After Honor Clerk had done an exhibition on the Sitwells at the NPG, she planned to do an exhibition on the Nicholsons as a family, including Kit, who was Ben’s younger brother.   Now Dulwich Picture Gallery, in conjunction with Kettle’s Yard, have done an exemplary small exhibition, showing how Ben and Winifred Nicholson reacted to one another:  to the same subjects, developing together, living in Cumberland on Hadrian’s Wall (Howard country), painting the same hillside and the same farm;  befriending William Staite Murray and Christopher Wood;  and then moving down to St. Ives where they were very obviously influenced by the naive style of the self-taught Alfred Wallis.   He was better at still lives, she at portraits.   She comes out of it strongly, not least in the move to Paris and abstraction in the early 1930s.   The exhibition demonstrates very clearly that she was at least as important as Barbara Hepworth in the formation of his art.

I’ve always loved the way that the mausoleum for Sir Francis Bourgeois and Noel Desenfans is integrated into, and central to, the experience of their picture gallery, so that one breaks off from looking at Claude and Poussin and steps into the amber gloom of their burial place.   Soane was already a friend of Bourgeois when Bourgeois died in 1811.   They had both been opponents of Benjamin West as President of the Royal Academy and both were ardent freemasons.   So, the design of the picture gallery and mausoleum was a labour of love, making use of Soane’s deep knowledge and love of Roman funerary buildings:

I spent another happy afternoon pottering about Christopher Ondaatje’s amazing collection of Bloomsburiana and other associated literary material which he houses in remotest Devon.   He has made the collection over the last decade, buying books, including many first editions, and then buying portraits which go with the books.   It’s an odd and very satisfying combination of a visual and intellectual feast, including many wonderfully atmospheric photographs, particularly after a good lunch.

Arriving, as I always do, far too early at Paddington Station for a trip to the west country gave me time to admire, as I seldom do except subliminally, the amazing beauty of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s curving roof, which is more visible after recent renovations (by the PPRA no less).   It’s a most elegant cat’s cradle, originally painted in colours chosen by Owen Jones, using the technology of metal to maximum effect.   The curvacaceous ornamental ironwork at the end of the platform is by Gustave Eiffel:

The roof over platforms 9 to 12, which is now the most visible, was added much later in steel in 1916:

But the experience of waiting for the train to Newquay remains as exciting as it must have been in 1854.

I went back to work today, the same day as the Prime Minister.   I know he has been much criticised for taking two holidays, but I have found two holidays very therapeutic.   So, I returned freshly shorn with a spring in my step which lasted at least up until lunchtime.   Our wonderful Head of our Red Collars said that he did not recognise me which was a trifle unnerving.   Was it the light tan or the haircut or simply that he hadn’t seen me for a few weeks ?   Lunch was at the Wolseley which was fuller than the tube train.   Several people have commented that my last blog about being back in London was a trifle gloomy, but today London was at its best.

Loyal readers of my blog will realise that I have gone uncharacteristically silent.   This is not because I have gone AWOL, but because I am suffering from the usual post-holiday withdrawal symptoms:  the return to London;  the return to reality;  the feeling that the Mile End Road is not quite as interesting as Route 8.   London looks so crowded by comparison to the US, the cars so small, the streets so densely inhabited.   But this feeling has never been stronger than when we returned from Newfoundland and looked out of the train window in horror at the streets of south London.