On Tuesday morning I went along to the press viewing for the Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey exhibition at the National Gallery, which opened yesterday.
It’s a decent exhibition, although one can see why Delaroche was out of fashion for so long. His sentimental, even mawkish renderings of great moments from Tudor and Stuart history manage to be both gruesome and twee, often at the same stroke.
The exhibition centres around his portrayal of the execution of Lady Jane Grey. Much wailing from the ladies-in-waiting; compare and contrast with the ambivalence of the axeman, who stands impassive, as though it were not an act of human cruelty he were about to commit, but a pre-determined act demanded by a higher power. Delaroche has layed on the pathos in spades by having a blindfolded Lady Jane grope helplessly for the block - you have both weepy sentimentality and a sort of grotesque historical determinism in the same canvas.
This is the model for most of the major works on show. The Princes in the Tower tremble before their murderer (represented only by a shadow under the door) while a pathetic little toy-dog yaps bravely but pointlessly at impending doom. Cromwell lifts the lid of a coffin to peer at the ashen face of Charles I’s corpse; everything about him is blood-red, to the point that it looks as though his very boots are brimming over with blood. There is a holiness to the dead King’s visage, but it hardly lights up the canvas - this is a painting literally coated in gore and cruelty.
Delaroche was, of course, a product of the French Revolution, so had seen his fair share of gore; this also contributed no doubt to the depressing inevitability of death in his major works. He is not a subtle painter, nor are his paintings especially demanding. Still, the exhibition is pretty well lit and certainly worth half an hour if you are loitering in Trafalgar Square. But as for Delaroche as the purpose of a day out? There’s not much to separate it from a quick squizz around The London Dungeon.
