Art as an Ending

Somerset House has a long history as a London royal palace. It also was a site for art, culture, and science, which continues to today. 

It was commissioned by George III and designed by Sir William Chambers, it was constructed between 1776 and 1801 on the site of the palace by Edward Seymour. Seymour was Edward VI's uncle and self-named Lord Protector and Duke of Somerset since Edward was too young to ascend the throne. As the new Duke and Protector, Seymour wanted a new palace suitable to his new rank. He began building his great mansion on land he already owned between the Thames and the Strand. Various monarchs have used the building and it has had its share of construction, demolition, and restoration by these monarchs and as a result of the Civil War, the plague, and the Great London Fire of 1665. The House fell into such disrepair in the 18th century that George III gave the site to the government for public offices, which found other purposes for the newly rebuilt Somerset House, completed in 1779. It became the center for the Royal Academy, the Government Art School, the Royal Society, and the Society of Antiquaries. 

The Royal Academy of Arts had their Exhibition Room in the newly rebuilt Somerset House until 1836, when the Academy moved to the National Gallery in 1836. 

The Royal Society is the oldest scientific society in Britain. They also took up residence at Somerset House in 1781 and stayed until 1857. One of the first scientific discoveries announced at a Society meeting after shortly moving to their new residence was by astronomer William Herschel of a newly discovered planet, Uranus.

These rooms are now the home of the Courtauld Gallery, which has an important collection of old master and impressionist paintings. Works are on display by French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist such as Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Degas, and Seurat. I unexpectedly stumbled upon my favorite Mante, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. 

One of the exciting things about exploring is never knowing what you'll stumble upon. A curiosity about this royal palace and what had happened to it led me to discover not only a treasure trove of historical events that happened at this site but also one of my favorite paintings and some other outstanding works by some of my favorite artists. 

Seeing Britain Through Art

The only way to end my two week holiday in Britain is with a truly British institution. I started the London portion of the holiday with the British Museum and am ending it with Tate Britain.

The Tate Britain sits on the Thames in the Pimlico neighborhood and looks like a smaller British Museum, with a ground round dome under which is a rotunda court in gleaming white marble. It however is nowhere near as overwhelming in terms of its collection and can easily be done Ina few hours. It's also the perfect pairing to go with the National Portrait Gallery.

The Tate is named after Sir Henry Tate, an industrialist who had made his fortune as a sugar refiner, offered his collection of British art to the National Gallery in 1889. However, the  National Gallery did not have space for Tate's collection. So to remedy this problem, Tate created a new gallery dedicated to British art, opening to the public in 1897. This gallery grew to hold more than just Tate's collection but the works for British artists from various other collections. The original name of the gallery was the National Gallery of British Art.

The result is a fine collection dating from the 16th century to the present with most of Britain's leading artists represented, such as Gainsborough, Reynolds, Constable, Hogarth, Blake, and of course JMW Turner. The Tate has the largest collection of Turner's works spread over seven rooms. Turner willed most of his paintings and watercolors to the British nation, and he intended that a special gallery would be built to house them.

It also has an impressive number of the Pre-Raphaelites, which is a wholly British movement in 19th century art. Founded in 1848 by by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, critics. The groups purpose was to reform art and return it to the colorful and complex compositions of Italian art before the adoption of Classical ideals of Raphael  and Michelangelo.  The Pre-Raphaelites' paintings on display correspond with the Romantic period of poetry. One of the most stunning pieces is John Williams Waterhouse's "The Lady of Shalott,"which colorfully and mournfully illustrates lines from Tennyson's poem.

There couldn't have been a better way to end a truly British holiday, excursions that spanned time and country, then to walk through 500 years of British art.  To see the scope and depth of the change in British art across time was the perfect compliment to bookend the heritage contributions to British history.

Artful Surprises

Sir John Soane's Museum is small but full of curiosities and surprises. The Museum is in the house and library of Soane, who was an architecture and therefore knowledgable and skilled to combine three houses (Numbers 12, 13, and 14) in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Beginning in 1792 and proceeding in phases that ended in 1824, Soane created his ideal gallery for the display of his collection of curios. 

