On the way to Flatford, we found ourselves unexpectedly in the vicinity of Long Melford and stopped off in search of family tombs (Savages not Smiths). I have been quite recently when staying in Clare, but still appreciated seeing, once again, the great wool church, stately at the top of the green:-
The south porch (Dowsing must have visited):-
We went this afternoon to Flatford Mill to see an exhibition of watercolour paintings by Charlotte Verity undertaken during a period of residency at Bridge Cottage which is where the work was shown. It is impossible not to see the countryside round about through the eyes of Constable as one comes down the hill out of East Bergholt and looks out across Dedham Vale to Dedham Church in the distance:-
Then, by the Mill itself, there are views of the lock and across the river of trees which are familiar:-
I’ve always been a touch sceptical of the widespread influence of Daniel Marot, the Huguenot designer, who left France for Holland and came to London to work at Hampton Court and Kensington Palace. But less so when one sees the set of panels which Ralph Montagu commissioned for Montagu House in Bloomsbury and which have been kept in store in the attics of Boughton:-
It was cold and slightly bleak at Boughton where we went to see the Huguenot exhibition, but still wonderful as one comes out of the roads and villages of Northamptonshire into the secret grandeur of the estate with its great, architecturally cool, French house:-
Chris Wilkinson is not the sort of architect who one would necessarily expect to use drawing as intensively as he does as he belongs to a generation who view architecture as about technology and problem-solving as much as about pure design. But, it’s obvious from the small exhibition he’s just installed in the RA’s Tennant Gallery that he uses drawings at least as much for pleasure, sketching the characteristics of medieval buildings on holiday in Lucca and the view out of the window of his hotel room in New York, as he does for purposes of conception, design and presentation.
These are some details, arbitrarily selected:-
Magna in Rotherham which won the Stirling Prize:-
I found the train journey to Lincoln interesting. It’s so long. Less than an hour to Peterborough and then nearly two hours across long, endlessly flat agricultural land. Past Spalding, the town of the Gentlemen of Spalding, one of the oldest of those groups of local antiquaries, who met in a coffee house to discuss the latest issue of The Tatler and included Isaac Newton and William Stukeley. Through Sleaford with its grand but decayed Victorian Maltings. I didn’t know we had our own prairies:-
A visit to Lincoln to attend the 85th. birthday party of John Roberts, one of the RA’s most loyal supporters, has given me a chance to see Lincoln Cathedral which I haven’t done in a long while. I saw it empty just before evensong.
Its wonderful romanesque detailing on the west front:-
Today was my first chance to see Daniel Maclise’s great Waterloo Cartoon, which has been restored over the course of the last year, was shown at the Royal Armouries during the summer, and now goes on display in the RA’s Large Weston Room for the autumn, as our way of marking the bicentenary of the Battle. It’s quite an amazing work, on a vast scale, ostensibly celebratory as it shows the moment when Wellington greets Field Marshal von Blücher outside what had been Napoleon’s headquarters, but also full of the travails of war, the fallen soldiers. In all, a celebration of grim heroism.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 