Art maketh the man

[davywavy]

A few years ago I was wandering through the Victoria & Albert museum one afternoon. The V&A is a remarkable building - there are numerous little galleries tucked away in unconsidered places with treasures to be found in them and on this particular afternoon I was wandering amongst canvasses of lesser known works of art when I turned a corner and found myself face to face with this famous picture:


It was an odd experience. It's a very famous and popular picture - at university I copped off with at least one dippy pre-raph wannabe gothette with a poster of it hanging on her wall - and the gallery it was hanging in was completely deserted. I could have whipped it out of the frame, stuck it under my coat and taken to my heels before anyone knew any different.

I'd be the first to admit that there's a lot to dislike about living in London. It's full of Southerners, the whole place smells of fresh urine after 11pm on any given evening, it's run by Ken Livingstone and there's alway the lurking fear that some delightful youngster will take a liking to my MP3 player and stab me for it. However, one of the things to like about London is the way it is littered with world-famous art and architecture. You can turn a corner and unexpectedly find yourself confronted with something which you've known from childhood in pictures, freely available for all to enjoy but without the attendant fuss which would be attached if they were to be found in, say, Paris of New York.
Very often, as soon as you get away from the main tourist thoroughfares there will only be you or a very few people there.

So ti was that yesterday afternoon I took a wander around the Wallace Collection. It's something I'd been meaning to do ever since colonel_maxim told me about it in relation to one of his more outrageous schemes a few years ago. What attracted me was his description of the large collection of European, Persian and Indian arms and armour, and so I didn't realise that there is also an extensive art collection attached which includes a number of lesser known works by people like Reynolds, Gainsborough and Rembrandt, plus the delightfully-named Jan Weenix whose entire oevre appears to have consisted of painting dead rabbits. Not much of a living, but he seems to have gone about it enthusiastically.
And then I turned a corner and unexpectedly found myself in a deserted gallery with this famously cheerful fellow:


And let me tell you - the picture I had on my pencil case at school doesn't do justice to the original. The artist manages to capture the essense of someone whom you're sure would be tremendsouly good and funny company, complete with mischeivous twinkle in his eye.

With that in mind, that's my question to you lot today - what's your favourite random 'find' in the city - something that's famous, but people don't really seem to know about the original?

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

It was in New York rather than London, but while wandering in a head-cold daze around the extremely sparsely populated Frick Museum, with their annoying audio tour headset clamped against my ear, the ridiculously plummy tones of the narrator said, "It is hard to believe that one stands before the original Holbein Thomas More . . .", to which I could only croak in a gobsmacked tone, "Too fucking right, mate."

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Before the accursed Dan Brown, I would have said Temple Church. I'm not a Christian, but Temple Church is something special. But then, the whole Inns of Court area is something special. Middle Temple Hall is absolutely GLORIOUS, architecturally speaking.

[mrmmarc.livejournal.com]

Damn right! Awesome area...
Middle temple Hall has to be seen to be believed, as does prince Henry's rooms.
But the best find is Hoare's bank on Chancery Lane. A family run bank that has been ran by the same family since 1672.
Real behind behind real counyters- messengers and doormen wear top hats and there is a museam upstairs! Check it out!

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting "Temple to Temple" London walk (haven't got the URL to hand, unfortunately, but I suspect it can be googled for), which takes in lots of interesting landmarks - it's worth doing a bit of research on opening times before you go though, otherwise you end up just seeing the outside of lots of locked churches, and having the porters at the Inns glower at you and point out that they're Not Open On Snudays (or past 3pm, or whatever their excuse was).

I went for an interview at Hoare's...didn't get the job, but it wasn't necessarally have been a bad thing - it would always have been a little difficult when people asked where I worked, since it is pronounced exactly the same as Whores...

Speaking of which

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

When are you going to get me on the square, you bugger?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, there used to be the Basil Hotel, although it's shut at present

H

[mrmmarc.livejournal.com]

what's your favourite random 'find' in the city - something that's famous, but people don't really seem to know about the original?

Art or places or buildings?
Art- well as I said recently Holbines 'The Ambassadors' at the national is an awesome sight to run into... the leonardo sketch is also rightfully awesome. But for overlooked gems... Caravaggio's 'Supper at Emmaus' and van Eyck's 'The Arnolfini Wedding'- so small, so goddamn perfect!

But for awesome unknown art- go to Vicoria Embankment Gardens. There is the Sullivan Memorial (to Sullivan out of Gilbert and Suillivan fame). His GREAT BIG head looks out over the gardens, but leaning against a plinth is a statue of a young girl, quite distraght, weeping... so upset in fact she has torn off most of her clothes.