And what a collection it is! An avid collector, Soane amassed items ranging from Greek marbles and bronzes, Roman jewelry, medieval sculptures, and Renaissance paintings. On display (but I won't say where so as not to ruin the surprise for those who haven't visited) are two series by William Hogarth - "The Rake's Progress" and "The Election." There is even the sarcophagi of Seti I. Soane hosted a party that lasted three days just to showcase this acquisition. Soane had an entire room devoted to architectural models, even his own, which include the Bank of England and models of ancient Roman and Greek buildings. And as any bibliophile will appreciate, there are walls of bookshelves. Soane even turned the pillars of the drawing room into bookshelves. 

Upon his appointment at the Royal Academy as Professor of Architecture in 1806, Soane arranged his books, casts, drawings, and models for the students. He proposed that he open his house for the use of the students before and after his lectures, starting Soane down the path of converting his home into a museum for others to view and learn. 

In 1833, Soane negotiated an Act of Parliament to settle and preserve the house and collection for the benefit of ‘amateurs and students’ in architecture, painting and sculpture. The Act went in to effect on his death in 1837, vesting the Museum in a board of Trustees who were to continue to uphold Soane’s own aims and objectives. A crucial part of their brief was to maintain the fabric of the Museum, keeping it ‘as nearly as circumstances will admit in the state’ in which it was left at the time of Soane’s death in 1837 and to allow free access for students and the public to ‘consult, inspect and benefit’ from the collections. Since 1837, each successive Curator has sought to preserve and maintain Soane’s arrangements as he wished. 

Soane clearly believed that there wasn't any point in acquiring anything that he couldn't display, so every surface, wall, and ceiling is adorned with artifacts and artworks. The wonderfully stylish clutter takes you through centuries and cultures, each turn revealing a new surprise. 

To Collect and To Remember

Although I've been fortunate to visit London many times, I've somehow never found the opportunity to go to the British Museum (much to the chagrin of a few friends.) But today I've remedied that great slight with a visit to one of the most remarkable museums.  The British Museum, founded in 1753, is the epitome of the Age of Enlightenment and Empire and the first national public museum in the world. The Museum's early collection was mainly books, manuscripts, and natural specimens with some coins, medals, prints, and drawings collected by the physician, naturalist, and collector, Sir Hans Sloane.

Sloane collected more than 71,000 objects throughout  his life. He wanted his collection to be preserved intact after his death so he bequeathed the entire collection to King George II. Accepting the gift, an Act of Parliament established the British Museum on June 7,1753. Opening to the public on January 15,1759, the British Museum was first in Montagu House in Bloomsbury on the site of today's building.

The British Museum's collection grew as the British upper classes traveled the globe in the 18th and 19th centuries, uncovering antiquities and artifacts of distant civilizations and shipping them back to Britain for investigation and display. These acquisitions formed the basis of the museum's collection and has been built to be one of the largest and finest. A number of high profile pieces were discovered in the 19th century - the Rosetta Stone in 1802, the Townley collection of classical sculpture in 1805, and the Parthenon sculptures (Elgin Marbles) in 1816. And the 7th century Saxon burial ship and treasures was discovered in 1938 in Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.

It is a testament to the breadth of the Empire at one time to have been able to collect artifacts from such different civilizations around the world. And in some way, the British Museum is a remembrance to all  of these past cultures and societies.

Remembrances to the past are all over London, from Christopher Wren's Monument  that commemorates the Great Fire of 1666 to the current installation at the Tower of London. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. To remember the British citizens lost in the war, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower's moat.  Each poppy is created by hand and installed by hand, creating an undulating wave of red across the greenery of the grassy moat. Singular poppies rise from the tide reminding you that each poppy represents an individual person. The installation is equally breathtaking and heart-wrenching to realize the destruction of the war, truly an event to pause and a remember and a collection I will be hard-pressed to forget.

