Passacaglia and Fugue

Yesterday we headed off to Dulwich Picture Gallery for the Tirzah Garwood exhibition. As usual, there's quite a lot packed into a relatively small space. As well as works by Garwood, there were a few by her more famous husband Eric Ravilious, and portraits of both by other artists. I think I perhaps found Ravilious more consistently to my taste, but Garwood offers more variety. The works on display included woodcuts, pencil drawings, oil paintings, marbled papers, and collages, often of children's toys or houses and shops - including one with a Meccano mechanism apparently intended to circulate ducks on a stream. The subject matter varied from drawings of her children to almost surrealist renditions with curious relative sizing and perspectives, almost reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland or James and the Giant Peach.

The Vicarage, by Eric Ravilious

Portraits of Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood, by Phyllis Dodd

Etna, by Tirzah Garwood

Brick House Kitchen, by Tirzah Garwood

A Crane Fly and Spider, by Tirzah Garwood

Erskine returning at dawn, by Tirzah Garwood

Yesterday we visited the Watts Gallery and Artists' Village at Compton, near Guildford, primarily for the Edo Pop exhibition. The exhibition was a contrast to the prints I'd seen a few weeks ago at Dulwich; although there were one or two cityscapes, the focus was more personal, with firefighters, actors and courtesans being the more frequent subjects. Never quite becoming like a scene from the Mikado, nevertheless it was an insight into what was popular in nineteenth century Japan, and also the way political censorship and culture influenced the works produced.

As I hadn't visited before, we also took in the Watts Chapel, an odd compendium of Romanesque, Celtic, and Arts and Crafts influences, the main galleries, and Watts' house, Limnerslease. I liked the William de Morgan ceramics; the paintings of Evelyn de Morgan were more so-so. Some of Watts' own paintings were almost impressionist, others more pre-Raphaelite; among the more conventional portraits was an interesting one of Charles Hallé, founder of the eponymous orchestra based in Manchester. The statue Physical Energy is familiar to me only from Kensington Gardens; I hadn't realised there were other casts, in South Africa and Zimbabwe. This seemed like an excuse for contemporary navel-gazing and hand-wringing over the influence of Cecil Rhodes by the gallery. Like the chapel, Limnerslease was decorated largely by Mary Watts. The exhibit of a book presented to Mary by forelock-tugging villagers who had worked on the chapel was a bit toe-curling, but the house itself was pleasant enough and we were fortunate to see the artists' studios on a day with plenty of natural light.

It's use-it-or-lose-it season for annual leave at work, and I'm in favour of using it. We had intended to meet up with F late last year for a trip to Dulwich Picture Gallery, but our plans were upended by rail strikes. In the mean time, R had already visited the M K Čiurlionis: Between Worlds exhibition. As weekends are the new peak days, I decided a Friday trip would suit me, and it worked quite well. The exhibition space at Dulwich is long and narrow, and it doesn't take many people to make it busy, but it was fairly quiet when I arrived in the late morning.

The paintings were definitely other-worldly, reflecting Lithuanian history and culture, with significant pagan and eastern influences. But they were also familiar, with one or two angels being reminiscent of the recent BBC adaptation of His Dark Materials; and Serenity (below), whilst being quite different in detail, reminded me in structure of Bocklin's Isle of the Dead. I didn't see any mention of synesthesia, but Čiurlionis was also a composer, and gave musical titles such as "Sonata", "Symphony" or "Fugue" to several of his works.

Serenity

Creation of the World (V) - a watery Tattoine?

Sonata of the Sea (Finale) - perhaps inspired by The Great Wave off Kanagawa?

The City - as featured in any number of fantasy novels

Sonata of the Pyramids (Allegro)

After lunch, and back in central London, there was time to visit the Royal Academy's Spain and the Hispanic world exhibition. More of a conventional blockbuster, this exhibition takes items loaned from the Hispanic Society of America, while their museum undergoes renovation. Obviously this was a busier exhibition, but still probably less crowded than at a weekend. It's difficult to compare with the before-time, but I wondered whether there were fewer exhibits, as things did feel a bit more comfortably spaced out. The range and quality is impressive, from the Bell-Beaker artifacts of c.2400 BCE, through the culture of Al-Andalus, the colonial era in North and South America, culminating in some Sorolla paintings (readily recognisable in style from an earlier exhibition) and a sketch for his installed paintings Vision of Spain.

