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LONDON DAYS
‘Dear, damn’d, distracting town’ – Alexander Pope
Ancient Egypt at the British Museum See page 18 for full details
If you would like to receive our fortnightly e-mail updates on the latest range of London Days, please e-mail info@ martinrandall.co.uk, or call us on 020 8742 3355. Details and dates are released frequently throughout the year.
The itinerary is detailed and meticulously planned with special arrangements and privileged access significant features. Refreshments and lunches are included and planned in appropriate settings for sustenance, conversation and reflection.
London Days are all-inclusive, non-residential tours opening doors in the capital to its wonderful art, architecture and history.
These are active, fulfilling days, often with a lot of walking and standing. Travel is mainly by Underground, sometimes taxi, occasionally by private coach or bus.
They are led by carefully-chosen experts who enthuse, interpret and inspire, bringing to life each specialist theme. Radio guides enable lecturers to talk in a normal conversational voice while participants can hear without difficulty whether in a museum or on a main road.
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Contents – London Days by date
Those with titles in italics fall on a Saturday August 2018
November 2018
12: Spanish Art in London.................................9
22: London Gardens Walk.................................4
7: The Golden Age of Dutch Painting.......... 15
20: The Golden Age of British Painting....... 17
24: The London South Bank Walk...................4
8: The Italian Renaissance.............................. 17
29: London Gardens Walk.................................4
15: Turner & Claude........................................ 17
29: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum............................... 18
31: Charles Dickens............................................ 5
16: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum............................... 18
May 2019 7: The Tudors....................................................... 5
20: Arts of India................................................ 18
10: The London Backstreet Walk.....................7
21: Great Railway Termini............................... 14
September 2019
September 2018 3: The Tudors....................................................... 5 4: Arts & Crafts.................................................... 6 13: London’s Underground Railway................6 18: The London Backstreet Walk.....................7 18: Wellington in London..................................7 19: The Genius of Titian.................................... 8 20: The Complete London Hogarth................8 22: Spanish Art in London...................................9 24: John Nash...................................................... 9 26: Hawksmoor................................................ 10 October 2018 2: 'Wren' in the City......................................... 10 3: Hampstead in the 1930s........................... 11 5: The Golden Age of British Painting......... 12 9: Japanese Art in London.............................. 11 10: Caravaggio & Rembrandt........................ 13 10: The London Backstreet Walk.....................7 17: The London Backstreet Walk.....................7 24: Venetian Art in London............................ 13 25: Ancient Greece at the British Museum................................................ 14
22: London's Underground Railway................6 27: Spanish Art in London.................................9
20: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum............................... 18
28: Islamic Art in London................................ 19
November 2019
29: Caravaggio & Rembrandt........................ 13
15: Islamic Art in London................................ 19
29: Chinese Ceramics..................................... 13
19: The Golden Age of British Painting....... 17
December 2018
22: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum............................... 18
4: Japanese Art in London.............................. 11 5: Ancient Greece at the British Museum................................................ 14
December 2019 3: The Golden Age of British Painting......... 17
10: Mantegna & Bellini................................... 16 11: Golden Age of British Painting............... 12 January 2019 10: Venetian Art in London............................ 13 31: Islamic Art in London................................ 19 February 2019 7: The Golden Age of British Painting......... 17 8: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum............................... 18 14: The Golden Age of Dutch Painting....... 15
26: Great Railway Termini............................... 14
March 2019
27: London Lecture Afternoon...................... 20
11: Arts of India................................................ 18
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‘A wonderful day, I feel like I have been royally entertained, educated and exercised!’ -participant on Charles Dickens, 2017
Illustrations. Above: The City of London, 20th-century reproduction of an engraving by S. & N. Buck, 1749. Front cover: The British Museum: the Egyptian Room, with visitors. Engraving by Radclyffe after B. Sly, 1844
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Contents – General information Making a booking There is no booking form for London Days. You can book over the phone, or online at www.martinrandall.com. If booking by phone, we will need to know: •
Name and date of the London Day(s) you are booking.
•
Your name(s), as you would like it/ them to appear to other participants.
•
Your address, telephone number and email address (if you have one).
•
Any special dietary requirements and your contact details for the night prior to the day.
Payment. If by credit or debit card, give the card number, start date and expiry date (but for security not in an e-mail). There is no charge for using either a credit or debit card.
London Days vouchers: the perfect gift idea Since its inception in 2012 our London Days programme has opened doors and minds to the wonders of the capital, and has continued to grow in breadth and popularity. The launch of our London Days gift vouchers offers the opportunity to share the experience of a cultural day out in the capital and are an ideal gift for occasions, from birthdays to anniversaries. The gift voucher, a large postcard print depicting St Paul’s Cathedral, can be purchased to any value, or for a specified day. For further information or to purchase a London Days gift voucher, please contact us on: Martin Randall Travel: 020 8742 3355, or email info@martinrandall.co.uk Martin Randall Australasia: 1300 55 95 95, or email anz@martinrandall.com.au North America: 1 800 988 6168, or email usa@martinrandall.com
Confirmation will be sent to you upon receipt of payment. Further details including joining instructions will be sent about two weeks before the day. Cancellation. We will return the full amount if you notify us 22 or more days before the event. We will retain 50% if cancellation is made within three weeks and 100% if within three days. Please put your cancellation in writing to info@ martinrandall.co.uk. We advise taking out insurance in case of cancellation and recommend that overseas clients are also covered for possible medical and repatriation costs.
These are active, fulfilling days, often with a lot of walking and standing. Travel is mainly by Underground, sometimes taxi, occasionally by private coach or bus.
We also expect to run the following London Days. Please contact us to register your interest in any of them. London Parks Walk new Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms new Holborn & Clerkenwell new Persia in London new Ashurbanipal new
Alternatively, contact us to receive our fortnightly e-mail updates on the latest range of London Days. Send an e-mail to info@martinrandall.co.uk, or call 020 8742 3355. Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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London Gardens Walk The City & its borders Wednesday 22 August 2018 (le 986) Wednesday 29 August 2018 (le 998) Lecturer: Louisa Allen It may surprise people to learn that London is one of the greenest cities in Europe. Forty percent of its area is dedicated to readily accessible parks and public spaces, and while the great parks are known and loved by Londoners and visitors alike, few people know of the many small and remarkable spaces that are dotted through the city. With a history spanning five centuries, this walk encompasses old and new gardens and public spaces, some by special arrangement, to see the best of this small pocket of London’s lesserknown gems. Several of these have been created in the bombed-out remains of Wren churches, including the award-winning St Dunstan’s in the
East whose dramatic ruins have been engulfed in a wide range of wall shrubs and climbers to create a beautiful garden with a haunting atmosphere.
of the finest pieces of landscape architecture undertaken in London in recent years.
Postman’s Park, beloved as a lunchtime venue for City workers is another small space with a story; the newly re-opened Salters’ Hall gardens and Barber Surgeon’s also lie on our path. Lunch is at the former Carthusian monastery, The Charterhouse with its country garden just beyond the City boundary.
Finish: Nomura International, EC4R 3AB at approximately 6.00pm, (nearest Underground station is Monument).
Start: City Hall, SE1 2AA, 9.15am, (nearest Underground station is London Bridge).
Price: £215. This includes special entrances, lunch, morning and afternoon refreshments and one Underground journey.
In contrast, the dramatic Brutalist architecture of the Barbican housing estate has been updated with an innovative planting scheme developed by Professor Nigel Dunnett, following the success of his landscaping around the Olympic Park. And renowned Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf has been responsible for a new park on the South Bank at Potter’s Field which abuts one
Fitness: The distance covered is c. 5 miles and you are on your feet for most of the day while looking and listening. Please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time. Stout shoes are of course advisable.
world importance. A tipping point was reached: Southwark became one of Europe’s biggest citycentre regeneration projects.