History of Medicine: Smallpox

In a rare moment when my professional life intersects with this hobby while reading for my book club, I was introduce to Lady Marty Wortley Montagu. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her son, Edward Wortley Montagu, and attendants
National Portrait Gallery

Montagu is known as an poet and prolific letter-writer. She was also the wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and played an important role in the promotion of the smallpox inoculation in the eighteenth century. 

Smallpox has affected humanity so profoundly that inoculating against smallpox, i.e. vaccinating, is called variolation after the the Latin for smallox Variola vera for "spotted pimple."Variolation is the deliberate infection of the smallpox virus to bring on a mild case of smallpox to create an immunity against the disease. 

While in Turkey in 1717, Montagu was exposed to variolation against smallpox through the practice of ingrafting, which involved a process by which pus from an individual with a mild case of smallpox was spread into an open wound of an uninfected person. Montague had lost a brother to smallpox and considered the risk of becoming sick from inoculation worth taking. 

There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take the pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it, if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue, for the good of mankind. (Source)

Montagu inocluated her five-year old son while in Turkey and upon her return to England, she indeed contract doctors to spread the word about variolation. In 1721 when a smallpox epidemic broke out in England, she had her four-year old daughter inoculated by a physician who had been at the Turkish embassy, Charles Maitland. She publicized the event to spread the practice and even persuaded the Prince and Princess of Wales, to inoculate their own children, all of who recovered. 

With the procedure deemed safe after a series of experiments on orphans, prisoners, and the royal family, the procedure became more common as a method for preventing smallpox. 

Afternoon of Art

For my last day in London, I spent it viewing the most amazing works of European art at both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.

On a gorgeously warm and sunny day (the weather truly has been magnificent and yes, everyone here really does talk about the weather all the time), I walked from Lincoln's Inn Fields to Trafalgar Square to first go to the National to see their collection of more than 2,300 paintings. The National is the perfect art museum for me because it covers my favorite periods of Western art - mid-1200s to 1900. The layout is chronological, though the galleries are not organized sequentially. Starting with the Renaissance greats, I saw works by Lippi, Leonardo's The Virgin on the Rocks, and one of my all-time favorite Dutch Renaissance paintings, Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. Moving into the 16th century, the typical European Old Masters are represented by Titan, El Greco, and my favorite, Hans Holbein, which is represented by The Ambassadors. I spent more in the 18th and 19th centuries than in the 17th century with the Gainsborough's, Turner's, Constable's, Hogarth's, Renior's, and Manet's.

After two hours of art-viewing, I needed to rejuvenate. On a recommendation, I ventured across the street to St. Martin-in-the-Field's for lunch in it's cafe. Ironic that the church's name includes "in the Fields" considering it sits off of Trafalgar Square. However, St. Martin's used to truly be surrounded by fields when it was founded in the 13th century. The current 18th-century building was constructed by James Gibbs, a follower of Christopher Wren. The interior is adorned with Italian plasterwork and a huge mahogany and silver organ. The cafe is in the church's crypt with gravestones for Charles II's mistress, Nell Gwynne, among many others underfoot of the cafe's patrons. (By the way, the food truly was excellent.)

On to what is now my favorite museum in London, the National Portrait Gallery. The Portrait Gallery's collection is based on identity of the subject and not necessarily on who the artist is or the artist's talent. The works vary hugely in quality and have been organized by the subject and the time in which the subject lived rather than the time in which the piece was painted, like the National. Beginning chronologically with the Plantagenets and Tudors and ending with the current period, the portraits of royalty, artists, writers, politicians, scientists, musicians, and philosophers are presented. I spent two hours and still ran out of time (because they were closing and I spent too much time in the Tudor and Stuart rooms) so I wasn't able to see the modern portraits, such as this one of the Duchess of Cambridge. But I got to see my favorite portrait of Elizabeth I.

I love this museum not only because of the subject matter but because taken on a whole, the Portrait Gallery presents a visual map of the Britain's history. The historical actors depicted in these works of art have each influenced the creation of this unique nation.

Photos from the day can be found here.

Not Enough Time for the Past

I had to quickly come to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to get to see everything at the Victoria and Albert Museum (aka the V&A). First of all, there are seven floors, 150 galleries displaying around four million objects of sculptures, jewlery, textiles, clothes, paintings, ceramics, furniture, architecture, and more.

