M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
London Days
Non-residential events to inform and inspire
Bulletin 3, Summer 2013
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Contents
Sculpture in London................................ 2
Sculpture in London
Seven Churches & a Synagogue............... 3
Art in streets, squares & parks
Ancient Greece ........................................ 4
Tuesday 10th September 2013 (la 680) Lecturer: David Mitchinson
London’s Great Railway Termini.............. 6 Caravaggio & Rembrandt........................ 6 Mediaeval Art in London......................... 7 Venice in London .................................... 9 Arts & Crafts........................................... 9 The Tower of London............................. 10 Making a booking.................................. 12
• These London Days explore the art, architecture and history of the most varied and exciting city in the world. • They are led by carefully chosen experts who provide informative and enlightening commentary. • Our usual meticulous planning is applied, with special arrangements and privileged access a significant feature. • Radio guides enable lecturers to talk in a normal conversational mode while participants can hear without difficulty. • All are accompanied by an administrator to ensure arrangements run smoothly.
Thousands of tons of sculpted bronze and stone adorn London’s streets and open spaces in the form of memorials and works of art. Many aspire to be both, with varying degrees of success. Only a small minority are sculptural masterpieces. Artistic worth determines the selection, and months of diligent sifting has resulted twentyfive or so major works scattered across central London, from Bishopsgate in the City to the banks of the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The day is led by David Mitchinson, writer and former director of the Henry Moore Foundation. The focus is the twentieth century, with a little spillage into adjacent decades at both ends. Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill, Elizabeth Frink, Charles Sargeant Jagger and Fernando Botero are among the sculptors whose works studied. Most are on display in public places but one, a Reclining Woman by Henry Moore, is accessible only by special arrangement. Many Londoners and visitors will have seen at least some of them; not many, we venture to suggest, have really looked at them long and hard and felt their power and their beauty. Travel is by Underground and taxi. Participants need to be able to cope with quite a lot of time on foot, standing or walking. Lunch in a good restaurant and morning and afternoon refreshments are included. Start: 9.00am, Hyde Park Corner. Finish: c. 5.15pm at Oxford Circus. Price: £160. Group size: maximum 16 participants.
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Seven Churches & a Synagogue Some of London’s finest historic buildings Wednesday 18th September 2013 (la 698) Lecturer: Giles Waterfield As the most populous metropolis in the west until well into the twentieth century, and as capital of a nation notorious for its multitudinous shades of churchmanship, it is not surprising that London possesses the largest number of churches and the greatest variety of ecclesiastical architecture to be found in any single city. Subjectivity must play a role in selecting these seven, as do logistics, but it is fair to claim that they are among the best of their kind. This is an extraordinarily fascinating day, enriching aesthetically, historically and spiritually. There are two mediaeval buildings, the imposing Romanesque remnant of the abbey church of St Bartholomew the Great and the glorious Gothic of the Knights Templars’ church. Wren’s ingenious domed church of St Stephen Walbrook, the faultless St Mary-le-Strand by Gibbs and the magnificent Anglican Baroque of Christ Church Spitalfields by Hawksmoor are outstanding examples of the classical phase of architecture – as is the Bevis Marks Synagogue of 1699, one of the City’s little-known treasures. Butterfield’s All Saints Margaret Street is a seminal masterpiece of the Gothic Revival, of which the sublimely lovely St Cyprian’s, Clarence Gate, by Sir John Ninian Comper, is one of the last examples. The speaker concentrates on the essentials, highlighting what is distinctive and significant about the architecture and decoration and pointing out only the most distinguished artworks and furnishings. Time at each building does not allow for detail that is of merely local interest. Thus the day provides immersion in the beauty of greater things. M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
Church of Mary-le-Strand, illustration by G.M. Ellwood from Some London Churches, 1911.
Start: 9.15am, St-Bartholomew-the-Great in the City (tube station: Barbican). Finish: c. 5.45pm, Baker Street Station. Travel is by private coach, but there is quite a lot of walking. Price: £190. This includes lunch (at Middle Temple Hall, the finest Elizabethan interior in London), refreshments, one admission charge and a donation to each church. Group size: maximum 24 participants.
