It was the greatest possible pleasure to discuss all aspects of Vanbrugh’s life last night with Jeremy Musson, who has worked on Vanbrugh for much longer than I have, having published The Country Houses of Vanbrugh in 2008. 

It hadn’t previously struck me, as Jeremy suggested, that the interest in Vanbrugh in the 1920s, with the publication of the big Country Life book, The Work of Sir John Vanbrugh and his School in 1928, still worth reading, may have been sparked as much by Vanbrugh’s bicentenary in 1926 as the taste in the 1920s for grand classicism.

I hope we covered most topics: Vanbrugh’s amazing networking skills; getting jobs through his family connections, first in the wine trade, in India, in the army and then working for the Earl of Abingdon, before going out to The Hague to support William of Orange with Robert Bertie, heir to Grimsthorpe, and living with Bertie’s younger brother, Peregrine, in Whitehall, after Vanbrugh’s release from the Bastille. 

Jeremy read from several of Vanbrugh’s letters which give such a strong sense of his personality – quick-witted, clever, funny, full of gossip, but, also, when required, very business-like and good with people, the qualities of his personality, maybe inherited from his father, which have been less recognised.

Grimsthorpe looked amazing in the evening light.  Robert Bertie decided to rebuild the entrance front after being made a Duke.  As the inscription under his coat-of-arms says LOYALTY ME OBLIGE:-

We left it nearly too late to see the Michaelina Wautier exhibition in the Sackler Gallery at the Royal Academy.  It is an extraordinary and revelatory exhibition of the work of an artist who, until recently, has been almost completely overlooked in spite of having an immense work in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and having signed much of her work Invenit et fecit – sometimes extremely prominently.

If you haven’t seen it, I would urge you to in the four days that are left before the exhibition closes.

I have always liked Ghent – not as large as Brussels, nor as touristy as Bruges, although it is apparently much more on the tourist map than it used to be.

The city is renovating its Design Museum.  There’s an embargo until it re-opens on October 3rd., but it’s something to look forward to.

Meanwhile, I was able to see something of the City en route from, and back to, the railway station:-

I am posting in memory of the late David Hockney the photograph I took of him just after he had been presented with the RA’s medal in February 2018 in his studio in California, a mere 33 years after he was elected an ARA on 20 May 1985.

He looks so young:-

John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture is moving towards the end of its run at the Soane Museum.  Closes 28th. June.

As much as I will miss the exhibition, I will also miss the opportunity to explore the nether regions of the Soane:-

A very beautiful exhibition of hands at Tristan Hoare’s Gallery – a big, sunlit room on the first floor of 6, Fitzroy Square:-

There are several pieces by Romilly which have been taking shape over recent months:-

Gertrude Jekyll was trained as an artist – presumably a fine artist – at the National School of Art in South Kensington – what became the Royal College of Art.  She could obviously turn her hand to anything, including tiles:-

Ornament set into the door into her workroom:-

And a floor in a shed in the garden:-

The upstairs long gallery is lined with cupboards which were full of her collection of textiles, many of which she gave to the V&A including a moth-eaten, Italian peasant cap.

A damp expedition to Munstead Wood, the house which Lutyens designed for Gertrude Jekyll between 1895, following the death of her mother, and 1897, when she moved in.

The exterior of the house is extremely well preserved, as are the surroundings, including 11 acres of woodland to the south.

This is the house from the west:-

And from the south-west:-

The north view of the wing which held her workshop:-

And the internal courtyard on the north front:-

After Jekyll died in 1932, it was inherited by her nephew, Francis Jekyll, who wrote her biography.  It was sold in 1948, but was acquired in 1968 by Sir Robert and Lady Clark who looked after it well, restoring part of Jekyll’s garden, following its original planting.  Then it was acquired by the National Trust in June 2023 by private treaty sale.

Now the question is what to do in terms of public access.  It’s obviously far from straightforward as it’s approached down a rough, muddy lane.

It’s highly atmospheric – a monument to Jekyll’s very various creativity, quite apart from her contribution to the history of gardening:-

I went to the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration yesterday, an impressive new set-up in the old buildings of the New River Water Company in Islington.  Opens Friday.

The buildings are hard to photograph and maybe more impressive inside than out:-

Walking down to Farringdon, I got an unexpected view of St. Paul’s:-

Over the last week, I have been hugely admiring the Gentle Author’s posts of photographs taken by John Claridge, recently deceased, of the east end where he was brought up.

This morning, he has posted his photographs of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry which convey its grainy aura and the melancholy of what has been lost and allowed to decay: