A trip to the Art Gallery...

I often remark to DH that, when we travel, we visit lots of art galleries but hardly ever go to the any in our own city. So yesterday we went on a visit to the Queensland art Gallery here in Brisbane. DH had managed to get 'two for one' tickets for the 'Portrait of Spain' Exhibition which featured paintings from the Prado National Museum in Spain. These paintings were all part of the collection owned by royalty in Spain and the time span of when they were painted ranged from the 16th- early 20th century.

I waited at the bus stop while DH found a car park...

The entrance to the exhibition...we had bought our tickets online so no queue  :-)

 

Through the doorway of the entry, we faced this....it's actually a big picture of the Central Gallery at Prado...people were getting photos taken in front of this ...

So naturally DH and I had to do the same...it really was amazing...you  forgot that it was 2Dimensional...it was so real.

To say that the art works were magnificent would be an understatement. Probably my favourites were those of the royals wearing the most beautiful clothing; all of which was painted to look so life like. The still life paintings were also quite exquisite. The exhibition also gave us insight into the history of  Spain...how it grew enormously wealthy with its imperialism and then gradually it lost its supremacy in world affairs. The powerful Hapsburg family dynasty (who were also ruling in Netherlands and of course, Austria) were eventually ousted by the Bourbons. So the social, political and economic history was mirrored in the art.

DH and I did a guided tour and then we went back through the rooms to look at things again and to read the captions/labels. No photos of course in the exhibition itself but there are some videos of parts of the exhibit here and here. These links also link to other iTour presentations.

We decided to have some lunch in the Sala Cafe which was set up just for the duration of this exhibition. This cafe is set up to resemble a Spanish establishment complete with a musician playing a Spanish guitar. I ordered us some tapas selection which were delicious! Then we went for a bit of a wander through the building...

I love this part of the gallery...although when I used to bring classes of students through, I always worried that some would  be tempted to run through the pool :-)

Love the natural light that floods this area...

These fountains are outside...

Then I went for a walk outside so I could take more photos...

This garden area looks so inviting...

One of the sculptures in a sunken area of the garden...

Standing by the scuplture in the previous photo and looking towards the gallery cafe's alfreso area

Another one of the garden's sculptures...

DH had stayed inside but I caught his attention, gesturing to come outside and join me...

 At first I thought that I was looking at a sculpture, but as I got closer I saw that it was real! So I wanted DH to see it too.

A resident water dragon lizard...people walking near it didn't faze it at all.  The gallery is on the banks of the river and these dragons are in quite large numbers in the city reach of the river.

We're walking beside the state library here and I noticed that the flame tree is in flower. 

It had been a most enjoyable couple of hours and I felt quite proud of 'our' gallery. The next time I plan that we will spend some time in GoMA/ Gallery of Modern Art. The last time I was there was for the Andy Warhol exhibition and that was a few years ago now!