The Italian Renaissance antonia whitley in the National Gallery Thursday 19th September 2013 (la 697) Thursday 21st November 2013 (la 774) Lecturer: Antonia Whitley London’s National Gallery possesses the finest collection of Italian Renaissance art outside Italy. Unlike most other national collections www.martinrandall.com
4 London Days Sculpture from the Temple of Athenike (in Athens), engraving c. 1870.
in Europe, it was formed (over nearly 200 years) by connoisseurs and art historians rather than princes and nobles whose generally less discerning eyes allowed the admission of a proportion of second- and third-raters. There’s no dross on show in Trafalgar Square. Antonia Whitley has led over eighty tours for Martin Randall Travel, all predominantly with Renaissance subject matter. For these days at the National Gallery she picks out her personal selection of paintings to best illustrate what the Italian Renaissance was about. There are four sessions in the galleries of about 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 calm and quiet of The National Gallery Dining Rooms, the excellent restaurant. With no more than twelve 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. Start: 10.10am, National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing. Finish: 5.15pm. Price: £145. This includes a la carte lunch at the National Restaurant and mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments. Group size: maximum 12 participants. Radio guides are used for audibility.
Ancient Greece in the British Museum Friday 27th September 2013 (la 719) Lecturer: Professor Anthony Spawforth
A product of the Renaissance and of the Enlightenment, it is appropriate that the M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
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 just over an hour each, with relatively leisurely refreshment breaks. The first session looks at Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, and at the Geometric and Te l e p h o n e
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Archaic periods which saw Greek civilization emerge to greatness again after mysterious extinction of the earlier civilisations. The second session is largely devoted to the peerless sculptures from Parthenon in Athens, the socalled Elgin Marbles, famously – infamously – the highlight of the collection, and among the most fascinating and beautiful creations in western art. Lunch is at the excellent 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 remaining. Finally comes the Hellenistic period after Alexander the Great, especially the remarkable monuments from Lycia, the Nereid Monument and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Start: 10.10am. Finish: by 5.30pm. Price: £160. Group size: maximum 12 participants.
London’s Underground railway A History & Appreciation of the Tube Wednesday 5th March 2014 (la 824) 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 is 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 of it. Modern London was shaped by the Tube rather than vice versa. Motivation and management M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
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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. 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. 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 revered modernist architecture of the 1930s; and the astonishing architectural bravura of the 1990s Jubilee Line Extension. The day is not all spent below ground; after all, 55% of the ‘Underground’ stations are overground. 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 Canary Wharf (10 minutes from Waterloo). Fitness: participants need to be able to cope with busy trains and a lot of 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: £180. This includes all tube travel, lunch and morning refreshments. Group size: maximum 16 participants. www.martinrandall.com
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some ways the most appealing of London’s termini. King’s Cross has always been admired for the majesty of its unadorned functionality, 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.
St Pancras Station, from A London Reverie, 1928.
London’s Great Railway Termini Paddington, King’s Cross & St Pancras Stations Wednesday 2nd October 2013 (la 753) Lecturer: Professor Gavin Stamp Two eyebrow-raising assertions: the railways were a Georgian invention, 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 great 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. Largely the creation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Paddington is well preserved and in M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
The 240 ft span of the St Pancras train shed far surpassed any previous structure in the world, and the contiguous Midland Grand Hotel by Sir George Gilbert Scott is perhaps the best-known of all Victorian buildings. Its conversion for use as the Eurostar terminus, completed 2007, created one of the most exciting sets of public spaces in Europe. Start: 9.30am at Paddington Station. Finish: c. 4.30pm at St Pancras Station. Price: £175. This includes morning refreshments, lunch, travel by underground and special arrangements. Group size: maximum 18 participants.
Caravaggio & Rembrandt A new naturalism Thursday 3rd October 2013 (la 752) Lecturer: Dr Helen Langdon Few individuals have had such a revolutionary impact on the history of art as Caravaggio (1573–1610). His short life was violent and intermittently spent as a fugitive, but the impact of his artistic innovations were felt throughout Europe and through the whole course of the seventeenth century. 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, Velasquez, and, above all, Rembrandt (1606–1669). Te l e p h o n e
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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 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. Helen Langdon is author of what remains the best book on Caravaggio, and is one of MRT’s most admired lecturers. There are four sessions in the galleries of about an hour each. Between the sessions there are leisurely adjournments to the calm and quiet of The National Gallery Dining Rooms, the excellent restaurant run by Peyton and Byrne. Start: 10.10am, National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing. Finish: 5.15pm. Price: £145. This includes lunch at the National Restaurant and mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshments. Group size: maximum: 12 participants.