Following the success of the Great Exhibition (aka the First Worlds Fair held in 1851), the V&A was established in 1852 to make works of art available to the public. Originally called the South Kensington Museum, the Museum moved to its present site in 1857. The South Kensington Museum was renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1899 when Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for a new building, the current building, designed to give the Museum a grand facade. And grand it is with its red brick exterior, soaring dome, and vast open galleries.

Overwhelming doesn't begin to describe the building or the collection. With little idea of what to see first, I started wandering without a plan. I quickly came to the Fashion Galleries and ogled the finery, thankful to be wearing jeans and a t-shirt and not a two foot wide crinoline cage or a corset.

I next found myself in the jewelry gallery, where I spent most of my time seeing every little bejeweled piece, 3,000 from all across Europe, from ancient to modern. Spending time here easily made up for for skipping the Crown Jewels at the Tower. And if I am ever able to wear this amethyst necklace, I'll gladly wear any amount of bustle padding, corsets, and crinoline. I got lost, well not lost so much as turned around in the silver gallery (it's that large and there are a lot of silver pieces), learned how miniature portraits are made, and stood in a room surround by large and gorgeous medieval tapestries.

I saw so much from around the world and across time, but yet I ran out of time for the furnishings and sculptures and paintings and photographs. The V&A and I will just have to have another date when I next return to London.

Photos from the day can be found here.

Medical History, Oddities, and Curiosities

Today, I embarked on a theme - medical history - which ties my everyday life to my hobby of history. I first went to the Royal London Hospital Museum, which was a bit tricky to find as it is in the crypt (restored) of a late 19th century church, St. Philip's Church, in Whitechapel. The London Hospital was founded in 1740 and became Britain's largest voluntary hospital. (I could write so much about the history of the London Hospital, but will focus this just on the museum.)  The museum is divided by the centuries within which it has operated.

The 18th century section gives an overview on the foundation of the hospital and medical education and health in the 18th century. An operation bell of 1792 hangs by the front door. The bell was rung to call attendants to the operating room to hold a patient still. 

The 19th century section displays contemporary surgical instruments and medical equipment, surgery before antisepsis, and profiles Florence Nightingale and Eva Luckes, a hospital matron.  

The 20th century section focuses on the first and second World Wars, Nurse Edith Cavell, and scientific advances in medicines, such as x-rays. 

Continuing onwards, I next went to the Hunterian Museum, which is in the Royal College of Surgeons. On display is the collection of medical oddities and curiosities of the late 18th century physician John Hunter. He gathered all sorts of items, human, animal, and plant, to instruct his medical students. Hunter believed that surgeons should study the structure and function of all sorts of living things to understand how the human body adapts to injuries, diseases, and environmental impacts. Edward Jenner (of the smallpox vaccine fame) and Astley Cooper (a surgeon and anatomist who described several new anatomical structures, which are named after him) were both students of Hunter. The collection includes two floors and shelves upon shelves of pickled animal and body parts in jars, surgical instruments, and case studies of successful experimental surgeries, such as repairing facial gunshot wounds to World War I soldiers. The honestly coolest thing were boards of lacquered systems of arteries, veins, and nerves. The human subject would have been placed on the board and then all else but what currently remains on the board was dissected away.

Next, was the Wellcomme Collection. I was so excited to see this since it is described by my Frommer's guide as, "the capital's finest museum of medicine." Sadly, most of the collection is closed because the museum is undergoing remodeling. Here's what I missed! I'll just have to come back after it reopens in 2014.

So since I had more time then I had planned, I took the opportunity to visit the British Library. For a bibliophile  and nerd, the British Library is Mecca. First of all, it is receives a copy of every single title published in the U.K. and stored on 400 miles of shelves. The only thing I saw (and had time for) was "Treasures of the British Library," which displays 200 of the library's holdings, such as Shakespeare folios; drawings by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Durer; Jane Austen's writing desk and letters; a slightly singed copy of Beowulf; musical scores by Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel (incidentally, Beethoven and Mozart's scores were clean but Handel's had many scribbles); a letter from Elizabeth I to her brother, Edward VI; a speech to Parliament by George III's; loads of illuminated manuscripts and maps; and of courses the 1215 Magna Carta. I never pass up the opportunity to see one of the many versions of the Magna Carta. To me it is the epitome of English and British history as a symbol of the foundation of the state. 