Start: 9.30am, Waterloo Station.
Group size: maximum 18 participants.
Image: View from the Tate Modern viewing platform
The South Bank Walk Famous & forgotten sites Friday 24 August 2018 (le 988) Lecturer: Sophie Campbell The south side of the river between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge now plays host to some of London’s most prominent art museums, concert halls and theatres; restaurants, cafés, bars and food stalls are found in abundance; luxury apartments, starchitect office buildings and hotels proliferate. At times there is severe congestion on the Thameside walk. Even twenty years ago very few could have envisaged such a future for what was still a largely depressed and partly derelict strip of central London. Long after cultural colonisation commenced with the Royal Festival Hall (1951), generations of Jeremiahs warned against moving arts institutions to the South Bank. But the temptations of derelict land, abandoned industrial buildings and, in one striking instance, historical precedent (Shakespeare’s Globe) led to an arts quartier of
Some of this provides some of the interest of this day. Much of the walk’s fascination, however, lies in what has been untouched by this gentrification a few hundred yards inland, where there remain enthralling vistas of Victorian warehousing and industry, intersecting viaducts, strangely well-preserved Georgian terraces and outstanding items like Southwark Cathedral, the world’s oldest operating theatre, London’s first railway station and its most beautiful recent tube station.
Finish: London Bridge Station c. 6.30pm. Price: £220. This includes lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments, admission charges and donations. Group size: maximum 18 participants. Fitness: The distance covered is c. 5 miles, but you are on your feet for most of the day while looking and listening. Please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time. Stout shoes are of course advisable.
There are lively markets and the last of the great coaching inns, and a couple of the most famous of contemporary buildings, City Hall and The Shard, western Europe’s tallest building. At the end of the day the tour ascends to The Shard’s Viewing Gallery on the 68th-72nd floors to look down on the day’s itinerary, and hugely more besides.
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Charles Dickens Marshalsea, Chelsea, Westminster and Holborn
A Charles Dickens walk makes perfect sense in that Dickens was very much a peripatetic, restless man with a particularly acute sense of place and a superlative skill in depicting places in his writings, a skill he once described as being akin to that of a ‘fanciful photographer’. It is thus particularly rewarding to explore the relevant areas of London for his great novels (his knowledge of the city was described as being already ‘wonderful’ by one of his fellow clerks in the lawyer’s office where he began earning his living at the age of fifteen). His love/hate relationship with the great city and the myriad, often sensational, contrasts it offered, lasted the whole of his life and is central to all his work. At night the streets of London were for him what he called ‘a great magic lantern’ into which he needed to be able to look and he found it a struggle to write when deprived of this unfailing resource. The day begins at Southwark near the site of the now-demolished Marshalsea Prison. A visit by special arrangement to the home of Thomas Carlyle whose The French Revolution: A History inspired A Tale of Two Cities, followed by lunch
at one of Dickens’s clubs, the Athenaeum, scene of his memorable reconciliation with Thackeray after many years of estrangement. We explore the legal quarter around Lincoln’s Inn, one of the chief settings for Bleak House. The day ends at the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street, Dickens’s only surviving London residence occupied by him during the crucial years 1837–1839 when he was rocketing to fame with the serial publication of Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.
Image: Charles Dickens, wood engraving c. 1880
Friday 31 August 2018 (le 123) Lecturer: Professor Andrew Sanders
Start: 9.20am St George The Martyr, Southwark. Nearest Underground station: Borough (City branch of Northern Line). Finish: Charles Dickens Museum, Doughty Street at c. 5.00pm. Price: £245. This includes special entrances, lunch, morning and afternoon refreshments and journeys by taxi. Fitness: Although longer journeys are by taxi, there is a walk in the afternoon of c. 1½ miles. Stout shoes are advisable, but no trainers please as these are not allowed at the Athenaeum. Group size: maximum 16 participants.
The Tudors Hampton Court, tombs & portraits
Tudor architecture, culture and politics are studied through two of the finest buildings of the era, and Tudor people through the two best assemblies of images. The day begins at Westminster Abbey in the Henry VII Chapel, not only the most glorious ecclesiastical Tudor building but burial place of most of the Tudor monarchs. The theme of commemoration continues at the National Portrait Gallery, broadening to include courtiers.
Start: 9.25am, Westminster Abbey (west door).
Image: Hampton Court, Ann Boleyn’s Gateway, watercolour by E.W. Haslehurst, publ. c. 1910.
Monday 3 September 2018 (lf 118) Tuesday 7 May 2019 (lf 513) Lecturer: Dr Neil Younger
Finish: c. 6.30pm at Waterloo Station. Price: £215. This includes lunch, morning refreshments, admission charges and transport. Transport: taxis within London, return national rail between Waterloo Station and Hampton Court. Fitness: there are walks of up to 20 minutes between station and palace at Hampton Court, and a lot of standing in galleries and buildings. Group size: maximum 18 participants. Combine the May departure with: Tudor England, 8-13 May 2019.
Hampton Court began as the country palace of Cardinal Wolsey, one of the richest and most powerful individuals in Europe, before being sequestered by Henry VIII. Partially rebuilt and extended for William and Mary, it nevertheless retains some outstanding 16th-century interiors and works of art – great hall, chapel, private apartments, kitchens, tapestries and paintings. The lecturer Dr Neil Younger is a specialist in Tudor politics, government and court culture. He is the author of War and Politics in the Elizabethan Counties and is currently working on a biography of the Elizabethan courtier Sir Christopher Hatton. Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Image: Pen Drawing of illuminated letter by William Morris, by Joseph Pennell 1889.
Arts & Crafts Art, architecture and decoration from Bexleyheath to Chiswick Tuesday 4 September 2018 (le 120) Lecturer: Paul Atterbury
view of the Middle Ages, achieved liberation from historic styles while incorporating exotic influences. Along the way it entwined with Art Nouveau, held hands with the Aesthetic Movement and, according to a view which superficially seems perverse, gave birth to international modernism.
For a long while Arts & Crafts was the acceptable face of Victorian art. Sales of William Morris wallpaper boomed while many major Victorian buildings succumbed to the wrecker’s ball. Fortunately, loathing of all things Victorian has now largely evaporated, but creations which fit into the Arts & Crafts category – not so much a style as a basket of ideas and attitudes – still stand out as exceptionally appealing and intriguing. The day provides a splendid survey of this dissident and even subversive phenomenon, with excellent examples in many media. It begins with the 1859 Red House at Bexleyheath – as did the movement – designed by Philip Webb for the Morris family. Other places seen, inter alia, are a Chelsea church (Holy Trinity Sloane Street), a dining room in South Kensington (in the V&A, for which it was made) and a Hammersmith home (Emery Walker’s). For its instigators, the movement was as much about politics and economics as a matter of aesthetic preference. They championed
Start: 9.00am, at Tower Place East, London EC3. Finish: c. 6.00pm, Turnham Green Station, (District line). Price: £240 This includes transport by coach and tube, lunch at the V&A, morning and afternoon refreshments.
craftsmanship and craftsmen and excoriated industrialisation and machine-made artefacts; most added a dollop of Utopian socialism though with varying degrees of commitment. A.W. Pugin was the precursor, Ruskin its prophet and Morris the high priest.
Fitness: Travel is by private coach but there is some standing and walking and one tube journey across central London. Group size: maximum 15 participants. Combine the September day with: The Tudors, 3 September.
Arts & Crafts emancipated the designer to the status of artist, strove to give everyone access to beauty and, despite a persistent and rose-tinted
Image: experimental first trip on the Underground, wood engraving c. 1880.
