The Road Goes Ever On: London

Farewell, Britons!

After a day of packing and cleaning, we headed to St. Pancras station and the Eurostar to Paris. We'd been reading about delays on the line, and, sure enough, our train was nearly five hours delayed, getting us to the City of Light just as it was getting dark. Fortunately, St. Pancras is not a bad place to be stranded for a few hours.

Britain is probably the only place you'll ever see "catenary" and
"knock-on" used in the same sentence

Fellow detainees

In addition to all the shoppes, there's always people
playing the several pianos

Some very good indeed

And then there's some great sculpture upstairs

Not least, John Betjenan, the poet laureate who
saved St. Pancras and other glorious Victorian structures;
thank you, Howard, for introducing us to him

British Out-Takes, 2022, Part The Second

Pretty much the theme of the week, "Great job, Ma'am"

At a batsman practice shop, serving refreshments as well

Serious memorial in Camden; I whistled the Colonel Bogey March all
the way back to Fitzrovia, also muttering "Madness!" occasionally along
the way

Still processing...

The BT Tower near our studio, along with the
interesting Bowellist structure I photographed last
year

Near us on New Cavendish St.

With its interesting displays

Sir John Soane's Museum

Our last London visit of note was Sir John Soane's Museum, a house museum 20 minutes' walk from our studio. Soane was a noted Georgian/Regency architect, professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, and collector of thousands of sculptures, casts, prints, drawings, paintings and more, all preserved as he left them at his death in 1837. This is so is because he willed it all to the Nation, in order to disown his profligate son. By an act of Parliament no less. Wikipedia has an excellent and detailed account of it all, including the collection, and I'll post just a few pix from the house. The place is jam-packed with collection items, close-quartered, without a lift, also without much in the way of signage, and admits no more than 90 visitors at a time. There are knowledgeable docents in all the rooms, however. No reservations, and almost always a queue. Next time, rather than the general admission, we'll be reserving (early!) and signing up for the special guided tour.

Thanks, Wikipedia

So I asked, early in the visit, whether Marie Kondo had ever toured
the place; "she would be barred at the door" was the docent's answer,
noting that everything in the place evidently sparked Soane's joy

Canaletto

Original from Hogarth's Rake's Progress

The entire series!

Soane and Turner were friends; one of three Turners

Inscriptions filling the inside of a large Egyptian sarcophagus

Pretty incredible, overwhelming place

Courtauld Gallery

London has several smaller, independent museums, sometimes built upon the collections of a single individual. One such is the Courtauld Gallery, named for its principal benefactor, Samuel Courtauld, and is now located in Somerset House, on the Strand. Courtauld's collection has been joined by many, many others, and, together with the Courtauld Institute is now one of the world's art and art history powerhouses. Much of the Courtauld's Impressionist collection traveled to Paris while Somerset House was being renovated, to the Louis Vuitton Foundation, where we saw it in 2019. But there were other attractions for us in 2022: a special exhibition of paintings by the early Edvard Munch; the breadth of the general collection; and the Courtauld's other fame, figuring in Fake or Fortune, which we watch when we can, in which the Courtauld occasionally features (Bendor!). And then there's this: the Courtauld occupies the rooms formerly housing the Royal Academy, where its summer exhibitions were held from 1780 to 1837. It's not hard to imagine Turner or Reynolds or Gainsborough, et al., jockeying for space to hang their entries for the annual competition.

Courtyard of Somerset House, on the Strand

It's rare to see an entire set of paintings representing the evolution
of a painter's style; but that's what this exhibition, from Bergen, did;
we'd seen a fair amount of Munch in Oslo, some years back, and
Vicki is a fan; Morning, 1884, just 20 years old when he painted it,
already leaning toward Impressionism