Bell-Beaker bowl

Plate with Dragon

Plate with Harpy

Black Book of Hours

Vespucci World Map

The Duchess of Alba, by Goya

Louis Comfort Tiffany, by Sorolla

In an attempt to return to normality, we looked at a summer holiday this year. As usual, there were arguments about the Proms (partially voided by later events, obviously) and the likely weather. As usual, a compromise was reached.

Tues 30th: The advice from Heathrow is still to arrive 3 hours before your flight, so we have brought the parking booking forward by half an hour to even more ridiculous o'clock. On the bus from the car park, I discover my EHIC has expired (I confused the digits and thought it was valid until 2023). In the event, Terminal 2 is not particularly busy at 6am and we drift through security uneventfully, although more devices have been installed and I have to stand in odd postures to satisfy whatever scanning technology is now employed. Our flight is via Zurich, where - for the first time ever - my passport is stamped. We make the connection without incident, as both legs of the journey seem to have been delayed by a similar amount. We arrive at Naples and catch the bus into the city centre, then the Circumvesuviana train out to Ercolano, our base for the duration. Later in the afternoon, a trip to Oplontis proves fruitless, as it is currently closed on Tuesdays. It is far too hot.

Wed 31st: We decide to begin at the top of the bucket list, with a trip to Pompeii (which, in Italian, apparently has only a single i). It is impressive. There is nothing like it in scale in Britain, and even Rome does not feel that it compares, as ancient remains are interspersed with contemporary structures, so this really is a unique experience. We are uncertain about the single on-site cafe, but fortunately it proves to cater decent snack food at decent prices. The number of tour parties climbs during the day, probably exceeding the original population of the city, but in fact it's easy to find quiet spots by veering only slightly away from the main roads. As the day progresses, perhaps fatigue sets in - one house after another, all blurring into one - although the written guide suggests there are four distinct phases of construction. Randomly, late in the afternoon, we stumble upon a structure marked DOMVS L. CAECILI IVCVNDVI - the Caecilius of the Cambridge Latin Course and Doctor Who fame. As visitor attractions are open late into the evening and it is on our way home, we re-try Oplontis and check out the Villa Poppea, successfully this time.

Pompeii - Theatre

Pompeii - Home of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus

Pompeii - House of the Boar

Pompeii - Forum and Vesuvius

Oplontis - Peacock at the Villa Poppea

Thurs 1st: I observe I am getting bitten by mosquitoes, as before in Italy (particularly Florence). Rain is forecast, so we take the opportunity to visit the Archaeological museum in Naples. As well as Roman remains, there is an extensive Egyptian section in the basement, which proves to be more informatively labelled than is often the case, or perhaps I am just in the mood to pay more attention. By mid-afternoon we make our way to the Catacombe di San Gaudioso. This is the only tourist attraction where we are told to wear FFP2 masks (though we have been doing so anyway when indoors; we have heard enough stories of people catching covid while on holiday). It's a more gruesome tour than the Catacombs in Rome, being largely medieval.

Fri 2nd: The site at Herculaneum is a stone's throw from our hotel. The excavated site is much smaller than at Pompeii (as is believed to be the settlement as a whole), but it seems better preserved, with many buildings of two stories, although they are perhaps less ornate. The on-site museum contains some interesting artefacts, including a fragment of carbonised rope; more carbonised wood seems visible in some of the buildings. In the afternoon we head in to Naples, visiting various places including Pio Monte della Misericordia and the striking Maiolica church at Santa Chiara. We encounter a band of musicians playing what I instantly recognise as pizzica from a late-night Prom in 2019, though consulting the Internet it turns out that in Campania the style is known as tammurriata - all variants of tarantella.

Herculaneum - House of Neptune

Herculaneum - Thermopolium

Sat 3rd: It's time to visit the Royal Palace in Naples, which is a relatively modest affair; afterward, we catch the noon tour of the underground Galleria Borbonica, featuring tunnels intended to safeguard the monarchy in the event of insurrection, but later used as shelter in World War 2, and later again as storage for vehicles impounded by police, and fly-tipping by low-level organised crime groups. In the afternoon we take the funicular to the monastery of San Martino and the neighbouring castle of Sant Elmo.

