A Day in London

      Back to my visit to London the other week.  The Thursday I spent in London.  There was the RIBA Traditional Architects Group Summer Party in the the evening, and in the morning I headed over to Marylebone for a return visit to The Wallace Collection and Marylebone High St.  It seems now, at distance of a fortnight or so, I regrettably took the whole day at a bit of lick

     The Wallace Collection is the most splendid place, full to bursting of all manner of good things, but it is essentially a collection of art - mainly French and Flemish - and decorative art - mainly French and mainly from the 18th century, that is the reigns of Louis XV and the later reign of his grandfather Louis XIV; not, as I stated in my previous post on the collection back in 2016, the 'Grand Siècle'.  The collection contains, therefore, elements of Baroque, Rococo and Neo-classical taste.  In France, I think the terms would be 'Louis XIII', 'Regence' and 'Louis XIV' - the later in particular being a portmanteau term as it includes both the Rocaille and Neo-Classicism.  And here I must make a little confession or two.  Firstly, the contents are not all to my taste, but the craftsmanship throughout is superlative.  And secondly, and perhaps paradoxically, I deeply admire French architecture of the period and (whispers) prefer it to its British contemporary, Neo-Palladianism.  What I admired in the few architectural elements in the collection (mainly fireplaces) was the inventiveness and the combination of gilded metal (bronze, I presume) with polished stone.  To be honest, as regular readers of this blog may notice, these examples of sophisticated, polished French design may sit in some sort of contradiction with the sort of stuff I regularly post, which seems to be more about the humble, the domestic and the patinated.  (These two pictures are from my previous visit)

     All that aside, I also wanted see again the Guardis in the collection.  Antonio Guardi (1712-1793), verduisti, is considered the last practitioner of the Venetian School - in fact the Most Serene Republic lived on for a mere four years after his death.  I prefer his work, which is lively and 'impressionistic', to that of his near contemporary, Canaletto.  Guardi was possessed of a certain 'sprezzatura'.  I find his capricci rather an inspiration for my own work.  Alas, I missed the Bonningtons, but (as last time) my eye was caught by two exquisite early 19th century French oils by Decamps and DuPre.  It's not a period I know particularly much about but these two beauties tempt me to explore.

     Well, after all that, it seems fitting that Marylebone High St is the centre of London's French community.  Eventually I found myself in Daunt Books w its wonderful Edwardian interior.  I really shouldn't be buying books - we simply haven't the space - but I did treated myself to a copy of the travel writer Robert Byron's 'The Station'.  An account of his visit to Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, the great spiritual centre of Orthodoxy.  More of that, perhaps in a future post.

Adoration of the Shepherds

 The Holy Innocents, 28th December, 2023

     Just over a hundred years separates today's image - 'The Adoration of the Shepherds', by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-74) in London's Wallace Collection - from yesterday's; and, although perhaps not a fair comparison for they are not of the same genre, the contrast in style and technique could not be greater: lucidity to mystery, hieratic to fluid drama, from an even light to the theatrical disposition of light and darkness. It is, paradoxically, both a maximalist and minimalist work - by minimalist I mean the ruthless expunging of extraneous detail. As in all Baroque art, all is subsumed into a whole that is designed to elicit, to excite, an emotional response in the viewer. While in yesterday's painting the subjects were either deep in contemplation or addressing the viewer, here the figures are completely oblivious to the observer being entirely caught up in the communal moment when the shepherds are brought into the divine presence.

     According to The Wallace Collection website The Adoration was painted c1645. It is a large work, some 260x160cms, commissioned, perhaps, for Abbey of Notre Dame de Quincy, where it is tempting to think it formed part of an altarpiece.

     Altarpiece, or not, the whole thing, I think, can be read as an allegory of the Eucharist, or rather the Eucharist as it was understood in the Western catholic church in the early years of the seventeenth century.  The shepherds, who can be thought of as the Faithful, have brought a lamb, a bound lamb pointing to Christ's passion and death, as an offering to the infant Christ. It lies upon the floor of the cave.  Christ is the Lamb of God. The Virgin Mary stands as a 'type' of the church presenting to the faithful the incarnate God for adoration, just as the church, in the person of the priest, in the elevation of the consecrated species, presents the faithful the risen body & blood for adoration.  It was at that moment of adoration that the altarpiece and the liturgical action below it became one and time was collapsed.

