A lovely afternoon in the Fitzwilliam Museum with the RA’s Patrons being taken round by Tim Knox.   We began in the entrance portico which has been newly refurbished in honour of the Museum’s forthcoming 200th. birthday next year and before, as Tim said, one of the lotus leaves fell on a French schoolchild:-

We then went in to the great entrance hall which used to look rather neglected, but now is in good order in full neoclassical opulence, mainly done by C.R. Cockerell who took over from George Basevi and completed in the 1870s by E.M.Barry:-

Towards the end of the tour I was pleased to see a little drawing of Ruskin in the room devoted to Ruskin’s Turners done by John Jackson RA who had been with Ruskin in Rome in 1819 and is assumed to have done the drawing some time in the mid-1820s:-