Certosa di San Martino - Camera Obscura Sundial

Sun 4th: Another rainy day, at least initially, so we take the metro and the bus to the art gallery at Capodimonte. To be honest, this is a bit of a disappointment: the floors that are open are mostly consumed by one after another Madonna con Bambino, and the 18th/19th century floor is closed. As the weather has cleared, in the afternoon we take a trip out to Pozzuoli, which has a remarkable amphitheatre. Sadly there is no access to the ground level, but the underground, where gladiators, prisoners and animals were stored and prepared, is very well preserved. Due to the rain earlier in the day, the Temple of Serapis appears like an island in a lake. Despite applying insect repellent, the bites are now looking quite dramatic, and I feel the need to check symptoms of malaria and sepsis, just in case, but I am reassuringly free of them.

Pozzuoli - Amphitheatre

Mon 5th: It is well known that any English word can, if necessary, be turned into Italian by adding the suffix -o or -io, and it feels like we are playing Crescento di Morningtonio as the Circumvesuviana train takes an unexpected turn off before Naples. We decide to get out at an interchange station, only to discover that the interchange is closed. We walk in the wrong direction to the next stop, where it turns out the contactless card access is not working. Eventually we do get in to Naples, but the Trenitalia ticket machines are refusing to take card payments. We abandon them and take the old-fashioned option of going into the ticket office, where after a wait we accomplish our objective of getting tickets to Caserta. Earlier research revealed that there is a dearth of mid-morning trains, but once we have our tickets things proceed largely according to plan, so it's lunch by the time we arrive. The Bourbon out-of-town palace is on a much grander scale than their city-centre pad, and it's frequently plain that it could be an inspiration for 20th-century fascist architecture. The grounds are enormous, and we follow the rill - though it's really too big for such a name - through various levels. At the top there's an "English" garden - it's not exactly clear why it has this name, beyond the presence of one or two follies in the style of fake ruins, as though there weren't enough of the real thing in this area.

Caserta

Tues 6th: We are a bit smarter with the transport and go directly to the ticket office for a more complicated journey to Paestum. This turns out to be impressive again - three massive Greek temples in a settlement that pre-dates the Roman period. Amusingly, it turns out that the Temple of Hera is purely hypothetical - there is no real evidence for the choice of deity. The site is relatively quiet but the heat is intense.

Paestum

Wed 7th: Our final day begins somewhat frustratingly, as many places in Naples turn out to be closed or to require pre-booking. By lunch time we are heading to the airport, where our flight stubbornly declines to have a check-in desk (we have been unable to check-in online, but the booking did say "airport check-in" so this is not surprising). Eventually things start moving, but it has made our connection in Amsterdam, rather tight. The captain announces that the landing gear of the plane struck a bird on arrival, and that the delay is due to safety checks: fair enough. We make our connection in Schiphol, but on arrival in Heathrow, it transpires that our luggage didn't. We complete the requisite forms and hope for the best. A previous experience in 2017, as well as third-party anecdotal evidence from many years ago, makes me hopeful, but this is 2022 and Schiphol is experiencing problems just as much as Heathrow, it seems.

To be honest, food and drink were unremarkable, though we discovered birra rossa. Public transport was good, provided you researched it in advance - some lines (but not all) take contactless payments like TfL; the last train back from Naples to Ercolano was at 21:30 so we had to be aware when eating in Naples in the evening.

Thurs 8th - Fri 9th: Online tracking of our luggage is painfully slow, although it indicates it has been identified and forwarded to the UK.

Sat 10th: At last, our luggage arrives, in a changed world.

Book Review: Lake Keitele - A Vision of Finland, by Anne Robbins
A short book from a free exhibition, which I must have skipped but R must have visited. I have, nevertheless, seen the National Gallery's own painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela when presented in its permanent collection. The text is brief and biographical; identified as a young talent, he was given scholarships to study more widely in Europe. As well as the four versions of Lake Keitele, he is famous for many works based on stories in the Kalevala (such as Lemminkäinen's Mother), but these and the Symposium are mostly missing here, with the focus on landscape; there's also a portrait of the artist's wife and a piece of stained glass - rather unusually, he installed a glass furnace in his studio. The book also shows some interesting works not in the exhibition; Gallen-Kallela's visit to Africa yielded some interesting landscapes of Mount Kenya and Mount Donia Sabuk, while John Brett's The British Channel seen from the Dorsetshire Cliffs makes for an interesting comparative on the treatment of water surfaces.

Book Review: Ravilious, by James Russell
Time for another exhibition catalogue, this one from Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2015. Sometimes these books go to a lot of effort in providing detailed biography or information about a school or movement; in this case, though, the text is quite short, which allows more space for the paintings. Like other Erics of a similar period - Coates, Gill, Blair - there's a curious combination of modernism and nostalgia. Ravilious had friends who went in other directions, and whilst he sometimes has touches that nod to those fields (such as the surreal No 29 Bus), his feet are firmly on the ground. Some favourites below.

