COLD ENGLAND BUT ALWAYS LOVELY TO BE BACK......

Tobacco Shop Covent garden

It was soon after New York that I was off again to London and Meldreth. Springtime and the daffodils will be out and the sun will be shining so I thought....well that was to be a dream which would not come true with the exception of one gorgeous day in Cambridge. The rest of the time we were back in our winter clothes and I piled on jumpers and cardigans in the hope of keeping warm.

The exhibition « Becoming Picasso» - Paris 1901 was the main reason for our visit to London. Pierrette joined me and intimated that the following days were to be full of surprises. In an email she had mentioned the «Hermitage» but short of flying there, I couldn’t imagine for one moment what she was talking about. There had been no mention of a museum in England being «connected» to the Hermitage as is the case in Amsterdam, so I certainly could not guess what I was in store.

But Picasso first. And for the first time I was a little disappointed in the exhibition. The Courtauld Gallery is one of our favorites, but somehow, for me, the exhibition didn’t come off. 1901 was the year that Picasso launched his career in Paris and this probably set the course for him to become one of if not the most eminent painters of the 20th century.

Shown are the major paintings of his debut with Ambroise Vollard. You see at once how much he had been influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Degas....and the beginning of his blue period began  the second half of that year. This period was undoubtedly inspired by the suicide of a very close friend Carlos Casagemas. He shot himself because of an unrequited love for some lady. This had a bad effect on Picasso.    

A painting of a dwarf performer, possibly from a circus or cabaret, was one of the most striking paintings in Picasso’s 1901 Vollard gallery exhibition.


  This celebrated self-portrait announced the young Picasso’s entry into the Paris art world. It stood out at his debut 1901 exhibition as being “done with great courage and great confidence”, according to one critic. But does it look like Picasso as we knew him?

  Inspired in part by Gauguin and Van Gogh’s bold use of contouring lines and simplified colours, Picasso created a monumental depiction of a young girl clutching a dove, a ball abandoned at her feet. This is one we know well.....



The figure of Harlequin is an important feature of some of Picasso’s later works.
He makes his first significant appearance in Picasso’s art in this painting.







This canvas is part of Picasso’s series of drinkers seated at a café table, produced in the second half of 1901. The subject had long been a feature of modern art in Paris, but Picasso made it his own in this and the other related works displayed.


On 17 February 1901, Casagemas drew a revolver and
shot himself in the temple in a Montmartre café in front of a group of friends. Picasso was in Madrid at the time but later in the year Casagemas’s suicide registered in his art. This is one of three related paintings in which Picasso imagined the head of his dead friend, here seen lying in his coffin. Picasso kept these meditations on Casagemas’s death private for many years, only revealing their existence in the 1960s. Picasso later claimed that Casagemas’s suicide inspired the beginning of his Blue period.

Many of the paintings belonged to private collections but even so I had seen some of them. Not Casagemas however. It was a pleasant exhibition but not as satisfying as I hoped it would be.

The Cam.....

Cambridge was in full beauty the following day -
and our first port of call was to Cheffins - an auction house where Pierrette has picked up some very nice pieces over the years. First  surprise visit for me. It was mainly antique furniture on auction and quite frankly you could furnish a house at a very low cost. I kept of getting 0’s out of place as I couldn’t imagine for one moment that a piece of furniture could go for 30£

Also the enchantment of finding an old chapel which had been turned into a restaurant. Good food and very quiet. I wonder if we will ever be able to escape screaming piped music which prevents talking without shouting over it.

The following day we were off to the «Hermitage». I was told it was nearly a two hours drive and that was about it. Finally Pierrette handed over the small brochure to me, which was not exactly full of information. We were going to Houghton Hall to an exhibition called «Houghton revisited»  In small print I could see that it was a Hermitage collection!

The history of this collection is astounding.

The magnificent art collection of Great Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, sold to Catherine the Great to adorn the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, will be reassembled in its spectacular original setting of Houghton Hall for the first time in over 200 years.
Houghton Revisited runs from 17 May-29 September 2013 and is a unique opportunity to view one of the most famous art collections of eighteenth-century Europe. The display will include paintings from the English, French, Italian, Flemish and Spanish schools, with masterpieces by Van Dyck, Poussin, Albani, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez and Murillo..
Houghton Hall, now the family seat of Sir Robert Walpole’s direct descendant, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, is considered one of the country’s finest Palladian houses.
The Hall was designed to house Walpole’s prized collection of Old Master paintings, and the magnificent interiors and furnishings designed by William Kent are also still intact. The paintings in the Houghton Revisited exhibition will be hung in their original positions in the State Rooms, bringing them back to the splendour of more than two centuries ago.

http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/05/photos-houghton-hall-guest-book 

This is a well worth while site to go into to discover many of the tit bits of the family today. Prince Charles opened the exhibition and there are videos on that too on other web sites. 

But what did I like? I certainly loved the library and the Marquess still works in it today. In fact he had the best of the paintings there which had been put into the Common Parlour for the exhibition. It is the only one which will not be returned to the Hermitage in September. You can see it a little here along with the Marquess.  Unfortunately there is no available picture of the library  to be found.  You can see though that there  is something real about this portrait rather than so many of those of the 15th and 16th century which are rather over exaggerated for me.

There is a painting by Velazquez which I can remember seeing in a Bacon exhibition next to one of his Popes. That brought back memories. Then another of Kitchen 1646 by a Master who I did not know, David Teniers ll and now of course I am wondering if I hadn’t seen his work with Marielle in Como as he was the son in law of Jan Breughel. I thought at the time that it was not difficult to compare this painting with Breughel’s style.

The Marquess also is interested in modern and contemporary work and there were some marvelous sculptures in the garden area. There are six but I only saw two of them. As I was frozen, I left the walk to Pierette and Borgy and chose to have a hot drink.

The Scholar Rock by Zhan Wang (China 1962) was a lovely discovery. A giant artificial rock made out of stainless steel. Pierrette discovered that it could also be used as a musical instrument.

My coffee lounge was not like this !

And I loved Stephen Cox figure. Just look at her toes turning in!!!




Horses are a very important part of the family within this set and polo was too. I thought of my brother’s son in law in Tasmania and wondered if he would have been impressed by the many champion prizes and beautiful leather saddles used for the horses. This week there are competitions at the hall - I just hope that it is Springtime and not the middle of winter with rain and wind into the bargain.