It’s not hard to sympathise with Christopher Allen’s recent column in the Review section of the Australian decrying the juxtaposition of great or very good paintings in the London National Portrait Gallery exhibition now in Canberra with the merest examples of celebrity pics. The complex moral grandeur of the John Singer Sargent portrait of Henry James, the vitality of the self-portrait of Joshua Reynolds, the complex interactive energy of Nelson and Lady Hamilton and Sir William Hamilton bathed in the drama of their triangle.
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