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Frequently Asked Questions: Fact and Figures: |
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The first picture that meets visitors to the National Gallery is not an Old Master - nor even an Impressionist - and it does not hang on a wall. Set into the floor of the first landing in the Gallery's main entrance is 'The Awakening of the Muses', a marble mosaic laid in 1933 by the Russian-born artist Boris Anrep (1885-1969). The subject is worthy of an Old Master and of a place of honour in a noble palace, but Anrep's modern Muses take their chances underfoot in a busy public place, and are the centrepiece of a celebration of everyday life, with mosaics of 'The Labours of Life' to the west, 'The Pleasures of Life' to the east, and 'The Modern Virtues' to the north. |
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Detail showing Virginia Woolf from Boris Anrep: 'The Awakening of the Muses', 1933. Halfway Landing, Main Building, National Gallery, London. |
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Anrep was an associate of the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers, who notoriously championed modern art and modern attitudes. His Muses are not heavenly immortals, but portraits of people from his own world. Greta Garbo stars as Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, but the other characters are played by his Bloomsbury friends, among them Virginia Woolf wielding an elegant pen as Clio, Muse of History, and the art critic Clive Bell as (a rather sober) Bacchus. Anrep and Bell had first worked together in 1912, selecting works for Roger Fry's second controversial Post-Impressionism exhibition. |
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