Caravaggio, late-18th-century engraving. M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
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Mediaeval Art in London The Principal Museum Collections Tuesday 8th October 2013 (la 751) Lecturer: John McNeill Most traces of mediaeval London have been erased by iconoclasm, bombardment, conflagration and, last but not least, three hundred years of outfitting the city for its role as the world’s leading commercial centre. But that is to reckon without the presence of some of the best museums in the world – and the role of luck in ensuring unexpected survivals. This day is concerned with what is now considered to be art, not with archaeology or architecture, and allows a view of most of the best European artworks which survive from around ad 500 to 1500 (early Renaissance items excepted). The recently opened Mediaeval and Renaissance Galleries in the Victoria & Albert Museum provide a brilliant display of a range of artefacts which makes it one of the best mediaeval museums anywhere. All techniques and materials are represented: sculpture in stone and ivory; gold, silver and iron; textiles and tapestries; glass, pottery, enamel, paint. Though smaller, the mediaeval holdings at the British Museum have also benefited from recent re-display. A distinguishing feature here is Byzantine art. Outstanding are the Lewis Chessmen, painted fragments from Westminster Palace and the celestially exquisite Royal Gold Cup. The altarpiece from Westminster Abbey, now in the Abbey Museum, is but a fragment, but what remains justifies claims that it is the finest panel painting surviving from thirteenthcentury Europe. The Courtauld Gallery has a remarkable collection of early Italian painting and Gothic ivory carvings, while the National Gallery has the finest holding of early Italian painting outside Italy. www.martinrandall.com
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The day finishes with a private reception in the Clifford Street showrooms of Sam Fogg, London’s leading dealer in mediaeval art. Start: 10.10am at the Victoria & Albert Museum, South Kensington. Finish: c. 7.00pm at Sam Fogg, Clifford Street W1S 4JZ (Green Park tube). Price: £190. This includes two journeys by underground railway and three by taxi; admission charges; lunch and morning, afternoon and evening refreshments. Group size: maximum 16 participants.
The London Backstreet Walk From Hyde Park to The Tower Wednesday 9th October 2013 (la 759) Lecturer: Gavin Stamp
Some fairly special arrangements have been made to enter buildings to which the public are not generally admitted. 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: 8.45am, Hyde Park Corner, Wellington Arch. Finish: Tower Hill Station at c. 5.45pm. Price: £170. This includes refreshments and lunch, admission charges and donations. Group size: maximum 18 participants. Fitness: you should be able to walk at about 3 mph for at least an hour at a time. The terrain is fairly flat but there are steps (including one flight of 57 steps). Stout shoes are of course advisable – but no trainers please: they are specifically forbidden at the lunch venue.
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 covered is nearer 6 miles. With three refreshment breaks and a lunch, this may be a tiring day but not really strenuous. 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. M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
Horse Guards Parade, engraving 1903.
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Venice in London in aid of ‘Venice in Peril’ Monday 14th October 2013 (la 758) Lecturer: to be confirmed, with contributions from Reino Liefkes and Giles Waterfield Mutual respect characterised the relationship between England and Venice – and between the English and the Venetians. There were similarities: prosperity based on international trade, political systems designed to exclude tyranny, the ability to punch above their weight in European affairs through naval power and cash disbursements. But in the arena of the arts the admiration was entirely one way. For the three hundred years up to Venice’s acquiescence to Napoleon, a superabundance of talent and skills piled up painterly riches in churches, palaces, scuole and villas. But the domestic market was insufficient, and paintings were exported to virtually every country in Europe. Artists were exported too: Tiepolo’s best work was done in Germany and Spain, Canaletto came to England when war stemmed the tide of grand tourists to Italy and Lord Burlington brought over Sebastiano Ricci to create the marvellous mythologies in his house in Piccadilly, now the Royal Academy. A taste developed among English collectors for the charm and colour of Venetian paintings. Diplomats, merchants, grand tourists and connoisseurs commissioned works and, especially while Venice languished in decline in the 19th century and Britain grew in wealth, plucked choice adornments of altars and ballrooms in exchange for ready cash. Many have found their way into public museums, and the National Gallery has one of the finest and most representative holdings of Venetian painting to be found outside Italy. At the Victoria & Albert Museum we look at other arts in the superbly renovated Renaissance M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
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galleries and, with a specialist curator, in the excellent glass gallery. The day finishes with a reception and lecture at Burlington House in aid of the Venice in Peril Fund by Giles Waterfield on the influence of Venice on museums in the nineteenth century. Start: 11.00am at the V&A Museum, South Kensington. Finish: c. 8.00pm at the Society of Antiquaries, Piccadilly (or without the lecture at c. 6.00pm). Price: £190 which includes lunch, afternoon refreshments, drinks reception and lecture, transport by taxi, and a £30 donation to Venice in Peril. Group size: maximum 14.