The Westbury Horse

Hedge Trimming

Geraniums and Carnations

Belle Tout Interior

Runway Perspective

The Teleprinter Room

Book Review: Australia's Impressionists, edited by Christopher Riopelle
As lockdown travel goes, this is about as far as it gets: another exhibition catalogue, this time from 2017. The exhibition was quite compact, and the book is too, focusing on just four artists, though there are some comparison illustrations and references to others. A combination of home-grown and imported talent; the discontent in the conservatism of teaching in Paris in the late nineteenth century; works that produced a mixed response and took time to be accepted. My impressions from the exhibition seem largely constant. Perhaps Sirius Cove is less impressive in the book: due to its format, it can't help but appear rather in miniature; but Ariadne, used also as the catalogue cover, has more of the quintessential, scorching light.

A Break Away! (Tom Roberts)

Fire's on (Arthur Streeton)

Sirius Cove (Arthur Streeton)

Ariadne (Arthur Streeton)

As previously noted, I passed the time on Saturday afternoon by visiting Dulwich Picture Gallery to see the Cutting Edge exhibition, focused on linocut prints of the 1920s and 1930s. The notes compare the Grosvenor School artists to futurist and cubist painters, and they certainly share a sense of energy. On entering the exhibition, Void of War was instantly identifiable as being by Paul Nash; later on, The Tube Train and The Tube Station by Cyril Power seemed equally familiar. But there were some unfamiliar pieces too: other favourites included the archetypical London The King's Horses by William Greengrass; two modernist takes on quintessential rural England, The Cricket Match by Edith Lawrence and Fall of the Leaf by Sybil Andrews; the Antipodean The Windswept Farm by Dorrit Black; and the implausible placing of conductor and pianist in The Concerto by Cyril Power.

Yesterday we went to the National Gallery to see the Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light exhibition. Some pieces we'd seen before on our trip to Madrid in 2016; but others are new, some from private collections and others from New York, where Sorolla had dealings with the Hispanic Society, and other museums. The paintings live up to the exhibition's promissory title; the depiction of light and shade is a transformatory hallmark. Among landscapes, cityscapes and gardens, some other favourites were Mother - the most honest Madonna and Child I've ever seen; The Shadow of Alcantara Bridge, Toledo; the harrowing Another Marguerite!; and an overall favourite, Sewing the Sail.

I vaguely recalled hearing about an Asterix exhibition some time ago, so when nwhyte enquired whether anyone was interested in visiting the Jewish Museum's Goscinny exhibition, I realised that must have been what I was thinking of and so I went along. We also met up with J and, later on, her other half. The exhibition is on Goscinny's life and work, so it is more broad ranging than just the Asterix comics, though these do form the highlight. He had an eventful childhood, born in Paris, moving to Argentina (due to his father's job) before World War II, then to the US and back to France. The early work seems less comical, with a focus on detective storylines and interactions between American settlers and indigenous populations (we debated to what extent the illustrations would be allowable today; though in at least one case, we noted, the native Americans were the heroes of the story). Goscinny began his collaboration with Uderzo in the 1950s, and Asterix debuted at the end of the decade, as an immediate success. The exhibition includes an unofficial early appearance in Britain, re-styled as "Little Fred (i.e. Asterix) and Big Ed (Obelix)", ancient Britons battling the Roman invaders; though even in this version, there are linguistic puns, such as the Roman commander Pompous and the British chieftan Bearwolf. Apparently at least three British publishers turned down the opportunity to publish, because they feared the jokes wouldn't translate, but Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge turned in a sterling performance. There's an international selection of covers on display; intriguingly, the Arabic version of Asterix the Gaul has the illustration reflected right-to-left; whether this is necessary in some sense to go with the direction of the writing I don't know. Americans, apparently, have a different translation to the British.

We also went around the permanent exhibition, chronicling the history of the Jews in Britain. Unfortunately, it follows the usual pattern in Europe, including inconsistency. Bad King John (readers of 1066 And All That know the moniker isn't applied to any other monarch) granted the Jews various rights of residence and property; then Edward I (by the previous implication, "Good" - though the Welsh probably have other views) threw them out a few decades later. Fortunately, progress was made in the following centuries, though inevitably the section on the twentieth century is dominated by migration, refugees, and the Holocaust. A space containing a series of portraits of LGBTQ Jewish figures provides a contemporary view of a diverse community.