London’s Underground Railway A history and appreciation of the Tube than vice versa. Motivation and management has been various: commercial and philanthropic, entrepreneurial and Keynesian, expansionist and defeatist. The first ‘cut and cover’ lines, in trenches under existing roads, were vigorously promoted by a socialistic solicitor. The ‘deep level’ tube lines were pushed through by a maverick American, while the suburban extensions between the wars fulfilled the utopian ideals of a dour Yorkshireman who came bitterly to regret the urban sprawl they spawned. Now, after decades of relative neglect, investment and improvement are on an unprecedented scale.
Thursday 13 September 2018 (le 127) Thursday 22 November 2018 (le 273) Lecturer: Andrew Martin Shanghai has more track, Paris and New York have more stations, but London has by a clear margin the oldest urban underground railway in the world: 2013 was its 150th anniversary. It is also by far the most complicated, having started messily as several independent and often competing enterprises; contrary to sensible practice, strategic planning by unitary municipal government came towards the end of the process, not in advance. Modern London was shaped by the Tube rather
The day is led by Andrew Martin, journalist, novelist, historian and author of Underground Overground: a Passenger’s History of the Tube (2012). During the 1990s he was ‘Tube Talk’ columnist for the Evening Standard. He stresses that his approach will not be drily academic or technical but anecdotal and affectionate, highlighting the human stories, the architecture and design, the overlooked detail and the downright odd.
revered modernist architecture of the 1930s; and the architectural bravura of the 1990s Jubilee Line Extension. The day is not all spent below ground, and by special arrangement there is a visit to London Transport’s historic headquarters at 55 Broadway. Start: 9.00am at Baker Street Station. Finish: c. 5.00pm at Southwark (a short walk to Waterloo station). Fitness: participants need to be able to cope with busy trains and a considerable time on foot; standing or walking. There are a lot of station steps as well as a flight of 100 which are steep and narrow within 55 Broadway. Price: £215. This includes all Tube travel, lunch and refreshments. Group size: maximum 15 participants. Combine the November day with: Great Railway Termini 21 November 2018.
Among the places and themes examined are the first ever stations, still in use and little changed; the even earlier Brunel tunnel under the Thames, mother of all modern tunnels, opened 1841; the subtle beauties of Leslie Green’s tiled stations of the early 20th century and the
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The London Backstreet Walk From Hyde Park to The Tower
Tuesday 18 September 2018 (le 172) Wednesday 10 October 2018 (le 233) Friday 10 May 2019 (lf 521) Lecturer: Sophie Campbell This walk is predicated on two beliefs. The first, platitudinous if rarely put to the test, is that the centre of London is not so large that people of ordinary fitness couldn’t walk everywhere. The second would perhaps be greeted in some quarters with scepticism: that one can traverse the capital from Hyde Park Corner to the Tower of London without walking along main roads for more than a couple of hundred yards in total. This is London seen from parks, gardens, alleys, backstreets and pedestrian zones. As the crow flies, it is exactly 3⅓ miles, but as avoiding traffic requires some circuitous deviations the distance walked is 8 or 9 miles. The route – which is far from obvious, as may be understood – is laced with delights and surprises. Many famous buildings are passed or glimpsed, but largely the interest lies in unexpected clusters of pre-20th-century
architecture, picturesque vistas and intriguing alleys, patches of parkland and well-tended gardens, recent architectural behemoths and mediaeval street patterns. Some special arrangements have been made to enter a few buildings en route. Champagne at the Savoy and lunch in the grandest Elizabethan hall in England are among the treats. But the main point of the day is to provide the satisfaction of accomplishing a unique and fascinating journey through the heart of the most vibrant, varied and fascinating city in Europe. Start: 9.00am, Hyde Park Corner, Wellington Arch. Finish: c. 5.40pm at Tower Hill Station. Price: £205 in 2018 and £215 from September 2018. This includes refreshments and lunch, admission charges and donations. Fitness: This is a serious hike, so please don’t attempt it unless you are able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time and have the stamina for 9 miles (though there are 4 refreshment breaks). The terrain is fairly flat but there are steps (one flight has 57).
Wellington in London with private access to Apsley House
Wellington loathed the hero-worship to which he was subjected after Waterloo, but ample rewards and memorials were awarded by a grateful nation – with justice, for arguably he was Britain’s greatest general, and more than anyone else was responsible for terminating Napoleonic tyranny. Opinion concerning his political career remains divided, but there is no doubt he possessed integrity and good sense. He was not deficient in the sensibility department either.
Stout shoes are of course advisable – but no trainers please: they are specifically forbidden at the lunch venue. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
Later start
Start: 10.50am, National Gallery.
Image: Engraving of the Duke of Wellington
Tuesday 18 September 2018 (le 154) Lecturer: Josephine Oxley
Image: Lincoln’s Inn, watercolour. c. 1910.
Wednesday 17 October 2018 (le 253) Lecturer: Barnaby Rogerson
Finish: c. 5.00pm, Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner. Price: £225. This includes all admission charges and special arrangements, morning and afternoon refreshments, lunch and one journey by taxi. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
Both history and art history, this day studies Wellington’s achievements, his personality and his life and times. It is led by Josephine Oxley, curator of Apsley House, the London home of the first Duke and his successors to the present. With its spectacular art collection, it remains the finest private house in the city and the day ends with a special out-of-hours visit here. Nearby are two memorial statues and the Wellington Arch, location of an English Heritage exhibition on Waterloo. The National Portrait Gallery, Guards Museum and Household Cavalry Museum are also visited during the course of the day and further illuminate Wellington’s life. Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Image: copper engraving 1787 by J. L. Delignon, after Titian’s ‘Perseus & Andromeda’ (detail).
The Genius of Titian National Gallery and Wallace Collection
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Wednesday 19 September 2018 (le 171) Lecturer: Lucy Whitaker Titian’s genius was recognised early in his career, and by the time of his death in his eighties (1576) the esteem in which he was held probably exceeded that attaching to any other living artist in previous history. Moreover, his star has never waned since, contrary to the usual pattern which sees even ‘great’ artists cast into the shadows for a while by the capricious wheel of taste. Such was his prestige that in his maturity rarely did even the grandest of Venetian nobility manage to commission a picture from him, even though Venice was his only long-term place of residence as an adult. Only the greatest elsewhere in Italy were so honoured – the Dukes of Ferrara and Urbino, and the Pope – and, beyond the peninsula, the most powerful rulers in Europe, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his son Philip II of Spain. It follows that subsequently paintings by Titian were to be found only in the most illustrious princely collections or, when the balance of financial power shifted towards the mercantile and
manufacturing nations, in the national galleries only of the most prosperous powers. Even leaving aside the 3 or 4 which are disputed, London’s National Gallery has 15 unquestioned Titians, a total exceeded only by the Prado in Madrid and the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. There is another on public display in London, Perseus & Andromeda in the Wallace Collection. The day is led by Lucy Whitaker, Senior Curator of Paintings and Head of Research for the Royal Collection Trust in London. Start: Wallace Collection, c. 10.30am (nearest underground stations Bond Street or Marble Arch). Finish: The National Gallery, c.5.00pm. Price: £195, including morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch, donations to both collections and a taxi journey. Group size: maximum 14 participants
Image: Hogarth’s house in Chiswick, wood engraving c .1880.
