I have been trying to remind myself of the architectural history of Buckingham Palace and why it is as it is, a palimpsest.   The answer is that the projecting wings were designed by Nash as part of his lavish and excessively expensive remodelling in the late 1820s, which included Marble Arch facing the Mall between the two wings.   Edward Blore replaced him in 1830.   It was Blore who created the first version of the east front, including the balcony, in 1847, and this was remodelled by Aston Webb just before the first world war.

We had our biennial visit to Buckingham Palace yesterday to report on the affairs of the Royal Academy:  walking at great speed through the crowds in Green Park in morning dress;  discovering that I had left nearly all means of identification in the wallet in my suit jacket;  walking through into the inner courtyard where there was nothing but freshly brushed gravel and a black carriage drawn up by the porte-cochère.   We were after the new Peruvian and Italian ambassadors had presented their credentials (I was accidentally mistaken for the Italian ambassador even though she is a woman).   For us, the equerry was allowed to take off his sword and medals.   I know that I am not allowed to report on what was said, only that the Queen has a great number of paperweights on her desk.

We spent last night going through our Charles I exhibition with Per Rumberg, one of its brilliant co-curators.   What struck me more forcefully than before if the astonishing representation of work by Van Dyck and how productive he was from the moment when he arrived in London in 1632 as the principalle paynter in ordinary to their majesties (note the plural), including the two gigantic equestrian pieces, one, formal, for the Long Gallery in St. James’s Palace in 1633, and the other, more rural, for the Prince’s Gallery in Hampton Court.   And how delusional all this grand image-making proved to be.

I had a happy half hour this morning being shown the inner sanctum of Berry Bros., including its eighteenth-century parlour, the scales which weighed Lord Byron, its earliest bottle of tokaji and the cellars under the street.

This is the page which recorded Byron’s weight:-

These are the registers of weights:-

The cellars:-

Some early wine labels:-

And some cork screws:-

We had a late lunch in the lovely Jerwood Gallery, designed by Hat Projects, a perfect scale of urban gallery, surrounded by fishermens’ huts, and with an admirable modern British collection, recently assembled:-

The surrounding shoreline was vivid in the late afternoon sun, before a sudden sleet storm:-

We saw Gus Cummins’s small, but choice exhibition at the Jerwood (he’s a local). Although I have seen his work annually in the Summer Exhibition, I hadn’t realised his roots in surrealism.

This is him as a young man:-

His drawing style:-

And his paintings.

City (1995):-

Intimation (1996):-

We travelled to Eastbourne, a couple of hours, to see the collaboration between Andy and Peter Holden, Natural Selection, which we couldn’t see in Newington Road (no disabled access).   But the lift was bust, so we couldn’t see it here either. So, these are record photographs of the installation:-

We called in at the National Portrait Gallery for a cup of tea yesterday, perplexed by the stories of a massive loss of visitors, but there was no lack of them on a wet Saturday afternoon in the Regency galleries which I remember as often deserted. We stopped to admire the creamy brushwork in Lawrence’s portrait of Lord Liverpool:-

And the studio portrait of Burke (but what is Burke doing in the Regency galleries ?):-

We had a little ceremony in his studio in which David Hockney was presented his Royal Academy medal, only thirty three years after he first became an ARA on 20 May 1985:-