London

   My next planned post was to have been on the visit the bf and I made to Houghton Hall.  However on Wednesday I went up to town to meet my brother.  One of the things he wanted to see was the Wallace Collection.  And I was so impressed with what I saw I decided on the train home to alter my plans.

    One of the themes of this blog has been the 'Schatzkammer', or treasury.  A place of concentrated wonder.  Enlarging on that theme this blog has also turned out to be about the enchantment, or rather re-enchantment, with the world.  A position, I suppose, against what Max Webber termed 'entzauberung' or dis-enchantment with the world in the state of Modernity.  The Wallace Collection more than satisfied both categories for inclusion in this blog.  Such was its richness that it was almost overwhelming, and we left sated after an hour or so without seeing it all.
   Anyway we met up outside Baker Street tube and walked down Marylebone High St., popping into the Conran Shop, the lovely Daunt Books, and St James, Spanish Place, a little known Gothic Revival church built by Edward Goldie and has a very good interior - lofty and vaulted.  It was a part of London that George did not know at all and I hadn't visited for years.

Daunt Books

   The Wallace Collection is housed in Hertford House one of London's remaining aristocratic town houses.  It occupies an island site on the north side of Manchester Square, just north of Oxford St.. It became the town house of the Hertfords in 1795, and is a somewhat unprepossessing building to house such a spectacular collection.  Like that of Viscount FitzWilliam, that became the core of the Fitzwilliam Museum, The Wallace Collection is an aristocratic creation - the work of three generations: the 3rd & 4th Marquesses of Hertford and Richard Wallace the latter's illegitimate son.
   At the heart of Wallace's collection is the fine and applied art of France, particularly from what is is termed 'Le Grande Siecle'.  It is the 4th Marquess that is responsible for this part of the collection, indeed he was one of the great collectors of the 19th century.  There is marble, bronze, ormolu and boulle aplenty, and the craftsmanship on display is at times quite breathtaking.  Cabinets too of French porcelain and enamel ware, and then there is a whole host of exquisite miniatures. There are rooms of Watteau and Fragonard and Boucher - not really my taste but in conjunction with the applied art in each room the effect is staggering. In fact the Wallace Collection contains a number of famous paintings: Watteau's 'The Swing', Reynold's 'Portrait of Nelly O'Brien', Poussin's 'Dance to the Music of Time' and Hals' 'Laughing Cavalier'.  There is a hefty haul of Flemish art to keep the cavalier company including work by Rubens, Rembrandt and van Dyck.  There is too a gallery of Venetian Veduta paintings by Canaletto and Guardi - the latter was a discovery: much more painterly and atmospheric than Canaletto.  Other discoveries were a series of beautiful little landscapes by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860), work by Richard Parkes Bonnington (1802-1828) and a group of painterly sketches by Rubens.  The paintings on the whole tended towards portraiture, and the rhetorical - religious, mythological and narrative.  The domestic was not so prevalent except in the Flemish galleries.  There was none, as far as I can remember, of the intimate, everyday subjects as you find in Chadrin and Oudry.  It was Sir Richard Wallace who bought the collection over from Paris in 1870, where he and the 4th Marquess before him made their home, and it was his widow, Lady Wallace, who left the collection to the nation.  Hertford House opened to the public in 1900.  We missed the rooms of Oriental and European armour and the Medieval and Renaissance galleries, but as I've already said we were feeling pretty sated after an hour or so.  It is possible to have too much of a good thing! Finally as a result of a major, decade long, refurbishment the gallery walls are hung with wonderful silks in a number of bold and striking colours and patterns, not only do they make the paintings sing but add a depth and intensity to the whole gallery going experience.     In all superlative.  I'm already thinking about making a return visit.

   Lunch was taken in Paul Rothe and Son, a really lovely deli, just around the corner from The Wallace Collection in Marylebone Lane; early dinner in an old favourite of mine Polpo at Bird & Ape in Cambridge Circus.