A trip to the Guildhall art Gallery is always a treat and it is even more so now with its Inspired exhibition which runs until 23 December. It’s a new exhibition drawn from the Guildhall Art Gallery’s permanent collections that examines ways in which visual artists have taken inspiration from the literary arts – poetry, plays, novels, and also music.
Let’s start with this thoughtful, gentle man, sculpted by someone who knew him very well personally …
This is Terry-Thomas, a major star in the 1950s and 60s best known for playing disreputable members of the upper classes especially ‘cads’, ‘toffs’ and ‘bounders’ …
The last years of his life were tragic. Following his death, Lionel Jeffries called him ‘the last of the great gentlemen of the cinema’, while the director Michael Winner commented that ‘no matter what your position was in relation to his, as the star he was always terribly nice. He was the kindest man and he enjoyed life so much’.
This is the actress Valerie Hobson at the height of her career in 1948…
She gave up acting shortly after marrying her second husband John Profumo, the government minister who later became the subject of a sensational (and epoch-changing) scandal in 1963.
This picture was originally entitled Young Airman …
It’s now believed to be a portrait of Roald Dahl in his RAF uniform.
His memoir This Small Cloud was published posthumously in 1987 and was a fascinating account of life as a working class gay man in the early 20th century.
This painting is entitled Keats Listening to the Nightingale on Hampstead Heath and represents the moment he was inspired to write his famous Odepublished in 1819 …
The little bird can be seen in the top left hand corner, silhouetted by the moon …
Here’s the dramatic moment in Macbeth when, at a banquet, he sees the ghost of the murdered Banquo. His wife, the principal figure in the painting, tries to take control by firmly grabbing his shoulder …
The guests stare at him in surprise …
Beautiful sculptures on display include Sir Henry Irving as Hamlet …
Geoffrey Chaucer …
Goethe’s female character Mignon …
and the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók …
Learn more about these works by watching this excellent 15 minute video tour by Katty Pearce, the exhibition curator, or even better visit yourself – you won’t be disappointed …
Curator’s tour : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOO8TKdqZLE
I visited the day after the Lord Mayor’s Show and his State Coach was on display at the Basinghall Street entrance to the Guildhall piazza …
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Known as L‘Inconnue de la Seine, read on further in the blog to discover her story and how she became world famous.
One has to acknowledge that, when walking through Clerkenwell, this building comes as a bit of a surprise …
The plaque reveals its history …
The museum that now occupies the building is a treat and entry is free. It tells the fascinating story of this famous organisation, from its origins in Jerusalem over 900 years ago to today’s modern St John Ambulance service. I only visited a small part of the museum so will be returning and aiming to take part in a guided tour.
The first exhibits you see…
The Order’s motto today is Pro Fide, ProUtilitate Hominum – For the Faith and in the Service of Humanity. This duty of care is just as relevant today as it was 900 years ago in Jerusalem. The principles of the Order can be summarised in three words, which are inscribed on the central podium shown in the image above.
Faith – Like monks, the first Brothers of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem vowed to be poor, chaste and obedient …
Care – They took one other vow – to honour and care for the sick and the poor …
Valour – Most of the Brothers were Knights trained in the arts of war. They used these skills to defend the Holy Land …
From the earliest times, the Order had female members. St Ubaldesca joined at Pisa around 1150 and after her death in 1205 she was canonised for her lifelong devotion to the care of others. This painting, from the 1600s, depicts her in a pious pose wearing the robes of the order …
I really like this poster from the 1950s representing as it does the spread of the modern Order throughout the world, initially via the British Empire …
A 1955 portrait of a St John Ambulance Brigade Officer and Nurse …
There’s definitely even more of a hint of Florence Nightingale and her lamp in this painting …
These two examples of suits of armour date from the 1500s to the 1800s but they broadly represent the kind of protection worn by the opposing forces during the Order’s long struggle with the Ottoman Empire.
The Turks favoured mail shirts …
The plate armour worn by European knights offered better protection but it was heavy, inflexible and – under the Mediterranean sun – soon became uncomfortably hot …
Siege relics …
A magnificent 16th century banqueting table decoration that once belonged to the treasury of the Knights of Malta in Valletta ..
The Ashford Litter …
A breakthrough in the transportation of patients allowing them to be moved comfortably by a single person.
The order played a pivotal role in caring for casualties in the First World War …
Just one of a number of display cabinets …
The triangular bandage is a staple component of first aid kits with many different uses. In the late 19th century the St John Ambulance Association started providing printed versions demonstrating how to use it …
Also in the cabinet there is an evocative painting from 1917 of a ward at the St John Ambulance Brigade Hospital, Étaples. The blanket of each bed is emblazoned with the eight-pointed cross of St John …
The insignia can be seen again on a red plaque above each bed, naming the donor who provided funds for it …
The Hospital in Étaples was the largest voluntary hospital serving the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War. It had a staff of 241, all from the St John Ambulance Brigade, and was considered by all who knew it to be the best designed and equipped military hospital in France, caring for over 35,000 patients throughout the war. On the night of the 19th May 1918, the hospital was hit by a bomb which killed five members of staff. Shortly after, on 31st May, a second bomb hit the hospital, resulting in eleven deaths and sixty casualties.
