13-Jun-2007
A novel scheme being launched by the National Gallery aims to stop central London shoppers and workers in their tracks - by placing canvas art in the most unusual places.The Gallery is running a 12-week project, entitled The Grand Tour, which will see 44 full-size, fully-framed recreations of some of their finest canvas art works hung on walls at sites across the city's famous streets.
With the help of project sponsors Hewlett-Packard, top-class reprints of canvas art by past masters including Constable, Monet and Van Gogh are now in view, with a Seurat piece adorning a space outside Hamleys toy shop and a Caravaggio collecting quizzical looks outside a Soho sex shop.
"It does jolt one and make you look and think - even me. They're sufficiently high quality on a photographic equivalent of canvas and they are framed in such a way that they don't look like posters," commented Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Gallery.
"It's much more like seeing a work of art in the National Gallery than seeing a poster on the Underground."
The National Gallery is asking anyone interested in the innovative canvas art placements to ring a dedicated phone number or view the Grand Tour website to download audio tracks for special guided tours, offering both quick lunch-time viewing circles and longer, more laidback routes.