The Complete London Hogarth from the City to Chiswick Thursday 20 September 2018 (lf 168) Lecturer: Dr Lars Tharp William Hogarth (1697–1764) is, after JMW Turner, perhaps the British painter most admired in Europe, though ironically he satirised the craze for Continental styles of art and tirelessly proselytised on behalf of native talent. Best known as a satirist and social commentator, it is easy to lose sight of the reality that he is a first-rate artist of international standing. Hogarth was a Londoner, and most of his best works remain in the city of his birth and death. This unusually intense but enthralling journey enables participants to see nearly all the paintings which remain in the city. The day begins at St Bartholomew’s Hospital with Hogarth’s only essays in large-scale history painting, the dominant tradition from which he emerged. The Pool of Bethesda and The Good Samaritan with over-life-size figures remain in their original site. The extraordinary Sir John Soane’s Museum possesses A Rake’s Progress (8 scenes) and Election (4 scenes), and the itinerary continues to the Foundling Museum to meet its founder, Captain Coram, one of the finest of all British portraits. The National Gallery has a third moralising series, Marriage à la Mode (6 scenes), and the Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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enchanting Graham Children. Here we have lunch. Tate Britain possesses several genre, history, satirical scenes and portraits including Calais Gate, Self-portrait with Pug and scene from The Beggar’s Opera. His mortal remains reside below an elaborate tomb in a churchyard beside the Thames at Chiswick. The day finishes a few minutes away with an out-of-hours visit to his country retreat which displays a selection of his engravings, a hugely influential and popular portion of his output. For the art lover this is either one of the most frustrating days in London ever devised – several world-class museums are entered and most of their contents ignored – or it ranks as one of the most pleasurable and illuminating. The speaker, Lars Tharp, is well known as a lecturer, broadcaster and writer and was Hogarth Curator at the Foundling Museum, having been its director. Start: 9.15am at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield. Finish: c. 6.30pm at Hammersmith Station (District, Piccadilly, and Hammersmith and City Lines, buses and taxis). Price: £230, including lunch and refreshments, travel by private coach, entrances and special arrangements. Group size: Maximum 15 participants. Te l e p h o n e 0 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Spanish Art in London At Apsley House, Wallace Collection and National Gallery
Tuesday 27 November 2018 (le 344) Tuesday 12 March 2019 (lf 447) Lecturer: Gail Turner In 1848 the great pioneer in the study of Spanish art, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, declared that ‘the private collections of England could probably furnish forth a gallery of Spanish pictures second only to that of the Queen of Spain’. A great many of these pictures have since entered public collections throughout the country, making Great Britain one of the best places outside Spain to study Spanish art. Initially, it was the Peninsular War of 18081814 that broke the floodgates and provided a new market for Spanish art, and many more paintings were to leave Spain when the Spanish monasteries were dissolved in 1832. One such private collection is the 1st Duke of Wellington’s at Apsley House. Displayed inside this aristocratic townhouse are numerous paintings taken from Madrid’s Royal Palace by Joseph Bonaparte during the Peninsular War and later given to Wellington by King Ferdinand of Spain.
Later start
The Wallace Collection includes Velázquez’s mesmerizing portrait of a Lady with a Fan as well as a rare work by the Sevillian artist, Alonso Cano, who was known as the ‘Michelangelo of Spain’.
Image: Diego Velázquez, engraving c. 1830.
Saturday 22 September 2018 (le 174) Lecturer: Dr Xavier Bray
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The National Gallery owns 9 paintings by Velázquez that span his career, from his early beginnings in Seville to his courtly paintings for Philip IV in Madrid. Alongside Velázquez hang some of Murillo’s finest paintings including several large canvases that originally decorated the altars of Seville’s monasteries and convents. The National Gallery also prides itself on a small group of works by El Greco, an artist who became fashionable in the early 20th century, principally thanks to the art critic Roger Fry who compared the abstract quality of his work with Cézanne. Start: 10.15am at Apsley House. Finish: c. 5.30pm at the National Gallery. Price: £215. This includes lunch, refreshments, donations to the galleries and taxis. Fitness: travel is by taxi, but you are on your feet throughout the day while looking and listening. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
John Nash the man who transformed London
While London at the beginning of the 19th century was the largest and most prosperous city in the world, it fell far behind many other capitals in the magnificence of its government buildings and the grandeur of its street layout. This was a direct outcome of the limits put on British monarchical authority – and spending power – after the Glorious Revolution, and the concomitant resistance to central authority of any kind. It is no coincidence that the monarch most widely despised by his subjects since 1688 was the one who encouraged the greatest episode of town planning and large-scale beautification in the history of London, George IV, Regent from 1811 – the year the leases of Regent’s Park fell in. But the person most responsible for the park’s incomparable architectural rim, and for the great sequence of thoroughfares leading south to Whitehall, was John Nash. Nash’s star is now in the ascendant again, but for much of the last two hundred years his detractors predominated, with mutterings about his shady dealings as a developer, his (or rather his wife’s) improper relationship with his royal patron, his sloppiness as a designer and the shoddiness of his stucco-wrapped buildings. As an architect he was sometimes somewhat broad-
brush, but he was master of effects both grand and picturesque. Simply turning his Regent Street masterplan into reality in only ten years was an extraordinary achievement.
Image: Buckingham Palace, by Joseph Pennell from ‘A London Reverie’1928
Monday 24 September 2018 (lf 166) Lecturer: Dr Geoffrey Tyack
Nearly all his surviving buildings, urban improvements and park landscaping in central London are seen on this day, beginning with Regent’s Park and finishing with his Buckingham palace interiors, unquestionably the most regal in the realm. Dr Tyack is an architectural historian whose book John Nash: Architect of the Picturesque was published in 2013. Start: 9.30am, Camden Town Underground Station. Finish: c. 5.45pm, Buckingham Palace. Price: £195. This includes lunch, refreshments, one bus journey, an admission charge and a donation. The visit to Buckingham Palace is by no means exclusive and clients should be warned that access requires some queuing and that the rooms will be busy. Fitness: this is a full day walking and participants need to be able to cope with considerable time on foot, and with catching a busy London bus. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
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Hawksmoor The six London churches Wednesday 26 September 2018 (le 185) Lecturer: Owen Hopkins Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736) dropped from public consciousness while Wren and Vanbrugh did not. In so far as he was known before the 20th century he was reviled for just those qualities which lead to passionate attachment to his creations now – boldness, massiveness, Baroque vigour, dissident classicism and sculptural imagination. Yet he is probably an even greater architect than his documented buildings show; it is highly likely that he is the author of some of the finer parts of buildings long attributed to others.
He was Wren’s assistant for over twenty years, and also collaborated with Vanbrugh. The Baroque flowering of Wren’s late works should probably be ascribed to Hawksmoor, while his professionalism and artistry were key to turning the soldier-playwright into a great architect.
St George’s Bloomsbury, St Mary Woolnoth, Christ Church Spitalfields, St George-in-theEast Stepney, St Anne’s Limehouse and St Alfege Greenwich. Thomas Archer’s contemporaneous St Paul’s Deptford is also included.
Taken together, his greatest achievement remains the six London churches built in accordance with the 1711 Act of Parliament. This specified fifty new churches; only twelve were built, not least because Hawksmoor’s extravagant ambition absorbed an undue proportion of the funds. Remarkably, they all survive, though one is a (well-preserved) shell after the Blitz. The journey by coach takes in
Finish: c. 5.20pm, Greenwich; the ferry to Tower Hill, Embankment and Westminster (c. 35 minutes) is recommended.
Start: 9.20am, Holborn tube station.
Price: £215 in June £225 in September. This includes travel by coach & ferry, lunch, refreshments and donations to the churches. Group size: maximum 20 participants.
Image: Plan of St Paul’s Cathedral
‘Wren’ in the City Parish churches and St Paul’s Tuesday 2 October 2018 (lf 209) Lecturer: Dr Geoffrey Tyack Before the Great Fire of 1666 there were 107 parish churches in the City of London. Only 22 survived; 23 were not rebuilt; 52 were rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. This is a major achievement, one without parallel. Given that very few churches were built in England after the Henrician Reformation, and that pure Classicism was still a rare accomplishment in these isles, it fell to Wren virtually to invent the post-mediaeval English church. Wren was England’s greatest architect; that was the orthodox verdict for much of the twentieth century. Recently scholars have shown his role as architect of the City churches to have ranged from dominant to nothing at all. Of the six
parish churches entered on this walk, only two were definitely designed in their entirety by Wren himself, while two are certainly by others. Nevertheless, his management of the rebuilding project, and his undeniable contribution of ingenuity, inventiveness and beauty, leaves his genius little diminished, and the subject of the City churches even more interesting.
arrangements including ascent to the triforium (141 steps) and a view of the Great Model.