And that is exactly what I'm experiencing everyday in this magnificent city and country - the epitome of English and British history that surrounds me as I walk like the New Yorker I am up Bloomsbury Street and past the British Museum, around Lincoln's Inn and Chancery (Shout out to Bleak Houses!),  and through Whitechapel.

Photos from the day can be found here. 

Before and After Death - The Tower and The Cathedral

For my first day in London, I decided to do the two things I wanted to see the most - The Tower of London (never been) and St. Paul's Cathedral (have been but don't remember.)

Successfully commuting in from Cambridge to King's Cross and then taking the Tube (once an urbanite, always an urbanite), I arrived at the Tower of London on a brightly sunny and gorgeous day, contrasting to the morbid history of the site I was on. I arrived just in time to catch a tour by a Yeoman Warder, aka Beefeater. Of the many things told but what I found most fascinating is the change in tower architecture for defensive towers. Before the Crusades, towers were square. After the Crusades, they were round. 

The Tower also has the only surviving medieval palace in Britain, dating back to the 1200s, which stands in the wall above Traitor's Gate. Prisoners were brought o the Tower through the Gate, two of which were quite famous and queens - Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. 

Speaking of Anne Boleyn, I stood where she, and many others, lost their heads, which was quite powerful. Moving on to see where she spent her time before her death, I made my way through the White Tower. It currently houses the Royal Armory, and does not show many signs to the fact that the White Tower used to be the prison and execution site. Other "guests" of the White Tower were Sir Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey, and most famously, Princes Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, also known as the Princes in the Tower, who disappeared and were said to have been either killed by their Uncle Richard or were spirited away to Ireland...Digression...There were two small skeletons found behind a staircase in the White Tower during Charles II's reign. It is thought that these may be the remains of the Princes, which are now interred at Westminster Abbey.  Now that Richard III's remains were discovered and confirmed last year in Leicester, these skeletons will be tested for DNA and compared to Richard III's for confirmation if the tower skeletons are related to Richard, thus proving them to be his nephews. A 540ish mystery may come to an end.

What was quite striking was the vastness of the complex and various architectural styles represented, from Saxon to Norman all the way up to Georgian, as seen in the Hospital buildings and houses. (Evidently, according to my Beefeater tour guide, there are still people who live with their families at the Tower.)

Taking the opportunity to walk, I found my way from the Tower west to St. Paul's Cathedral. Not able to take pictures of the interior, I am not able to describe the awesomeness of the gilded and colorful altars or ceilings. The crypt holds the remains of many famous people. I accidentally walked on Joshua Reynolds and JMW Turner and saw the monuments to Robert Hooke, William Blake, Alexander Fleming, and Lord Nelson. The coffin that Nelson is buried in was originally made for Cardinal Wolsey, but when he fell of favor with Henry VIII, he did not receive such a stately burial. The coffin was put into storage for about two hundred years until it was used for Nelson when he died at the Battle of Trafalgar. 

Taking advantage of the perfect weather, I climbed to the Golden Gallery on the top of Wren's great Dome - 550+ steps. And it was worth it for the panoramic views of the London, and the melding of historic architecture and newly modern developments like the Shard.

Photos from the day can be found here. 

Rediscovering England - The Itinerary

The more I researched and read and planned for my upcoming trip, the more excited I am!

Countdown until departure = 6 Days!

After reading through two of my favorite traveling planning books (Frommer's England and the Best of Wales and DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Britain), I've come up with an overwhelming list of things to do, places to go, sites to see.

And my list is....

