Category Archives: London

More London

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Thursday’s ticket gave me half-price entry into the London Transport Museum, so I decided to visit it, if only for the exhibition of art deco posters. Perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say that every other adult had a pushchair, but I certainly felt out of place without a small child in tow. They were pinging about all over the place. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there, so it was familiar. I did linger at the steam locomotive used on the Metropolitan & District underground for over 40 years; it had a condenser to capture the steam but nothing to alleviate the smoke. At first I thought how awful it must have been for passengers . . . and then I thought of the drivers and stokers.

I enjoyed the exhibition of art deco posters from the underground. They implied affordable modern luxury – a visit to Kew Gardens, the zoo or the West End. There were a couple by Sybil Andrews/Cyril Power that I’d seen in Dulwich.

Then, since I was nearby, I headed towards the Courtauld Gallery. I was briefly sidetracked by a youthful band celebrating the anniversary of the founding of RAF air cadets. I looked at the”Courtauld bag” (from Mosul, 1300-30) and was rather taken with Tobias and his fish in the Botticelli painting of the Trinity. There was also a small exhibition: A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860. I’ve seen a lot of Turner and Constable landscapes recently, and I can’t see that Elizabeth’s Batty’s is markedly inferior.

Cutty Sark

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The most surprising thing about the elegant Cutty Sark (1869) was that it had an iron skelton. That saved on space, which was crucial for the container ship of its day. The hull was covered in a metal alloy (Muntz) to deter barnacles and to smooth her passage through the sea. She was one of the last and fastest tea clippers of her day but was soon replaced by steamships. The crew was around 26 men and boys, all living in small quarters on the top deck – with rather larger quarters for the captain and officers. One of those visits that are more fascinating than you expect.

Euston underground tunnels

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Another Hidden London tour – this time under Euston. I can still feel the dust in my nose. We looked at a former tube tunnel that was taken out of service when the island platform between two tube lines became too narrow for safety. Then the old tunnel linking two rival underground lines (whose separate entrances were either side of the mainline station) where there was a shared underground ticket hall. This tunnel was closed in 1962 and the walls are still layered with advertising posters from then. They have decayed but – given the lack of light – they are still vibrant.

The tour was full of interesting little things – e.g. making it easy for people to change trains by having platforms adjacent for popular connections is hazardous when the trains don’t arrive and depart in tandem. It’s actually safer to manage hordes of passengers by making them walk some distance to make their connection. I learned that the Luftwaffe bombing of Guernica in 1937 prompted the British government to prepare for the possibility of air raids; there was a control room just off the tunnel, and air raid warden service was established that year.

I also discovered that the oxblood-red building at the end of Drummond Street I’d noticed before was the station for the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead railway from 1907-14. Designed by Leslie Green, it has been used as a ventilation shaft ever since, but it is soon to be demolished to make way for HS2. I shall have to take a photograph before I leave.

Turner and Constable

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I set off for the Tate on foot and continued walking when the rain started, preferring to avoid crowds while I could for I knew the exhibition would be busy. It was indeed sold out for the day, and the cloakroom was quickly full.

The exhibition looked at Turner (b 1775) and Constable (b 1776), comparing their works and their success (the former seen at the time as “poetic”, the latter “truthful”). Turner travelled widely, portraying the sublime and maximising income from his output through his prints; Constable painted closer to home, often out of doors, trying to capture natural features and atmospheric effects as truthfully as he could. There was a sketch of Helmingham Dell which I wanted to steal: it combined the charm of poohsticks bridge with the elemental forest scenes in Hamnet. I much preferred his smaller works to his “six-footers” – paintings designed to be noticed at exhibitions. (Turner had learned that lesson early on.) It was interesting to compare Constable’s experiments with his brushwork – usually textured (which critics had divided opinions about), but occasionally smoother.

Again, I preferred Turner’s later, less finished paintings. There are only so many scenes of ravines, cliffs and castles that I can take. His unfocussed views leave more room for interpretation.

I wandered around the regular galleries too, and noted a painting of Mrs Mounter by Harold Gilman that I was sure I had seen last month at the Walker. Yes, I had – Mrs Mounter was a regular model for Gilman; I’ve even seen her in Leeds. The main hall had a selection of Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, and I was struck anew by the Rock Drill torso. Epstein changed the sculpture (originally more sinister) after WWI, amputating some of it and casting it in bronze, and the result is somehow sorrowful – almost like a Pietà with bowed head and arm reaching out in supplication.

I also spent time with William Stott of Oldham. Undemanding . . . but so lovely.

V&A East Storehouse

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Another whim. I’d never been to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, despite years of going past it on the train to Manningtree and Harwich and watching the site being developed for the Olympics, so getting off at Stratford International was a first. It’s a fairly unlovely place – the River Lea is brown and the architecture bland – but on a fine day it didn’t matter.

The V&A Storehouse is indeed a storehouse – similar to the Boijmans van Beuningen Depot in Rotterdam but without the exterior wow-factor. You wander around as you wish; there are a few labels, some QR codes and heavy large-print catalogues. It’s very Instagrammable from certain angles, but I confess – much as I was charmed with it – I did come away with the impression that the V&A could have a clear-out. I appreciate that you’d have to hang onto a piece of Chinese tapestry-woven silk (1368-1644, which is quite a range), and a bit of the façade of the now-demolished Robin Hood Gardens tells its own story . . . but the moth-damaged vintage Harvard trucker baseball cap, date, location and maker unrecorded? Really?

