Tenby

      The bf's birthday yesterday and we decided, last minute, to take the train to Tenby.  Rather cold, but fine.  Lovely lunch.  Some photos for you.  Doors mainly.

Turner in Cardiff

      A return trip to Cardiff on Friday to see the Turners on display at the National Museum of Wales.  A small exhibition of deeply evocative oils and watercolours from the permanent collection to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Turner's birth in 17175.  If I remember rightly the oils are all of the Kent coast, and the watercolours are of Wales.  It was quite something to to be able stand close to these remarkable paintings - works both delicate in the oily washes of paint and forceful in gestural impasto. Quite an emotional experience if truth be told.  Paintings that are rich in texture and colour and glow with vitality.  Yet, oddly enough, I was put in mind of the atmosphere created by the work of Caspar David Friedrich - both men exploring the place of humanity in the vastness of nature.

     The permanent collection at the National Museum is rather fine and it was very instructive to be able compare what I had just seen with the Canaletto - 'The Baccino di San Marco looking north' -  in the adjacent gallery.  Turner's technique, surprising perhaps, was not so far removed from that of the Venetian Vedutista - the same application of numerous thin washes of transparent colour, the smear of impenetrable impasto for such elements as a sail; the same impressionistic rendering of detail eg figures, and yet the results could not be more different.  From serenity and reasonableness to sturm und drang, of nature 'prowling round like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour'.

October

 October by John Clare (1793-1854)

Nature now spreads around, in dreary hue,
A pall to cover all that summer knew;
Yet, in the poet's solitary way,
Some pleasing objects for his praise delay;
Something that makes him pause and turn again,
As every trifle will his eye detain: —
The free horse rustling through the stubble field;
And cows at lair in rushes, half conceal'd;
With groups of restless sheep who feed their fill,
O'er clear'd fields rambling wheresoe'er they will;

The hedger stopping gaps, amid the leaves,
Which time, o'er-head, in every colour weaves;
The milkmaid pausing with a timid look,
From stone to stone, across the brimming brook;
The cotter journeying with his noisy swine,
Along the wood-side where the brambles twine,
Shaking from mossy oaks the acorns brown,
Or from the hedges red haws dashing down;
The nutters, rustling in the yellow woods,
Who teaze the wild things in their solitudes;

Cardiff

      To Cardiff on Friday to buy a suit for a family funeral this week.  I'm not at my best at the moment so the day was a bit of trial.  I did however manage to take a few photos of the public buildings in Cathays Park, perhaps the best collection of such structures in Late Victorian Britain.  As I think I have said before, the urbanism is not that special - the layout is just, after all, a simple grid - but the buildings, the earliest ones that is, are of an extraordinary richness and complexity. Baroque in the blurring of categories particularly between architecture and sculpture.  Eclectic in their sources, as was typical in Britain in the late 19th & early 20th centuries.  And finally, as always with a building of this period, the detailing is superb. 

Stephen Calloway in 'English Style'

      I was flicking through 'English Style' by Suzanne Slesin and Stafford Cliff  the other day, and I was left wondering who created the interior below - the text contains no name, but the owner is described as 'a curator at the V&A'.  I was considering if it was the work of Sir Roy Strong - who rarely, if ever, appears books such as these - when suddenly I had one of those light bulb moments and thought of the historian and curator Stephen Calloway, and whose flat I have posted about here.  Well, sure enough, a quick comparison of images from the original House & Gardens article and these below revealed furniture and other items in common.  It may therefore be safe to assume that these highly sophisticated interiors share the same owner, and is indeed Stephen Calloway.  Whoever the owner I find these rooms immensely satisfying.  But what of the relationship between both interiors in time?

Aberglasney

     To Aberglasney Tuesday where summer is fading into autumn. Afterwards a short walk up the hill to the village hall, aka 'The Temperance Hall', and an art and antiques exhibition by Studio Cennen, a revival of the exhibitions that they held in the hall before Lockdown.

Own Work: Arundel House Arch

     Finally a new painting to show you.  A depiction of a now non-existent gate Inigo Jones designed for Arundel House, London.  Mannerism in full flow, almost Jacobean.  Mixed media.