I finally got round to visiting the Velzquez exhibition at the National Gallery today. I already cocked-up on dates and missed the Holbein exhibition at the Tate so I was determined not to miss this, even though it meant going in the morning to queue up to buy a ticket for entry in the afternoon.

Afterwards I realised that this is the only the second exhibition I have been to, and both times were Spanish artists. Given that I really prefer Dutch/Flemish, Italian and French artists this is a little strange.

It must be nearly 30 years since the last one, and it will probably be another 30 years before I go through all that again. To say that the place was packed would be an understatement. I have been to less crowded football matches, although admittedly they were Crawley Town friendlies. Even with the timed ticketing arrangements in place to reduce crowding, it was unpleasant.

The paintings themselves were, of course, stunning and it really was an achievement to get so many of those paintings in the same place. I could complain that they didn’t manage to get Las Meninas, but that would be churlish quibbling. I think most people would agree that the exhibition contained many fine paintings, including one or two which rank among the very best ever painted – but due to the subjective nature of art they would disagree on which one or two they were.

For the record, my favourites are probably the portrait of Pope Innocent and the large piece depicting the royal hunt.

It was fascinating to see certain paintings together, the best example being the painting of a woman in a kitchen, right next to an almost identical painting which included a biblical scene in one corner – either a painting on the kitchen wall or a view through a serving hatch. I don’t think it is known with any certainty whether one was a copy of the other or just a preliminary painting for the other. Normally one of these paintings lives in Chicago and the other in Ireland and this is the first time anyone has had the chance to see them together for comparison.

Having so many works together it is also easier to notice the same jugs and other props turning up all over the place, and to see the changes in subjects who appear in more than one painting, so that is a big plus point.

One thing which got to me was that the gallery supply mp3 players with a recorded guided tour on them. The average age of visitors was quite high, I reckon at least half were well over 60, so a lot of these mp3 players had the volume set to a Spinal Tap-like 11. Combine that with the way there was very little personal space and I spent the entire visit hearing the noise from multiple headphones which were all out of synch and in different languages.

But was I glad I went? I have to say yes. A certain amount of disappointment was inevitable: with expectation levels so high it would hard to meet them entirely, but I know for a fact that if I had not gone I would always have been reminding myself. I still have the very good Taschen book which my sister gave me at Christmas, but it works better as a reminder of the source material and not as a substitute. I Afterwards I concluded that I prefer to see paintings all mixed up, to be able to come across a masterpiece amongst more mundane works. Having so many together is a bit of a sensory overload.

According to the guide, nine of the paintings in the exhibition are from the National Gallery’s own collection. A reminder of the riches of the collection. There were also four paintings which normally live in the Wellington Collection at Apsley House (AKA “No. 1, London”), including the Pope Innocent one. I have never been there, but it sounds like it is worth a visit.

It took a full hour to get round the four rooms, and in all that time I kept one eye out for the other visitors, bearing in mind this article from last week – Oliver Kamm’s critique of it has led to a lot of fisking and criticism from elsewhere so I thought I would just compare the observation in the original article with my own first-hand experience. What I found was that in that particular time-slot there was not a single black face amongst the visitors. Nor were there any asians, either oriental or from the Indian sub-continent, or anything other than white pensioners. I don’t want to belittle the issues Johah Albert raised, but there must also be a concern that the under 30’s are almost as thin on the ground.

However, in the main galleries which I had to walk through to get to the Velazquez bit I did see a school party with a more-or-less 50% ethnic minority composition sitting on the floor having that huge Stubbs horse painting explained to them. I do wonder if those black kids will be back in 20 years time, I would like to think they will be.