Having a statue of someone griving beside a memorial is awesome- its a HELL of a statue (some have even said it is the most erotic statue in London).

Buildings? OK- folks go to the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Mortlake (south London). Go to the graveyard there to see the tomb of Sir Richard Burton (the explorer who discovered the nile). It's a stone tomb.
That looks exactly like a victorian explorers field tent. Seriously. Even better there is a ladder at the back, you can climb up and peer in... and there is the coffins of Sir Richard and his beloved wife Isabel together in detah as they were in life! AWESOME!
Borough also has its own wayside shrine- the Madonna on O'Meara steert. SO worth seeing...

There is much much more I suppose. ya know me. I would love to go out and get lost in London...:)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

In Yorkshire!
Everyone knows that.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Depends what sort of culture you like, really - but there is plenty of cultural stuff Oop North.

Off the top of my head, York Minster (and of course Yorvik and the city walls, if you're in York), Fountains Abbey, Bowes Museum, Beamish Museum are all good days out. Fountains Abbey & Beamish have rather more outdoors bits, so may well be best seen before the weather gets too cold.

Those are just a few bits though - there's plenty of things to go and see, you just tend to need a car to get from one to the next.

[(Anonymous)]

Anything on at the kinema this week edward?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I saw Snakes on a Plane on Friday. It's not very good.

Not in a hilarious, 'so bad it's good' way, it's just plain mediocre at best.

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

I thought it was funny....

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I thought it sucked.

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

I'm horrified!

HORRIFIED.

Harsh Times is highly recommended.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

But why would you want to know me if I did?

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

The Desert

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily famous, but a hidden gem nonetheless: my favorite building in London is the ex-Norfolk Hotel, now King's College Dept of War Studies, between Embankment and Strand on (I think) Sussex Street. The whole front is peppered with bizarre critters in low relief that look very much like inspiration for a whole lot of Goblins of the Labyrinth.

Also, John Dee's original scrying crystals, mirrors, engraved wax altar tablets and whatnot, in a tiny cabinet in the galleries of enlightenment in the British Museum. That really gives me a thrill, as do a great many exhibits in the Wellcome collection at the Science Museum. I don't think you can beat the British Museum for finding amazing things in dark corners.

I've also been totally captivated by Heironymous Bosch's ikkle Ecce Homo in the National Gallery since I was tiny. I also have to agree with the commenter above who mentioned Van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage.

The Cast Court at the V&A is also totally jaw-dropping (the sheer endeavour involved in making a plaster cast of Trajan's Column and then putting it indoors for example), as is the strange collection of original tudor shopfronts hidden behind the gallery shop.

I remember very vividly happening across the London Stone in a tiny alcove across from Cannon Street Station too.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

AND all of the Hawksmoor churches. *LOVE*
Mind you, that may be influenced by a surfeit of Peter Ackroyd in my youth!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The cast court is one of those places which I had no idea existed until I wandered in one day and just went "You have got to be kidding."

[colonel-maxim.livejournal.com]

Terribly dull and obvious but it would have to be Whistlejacket at the National Gallery.

Which isn't where it ought to be

[(Anonymous)]

Whistlejacket used to hang in Wentworth Woodhouse, property of the Fitzwilliam family - there's a room called the Whistlejacket Room, which was meant to accommodate the picture, and is consequently a bit empty and pointless without it.

Also ... have you seen "She Stoops To Conquer"? There's a Whistlejacket joke in that, which must have been topical when the play was written ...

H

Nudge

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

You might recall you said you'd let me have a copy of To Reign in Hentzau?

[gwaunquest.livejournal.com]

I remember going to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. It's a very small painting standing on an easle. I cried it was so beautiful. Reproductions are never the same. The life is not there. A few years ago I visited the Tate modern and unexpectedly encountered a rough sketch by Paul Cezanne. That moved me because it felt as if I was meeting the artist, close and personal.
If I get the chance to come across to Londinium any time soon you must accompany me on a trip to StPancras. I've never been and it looks phenominal, I belive it's now possible to tour the Hotel interior. I have wanted to see it ever since reading 'Long Dark Teatime of the Soul'.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Alas, as far as I know, St Pancras tours have now stopped as they're renovating the hotel with an eye to reopening it.

[gwaunquest.livejournal.com]

Bugger!! But Hoorah! if it means I can some time stay there:}