Arts & Crafts Art, architecture & decoration from Bexleyheath to Chiswick Wednesday 16 October 2013 (la 756) Lecturer: Michael Hall For a long while Art & 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 styles and attitudes – still stand out as exceptionally appealing and intriguing. This 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 City pub (the Black Friar), a Chelsea church (Holy Trinity Sloane Street), a dining room in South Kensington (in the V&A, for which it was made), a Hammersmith home (Emery Walker’s) and a wallpaper factory in Chiswick. (Among the present occupants are Martin Randall Travel, and participants are invited in for a drink.) www.martinrandall.com
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For its instigators, Arts and Crafts was as much a political and economic movement as a matter of aesthetic preferences. They championed craftsmanship and craftsmen and excoriated industrialisation and machine-made artefacts, with a dollop of Utopian socialism to varying degrees of commitment. A.W. Pugin was the precursor, Ruskin its prophet and Morris the high priest. The movement raised the status of designer to that of artist, strove to give everyone access to beauty and, despite a persistent and rose-tinted view of the Middle Ages, achieved emancipation from historic styles while incorporating exotic influences. Along the way it entwined with Art Nouveau, merged with the Aesthetic Movement and, according to a view which superficially seems perverse, gave birth to international modernism. Start: 9.00am at Tower Hill tube station. Finish: c. 7.00pm at Hammersmith station. Price: £195. This includes coach transport, admission charges, lunch, morning, afternoon and evening refreshments, admission charges and donations. Group size: maximum 15 participants.
The Tower of London Masonry and memory Saturday 26th October 2013 (la 762) Lecturer: Nigel Jones The Tower of London is one of Europe’s largest and best preserved castles. Among myriad features which put it in the front rank for architectural history are the sublime Romanesque chapel, textbook concentric curtain walls and England’s first indoor lavatories. Arguably it is also the most important historic site in the country. For hundreds of years it was scene of dramatic and significant events – M A R T I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
The Tower of London, wood engraving c. 1830.
besieged fortress, royal residence and involuntary abode of some of the greatest in the land (for some, their last earthly abode). Its function as an arsenal lasted from its inception in 1066 to the nineteenth century, and its role as store for royal regalia and treasure continues to this day (there is an out-of-hours viewing of the Crown Jewels). Fully armed regular soldiers mount guard day and night, albeit in scarlet tunics (we attend the Ceremony of the Keys, the world’s oldest ritual). Spectacular, precious, intensely evocative, embodying extraordinary historical associations and continuities: all the world knows this, as visitor numbers and summer queues attest. But here’s a strange paradox: how many of those reading this – highly educated, well travelled, with more than a passing interest in history and architecture – have visited the Tower within the last twenty, thirty, sixty years? Te l e p h o n e
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It’s time to go again and make a proper study with perhaps the best-qualified guide available. Respected historian Nigel Jones is author of Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London (2011). There is a walk outside the walls and a visit to a couple of related sites nearby, afternoon tea and a good dinner. Start: 2.15pm. Finish: c. 10.00pm. Price: £270. Group size: maximum 20 participants.
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London Days 2013 & 2014 by date September 2013
9th The London Backstreet Walk Gavin Stamp
10th Sculpture in London David Mitchinson
18th Seven Churches & a Synagogue Giles Waterfield 19th Italian Renaissance Antonia Whitley
14th Venice in London Lecturer to be confirmed 16th Arts & Crafts Michael Hall
26th The Tower of London Nigel Jones
27th Ancient Greece Anthony Spawforth
November 2013
October 2013
1st London’s Underground Railway Andrew Martin (this is now sold out) 2nd London’s Great Railway Termini Gavin Stamp
3rd Caravaggio & Rembrandt Helen Langdon (this is now sold out)
21st The Italian Renaissance Antonia Whitley March 2014
5th London’s Underground Railway Andrew Martin
8th Mediaeval Art in London John McNeill
Making a booking
There is no booking form. Just contact us with: Your name(s) and contact details. Name, date and code of the event(s) you .are booking.
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.
For the full-day events, details of any special dietary requirements. Payment. If by credit or debit card, give the card number, start date and expiry date (but for security not in an e-mail). Confirmation will be sent to you upon receipt of payment. Further details will follow.
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