It’s such a pleasure going back to the National Gallery post-lockdown, partly because everything has been re-hang to allow for works to travel to Tokyo and Canberra; partly because I find one views everything afresh after months of visual starvation.

Bartolomeus Bruyn’s Virgin, Saints and a Holy Woman, acquired 1924:-

Altdorfer’s Christ taking leave of his mother, bought in 1980 when the National Heritage Memorial Fund was first established:-

Hobbema’s Avenue at Middelharnis:-

A Pourbus portrait on loan from a private collection:-

I sensed throughout that it had hugely benefitted from a radical re-hang, everything placed more logically, with greater variety, and slightly more thematic, but not too obviously, altogether a great achievement.