I’ve always liked Hong Kong; the sense of concentrated energy, the ever higher high-rise buildings in the folds of the hills, the way that the man at the Mandarin greets one by saying ‘Welcome back, sir’ as if he remembers the last time. It’s not been so easy this time because I arrived with a streaming cold which only got worse, but this has not prevented the usual overwhelming hospitality: lunch with David Tang in honour of Zaha Hadid who has opened a new design building earlier in the week; a talk at the Fringe Club in which I tried to describe the history of the RA and its current interest in Hong Kong, followed by a talk on the history of art in Hong Kong by Victor Lai which I was luckily able to follow thanks to simultaneous translation; and lunch with Adrian Cheng, our new, energetic and capable trustee who seems to own half of Hong Kong including the Grand Hyatt where we had lunch. Continue reading
Catherine Goodman (3)
Have just been for my third sitting. I was asked to take a picture of the studio which is magnificent in its picturesque neglect, but it feels intrusive to ask, disturbing the privacy not just of the studio, but of the sitting. We listened to Mahler’s third symphony in the intervals of painting and desultory talking of music, friends, the Veronese exhibition at the National Gallery and why I had never visited India.
Burlington Project (1)
We have just had a breakfast for our patrons encouraging them to come up with the last £6 million required to fund the Burlington Project. At last, it looks and feels like reality: a project team in place; £30 million raised; the plans all in place; all we need is the remainder of the funding. I was asked what would happen if we don’t have all the funding in place by the autumn. I’m confident that we will. For anyone who is interested in what we are up to, we’ll provide a link to the little film which explains the project.
(full video)
Catherine Goodman (2)
I’ve just been for my second sitting with Catherine, bicycling all the way from Stepney to Flood Street in the early morning sun. I’ve realised that it’s different sitting to a woman than to a man: more companionable; more about psychology than pure observation. She switches between conversational mode and painting and I learn a bit about what it was like to be at the Royal Academy Schools in the early 1980s when Peter Greenham was Keeper and it was all about figurative painting, no abstraction allowed, and the staff included Anthony Eyton and Olwen Bowey, both long – standing RAs. There’s an invisible community amongst those of us being painted for Catherine’s exhibition at the NPG, as we exchange places in her studio, talk about one another, but never meet. I can’t help wondering if it was like this for Reynolds’ s sitters as they went in and out of his studio on Leicester Fields, very punctually on the hour. We had Delius today, rather than Bach.
Chiarascuro
Good opening for Chiarascuro, a most beautiful exhibition from the collections of the Albertina and Georg Baselitz. I particularly like the design by Eric Pearson which is dark and atmospheric and creates the feeling of a print room with dark colours and desk cases and labels with a thin red rim. The Old Master specialists were out in force and Baselitz gave the opening speech.
Gallery view in Renaissance Impressions
Keeper’s House
It’s been a busy week at the Keeper’s House. On Tuesday morning, the Duke of Edinburgh came to see it as Patron of the Royal Academy’s friends. He was astonishingly spry, joking with many of the volunteers who have been friends since nearly the beginning of the scheme in 1977. Michael Sandle reminded him that they had met twenty five years ago in Malta and Humphrey Ocean told a story of how his grandfather had shared a bed with Jeremy Hutchison on a boat round the Cape of Good Horn. The Duke asked to see the kitchen to the slight bemusement of the cooks preparing lunch. All in all, a good event. Then, last night we had a little ceremony to celebrate all the work done by Edwina Sassoon to make the garden possible. Tom Stuart – Smith came and we all toasted Edwina in prosecco.
From left: Christopher Le Brun PRA, Charles Saumarez Smith, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, greeting Friends of the RA in Keeper’s House. © Red Photographic
From left: Charles Saumarez Smith, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, CBE, PPRA in the Academicians’ Room © Red Photographic
John Maine, Sanctuary
I’ve spent Saturday afternoon on the train to Salisbury to see an exhibition by John Maine RA of his sculpture in the environs of Salisbury Cathedral. It was a spectacularly beautiful afternoon and the work looked wonderful in the crisp, clear, early spring light. None of the work is site specific, but all of it is enhanced by the relationship to the surroundings, including a group of stone works based on the cosmati pavement in Westminster Abbey, which was previously exhibited at the Royal Academy. Best of all were five beautifully polished stone polyhedra lining the cloister, making one look not just at the work, but at the stonework of the cloister. But I also enjoyed the flat decorated work like tombslabs within the cathedral itself.
Catherine Goodman (1)
I’ve just been for my first sitting with Catherine Goodman, the Artistic Director of the Prince’s Drawing School. She’s been saying for as long as I can remember that she wanted to paint my portrait and made it clear that it had to be now if it is to be included in her forthcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It’s surprisingly therapeutic sitting in an artists’ studio on a Saturday morning, listening to a rather tinny recording of the St. Matthew Passion on her iPod and looking at her collection of drawings pinned up on the wall opposite: a beautiful drawing of what I thought was a child, but turned out to be a French man in his thirties and a pen drawing of a legionary, who, from a distance, looked like Patrick Kinmonth.
Ilse Crawford
One of the most enjoyable things I have done this week is to attend a dinner to celebrate Ilse Crawford’s MBE. She did it in style, as one might expect, hiring the whole of Cecconi’s and inviting at least half of the beau monde. I found myself sandwiched between Anya Hindmarch, the loveliest of my Trustees, and Edwin Heathcote, the FT’s architectural correspondent. We talked about my current preoccupation which is how to get Westminster City Council to upgrade the streetscape round Cecconi’s when Native Land does the work it is required to do on Cork Street. I can’t think of any neighbourhood which more obviously deserves some careful and well considered upgrading, particularly in advance of the opening of the Crossrail station in Hanover Square. So, the question is: how do we get the authorities to do this? Edwin couldn’t tell me.
Bendigo
Me with Karen Quinlan, Director, in the Genius and Ambition exhibition, Bendigo’
Bendigo is a small-ish city north west of Melbourne, grown fat on the profits of the gold rush and filled with the hallmarks of late Victoria civic prosperity – a large municipal park, grand theatre and town hall, fine buildings as if constructed from a pattern book and an Art Gallery which is bringing visitors to the city through a programme of adventurous international exhibitions, including from the National Portrait Gallery, Cecil Beaton and Grace Kelly. It was their idea to do an exhibition from the Royal Academy and very good it is, too (at least I think so), showing off the full range of the collection beginning with John Singleton Copley ‘ The Tribute Money’ (1782) and Joshua Reynolds’ s ceiling painting for the library at Somerset House. Of course, I know intellectually that the RA has a fine collection, but, because we never see it hung together, it is hard to appreciate its full range and the way that it is possible to tell the history of British art from it. I only hope that we can achieve half the effect of narrative coherence when we install the new upstairs gallery in Burlington Gardens in 2017.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
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