We took a late morning train, so we were down in London by early Saturday afternoon. We had hoped to stay with family, but other events intervened, so we found a convenient hotel in East Croydon. I must say, for visitors to London, it is a convenient place to stay, with fast trains to London Bridge, Victoria or Charing Cross. We checked in at the hotel and went back up to London to the South Bank, where we booked tickets for the National Theatre production of Comedy of Errors with Lenny Henry. I would have preferred One Man, Two Guv'nors but had already ascertained there were no tickets for that. We also spent a happy hour looking at the second hand books and then we went back across Waterloo Bridge to the Courtauld Gallery. I had forgotten how beautiful London is at night.
The Courtauld Gallery had an exhibition of Spanish drawings. Some were very interesting; the one I liked best was this Picasso drawing.
There are some wonderful paintings in the Courtauld Gallery collection
Paul was very taken with this Modigliani, and there are some wonderful Cezannes.
This isn't my favourite, but I had left my camera behind, so am depending on whatever Paul took.
After early supper, we were back at the National by 7.30 for the Comedy of Errors. I must say it is a very good vehicle for Lenny Henry, who has quite a talent for farce. You have to suspend your disbelief somewhat, but I found it very enjoyable indeed.
On Sunday, we rose late and went to Tate Britain for two different exhibitions. I have no idea why neither of us took a camera, so there are no photographs. We went first to John Martin - Apocalypse, which was on its last day. It was full of his paintings of apocalyptic destruction and biblical disaster from collections around the world, some of which I knew already.
The paintings are huge, 10 or 15 feet across, full of impossibly rugged landscapes and grandiose theatrical spectacle. I'm putting in here a URL from Wikipedia of one of the paintings which is fairly typical, I'm not sure how successful this will be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Martin_-_Sodom_and_Gomorrah.jpg
The exhibition brochure claimed he has had an enduring influence on today's cinematic and digital fantasy landscapes, and mentioned Ray Harryhausen.
After all this drama, the next exhibition, The Romantics, was much calmer. There were a lot of Turners and quite a few Constables and Samuel Palmers. It is open until April, and I may just have go back because I felt that seeing it right after all the drama of John Martin meant it was rather overwhelmed.
After that, it was a family dinner then back to the hotel.
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