If you're in Boston then a trip to the Museum of Fine Art is a must and I walked there in the snow. I actually went twice since I didn't see enough on my first visit and the beauty of ticketing at the MFA is that you buy a ticket but can visit a second time free provided it's within ten days of the first visit. That means you don't have to cram everything into your visit because, if you've got the time, you can always go back again. What a good idea.
It's a bit of a monster of a building with the majority of works on the Ground and First floors but with some works in it s Americas collection on the Lower Ground and Level Three (remembering that Level Three is actually the second floor to British people). You need to pick up a free map to try to understand the place and how the galleries are organised with its art and artefacts from all around the world and, in particular it's huge Art of the Americas collection. And don't forget to look around you at the building itself since the dome and surrounding corridors were painted by John Singer Sargent and there was an exhibition of his sketches on the ground floor underneath the dome. I always associate Sargent with society portraits so it was interesting to see these sketches on a range of subjects way beyond his portraiture.
I wanted to see it's European collection spread over Level 1 & 2 so I headed to the Fenway side of the building. On Level 2 you enter that wing of the building through large room hung with loads of 16th and 17th Century paintings by the likes of El Greco, but I kept going through to find the real gems in the collection from the early Renaissance.
One of the earliest works in the painting collection (if not the earliest) is a lovely little triptych by Duccio from the early 1300s. The main scene is the crucifixion with saints Nicholas and Gregory on the wings. This is a really high status work that was probably commissioned as a travelling altarpiece by a prince or rich merchant. It's quite small and the detail is gorgeous and is one of the many works I'd love to see lit only by flickering candlelight to see it the way that Duccio would have done when he handed over the work to its first owner. 
There's also a lovely painting by Roger van der Weyden of 'Saint Luke Drawing the Virigin' which is a composition I can't recall seeing before in a gallery but I know that some artists used similar compositions. It's sort of the artist saying 'look, my art goes back to one of the Saviour's followers drawing the Saviour himself' and increasing its status from being a mere craft. It uses the Italian device of having a window and landscape at the centre of the painting but van der Weyden goes one step further by including people outside the window looking at the landscape. He's almost telling those Italians that Netherlanders can use all that artistic trickery too and go one better. It's a lovely little painting, full of the detail you'd expect from early Northern Renaissance works.
Another early painting I want to mention is 'Virgin & Child with Four Angels' by Neri di Bicci from Florence, a new name for me and you can probably guess why I'm including it here. It's quite a nice composition but just look at the faces of those angels...
It's a good Renaissance collection and includes other paintings by people like Bosch with a version of 'Ecce Homo', a lovely Crivelli and a small hexagonal panel by Fra Angelo.
The collection moves forward in time and there are lots of other paintings to gaze at and muse over with the mandatory Delacroix and, surprisingly, a smallish John Martin. Jumping forward to the late Nineteenth Century and we have a Monet room and a Sargent room and lots of Impressionist paintings and post Impressionists with Gauguin and van Gogh. Americans invested in these paintings long before we did in Britain (other than the Courtauld collection) which is why their collections can be astonishing. One of the lass colourful paintings in these rooms was 'Man at his Bath' by Gustave Caillebotte which shows a pastey-skinned man drying himself off after a bath. This is as far from the Classical ideal of a naked man as it's possible to get but is the everyday reality for all of us.
A far more colourful painting that caught my eye was 'Women of Paris: The Circus Lover' by James Jacques Joseph Tissot. I'm not a great fan of Tissot who was contemporary with the Impressionists but whose style is more realistic, but this is a grand painting and, if you remove the women in what we now think of as as period costume, that circus scene could easily be played out in Wonderground on the Southband in London today. I particularly like the slightly belligerent bloke in the Union Jack shirt walking towards the women. You just know that the bloke bottom-left has just told the ladies that the acrobats aren't all that really and he can do some of the tricks - bet you can't matey!
Two of my favourites were in the same room and by van Gogh. They would probably benefit from being hung in less ornate frames but they are both gorgeous. 'Houses at Auvers' with it's thick paint that made me want to touch it to feel the textures and the mysterious 'Ravine'. Both are superb quality and would command wall-space in any gallery in the world. But did the MFA shop have postcards of either? You can guess the answer.
One of the benefits of American museums is that once you've paid your entrance fee then everything is free to see inside, including the temporary exhibitions. The exhibitions at the MFA were small but worth popping in to see. I saw the Escher exhibition which was so-so but missed the Rothko exhibition. I did, however, visit the exhibition about the drawings from Vienna by Klimt and Schiele that is coming to London later in the year to celebrate the centenary of their deaths. The drawings are in various media and at a relatively small size and it was interesting to see the similarities in their styles as well as the differences. I'm in two minds as to whether to see it again in London but, with my new-found interest in drawing, I probably will, if only to see if there are any tips I can steal from them.
Another exhibition - the main one for the museum that featured on all the posters but has now closed - was an exhibition by Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist I've never heard of before but will watch out for. The exhibition was full of mainly big pieces and was full of light and colour and fun. In one of the exhibits the flooring that you walked on ran up to and onto the wall making it part of the work and, for some reason that just tickled me. Big pieces with smiley flower-heads and brash colours, encouraging the kids to run around making a noise and it all seemed so right. It was actually quite wonderful to be surrounded by these works in a very different way to the wonders of the Renaissance upstairs. I liked it.
There were also galleries of Greek and Roman statues, a huge collection of the Art of the Americas, furniture, craftwork and all sorts of stuff. It's a massive collection and you probably need more than two visits to do it justice but I was pleased with what I'd seen in the European painting collection. That was enough for this visit.
One thing that did irritate me was finding my way around to see the rooms i wanted to see. The visitor map is laid out by room number but the galleries are labeled with the name of the sponsor of that room or corridor. You have to really look for the room numbers which seem to be on small plaques near the door that, all too often, are blinded by the art inside the room. It's all very confusing which is another reason for setting aside plenty of time to see the place. I suspect it probably works better for locals than for visitors. I'd recommend the American Cafe in the courtyard of the museum for lovely food, excellent service and a great view of a Dale Chihuly work in glass and steel that kept me focused on it and wondering how it didn't fall over. I loved it!
If you're in Boston and have a few hours to spare you could do a lot worse than pop along to the Museum of Fine Art. There's something there for everyone but don't expect it to be laid out for you - do some research first so you know what you really want to see before you arrive.
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