It’s the press view of our Renzo Piano exhibition today: a very thoughtful exploration of his practice as an architect through models, drawings and original archival material. I hadn’t realised that he came to London in 1969 to teach at the AA and set up practice with Richard and Su Rogers then, pre-Pompidou entry. I’ve also always liked his building for the Menil Foundation in Houston, even better than Pompidou – light and lightweight, highly respectful of its suburban surroundings, looking out onto greenery. There’s a nice drawing of the roof structure, showing Renzo Piano with a pipe. Amongst later projects, the two that I know are the Whitney Museum, successful not just for its creation of good public spaces at the bottom of the High Line, but for very good, well considered back-of-house spaces, often neglected in museum projects; and the Shard, which I’ve always liked for its cathedral-like monumentality on the skyline. But there are also lots of projects I don’t know.

David Cannadine gave a brilliant lecture last night on Churchill’s commitment to his work as an artist and his use of painting as a way of alleviating the black dog of depression.   But I realised afterwards that I am still unclear as to exactly how friendly he was with Alfred Munnings and how far he shared Munnings’s very conservative views of art.   It was apparently Churchill who encouraged Munnings to revive the Royal Academy’s annual dinner in 1949.   He was sitting next to Munnings when Munnings, as President, stood up to give his ill-fated and drunken speech in which he berated all aspects of contemporary French art, quoting a comment Churchill had made earlier in the evening as to what one might do if one met Picasso in the street – apparently, much to Churchill’s annoyance.   What Cannadine made clear that Churchill’s involvement in art, and commitment to it, was longer, deeper and more complex than one might expect of a major international statesman.

I have just had a remarkably brief interview on the Today programme with David Cannadine who has just published a brilliant short account of Churchill’s involvement with the art world under the title Churchill: the Statesman as an Artist.   What is clear is how seriously he took what was essentially a hobby, taking lessons from Lavery, Sickert and William Nicholson.   Then, rather amazingly, he was asked to write comments on the annual Summer Exhibition for the Daily Mail in the 1930s when he was out of government.   In 1938, he gave a good and thoughtful speech at the Academy’s annual dinner about the role of the Academy as a mainstream art institution, representing tradition, but also needing to co-opt innovation. Cannadine is lecturing on the subject tonight and there are probably still tickets available.

In response to Marina Vaizey’s comments about Helmut Gernsheim and the fine photographs he took during the war of details of the fabric and tombs of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s (and 10, Downing Street) for the National Buildings Record, he is indeed a fascinating figure:  trained as an art historian and then, at the suggestion of his older brother, who was an art dealer, at the Bavarian State School of Photography, he came to Britain, where he worked as a commercial photographer, in 1937.   On the outbreak of war, he was interned, sent to Canada, but the ship was diverted to Australia where he was again interned at a camp on Hay.   He was only released by volunteering to work for the National Buildings Record, where he pioneered a new approach to photography, based on his book New Photo Vision.   It was the product of lectures he had given to his fellow interns.

Just back from Cold War at the Rich Mix – an amazingly intense depiction of the state of the arts in Poland under Soviet domination, full of fake folk ethnicity, and of the difference between the free world (France) and Soviet control in Poland, all filmed in black-and-white, which catches the era (and aura).   Highly recommended.

I have been making my annual, largely futile, effort to clear the pile of books which accumulate on the floor of my study.   The only benefit, apart from a modicum of improved tidiness, is the discovery of books which I bought and then forgot about, or never had a chance to read.   One of these is John Summerson’s short account of the foundation of the National Buildings Record, published to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 1991.   He gives a good description of how government was galvanised into action to provide a full photographic record of historic buildings which were about to be bombed and of how he became its founding Deputy Director on 6 January 1941.  I think I may have bought the book in search of information about the work Bill Brandt did for the NBR.   He was hired in 1941 to undertake a survey of Cathedral monuments.   The caption to his photograph of the Dean Fotherby Monument in Canterbury Cathedral says that ‘some of his images evince an eye not normally found in the work of those who merely document’ which sounds as if it could have been a double-edged compliment.   Helmut Gernsheim was meanwhile taking his amazing photographs of tombs in Westminster Abbey which, I think, are still in files in the Warburg Institute.

While I’m on the subject of converted industrial buildings, I walked past the old Allen & Hanburys building just to the west  of the Cambridge Heath Road a week or so ago.   It’s another old established East End firm, bought up in 1958 by GlaxoSmithKline, with the factory closed some time in the 1960s.   It was founded by a Welsh Quaker, Silvanus Bevan, in 1715.   The eponymous William Allen joined the firm in 1792 and his second wife was a Hanbury.   They made those blackcurrant pastilles in a tin box which used to be sold under the name Allenburys, but are now made in Switzerland;  also, cod liver oil and weighing scales:-

People forget that London was full of small, and larger, scale manufacturing.

We have just come back from a matinée performance of Benjamin Britten’s Paul Bunyan by ENO in Wilton’s Music Hall – a strong and intense performance with a vast cast, but to me a bit baffling because I hadn’t had a chance to read the synopsis and had forgotten that the very English Britten, like Auden, went to New York in the early stages of the war, which is where he wrote Paul Bunyan, with a score by Auden, as an operetta for performance in a high school.   This is why it is infused with a pop, but lyrical, Americanism.   Highly recommended, although probably no tickets are available.

We went last night to a party in Spratt’s Mill, a surviving industrial complex on the Limehouse Cut which was converted long ago – in 1985 – into flats.   I had no idea what Spratt’s was.   The answer is dog biscuits and Spratt’s Works was, not so long ago, the largest dog biscuit factory in the world.   In the Boer War, it made ships’ biscuits for the troops and apparently also did a lively trade in pulses, dog shampoos and monkeys.   It was closed down in 1969 when purchase tax was introduced on dog food:-

We were invited to inspect the Thornhill ceiling paintings in the Painted Hall in Greenwich before the scaffolding is struck at the end of the month.

First, it was, as always, a pleasure to see the great mise-en-scène of the Royal Naval Hospital as laid out by Wren, with the help of Hawksmoor, after its foundation by Queen Mary after the Battle of La Hogue in 1692. The first building, which was already there, was John Webb’s earlier wing of the Royal Palace:-

Wren and Hawksmoor then added the great double flanking colonnades allowing the view through to the Queen’s House as Queen Mary required:-

On 1 February 1698, Wren was asked to ‘ lay before the Committee at the next meeting a draught and estimate of an Hall to be added to the present building in pursuance of the general design’. On 5 April, Wren’s Clerk of Works (i.e. Hawksmoor) was instructed ‘to set out the ground’ and the detailed drawings in the Soane Museum are in his hand.

Thornhill was commissioned to undertake work on the painted hall in July 1707, after it had been plastered ‘after the best manner fit for painting’ by the appropriately named Mr. Doogood.

One enters under the Dome, which, as Thornhill himself described in his published Explanation of the Painting in the Royal Hospital at Greenwich (London, 1726), has ‘the four WINDS painted in Stone Colour’:-

At the far end is a wall painting, already restored, which shows George I ‘leaning on a Terrestial Globe’:-

Above, a view of St. Paul’s:-

Mercury draws attention to the motto, JAM NOVA PROGENIES CAELO:-

Thornhill himself is present in the lower right:-

As one climbs the scaffolding up onto the roof, one sees the incredibly high quality of the carved decoration:-

But, also, that Thornhill (or his assistants) was a much better painter than history generally allows him to have been:-

Queen Mary has the unexpected feature of the name of her late eighteenth-century restorer written on her breast:-