I go the national gallery. Its a freezing day, early in the morning, and the cold gets everywhere, it whips up your sleeves and you try and stop it by bunching your hands together, but all you end up doing is making cold fists. I walk through Trafalgar Square, shivering, the cold seeping through my clothes like water. The square is a frozen stone, the fountains look as though they’re pumping snow. I would like to watch them, but I want to get inside.
I plan to go and look at the Klimt – Portrait of Hermine Gallia – but I am distracted by a temporary exhibit called “An American Experiment” so I push through the double doors and in. It’s a very small exhibition, only a dozen or so paintings. Maybe it’s because of the cold day, maybe it’s just me, but I go straight to a painting called Blue Snow: The Battery, by George Bellows.
It’s a picture of Battery Park in New York, immersed in snow. Commuters are ploughing their way through the park, heading home after a day in the factories, which you can see in the distance, looming like Gods, judging the tiny faceless inhabitants as they struggle through thick snow. They throw long shadows, and the shadows are blue, and its the kind of blue you only ever see when there is snow.
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