I didn’t have much culture planned for last weekend preferring instead to spend most of the 3 days in bed eating vast amounts of food but I did manage to stumble upon the perfect exhibition for me quite by accident on the day of my birthday!! Upon waking at quarter to 1 I realised the sun was shining and the birds were singing and I had barely seen daylight in 2 days so dragged the delightful Jason out of bed and insisted we walk to the V&A and spend a little time soaking up some beauty before buggering off to the park to continue the face stuffing schedule. The plan at first was to go to the picture gallery via the jewellery section and then see if we could catch the architecture show which finished on that day. However, along the way we discovered a whole 2 room exhibit of Beatrix Potter drawings which was perfect as I use to be obsessed with her books when I was a kid – an ideal birthday treat for me!
To begin with – the jewellery section has been done up in the last few years I think – I certainly remember it use to be far less exciting looking although you did get to go through massive clunky security gates when going in which I always found quite exciting. I’m not sure when they revamped the place but it really does look fab despite lack of security gates – all black with Perspex bendy show cases and Perspex stairs leading up to the upper floor. Very atmospheric and ideally lit to show off the vast array of sparklines the place houses – amazing!! This time we particularly enjoyed the watch section (on the upper level) with lots of amazingly intricate and delicate yet often huge pocket watches. These were sometimes known as Onions because of their large round shape. One of the ones I particularly enjoyed is below from about 1660ish – very very pretty!!!:
I also really loved all the sparkly tiaras in particular the art nouveau one by Lalique made of glass and horn at the turn of the 20th century, GORGEOUS!!!!:
Anyway, everything in the jewellery bit is lovely lovely you could drive yourself insane trying to chose one piece you would like to take home so we moved on to the painting gallery next.
When I first moved to London and started to inhabit the National Art Library on a weekly, and then daily basis the paintings at the V&A were displayed in a dirty room with walls covered in green felt and I remember distinctly nearly crying when I saw a Rossetti displayed in DIRECT sunlight – literally it was BY the un-curtained window with sunrays hitting it straight on. It was scary. At some point however they happily renovated the place and since then it’s always been my favourite part of the vast and seemingly endless museum. I’ve been there about 4000 times so it’s difficult to discuss it as a whole rather than just the few pictures you bother to look at so I will just pick out a few of the highlights for me:
Disappointed Love by Francis Danby has to be one of my favourites - proper job victoriana-rama:
Why were they so obsessed with this kind of theme in the Victorian era??? I mean, I KNOW why, but, WHY??? As if child birth wasn’t dangerous enough even falling in love could kill you then according to them.
Danby was a complete legend and also painted another of my favourite paintings in the gallery; The Upas, or Poison-Tree, in the Island of Java from 1820 – an amazingly gloomy picture in different tones of black (which makes it rather difficult to see in the gallery – not great lighting still alas) – the story being that convicts were sent to collect poison from the tree back in the day and if they managed by some miracle to make it back alive they were pardoned, coolio. My friend recently went on holiday to Java and it didn’t sound like that at all – quite the opposite in fact, Goldie Hawn was there the day before! Other great pics from Danby include the Deluge at the Tate; 
He was clearly rather into the sublime landscape concept!!! Got to love a bit of drama!!!
They have several interesting garden paintings which is always something I enjoy; This Dutch one by Henri de Braekeleer is lovely along with this English one by Charles Robert Leslie always catches my eye due to its extreme kitch-ness. They always have one hanging next to it called the Love Letter which I also really like but I can’t seem to find it anywhere and don’t know the artist – bit of Victorian narrative painting always does me good though.