Only 23 ‘Wren’ churches survive, and most of those are considerably changed. Intact survival, authenticity and atmosphere determine the selection for this walk.
Fitness: There is approximately two miles of walking during the course of the day as well as the 141 steps to the Triforium level at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Oh, and Wren did a cathedral. This was also a heroic struggle against parsimony, prejudice and hostility, but nevertheless within forty years there arose one of the world’s great ecclesiastical buildings, and Britain’s finest classical construction. The day incorporates some special
Group size: maximum 18 participants.
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Start: 9.20am, Blackfriars Underground station. Finish: c. 5.15pm, Bank Underground station. Price: £205. This includes lunch, morning and afternoon refreshments, admission charges and donations.
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Hampstead in the 1930s A walking tour and visits
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As the abundance of wall plaques in the area demonstrates, visual artists have been drawn to the physical and cultural attractions of Hampstead since the late eighteenth century. This London day, however, concentrates on artistic life in Hampstead in the 1930s, the period in which it occupied a unique place in the story of British art and architecture. This was in large measure due to the number of talented émigrés from Nazi-dominated Europe who found refuge here, and the British individuals who welcomed and worked alongside them. A private view of selected items from the era at Hampstead museum’s collection at Burgh House, and an introductory lecture, set the scene. It was during the 1930s that such residents as Paul Nash, Roland Penrose and Henry Moore made the area the hub of avantgarde activities in the UK. Both the abstract and surrealist camps were well represented and modernist architects Wells Coates and Maxwell Fry also lived here during this period. A walk through Frognal is testament to their influence and work, and there is a visit to Hungarian-born Erno Goldfinger’s pioneering home at nearby 2 Willow Road. By special arrangement, we visit the former
Image: ©Isokon Building, Hampstead, London
Wednesday 3 October 2018 (lf 203) Lecturer: Monica Bohm-Duchen
garage of the Isokon building in Lawn Road which has been converted into a small gallery devoted to the colourful history of these flats whose tenants included Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, as well as Agatha Christie and a significant number of Communist spies. The Mall Studios were home to what Herbert Read described as a ‘gentle nest of artists’, among them Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. For a brief but significant spell, Piet Mondrian lived just around the corner. The day is led by lecturer, writer and curator specialising in 20th century art, Monica
The visit to the British Museum explores the recently refurbished and reopened Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries. Japanese art has formed an integral part of the collection at the British Museum since its founding in 1753. Objects are studied dating from Ancient Japan to the Modern period, showcasing the outstanding craftsmanship and artistic creativity of the arts of courtiers, samurai and townspeople.
Price: £215. This includes morning and afternoon refreshments, lunch, admission charges and donations, one taxi journey. Fitness: there is a fair amount of walking on steep streets and you are on your feet most of the day at the sites visited. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
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Start: 10.15am, V&A museum. Finish: c.5.30pm, British Museum Price: £195. This includes mid-morning refreshments and lunch in the William Morris room at the V&A, mid-afternoon refreshments at the Great Court Restaurant, donations, and one tube journey. Fitness: There is one tube journey as well as some walking and standing. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine the December day with: Ancient Greece at the British Museum 5 December.
Image: Japanese warrior fromLe Tour du Monde1866
The day begins at the V&A which holds one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Japanese works of art and design. Highlights of The Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art are the diverse objects of the Edo period (1615-1868), including arms, armour, kimono, lacquerware, tea ceramics and woodblock prints as well as artefacts and crafts dating from the Meiji era (1868-1912).
Finish: c. 5.30pm in central Hampstead just a short walk from Hampstead Underground Station.
Bohm-Duchen who was born in Hampstead and has lived there most of her life.
Japanese Art in London at the V&A and the British Museum Tuesday 9 October 2018 (lf 232) Tuesday 4 December 2018 (lf 353) Lecturer: Dr Monika Hinkel
Start: 10.00am at Hampstead Underground Station
The day is led by Dr Monika Hinkel, lecturer of Japanese art and specialist in Japanese woodblock prints. Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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The Golden Age of British Painting Hogarth to the Pre-Raphaelites
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Image: ‘The Honourable Mrs Graham’, engraving after Thomas Gainsborough.
Friday 5 October 2018 (lf 219) Tuesday 11 December 2018 (lf 360) Thursday 7 February 2019 (lf 426) Wednesday 20 March 2019 (lf 451) Tuesday 19 November 2019 (lf 903) Tuesday 3 December 2019 (lf 924) Lecturer: Patrick Bade The Reformation dealt a deadly blow to the visual arts in Britain by removing ecclesiastical patronage and severing access to sources of new artistic trends in continental Europe. The aristocracy avidly collected the work of dead foreign artists but failed to nurture living British artists. During the early eighteenth century debate abounded around the relationship between British artists and their contemporaries and forerunners across the Channel. Hogarth represented truculent insularity, whilst Reynolds stood for a stance of patrician internationalism and a hope that influence could flow in both directions. However, both artists were united in their longing to establish a native school of painting that could rival the great Continental schools. They succeeded, and between 1730 and 1850 English painting was unsurpassed in its richness and diversity with a list of great names that includes Stubbs, Joseph Wright of Derby, Blake, Constable, Turner, Samuel Palmer and the PreRaphaelite brotherhood. Not to mention the Scottish contingent of Allan Ramsay and Henry Raeburn or the Irish James Barry and the Welsh Richard Wilson. Stylistically the day moves from the Rococo, through Neo-Classicism and Romanticism, to the meticulous truth to nature of the early Pre-Raphaelites. The day’s four sessions, three at Tate Britain and one at the National Gallery, offer a survey and exploration of this fascinating and rewarding period of British painting. The day takes in a selection of the greatest masterpieces of English painting in the collections at the National Gallery and Tate Britain. Start: 10.15am, at the National Gallery. Finish: c. 5.30pm, at Tate Britain. Price: £195 in 2018 and £205 in 2019. This includes lunch, refreshments, one taxi journey and donations to the galleries. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine the February departure with: Age of Victoria - a weekend symposium in Taunton 8-11 February.
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Caravaggio & Rembrandt A new naturalism
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shade) to dramatic effect, and the use of humble models and realism rather than idealism to tell religious stories in a new and moving way.
Few individuals have had such a revolutionary impact on the history of art as Caravaggio (1571–1610). His short life was violent and intermittently spent as a fugitive, but the impact of his artistic innovations was felt throughout Europe and through the whole course of the seventeenth century.
There are four sessions in the galleries of about an hour each.
Image: ‘Self-portrait with Saskia’ 1636, after Rembrandt.
Wednesday 10 October 2018 (le 236) Thursday 29 November 2018 (le 348) Lecturer: Dr Helen Langdon
The National Gallery has three paintings by Caravaggio (sometimes one is on loan elsewhere), but the emphasis of this day is on putting the artist and his achievements in his Italian context and on exploring his influence beyond the peninsula. Among the other artists studied, therefore, are Rubens, Velázquez, and, above all, Rembrandt (1606–1669).
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Helen Langdon is author of what remains the best book on Caravaggio, and is one of MRT’s most admired lecturers.
