Clare Teal

I never have been much of an early bird, so imagine my surprise to find myself queuing

outside London’s National Gallery at 8 o’clock in the morning. Incidentally the doors don’t

open till 10am and there was already a snaking throng of 300+ people politely standing in

line. When Muddy arrived having parked the car, I went off in search of breakfast and

returned shortly with two generous cartons of porridge, which, as the temperature was just

above freezing, proved most welcome.

General queue behaviour is fascinating to observe. We had been warned by the gallery

staff the wait would be approx 3 and half hours. Some people pulled funny faces (without

realising) to pass the time, others performed their own little ‘get warm’ dances, some crazy

people gave up after as long as 2 hours. In the final hour one woman for some strange

reason suddenly refused to ‘move up’ and stood stationary for at least 13 minutes and as

the gap in front of her increased so did the tempers of the people behind.

When we eventually got into the gallery at 11:45 we finally managed to buy our tickets.....

to discover the earliest time we could view the exhibition was 4:30pm!!!! Who on earth

could be worth queuing and hanging around for that amount of time? Leonardo da Vinci

that’s who. I don’t profess to be an art lover BUT even I could appreciate just what an

incredible painter he was. We were lucky enough to see the largest collection of his

original works ever assembled in one place and my goodness it was worth the wait - in

gold.

Da Vinci was a remarkable man, a true innovator who introduced the world to a whole new

way of capturing images on paper... i say paper. I couldn’t understand why such an

incredible artist would use such tiny scraps of funny shaped paper, not only that but every

inch of it was covered with sketches, it took me a while to realise he couldn’t exactly pop

into Smiths to pick up a ream of A4. Paper was very expensive as were drawing/writing

implements - to be honest they’re closer to sticks than anything he’d have used today.

The exhibition runs till 5th February. If you get chance wrap up and go witness a few

examples of the finest fine art ever daubed on a canvas.

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