In a guest blog, Mr Londoner takes us on a journey through London's best art galleries and collections.

A pop-up gallery in Holborn @meetmrlondoner

From old masters to 21st century pieces, it’s all here in the capital. The metropolis is home to the courtly paintings of King Henry VIII’s style-meister, Hans Holbein, through to the stencils of Banksy and ceramics of Sir Grayson Perry.

Some people feel intimated by art and by art galleries in particular. There’s really no need to be. One doesn’t need expertise to engage. We just need to look. We don’t have to understand a work, its provenance, history, or the techniques involved, to enjoy a piece, be stimulated or perhaps even provoked by it. What really matters is how art makes us feel. Some seem to find contemporary art somehow more accessible. And others might need a bit of persuasion to come face-to-face with an old master.

You're never too young to enjoy art. A family outside the National Gallery @meetmrlondoner

Small but perfectly formed - the National Gallery

The National Gallery on London’s iconic Trafalgar Square is relatively small, with 2,500 paintings on display at any one time. But it’s perfectly formed. The art is stunning and the gallery is home to some of Britain’s best-loved paintings. These include JWM Turner’s 1838 The Fighting Temeraire, which featured in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall. Another firm favourite, The Duke of Wellington by Goya (1812-14), put it an appearance in 1962’s Dr No - and was the subject of a 2020 comedy film starring Jim Broadbent.

Hans Holbein’s 1533 The Ambassadors is an arresting double-portrait depicting Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selves, two young French attendants at the court of Henry VIII. Jean, the French ambassador to England, is dressed in the signature Henrician style, with clothes designed to render the wearer as broad as they are tall. Holbein created this (courtly but macho) look of the turbulent 1530s - just as Georgio Armani created the padded-shouldered silhouette that defined the go-getting 1980s.

First in line: the queue at the National Gallery is generally not too bad @meetmrlondoner

The boys in Holbein’s art have everything. And their treasure trove of bling, in the form of immaculately rendered state-of-the-art objects, is displayed behind them. There’s an expensive oriental rug. There are charts and gadgets for navigating the oceans and measuring the stars. There’s music too. We see that our pair have artistic and spiritual sides in addition to their seemingly limitless purchasing power. The picture is rich with clues. Not least the discord caused by the Protestant Reformation that was sweeping Europe to the alarm of Catholics like Jean and Georges. And that classic device, the memento mori (a reminder of death), is a truly weird and creepy anamorphic skull. This mystery object can only properly be seen when viewed from the right of the picture This, it might be said, is an early pre-cursor to surrealism - centuries before the birth of Salvador Dali.

Keep it contemporary - the Tate Modern

Contemporary art lovers head to the former Bankside power station. Built in the Modernist style, in 1964, this former coal-fired power plant was re-born as the Tate Modern art gallery in the year 2000. It was the only building in central London to be opened twice by the Queen. It’s home to incredible pieces. There’s Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 The Fountain, the protest art of Bob and Roberta Smith and the feminist manifesto of the Guerrilla Girls, who ask: “Do women have to be naked to get into an art gallery?”

The former oil tanks at Tate Modern @meetmrlondoner

Iconic painters like Francis Bacon and Piet Mondrian are well-represented here. The Tate is also a great place to get to know the work of other artists who, although highly respected, are not perhaps household names. Yto Barrada creates cutting-edge art in a variety of mediums. She explores the exploitation of her native Morocco by the forces of tourism and international capitalism. Her work is witty. But the message is deadly serious.

Radio on. Tower of Babel, 2002, by Cildo Meireles, Tate Modern @meetmrlondoner

Italian artist Enrico Baj’s child-like monster in Fire! Fire! (1964) explores the forces of patriarchy and militarism. Brazilian conceptual artist Cildo Meireles' 2002 Tower of Babel is an extraordinary work. This massive pillar of radios, radiograms and ghetto-blasters, broadcasts a babble of found sound. The art compels the viewer to explore this strange construction, circumnavigating it and trying to make sense of the tangle of noise emanating from deep within. Participation is core to much of Meireles’ work. He believes in the power of all of us to make art - and in art’s ability to help us find our voice.

Kicking off at the Wallace Collection

Tucked away in Marylebone’s sleepy Manchester Square is Hertford House, the home of the Wallace Collection. The content includes paintings, armour, sculpture and a unique collection of Sèvres porcelain, from France.

The Swing, by Fragonard, 1767, Wallace Collection

The Laughing Cavalier of 1624, by Frans Hals, is an exquisite offering from the Dutch School. It’s probably the best known picture here. Special note also goes to Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing (1767). This Rococo masterpiece, originally meant for a private collection because of its incendiary subject, has just been cleaned. It looks magnificent and certainly reminds us that there’s nothing new in the male gaze. We see an elegant yet knowing young woman in a hidden corner of a garden. She wears an exquisite dress and is being pushed on a swing by a man in the shadows. Her alarmed little dog barks and even the stone statues react as she kicks up her leg. This causes her fashionable shoe to fly off in the direction of a younger man. He in turn has carefully positioned himself to look right up her complicated arrangement of skirts. And all this in a decidedly pre-underpants era.

Hidden art

Great art isn’t only found in galleries. Cutting-edge street art defines neighbourhoods like Spitalfields. Waterloo is now famous for the Leake Street tunnels - a go-to spot for spray artists. On the other side of the city, Mayfair’s galleries are a source of brilliant pieces by great painters like Aleksandr Rodchenko, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. And auction houses, like Sotheby’s, provide a rare chance to see works from the likes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir to Frank Auerbach, and Banksy, before they disappear into private collections. Best of all, whether this creative content has prize of place in a national gallery, is about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, or simply spray-painted on a wall - all of this brilliant art can be seen for free.

Art on the street - the Leake Street tunnels @meetmrlondoner

Mr Londoner is former museum director Antony Robbins. If you or your group would like to enjoy a tailor-made tour of London, experiencing the capital's best art galleries and collections with Mr Londoner, please do contact our friendly team today.