Start: 10.15am, National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing. Finish: 5.15pm. Price: £195 in June and £205 in October and November. This includes lunch, mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
The NG has one of the best collections of Rembrandt paintings in the world – the Dutchman never fell from favour among collectors, in sharp contrast with Caravaggio, who was practically forgotten in the nineteenth century. But they shared much, principally exploitation of the expressive and naturalistic potential of chiaroscuro (contrasting light and
Venetian Art in London Colour, light and canals
From the eleventh century Venice developed into a wealthy trading empire with Byzantium and the rest of Europe, its unique position made it the gateway between western Europe and the East. The end of the fifteenth century and the sixteenth century saw great achievements in architecture, sculpture and painting. Trading links with the East meant that Venetian artists could obtain the finest pigments for oil paint and it was in Venice that artists developed the technique of painting in oils. They became famous for their skill in creating illusionistic scenes in rich colours, with an awareness of light affected by the continuously changing effects of large skies and the ever-moving water. The Venetian Republic was proud of its maritime prowess and independence and its history and system of government profoundly influenced Venetian art. The Bellini family, Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese fulfilled commissions for the State, the Church and nobility. In the eighteenth century when Venice’s mercantile empire was in decline the city experienced a second great flourishing of art which was fluent and elegant and full of
colour and light. Artists such as Sebastiano Ricci and Giambattista Tiepolo were international, travelling throughout Europe and much in demand. These artists looked back at Venice’s great past while their contemporary the great topographical artist Canaletto provided pictorial records of the city for its visitors.
Image: Venice, Bacino, late-18th-century copper engraving.
Wednesday 24 October 2018 (le 283) Thursday 10 January 2019 (lf 404) Lecturer: Lucy Whitaker
Later start
The National Gallery has a superb collection of Venetian art both Renaissance and eighteenth century which is explored during the four sessions here. The day is led by Lucy Whitaker, senior curator of paintings for the Royal Collection, who has worked and published on both sixteenth and eighteenth century Venetian art. Start: 10.15am, National Gallery. Finish: c.5.15pm, National Gallery. Price: £205. This includes a donation to the gallery, mid-morning refreshments, midafternoon refreshments and lunch. Fitness: There is a lot of standing in galleries during the course of the day. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine the October Day with: Ancient Greece at the British Museum 25 October 2018.
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Image: section of the Parthenon Frieze, wood engraving c. 1880.
Ancient Greece at the British Museum
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Thursday 25 October 2018 (lf 277) Wednesday 5 December 2018 (lf 354) Lecturer: Professor Antony Spawforth A product of the Renaissance and of the Enlightenment, it is appropriate that the British Museum should be housed in a building modelled on Ancient Greek architecture – indeed, it is the grandest example of the Greek Revival in the country. It is equally appropriate that it houses one of the greatest collections of Greek art and artefacts outside Greece, given that the Classical world was the first and for long the primary object of antiquarian study and literary exegesis in Europe. It is the case that Britain had a special if controversial role in the creation of modern Greece. The exceptionally wide range of its holdings enables the day to begin two millennia before the Classical period and to finish with Roman copies of Greek sculpture made hundreds of years after the originals. The day consists of four sessions in the galleries of approximately an hour each, with relatively leisurely refreshment breaks. The first session looks at Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, and at the Geometric and
Archaic periods which saw Greek civilisation emerge to greatness again after the mysterious extinction of the earlier civilisations. The second session is largely devoted to the peerless sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, the so-called Elgin Marbles, famously – infamously – the highlight of the collection, and among the most fascinating and beautiful creations in western art. Lunch is at the Great Court restaurant, after which there is a little back-tracking to look at the development of pottery from the Archaic to the Classical periods, almost the only evidence of the glories of Greek painting that remains. Finally comes the Hellenistic period, Alexander the Great and after, especially the remarkable monuments from Lycia, the Nereid Monument and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Start: 10.15am, British Museum. Finish: by 5.15pm. Price: £195. This includes lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments at the Great Court Restaurant. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
Image: St Pancras Station, wood engraving (detail) c. 1880.
Great Railway Termini Paddington, King’s Cross and St Pancras stations Friday 26 October 2018 (le 289) Wednesday 21 November 2018 (le 311) Lecturer: Anthony Lambert Two eyebrow-raising assertions: the railways were a Georgian invention, all the ingredients being in place before 1830; and the twenty-first century is witnessing a golden age of rail travel. The first is indisputable fact, if surprising to contemplate; the second is likely to provoke an unprintable retort from many a daily commuter. However, few would quibble with a statement that the greatest achievements of railway architecture and engineering are Victorian. But seeing and appreciating magnificent stations such as those studied today is to a large extent possible because of enlightened intervention in the last ten or twenty years. The adaptation and upgrading of ageing infrastructure to meet modern requirements has been a major achievement, but so has the restoration and cleaning of historic fabric. And the sensitive addition of new structures of the highest quality of design has been a triumph.
but recent removal of twentieth-century clutter enables it to be better appreciated than for a century. And in 2012 the station acquired a magnificent new lattice steel foyer, the widest span in Europe apparently. The 240 ft span of the St Pancras train shed far surpassed any previous structure in the world and its conversion for use as the Eurostar terminus, completed 2007, created one of the most exciting sets of public spaces in Europe. The contiguous Midland Grand Hotel by Sir George Gilbert Scott is perhaps the best-known of all Victorian buildings. Start: 9.30am at Paddington Station. Finish: c. 4.45pm at St Pancras Station. Price: £195 This includes morning and afternoon refreshments, lunch, one journey by underground and special arrangements. Group size: maximum 16 participants. Combine the October departure with: The London Lecture Afternoon, 27 October.
Largely the creation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Paddington is well preserved and in some ways the most appealing of London’s termini. King’s Cross has always been admired for the majesty of its unadorned functionality, Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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The Golden Age of Dutch Painting at the National Gallery
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Image: ‘The Tavern Garden’, etching c. 1890 after a painting by Jan Steen (1626–1679).
Wednesday 7 November 2018 (le 319) Wednesday 14 February 2019 (lf 425) Lecturer: Dr Helen Langdon In the 17th-century the northern Netherlands, newly independent of Spanish rule and enriched by colonial territories, enjoyed an extraordinary flourishing of the arts. A new, broadly middle class, public of merchants, wealthy industrialists, and city officials, wished to display their wealth, and for this new market artists created an unprecedented variety of subjects. The first session addresses the waning dominance of Italian art, contrasting the exotic artificiality of Mannerist artists, with the new and powerful naturalism of the Dutch followers of Caravaggio. The subsequent three sessions focus on portraiture, and the new specialisations of Dutch artists, in genre, landscape, townscape, still life and flower painting. The National Gallery has one of the richest collections of Dutch art outside the Netherlands, and the day looks at on some outstanding and singular works; among them Rembrandt’s late Self Portrait; Hobbema’s Avenue at Middelharnis; a small room of exquisite flower paintings; an unusual group of domestic scenes by Vermeer and De Hooch which cover their full range and power. Dutch art looks realistic, but the day raises questions as to how truthful it was; what was the role of specialisation; how closely it related to popular culture, popular sayings, proverbs, and theatre. Helen Langdon is one of MRT’s most admired lecturers. Start: 10.15am, National Gallery, Getty Entrance. Finish: 5.15pm, National Gallery. Price: £205. This includes a donation to the gallery, lunch and mid-morning and midafternoon refreshments. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine the November Day with: The Italian Renaissance, 8 November.
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Mantegna and Bellini Lectures and exhibition at the National Gallery
A day built around Mantegna and Bellini, the exhibition at the National Gallery in London. Lectures in the morning at the Society of Antiquaries, by the curators of the exhibition and by the restorer of one of the exhibits. Lunch at a good restaurant between the lecture venue and the Gallery. In about 1453 the Paduan painter Andrea Mantegna married one Nicolosia Bellini from Venice, thus gaining as a brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini, also a painter. Subsequently they became two of the most renowned and influential Italian artists of their day, and their achievements are to be celebrated in Mantegna and Bellini at the National Gallery (1st October 2018 to 27th Janury 2019). Despite the familial connection and their similar ages, Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini only worked in close proximity briefly before Mantegna moved to Mantua to take up the post of court painter to the Gonzaga family. However, it is clear that their respective styles and practices were deeply influenced by each other, and their creative exchange continued as long as they both lived. The scholarly interest in antiquity and humanism that suffuses Mantegna’s art had a profound impact on Bellini’s early style, and Bellini’s atmospheric landscapes and chromaticism in turn inspired Mantegna. On the occasion of this major exhibition, MRT is holding a study day with lectures by three
outstanding experts followed by lunch and a visit to the exhibition. Two of the speakers are the exhibition’s curators, Caroline Campbell, Jacob Rothschild head of the curatorial department at the National Gallery, and Sarah Vowles, curator of Italian prints and drawings at the British Museum. The third is National Gallery conservator Jill Dunkerton, who has spent much of the last three years restoring Bellini’s Assasination of St Peter the Martyr, which will be a highlight of the exhibition.
