Name: Private Lives. Part 6. | BBC Learning English.
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T12:56:51.000Z
Duration: 12 min 31 s
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I've worked at three of London's major galleries, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Gallery, and

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it seems to me that they provide a very good showcase for showing off this nation's collection of art.

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And very importantly, they're free to go into, and

I think that's a very important thing in private lives.

Frances is 30 years old and she's a schools officer at the National Gallery in London.

It's her job to introduce students and teachers to one of Britain's most important collections of pictures.

During the programme, Frances takes us on a tour of the National Gallery and shows us some of her favourite paintings.

She explains how they are being used to inspire new work and to teach many different school subjects, such as history and maths, as well as art.

Frances also talks about where she lives, what she does on a typical weekend, and

she introduces us to someone she especially admires and likes spending time with.

Frances leads us into the west wing of the National Gallery, where there are European paintings dating from the 16th century.

We're now standing in front of a painting called the Ambassadors.

It's by Hans Holbein and he painted it in 1533 in England, which was the year that King Henry VIII made his final break with the Church of Rome.

It shows two men who came from France as envoys of King Francis I, standing in a very strange space with a green curtain behind them and a very elaborate marble floor with inlaid stone.

The Ambassadors stand on either side of an array of astronomical and musical instruments, which tell us a great deal about the intellectual achievements of 16th century Europe.

But in front of the two men on the floor is a large, distorted object which has been the inspiration for a stunning new piece of art recently on display in the gallery.

If we move round to the right hand side of the picture, you can see that below the men on the floor is an extraordinary object.

It's a stretched out skull and if you see it from the right hand side of the picture, it suddenly goes into perspective, into focus.

So we think this painting was originally meant to be hung perhaps on a staircase, where you could see the skull looking like a real skull, only from the side, a bit like a trick.

So one student took this skull, which he loved, and

made his own version of a stretched skull, but

not thick, two and a half or three feet long as it is here, but

probably more like 30 foot long, which was displayed in a recent exhibition here at the gallery in the central hall, which is a very Traditional room with marble pillars and a marble floor, and

suddenly here was a student's new piece of work.

The National Gallery has a special program for art students, allowing them to use certain pictures like the Ambassadors for inspiration.

And as we walk from room to room, there are copyists at work, art students who are painting copies of masterpieces in order to increase their understanding of the originals.

The National Gallery collection is also used to teach many different subjects on the primary school curriculum.

With this in mind, Francis leads us to a display of 17th century paintings.

A lot of my work at the National Gallery is taking children round primary school children as young as four, and

sitting them down in front of pictures like this and getting them to really look at them and see what they can find and what they can imagine is happening in the picture.

This is actually a very new skill for a lot of them because they spend so much of their time looking at fast moving images on films, television, playing with computer games and using computers.

It's clear that to get to know Francis, we need to appreciate not only the Gallery's collection and activities, but

The National Gallery was built in the middle of the 19th century during the reign of Queen Victoria.

But recently a new wing was built called the Sainsbury Wing.

We're now walking through from the old part of the National Gallery, which was built in Victorian times, through over the new bridge to the Sainsbury Wings, the new part, which was finished about five or six years ago, to one of my favourite parts of the gallery.

In the Sainsbury Wing, there are paintings from 1260 to 1510.

Frances casts admiring glances at one painting after another, and

then she talks about her childhood and how her interest in art began.

my family moved to the south very soon afterwards, to Sussex, just south of London.

And that's where I grew up and went to school.

And when I was at school, I spent more and more time in the art room and I decided to go to college and do fine art and French, because those were my two favourite things and they still are.

And so I did that and spent a lot of time doing sculpture and doing painting, doing a little bit of art history and really enjoying that more and more.

And I still paint now and do a lot of drawing.

Next, Frances spent some time showing American high school students around the great art museums of Italy and France.

And she took a further degree in art history, doing a special study of 15th century English staircases.

She decided that her ideal job would combine her art history qualifications with her love of introducing art to other people.

I really do feel incredibly lucky to work here.

I mean, I used to come to London and look at the National Gallery and it looked so grand, which it is, in a way.

I really, you know, it's a lovely place to work.

And also it's so satisfying because here are all these pictures which people think of as very great things, untouchable, wonderful works of art from the past, which you must stand back from and revere.

And it's so great and rewarding when you get groups of children or students, whatever age, and

you talk to them about pictures and they are reacting and responding to them, and

you've been the key in helping them, perhaps unlock some of those reactions.

Frances loves London because it's where her work is and she says she's very fond of the flat where she lives.

I live in west London in a very quiet street, in a Victorian house which has three storeys.

I share it with my sister who works in the film industry.

We've got a little garden at the back, which I love, which we've got lots of herbs and roses and things like that growing in.

My favourite room in my flat probably would be the kitchen, which is very light and sunny, overlooks the garden and is decorated with tiles that I painted myself, using actually a lot of the colours that you would see in the paintings in the Sainsbury Wing here.

Very bright oranges and blues and pinks and yellows, lots of bright colours, and

At weekends, Frances often entertains friends at her flat, or she might take the chance to visit friends who live outside London.

On a typical weekend, if I was staying in London, which sometimes I'm not, I would probably meet some friends and go shopping, go and see a film, probably go round to supper with some of the friends or maybe have them round to my flats and cook for them.

And then on Sunday I might well go and see an exhibition, which of course I don't have time to do during the week, and

maybe go and visit some people who live in London, but further away in Greenwich, perhaps.

Takes a while to get there and go for a long walk.

Next, Frances introduces us to someone she especially admires and likes to visit.

Someone I very much admire is my mother's godmother, who was a hundred two weeks ago, a Hundred years old and she is quite an extraordinary person.

She is fascinated by art and culture and literature and things that are happening today, not just things that happened when she was young in the past.

If you go and see her, she'll say now what about that new exhibition?

She'll always be reading somebody's letters in the original French and she wants to talk to you, you about these things.

She's got an incredibly lively mind and I think that she is somebody who is an example to everyone.

As someone who can grow old but still be fascinated by everything.

Frances herself has a strong love of learning and teaching.

She describes what she thinks is the general attitude towards art in Britain and how she hopes people will visit London's National Galleries since they're free and very user friendly.

They have a lot of events, lectures and holiday activities for children.

I think that people in Britain maybe are coming to know more about art.

I'd say there's a problem with modern art in Britain.

People either laugh at it or say, my five year old grandson could have done that in two minutes.

Older art I think takes some understanding and some explaining, which is tricky, so it just needs time spent on it, which not everyone is able to do.

And of course not everyone is able to come and visit collections of art like this, but

Now we arrive at the last painting on our tour.

A young art student is working in front of it, putting the last brushstrokes on his copy of this 17th century masterpiece.

We're now standing in front of a self portrait by Rembrandt.

He painted it in 1669, which was the last year of his life.

He died age 63 the next year and I think it's a wonderful portrait.

He's against a very dark background and his old face, which he's taking no trouble to disguise at all.