They also have some fabulous Pre-Raphaelite stuff in particular the wonderful The Mill by Burne Jones which is some sort of metaphor for something and obviously has hints of the three graces, really lovely;
I also love this one by him which I hadn’t really noticed much before in delightful tones of grey called Cupids Hunting field;
I could go on for hours about all the lovely things in this gallery but can’t so instead I will just mention my third Watts spot (it’s been a while) called The Window Seat which is another piece of high Victorian sentimental narrative rubbish – which I LOVE!!! Well done Watts once again;
So, anyway, we were almost done (i.e. Jason was dragging me out) the painting gallery when I realised they have given over 2 rooms to a little Beatrix Potter exhibition called Peter Rabbit; The Tale of the Tale. (88a and 90 if you’re interested) Hurrah!!! I LOVED Beatrix Potter as a child and use to have an extensive collection of her books in miniature which I genuinely loved – I still have a little box with a pull out drawer complete with mini brass door knob with lots of the little books inside in a row which I remember choosing for my birthday present when I was about 7!! My favorite 2 stories were The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or the Roly Polly Pudding, about rats nicely, and the Tale of the Two Bad Mice – I think I liked them so much because they were both largely about food.
This exhibition brought together letters, drawings and paintings by Beatrix Potter from before her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was published;
“[The tale was] conceived on 4 September 1893 in an illustrated letter to Noel Moore, the five-year-old son of her friend and former governess, Annie Moore. Noel was recovering from a bout of scarlet fever so Beatrix amused him with a story based upon her real pet rabbit, Peter Piper.”
I knew that the tales were conceived in letter form because they use to have that programme on daytime TV which were cartoons based on her illustrations and they always ended with some actress pretending to be her finishing off the letter/story and posting it off after walking past some kids in Edwardian dress playing in a country lane – do you remember it?? Anyway what I didn’t realise is she had always been a bit obsessed with painting rabbits and wildlife in general and was heavily influenced by the pre-Raphaelites, i.e. Ruskin, and passionately believed in the observation of nature and exact reproduction of the natural world around her.
It was a friend who suggested to her that she should turn the stories she continued to send as letters over the next few years into published books. However, she couldn’t get anyone at all to publish them as they all wanted to charge too much and she resolutely believed (in a slightly crazy way) that 'little rabbits cannot afford to spend 6 shillings on one book and would never buy it'. So she decided to publish Peter Rabbit herself for friends and family. Within a few months though someone wanted to publish them, in colour!! And so history was made blah blah blah. The second room of the exhibition was lined with every image + the text from the first Peter Rabbit publication which included 4 images she then removed from further printing runs because they had to make room for end papers or something. It was actually really interesting to see these unknown illustrations as I hadn’t realised how deeply the original ones have been burnt into my subconscious like familiar friends! The ones which were removed clearly hadn’t gone through the extensive process of redesign that the others had undergone over the years and are not nearly as good. Truly lovely show though but was very disappointed to note they had NO Beatrix Potter merchandise to purchase in the shop.
On the way out we had a quick look at the architecture show that has now finished called Architects build small spaces; “Using the landscape of the Museum as a test site, the V&A invited nineteen architects to submit proposals for structures that examine notions of refuge and retreat. From these nineteen concept submissions, seven were selected for construction at full-scale.”
We only saw 3 however. One was by the stairs up to the NAL and was something to do with books and libraries but you had to queue to go in it – fuck that. The other two were together in a very large very dark room off the main reception space. One, by Belo Horizonte, Brazil, was quite fun – you got to go inside and climb up and down stairs with lots of red curtains in random places and windows into the outside world and different parts of the inner architectural space – something about performance and show I think and could be used as a performance space or a viewing gallery for audiences to watch a performance from. I thought it was quite fun;
The last one we saw was beyond rubbish. By an architecture group, or school or something called Rural Studio – something about using reclaimed materials that would not be wanted or needed elsewhere. Good idea and everything but could they not have bothered to actually design something??? All it was was an empty shed- LITERALLY!!!” A box with noting inside and no ends, you just walked through it. Oh and it was made of wood from someplace in Wales – totally crap and not worth the reclaimed wood it was made from. Shame on them.
That’s all folks see you at a more punctual time next week I hope!!!