East Anglia
Cambridge
Ely
Saffron Walden
Norwich
Colchester

East Midland
Lincoln
Chatsworth House
Burghley House

London
Tower of London
Westminster Abbey
St. Paul's Cathedral (and yes, I'm going to the top of Wren's Dome!)
National Gallery
National Portrait Gallery
Victoria and Albert Museum
Royal London Hospital Museum
Hampton Court (if time allows)

I'll have a home base in Cambridge, which is near and dear to a few of my nearest and dearest, so I'm glad to finally experience the magic of this old town. It will also make traveling easier to have one place to stay and to "fake live" in England for two weeks. It'll be interesting to experience what it is like to live in not only another city but also another country for a brief period of time.

More to come...

Rediscovering England

I'M GOING TO ENGLAND!

Finally, after two years without a proper vacation, I'm making my way across the great Atlantic to Albion for two full weeks steeped in history. I'm compiling a list of places I want to see around London and various other environs, such as East Anglia, Yorkshire, and the Lake District. I'm beyond excited to explore the Tower of London, climb to the top of St. Paul's, and visit Highgate Cemetery (which I wrote about in these two previous posts: here and here.)

So while I'm discovering all sorts things of English and historical significance, I'll blog about each days' adventures. (At least the goal will be to blog each day...let's see how that goes.)

Departure date is in 19 days so I best get cracking on setting my itinerary!

St. Paul’s Cathedral: A Search for Inspiration

For there, above my head, rising with glorious disregard from a low jumble of roofs and smoking chimneys, was the dome I had seen from Hampstead, only now it soared before me, its vaulting magnificence held by a vast coronet of pillars. The columned lantern at its summit reached upwards into the smoke-bruised sky…There was nothing of supplication in its appeal to Heaven, nothing of the humility before God so beloved of the Bible…It rose from the mud as a magnificent testament to the boundless ambitions of men, realized in all their inexorable glory.

This passage from the Nature of Monsters, by Clare Clark, is a description by Eliza, the protagonist, of her first viewing of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. In 1718, Eliza arrives in London as the maid to an apothecary. The position had been arranged for her by her mother and the family of the father of her unborn child, a wealthy merchant’s son, to smooth over the scandal of their attachment. Eliza finds herself in the clamor and chaos of eighteenth-century London struggling to free herself and to survive, with a view of the dome of St. Paul’s as a source of salvation.

After the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed most of Central London, Christopher Wren (1632-1723) dominated the rebuilding of the city, and English architecture, for the rest of the century. His major and most famous project was rebuilding St. Paul’s Cathedral on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the city.

Eight years after the Great Fire, the ruins of St. Paul’s original structure had not been replaced or restored. Attempts to salvage the burned-out medieval church failed. Wren began demolishing the old building to make room for the new. The first stones were laid in the summer of 1675 and the last 35 years later.

For a faith with a profound distrust of Catholicism, Wren drew upon monumental Catholic examples in his design for St. Paul’s as the cathedral of the Diocese of London. As similar to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, St. Paul’s has a long nave, short transepts with semicircular ends, and a domed crossing. Commanding the city’s skyline, the dome for St. Paul’s has an interior masonry vault with an exterior sheathing of lead-covered wood, similar to the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and crowned by a lantern. Paired Corinthian columns line the main west front. The tremendous size of the Cathedral, complexity of form, and triumphant verticality make it a major monument of the English Baroque period.

Wren returned to England after travels in France in the 1660s and brought with him architectural books, drawings, engravings, and a great admiration of French classical Baroque design. St. Paul’s was to be the central point of Wren’s visionary redesign of London, where streets were to be extended from it. His artistic vision was to crown London’s skyline with a great domed church like the great European cities. Wren envisioned a modern European city with a series of intersecting avenues. But it was not to be had and the city remained along its ancient topographical lines.

The sheer enormity of St. Paul’s must have struck the everyday eighteenth-century Londoner with such awe at the ability and modern power to create such a building. In a time when life was dangerous, poverty was rampant, and destitution was a reality, the solidity of St. Paul’s Cathedral hopefully provided inspiration and hope as “as a magnificent testament to the boundless ambitions of men” to many, as it did for Eliza.

Sources:
London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
Art History by Marilyn Stokstad