Start: 10.00am, Society of Antiquaries, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE. Finish: you enter the exhibition any time between 2.30pm and 3.30pm and stay as long as you want (the exhibition closes at 6.00pm). Price: £195, £180 for National Gallery members. This includes morning refreshments, lunch and admission to the National Gallery exhibition.
The talks take place in the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House in Piccadilly. Lunch follows in a nearby restaurant, and then participants walk in their own time to the National Gallery. Admission to the exhibition is by pre-booked timed ticket. Audio guides are included, but the speakers will be on hand in the exhibition to respond to questions.
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Image: Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden, about 1465 © The National Gallery, London
Monday 10 December 2018 (le 359) Caroline Campbell, Jill Dunkerton, Sarah Vowles
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The Italian Renaissance at the National Gallery
London’s National Gallery possesses the finest collection of Italian Renaissance paintings outside Italy. Unlike most other national collections in Europe, it was formed (over nearly 200 years) by connoisseurs and art historians rather than princes and nobles whose less discerning eyes allowed the admission of a proportion of second- and third-raters. There’s no dross on show in Trafalgar Square.
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Start: 10.15am, National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing.
Image: The National Gallery, London
Thursday 8 November 2018 (lf 308) Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley
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Finish: 5.15pm, National Gallery. Price: £195. This includes lunch, mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments at the National Dining Rooms. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine the November day with: Music in Bologna 1-6 November 2018.
There are four sessions in the galleries of approximately an hour each. While most paintings commissioned then were of a religious nature, the call for portraits and mythologies speak of the burgeoning humanistic interests of patrons. Meaning, context, scale and innovation and what it was that marked out images by the great masters in this period will all be considered. Between the sessions there are leisurely adjournments to The National Dining Rooms. With no more than fourteen in the group, radio guides to eliminate problems of audibility, and the presence of an MRT staffer to oversee the arrangements, this should be a highly agreeable and efficacious way to enhance your knowledge and appreciation of Renaissance painting.
Turner & Claude The Poetic Landscape
J.M.W. Turner, on seeing a landscape by Claude Lorrain, burst into tears and exclaimed ‘I shall never be able to paint anything like that’. This day explores how the greatest of British Romantic landscape painters, Constable and Turner, strove to outdo the poetic visions, and magical effects of light, of 17th-century landscapists, among them Claude and Poussin. The National Gallery in London has the finest collection of 17th-century landscape in the world, while Tate Britain displays the largest collection of Turner. The day opens with the former, where we shall explore Claude’s creation of an intensely imagined poetical world, rich in effects of sunlight and melting distances, and touching in his response to classical myth. Here, too, are Poussin’s graver, sublime landscapes, and works by ‘savage’ Rosa which evoke fear and horror.
Image: Steel engraving c. 1850 after John Constable’s ‘The Cornfield’ (1826).
Thursday 15 November 2018 (lf 313) Lecturer: Dr Helen Langdon
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Arcadian Italy, and of the overwhelming forces of nature, of storm, mist and deluge. Turner, in his will, directed that two of his works should be hung side by side with two by Claude. His wish has been honoured, and perhaps, at the end of the day, we shall each be able to form a view on whether his initial tears of despair were justified. Start: National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing 10.15am. Finish: Tate Britain c. 5.15pm. Price: £195. This includes lunch at the National Dining Rooms, mid-morning and midafternoon refreshments and one taxi journey. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
After time in the galleries of British landscape painting, among them Turners and Constables, the afternoon is spent at Tate Britain to appreciate afresh the creative impact of these Old Masters on Constable’s naturalistic scenes, and on Turner’s evocations of a mythical, Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Fragment of a wall painting from ‘Egyptian Pictures’ by Revd Samuel Manning c. 1875.
Ancient Egypt at the British Museum Belief & society
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Friday 16 November 2018 (lf 314) Friday 8 February 2019 (lf 421) Friday 29 March 2019 (lf 458) Friday 20 September 2019 (lf 737) Friday 22 November 2019 (lf 905) Lecturer: Lucia Gahlin Ancient Egypt is perhaps best known for its mummies and pharaonic splendour, its monumental architecture and colossal statuary. One of the world’s most important collections of these antiquities is housed in London, at the British Museum. Its display of pharaonic might is second to none – Ramesses II casts his eyes downwards, a gaze which inspired Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. The tours of the Egyptian galleries during this late-afternoon visit focus on the beliefs and lives of the ordinary people. The itinerary takes advantage of the lesscrowded Friday ‘late’ at the British Museum and starts by exploring the formation of the Egyptian state around 3100 BC, and the changes this brought to the ancient people living in the Nile Valley. The material culture of this early period in Egypt’s history helps us understand the cultural, technological and political developments which changed Egypt forever; the social history of the Ancient Egyptian people, the transition from chiefdoms to a country united under one ruler.
Time is spent in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, to wander between the statues of pharaohs and gods. Here is a treasure-trove of evidence for private religion and daily life, lesser-known aspects of the ancient Egyptian civilisation. And in the Nebamun gallery fragments of painted plaster from the tomb of the 15th Century BC temple accountant, as fine as any known examples of ancient Egyptian art, are found displayed alongside an array of objects of daily use. Art and artifacts complement each other to create the fullest picture of ancient Egyptian society. Sessions are interspersed with refreshments in the Great Court restaurant. Start: 3.15pm at the British Museum. Finish: c. 8.15pm at the British Museum. Price: £190. This includes afternoon refreshments, a light supper (1-course with wine) and a donation to the museum. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine the November 2018 departure with: Turner and Claude, 15 November.
Image: Shah Jahan receiving his son, 20th-century miniature painting after a 18th-century original.
The Arts of India At the British Museum & V&A
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Tuesday 20 November 2018 (le 315) Monday 11 March 2019 (lf 445) Lecturer: Rosemary Crill If asked to name the London museum best endowed with the finest Indian art, one would be hard-put to choose between the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The question is rhetorical, of course; their respective collections have a different focus and different strengths. Both institutions provide the ideal playground to discover, explore and appreciate the arts of the Indian subcontinent. The morning at the British Museum is devoted mainly to the sacred and looks at the origins of the religious impulse and the growth of religious art. Expressed chiefly in sculpture, it begins with the sealings of the Indus Valley-Saraswati civilisation and continues through fertility cults and ritual objects to the rise of Buddhism and Jainism and the development of classical Hinduism. The magnificent Amaravati ‘marbles’ in the Asahi Shimbun Gallery provide the culmination. The afternoon’s main theme is more secular. The visit to the Nehru Gallery in the V&A focuses first on the riches of the Mughal empire, with some of the world’s greatest Indian miniature Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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paintings and jade carvings. After tea, the focus is on the interaction between India and Britain in the wake of the granting of the East India Company’s charter in 1600. Trade, empire and the ensuing impact of India on Britain, especially in its interiors and dress, are all discussed. Finally, the process is reversed by exploring, through painting and decorative arts, the impact of Britain on India, especially in so-called ‘Company painting’ and the superb objects made in the last surge of patronage in the 19th century. There are two one-hour sessions at both museums, with a refreshment break between each session. Start: 10.15am at the British Museum. Finish: 5.30pm at the V&A. Price: £205. This includes lunch, morning and afternoon refreshments, one tube journey and museum donations. Fitness: travel is by Underground which can be busy and there is some walking and standing during the day. Group Size: maximum 14 participants.
