We went back to Endsleigh: a garden of exceptional beauty, with the terrace in front of the house overlooking a steep descent into the valley of the Tamar and the banks of trees in the woods beyond. We learned that a key figure in the development of the proto-Victorian aesthetic – much use of rhodedendra and steep planting – may have been the second wife of the sixth Duke of Bedford, who was the daughter of the Duke of Gordon and had been brought up in the Highlands; and Repton of course, who was first consulted in 1809, displaced as architect by Wyatville the following year, and then returned in August 1814 to draw up the detailed plans contained in his Red Book.

The terrace:-

The gravel walk:-

The planting above the gravel walk:-

And the Shell House at the end of the terrace:-

I called in on Launceston’s parish church with its strange carved granite exterior. Mary Magdalene in the niche over the porch is not pre-Reformation, but put there in 1911:-

The carving make it look as if it is built out of soapstone:-

Indoors, a fine pulpit:-

We went into Launceston, an old market town, with castle, museum (closed) and war memorial, guarding the entrance to Cornwall on a hill called Dunsheved, with plenty of signs of Victorian prosperity, but now with all the hallmarks of urban decay – too much out-of-town shopping and charity shops.

Still, it has a fine medieval entrance gateway:-

And a good town centre:-

We had a cup of tea on the terrace of Wyatville’s cottage ornée at Endsleigh, overlooking the heavily wooded valley of the Tamar, planted out following the prescriptions of Humphrey Repton’s Red Book, which dates from 1814 and still survives: a deeply romantic view to match the picturesque fantasy of the house itself, where the sixth Duke of Bedford could retreat while looking after his nearby estates:-

We called in at Castle Drogo, Lutyens’s last, great, romantic castle on a hill north of Dartmoor, where Julius Drewe, who made a fortune out of the Home and Colonial Stores, established himself in castellated splendour; but the house is being radically restored because Lutyens was hopeless at plumbing, so there was not much to see except the long corridors of his extended house plan:-

Readers of my blog will know that I never miss an opportunity to study, celebrate and enjoy the amazing stone carving with which the essential Baroque structure of St. Paul’s, stolid and agreed at the beginning of the design, was enriched and embellished by craftsmen working in the School of Wren, including work by Grinling Gibbons and Caius Gabriel Cibber in the north and south Tympana and, following Cibber’s death in 1700, much of it by Francis Bird, who had worked under both before travelling to Italy.

The great columns and capitals of the West Front were based on drawings by Wren from the 1690s:-

But who carved the smaller decorative putti and the rich, surrounding carving, so full of swagger and so carefully individualised ?

We went to the Mary Quant exhibition at the V&A. It was packed. I was impressed how much survived, not all of it motheaten; but I also thought that the early work was surprisingly traditional, beautifully made, not haute culture, but still expensive, if not worn by a duchess, then by Chelsea types and models:-

See her Fitted Jacket and Skirt (1957):-

Georgie (1962):-

The change came, unsurprisingly, in 1966, with a more butch and military look:-

We went to see the new display in the jewellery gallery at the V&A.

We only had time to see a Henry Wilson cloak clasp (c.1914):

And a ring by Romilly Saumarez Smith, with Lucie Gledhill:-

We were sent a link to Eileen Hogan’s lecture about her exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art on 8 May, the day that it was delivered and the exhibition opened, but have only just got round to watching it. We found it unexpectedly moving watching it in absentia – the story of her artistic life, brought up in Tooting and taught by nuns, then rescued by going to Camberwell and being taught, amongst others, by Robert Medley, then at the Royal Academy Schools and the Royal College of Art by Carel Weight, and winning a scholarship to the British School of Athens. Through all her time as a teacher and painter, she has stuck to a belief in the benefits of close observation, getting to know a subject, often gardens, and painting it with extreme sensitivity to light and movement and the seasons – the spray of water in Chelsea Physic Garden or winter in Chiswick – drawing it first, recording it in her sketchbook and then painting more formally in her studio. Of course, this is the traditional activity of the painter, but, as she describes it, now more radical, because increasingly unusual, against the tide of so much of contemporary art practice, still, as she demonstrates so effectively, beautifully valid.

I strongly recommend watching it:-

https://britishart.yale.edu/multimedia-video/26/8209

I walked along the South Bank this morning.

Past the National Theatre, whose great supporting angular girders were impressive in the morning sun:-

Past the underbelly of Waterloo Bridge, where booksellers must set up their stalls:-

And across Hungerford Bridge:-