Home from London
Dec. 19th, 2019 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe didn't manage to snag cheap first class tickets on the train home this afternoon: I don't know if that would have helped. It was crowded, and overwhelmed by the surprise that all these travellers had luggage. Worse still, there was no internet. So I couldn't post, but I wrote anyway, and now let's see how far I can get with stitching that into something coherent.
It may be apparent from my previous post that I have been looking at the paintings of Hogarth - specifically, those in Sir John Soane's museum. The plan for the day was to visit the current exhibition, which brings together all of Hogarth's 'series' paintings and engravings, with the added advantage of a visit to the museum itself, which I had never seen, the possibility, if fine, of exploring the surrounding Inns of Court, and the pleasure of the company ofhelenraven.
The Sir John Soane museum is Sir John's house on Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he extended into the house next door to accommodate his collection of antiquities, mostly statues and carved stones, including, right at the bottom, an Egyptian sarcophagus. This defines the size of the space, and the collection is arranged in rising tiers around it. I like the idea that this is the museum within the museum, buthelen_raven says no, it is Sir John's shed.
He also seems to have owned a number of paitings by Hogarth, (some of which he bought from the estate of David Garrick, who bought them from the artist - that's what I call provenance). The current exhibition uses this as the basis on which to bring together as many as possible of Hogarth's 'series' works, either as paintings or as prints. Some of them are genuinely sequential, telling a story (Marriage à la Mode. The Good and Idle Apprentices) some related in other ways (Beer Street and Gin Lane is the obvious example). The narratives can in part be read from the images, especially if you know what clues to look for, but they are clearly also provided with explanatory text (the names of the characters, for example) which in our case we had not got. I would have liked to know more about this, and it would be perverse to try to claim the whole experience as comics-related (though I may, regardless) but I enjoyed seeing these images in this setting.
When we were museumed out,helenraven led us through Great Turnstile (it's a street) to a Korean restaurant where we ate a variety of tasty fried starters, durham_rambler found a dish of rice and kimchi topped with bacon, chorizo and a fried egg (which makes it a Korean all day breakfast, doesn't it?), I attacked a big bowl of noodles in black bean sauce with spoon and chopsticks (I won, but at the cost of any table manners I might pretend to) and the ice cream menu ofered impossible choices: should I have black sesame or golden walnut? red bean or green tea? We caught up on recent funerals and current reading (both of us have been reading and much enjoying Kate Charlesworth's Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide).
After lunch,durham_rambler and I resumed our exploration of the Inns of Court, hampered by the area currently being in use as a film set (Last Letter from Your Lover, apparently). Gates which might otherwise have been open were closed to us, and architecture which might have been impressive was obscured by parked vans. But I saw enough to feel I'd been right that it would be worth a look, and maybe another time we'll be luckier. We came out behind St Clement Danes, which was also, coincidentally, closed, so we headed down to and along the Embankment. This was harder work than we had expected, because we were working our way against a tide - a tsunami, says durham_rambler - of Santas, row upon row, four or five abreast, all in high spirits and taking no prisoners. If this is the same phenomenon we encountered in Greenwhich with helen_raven years ago, it has grown mightily in the interval. We were still meeting stragglers at Blackfriars, where we caught the bus home.
It may be apparent from my previous post that I have been looking at the paintings of Hogarth - specifically, those in Sir John Soane's museum. The plan for the day was to visit the current exhibition, which brings together all of Hogarth's 'series' paintings and engravings, with the added advantage of a visit to the museum itself, which I had never seen, the possibility, if fine, of exploring the surrounding Inns of Court, and the pleasure of the company of
helenraven.The Sir John Soane museum is Sir John's house on Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he extended into the house next door to accommodate his collection of antiquities, mostly statues and carved stones, including, right at the bottom, an Egyptian sarcophagus. This defines the size of the space, and the collection is arranged in rising tiers around it. I like the idea that this is the museum within the museum, but
helen_raven says no, it is Sir John's shed.He also seems to have owned a number of paitings by Hogarth, (some of which he bought from the estate of David Garrick, who bought them from the artist - that's what I call provenance). The current exhibition uses this as the basis on which to bring together as many as possible of Hogarth's 'series' works, either as paintings or as prints. Some of them are genuinely sequential, telling a story (Marriage à la Mode. The Good and Idle Apprentices) some related in other ways (Beer Street and Gin Lane is the obvious example). The narratives can in part be read from the images, especially if you know what clues to look for, but they are clearly also provided with explanatory text (the names of the characters, for example) which in our case we had not got. I would have liked to know more about this, and it would be perverse to try to claim the whole experience as comics-related (though I may, regardless) but I enjoyed seeing these images in this setting.
When we were museumed out,
helenraven led us through Great Turnstile (it's a street) to a Korean restaurant where we ate a variety of tasty fried starters, durham_rambler found a dish of rice and kimchi topped with bacon, chorizo and a fried egg (which makes it a Korean all day breakfast, doesn't it?), I attacked a big bowl of noodles in black bean sauce with spoon and chopsticks (I won, but at the cost of any table manners I might pretend to) and the ice cream menu ofered impossible choices: should I have black sesame or golden walnut? red bean or green tea? We caught up on recent funerals and current reading (both of us have been reading and much enjoying Kate Charlesworth's Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide).After lunch,
durham_rambler and I resumed our exploration of the Inns of Court, hampered by the area currently being in use as a film set (Last Letter from Your Lover, apparently). Gates which might otherwise have been open were closed to us, and architecture which might have been impressive was obscured by parked vans. But I saw enough to feel I'd been right that it would be worth a look, and maybe another time we'll be luckier. We came out behind St Clement Danes, which was also, coincidentally, closed, so we headed down to and along the Embankment. This was harder work than we had expected, because we were working our way against a tide - a tsunami, says durham_rambler - of Santas, row upon row, four or five abreast, all in high spirits and taking no prisoners. If this is the same phenomenon we encountered in Greenwhich with helen_raven years ago, it has grown mightily in the interval. We were still meeting stragglers at Blackfriars, where we caught the bus home.