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Islamic Art in London The V&A & the British Museum
Two of Britain’s greatest museums provide a London treasure-house of Islamic works of art. The first is the V&A. One of its original aims, in 1852, was to inspire British designers and manufacturers. And its Islamic collections did just that, one of its most notable recipients being William de Morgan (1839-1917), the great lustre ceramicist. Today, the Islamic gallery, focused on the famous Ardabil carpet, houses an awesome assemblage of Islamic works of art, including ceramics, tilework, metalwork, woodwork, glass, rock crystal, textiles and carpets. It also has a valuable educational group of cases which display the four elements so common in Islamic art – calligraphy, geometry, the arabesque (‘inspired by plants’), and figural art (‘images and poetry’). The day will start with these to form an initial understanding of Islamic art and what aesthetic or religious principles have helped to fashion it. Moving through the gallery, art and design are put into their Islamic cultural context, while enjoying the different designs
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displayed, particularly on carpets and textiles, as well as learning about individual pieces. The British Museum offers the visitor an incredibly rich collection of Islamic ceramics and metalwork, as well as some works of art on paper. The development of Islamic art in the different media is traced and the techniques explored which enabled them to evolve and develop, and to have such an impact on Italian Renaissance ceramics and design. The visit will include the major redisplay in the new Albukhary Foundation Galleries of the Islamic world opening in October 2018. Start: 10.15am at the V&A. Finish: approximately 5.15pm at the British Museum. Price: £205. This includes morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch in the William Morris room at the V&A, donations and one journey by Underground. Fitness: travel is by Underground and there is some walking and standing during the day. Group size: maximum 14 participants.
Chinese Ceramics & collecting in Britain
Unsurpassed by numerous imitators, the ceramic traditions of China – and of porcelain in particular – occupy the high ground of world ceramics. China was the first nation to develop a translucent white ceramic material in Europe, dubbed porcelain. After its long gestation it emerged during the Tang Dynasty (705-907 AD) and in the centuries that followed it became one of the first globally traded, man-made luxury commodities, its forms and surface decoration influencing the ceramic traditions of countless states throughout Asia and Europe. Not until 1710 was the European equivalent of hard-paste Chinese porcelain achieved at Meissen. The collecting history of Chinese ceramics in Britain stretches back to the time of Elizabeth I, the tempo increasing by the accession in 1689 of William and Mary, reaching a climax in the 18th century. Then followed the hiatus of the Napoleonic Wars, the decline of the East India Company, the Opium Wars and the simultaneous demise of Imperial China. For a while the supply of and taste for China’s luxuries faltered. But from the middle of the 1800s, with the rising prosperity of the British
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middle classes - and the new supply of trophies following the sacking of the Summer Palace the fever for Asian art resumed, further boosted by the opening up of trade with Japan. Rather than pursuing contemporary wares (as in the previous centuries), collectors were now on the hunt for antique ceramics. The extraordinary legacy of those 19th and 20th century collectors can today be seen in both of London’s great museums. To place ceramics into their historical context, the morning begins at the V&A with a general introduction to Chinese art in the Tsui Gallery. The Qing Dynasty rooms further exemplify European interest in Chinese material culture during the latter half of the Victorian era and into the 20th century.
Price: £215. This includes lunch, mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments at William Morris room, V&A. Group size: maximum 14 participants. Combine this day with: Spanish Art in London 27 November or Islamic Art in London 28 November.
The fruits and legacy of a new connoisseurship emerging in the early 20th century are explored at the British Museum. The jewel in the crown of the museum’s many treasures is the Percival David Collection, internationally regarded as the most important private collection of its kind outside China’s own imperial holdings in Beijing and Taiwan’s National Palace Museum. Start: 10.15am, at The Victoria and Albert Museum. Finish: 5.10pm, at the British Museum.
Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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Image: Chinese porcelain, wood engraving from 'The Magazine of Art' 1882.
Thursday 29 November 2018 (le 349) Lecturer: Dr Lars Tharp
Image: Mural Decoration, Print c.1870 from The Art Journal
Wednesday 28 November 2018 (le 324) Thursday 31 January 2019 (lf 412) Friday 15 November 2019 (lf 899) Lecturer: Professor James Allan
Bulletin 4, 2018
M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
Bulletin 4, 2018
London Lecture Afternoon at the Royal Society
Image: ©Royal Society
Saturday 27 October 2018 (le 291) The Royal Society, London Price: £75 per person
From Andean Civilisation to English country houses, and from Mozart’s first piano lessons to interwar Paris, the 2018 London lecture afternoon promises a broad range of talks from MRT’s distinguished pool of speakers. This year’s venue is the Royal Society on Carlton House Terrace which provides a fully-equipped lecture theatre and adjoining rooms with wonderful views overlooking St James’s Park.
The Talks: Dr David Beresford-Jones, Why the Andes? The place of Andean Civilisation in the Human Story Anthony Lambert, Visiting country houses from a historical perspective Dr Alexandra Gajewski, In pursuit of empty tombs and rotten bones: pilgrimage in the late mediaeval West Patrick Bade, Les Années Folles: art and design in Paris between the Wars Elizabeth Roberts, The Black Hand: the long road to Sarajevo Professor John Irving, Mozart learns to play the piano: 6 weeks in autumn 1777
The Venue Our venue this year is the Royal Society at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I building overlooking the Mall. The lectures take place in the Wellcome Trust Lecture Hall, a fullyequipped lecture theatre, with an interval for refreshments and a drinks reception with canapés after the lectures in the adjoining City of London rooms, with wonderful views of St James’s Park.
Practicalities Price: Tickets cost £75 per person, and the afternoon includes a tea break and canapé reception. Start: The first lecture begins at 2.00pm, with the drinks reception commencing at 5.30pm. Finish: The event will end between 7pm and 7.30pm. Please contact us to book or visit www.martinrandall.com/londonlecture-afternoon.
Dr David Beresford-Jones Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University. His research interests include the ancient south coast of Peru, the origins of agriculture, Pre-Colombian textiles and the synthesis of archaeology and historical linguistics, particularly in the Andes.
Dr Alexandra Gajewski Architectural historian and lecturer specialising in the mediaeval. She obtained her PhD from the Courtauld and has lectured there and at Birkbeck College. She is currently in Madrid researching ‘The Roles of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture’.
Anthony Lambert Historian, journalist and travel writer. He has worked for the National Trust for almost 30 years. His books include Victorian & Edwardian Country House Life and he writes regularly for the Historic Houses Association magazine. He has written numerous travel and guide books, including over twenty on railway history and travel.
John Irving Musicologist, pianist and harpsichordist. He is Professor of Performance Practice at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, and previously taught at the Universities of London and Bristol. He has written six books on Mozart, including the award-winning The Mozart Project, and has made numerous recordings.
Patrick Bade Historian, writer and broadcaster. He studied at UCL and the Courtauld and was senior lecturer at Christies Education for many years. He has worked for the Art Fund, Royal Opera House, National Gallery and V&A. He has published on 19th- and early 20thcentury painting and on historical vocal recordings. His latest book is Music Wars: 1937–1945.
Elizabeth Roberts Historian, writer and lecturer. Elizabeth studied at the University of Sydney. Former lecturer in Balkan history and politics at University College Dublin, and expert witness for the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Kosovo and Montenegro. Her books include Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro and (ed. with David Madden and Othon Anastasakis) Balkan Legacies of the Great War: The Past is Never Dead.
Book online at www.martinrandall.com
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