Lisa as Tourist IV: Somerset House and the Inns of Court
| On Monday, I set out for Somerset House, which houses several collections including the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Gilbert Collection. Even though I was not a little bit tired from the day before at Kew, I decided to go Somerset House because on Mondays the admission to the Courtauld is free in the morning and the Gilbert in the evening. Somerset House is actually four buildings in a square surrounding a central court with lovely fountains. One side sits on the Strand and the other looks out over the Thames. | |
the inner court at Somerset House |
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The Courtauld is a very nice small house gallery, and I definitely recommend it. They have an impressive collection of Degas bronzes and charcoals that I really enjoyed. The Degas include pieces from the dancers, woman bathers, and horses collections. These sculptures are very rough and look as if the plaster was frozen as the sculpture worked - they're still in motion as it were. It's so interesting to see the exact place where Degas's finger worked space here and there. The charcoals also have an unfinished sense about them since they were mostly studies for future paintings, but I like them very much in and of themselves. They have a very particular texture about them that captures the sense of moment-ness that oil paintings cannot. Also, the fragility of the thing - the thin paper and impermanence of the charcoals - make them seem as if they were caught in a particular moment themselves. The Courtauld also has a very good collection of Bloomsbury group figures, particularly Roger Fry. However, I think the work of Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister) is really the star of the collection. The three women painting is my favorite, with its women leaning into one another as one tells the other two a story. After going through the gallery, I ate my lunch on the lovely terrace overlooking the Thames on the other side of Somerset House. The terrace is very nice in the spring, and I think they have a restaurant there in the summer. It was a very nice day with lots of sunshine, and I very much enjoyed taking a break there. |
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the terrace on the Thames |
looking across the Thames at the London Eye from the terrace |
| Having eaten my lunch, I wandered down to the Victoria Embankment Gardens to waste some time until the walking tour I had decided to do would start. These gardens run a good part of the Thames, parallel to the Strand. The gardens themselves are fairly narrow, but, as they are the only green space nearby, were quite crowded during lunchtime. There are several monuments to nineteenth-century figures in the gardens, and the most interesting is that dedicated to Arthur Sullivan. It has a bust of him at top a pedestal that a wailing woman (whom I'm assuming is drama by the book and masks at her feet) leans against. Kind a bizarre if you ask me - it's little over the top, like Gilbert and Sullivan shows themselves. | |
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the memorial to Sullivan |
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| Noticing the time, I hurried over to the Holborn Tube station to meet up with my walk. I had decided to do the "Legal and Illegal London" walk. This walk takes you through the Inns of Court, which is where all the barristers have their offices and such. The Inns themselves are where young men with law degrees come to learn their trade in a period called "pupilage." The walk was quite good. The guide Shaughan knew his stuff and was entertaining without being too cheesy. I took a lot of pictures but didn't make very good notes about what was what, so I'm afraid that some of the pictures are mislabeled - they are all part of the Inns of Court. I highly recommend doing this walk if you want to see the Inns because they're hard to find and hard to know what is what without someone to guide you. | |
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Gray's Inn private courtyard |
Gray's Inn |
interior of the Inner Temple Knights of the Templar Church |
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the shop to get your legal accoutrements |
effigy of a knight in the Templar Church |
| Following the walk, I walked back along the Strand gawking a bit at those famous establishments the Savoy Hotel (Wilde dined there _all_ the time with his boys, particularly Lord Alfred Douglas) and Simpson's-in-the-Strand. I then went back to Somerset House to go to the Gilbert Collection. Well, it turns out my guide book needs a little updating, because the evenings are no longer free. Since I wasn't that interested in the Gilbert Collection's jewelry and miniatures, I decided to go home and call it a day. | |
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