In April 1945, Ada Evelyn-Brown was one of a group of St John Ambulance nurses sent to care for newly liberated prisoners at the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in north-west Germany. Her photograph album is on display at the museum …
Finally, to a beautiful but tragic lady.
This is the face of a young woman found drowned in the River Seine in Paris in the late 1880s. No one could identify the body, but the pathologist reportedly became fascinated with her serene expression and commissioned a death mask. Soon multiple reproductions were on sale throughout Paris …
In the 1950s a Norwegian toymaker, Asmund Laerdal, was commissioned to produce a mannequin in which people could practise mouth-to-mouth and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Seeking a non-threatening model, he chose L‘Inconnue and when his mannequin was mass-produced she became world-famous for a second time, known to this day as ‘Resusci Anne’.
I loved my visit to the museum and highly recommend it.
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For this expedition I got off the train at Aldgate and walked east along Whitechapel High Street.
The area is being transformed out of all recognition with massive refurbishment and redevelopment taking place on the south side. The north side of the street, however, still has its narrow cobbled alleys and iconic places like the Whitechapel Gallery.
The first alley I came across had no name but held the promise of some street art …
I wasn’t disappointed …
This next alley does have a name and is the home of a delightful project …
Look at these brilliant illustrations referencing the local area …
And it stretches right across the arched roof …
I see capitalist consumption alongside anarchist freedom just before I head down Angel Alley …
Freedom – a light at the end of the tunnel …
Some wall postings along the way …
The Freedom Press was founded way back in 1888 and this is their bookshop …
The wall of heroes …
Appropriate merchandise is available on their website …
Back on the High Street, I don’t recall seeing one of these before …
Then one comes to a wonderful institution, The Whitechapel Art Gallery. It grew from the high-minded vision of the Reverend Samuel Barnett and his social reformer wife Henrietta. They believed that art would lift the spirits of the East End poor, counteracting the ‘paralysing and degrading sights of our streets’. It was opened in 1901 and designed by the brilliant architect Charles Harrison Townsend …
The Gallery’s history is a history of firsts: in 1939 Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica was displayed there on its first and only visit to Britain; in 1958 the Gallery presented the first major show in Britain of seminal American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock; and in 1970 and 1971 the first shows of David Hockney, Gilbert & George and Richard Long were staged to great acclaim.
Turning now to the classic Art Nouveau building itself, the rectangular space between the turrets was originally intended to be covered with a mosaic frieze, but this proved too expensive. In 2012, however, the acclaimed artist Rachel Whiteread created a beautiful substitute. The work was Whiteread’s first ever permanent public commission in the UK.
The Gallery’s towers each feature a Tree of Life. Their brochure explains that, for this new work of art, Whiteread has cast their leaves in bronze to create an exhilarating flurry across the frieze. Four reliefs, casts of windows, stand as reminders of previous architectural interventions. Inspired by the tenacious presence of urban plants like buddlea, which the artist calls ‘Hackney weed’, Whiteread has covered the leaves and branches in gold leaf, making them part of London’s rooftop repertoire of gilded angels, heraldic animals and crests.
Apart from visiting the Gallery, there are other advertised opportunities to better yourself …
Crossing to the south side of the road, I was fascinated by this old house and its wooden shutters …
It has an 18th century look about it but I haven’t been able to find out more.
And finally to this little park …
Formerly known as St Mary’s Park, it is the site of the old 14th-century white church, St Mary Matfelon, from which the area of Whitechapel gets its name. This is its 17th century incarnation …
All that now remains of the old church is the floor plan .
The area was renamed Altab Ali Park in 1998 in memory of Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi Sylheti clothing worker. He was murdered on 4 May 1978 in Adler Street by three teenage boys as he walked home from work. Ali’s murder was one of the many racist attacks that came to characterise the East End at that time.
At the entrance to the park is an arch created by David Petersen. It was developed as a memorial to Altab and other victims of racist attacks. The arch incorporates a complex Bengali-style pattern, meant to show the merging of different cultures in east London …
A few grave markers from the old church have survived. This one (belonging to the Maddock family) is very grand, with its button-lidded top, the tomb ‘looks exactly like an enormous soup-tureen for a family of giants with a rather pretentious taste in crockery’ …
For more information I turned to the Spitalfields Life blog and an entry by the historian Gillian Tindall. She writes: ‘The Maddocks … were prosperous timber merchants just off Cable St. Into the tomb, between 1774 and 1810, went Nathan Maddock and his wife Elizabeth, both only in middle life, a daughter of thirteen, a sister-in-law of twenty-five, and her son when he was seventeen. It is a relief to find that Richard Maddock (who did not actually live in Whitechapel any longer but grandly in St James) was seventy when he died, and his sister seventy-nine. A James Maddock died aged nineteen, but that same year another James in the same family was negotiating the deeds of land in the area on which he intended to build and he appears to have lived so long that the tomb was full before it could accommodate him’.
These markers are more modest …
Finally, there’s a very impressive water fountain alongside the park …
The inscription says it was ‘removed from the church railings and erected on present site AD 1879’ …
It was great to still find some character in this area despite the wholesale redevelopment.
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