While looking for somewhere for lunch, I passed the old Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street and noticed above the door the mirror images of Mercury taking messages east and west, which reminded me of the image above the entrance to the Radio Kootwijk transmitter building.

London

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I arrived in London early and headed to Walthamstow to the William Morris Gallery for an exhibition of Liberty fabrics by women designers. There were some lovely fabrics – thankfully not all of them florals – and it was interesting to see the changing fashions over the decades. I already had a soft spot for Lucienne Day’s designs, and here I added Althea McNish, Gwenfred Jarvis, Hilda Durkin and Colleen Farr.

Arthur Liberty founded the shop in 1875, initially importing textiles and objets d’art from Asia and the Middle East. It soon moved into designing its own fabrics and helped to popularise the new Arts and Crafts and art nouveau styles. The fabrics were all printed until 1972 at the Merton Abbey Mills, and there was some fascinating film of the designs being block- or screen-printed and then rinsed in the chalk stream by men in their shirt sleeves who had been doing that work for decades. Then came the finished garment – which no doubt cost an arm and a leg to buy. A fascinating bit of social and economic history: design opportunities for talented women (initially anonymous), manufacturing work for local companies, then the sale of the finished goods to the prosperous to adorn their homes and persons – much of that exchange also transacted between women, albeit across a social divide.

After lunch I managed to get the last ticket of the day for the Secret Maps exhibition at the British Library. (It’s the final week of the exhibition, so I was lucky.) It was good at showing the power of maps – particularly at times of war or rivalry. The Dutch East India Company tried to keep secret their world map of 1648, which showed part of the coast of Australia. Even before that, the c 1547-produced map for Henri II showed the outline of a great southern continent. Hand-drawn maps were safer, in terms of reproduction, than engraved maps. Armed or a defenceless locations could be removed from or disguised on maps (at least before aerial photography). Tiny maps or maps printed on materials like silk could be hidden (and worn). There was a wonderful hand-drawn map by T E Lawrence of his route from the Red Sea coast to the Hejaz railway. Clandestine maps of worldwide cable networks, or the chart of radio beans on the Normandy coast to assist the D-Day landings (which later influenced GPS).

The unconsidered power of maps was also revealed – as in the official map of Nairobi, which shows no sign of the vast Kibera informal settlement of perhaps 170,000 people. New rulers give new names to their colonies and territories and divide them as they wish. Certain areas/transport corridors are prioritised over others. (I note how this hierarchy is reversed when I use bike route maps: main roads are uncoloured but the route I want is a bright red line across the page.) People have not always wanted their areas to be mapped – preferring to remain under the official radar or fearing what easily accessible knowledge may bring to their land.

More personal maps: the 1930s London map which showed public toilets that were used as meeting places for gay men. Charles Booth’s 1889 map of London which marked each street on a poverty-prosperity scale. Then came GPS and all the data which can be gathered (as in the routes run by American soldiers using Strava that gave away locations of their bases in Afghanistan ) or routes that can be used by asylum seekers to cross vast distances with an encryption messaging app.

I’m glad I got the last space.

Anna Ancher and London

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It was such a nice day and I was ready so early that I decided to walk towards the river and pick up the train somewhere en route. After yesterday’s crowds around Covent Garden, I opted for Gray’s Inn Road and Holborn, which I was sure would be deserted. I’m still infected by the locations in Hidden City; walking stirred memories of what I know about London – my own experiences (here I used to cycle, there I attended someone’s Call to the Bar) and what I have read (fact and fiction). I stopped to photograph Holborn Viaduct not only because of Hidden City but also because I recalled a line from a novel:

‘Of course I don’t expect you to come. You’ll do as you like. But I believe the Pont du Gard -’

‘My dear, I’ve seen the Holborn Viaduct. Life can hold no more . . .’

I chose a restaurant for lunch because it had an elevated view of the river and St Paul’s – and, yes, there was the needle spire of St Bride’s Church from the film. On my way back I stopped at a former telephone exchange and noted the phone-like decorations on the front.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

None of this was the aim of my day: I was going to Dulwich Picture Gallery for an exhibition on Anna Ancher (1859-1935), a Danish artist from Skagen, right on the northern tip of Denmark. Skagen was something of an artists’ colony, but Ancher was born and lived there all her life. She was admired for the way she painted light – and, certainly, some of her paintings were utterly delightful. It wasn’t just the depiction of light but also the colours.

My head was buzzing with other images by other artists, and once I had spent time with Ancher’s paintings I sat down and tried to separate them out. The little girl made me think of Philip Connard in Southport; the doorway of Gwen John’s corners of rooms (although more vibrant); there was something of Vermeer – and almost something of Rembrandt in an early portrait. There was something of the Glasgow Boys too, but with more sunshine. She painted local and domestic scenes of people she knew: her travels were to study other artists.

An enjoyable day all round.