It's always been a favorite London museum, the home to much of the nation's Turner collection and much other historic British art. Some of the best special exhibitions I have seen have been at the Tate Britain. But I think we may have finally hit our limit. The "modern" in-your-face installations are a distraction, and the moralizing all around is worse. Why not just display the great art and tell us about it, especially when you have a whole gigantic museum down the river reserved for modern "art" and its assorted "insights"? (The Tate Modern). Oh well, we visited--it's a short walk from our flat--and resolved to visit again, maybe some day when there's a special exhibition of interest or when we've forgotten the current experience. We looked at some favorites, some others, and moved on. A particular disappointment was the restaurant where Rex Whistler's fantastic (as in "fantasy") murals wrap around the room: darkened so you could see a grossly over-done video on the putative racism some see in the murals. "A child of his time" Turner would have said.
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In your face, in the main hall; with accompanying noise
from other rooms |
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The "benches" in the room, evidently intended for the kiddies, talk to
you when sat upon |
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| Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888 |
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Also new to us, Sargent's Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood,
1888; the great portraitist of the age, Sargent also went outside on occasion
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John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter's
Shop), 1849-1850; occasioned a public outcry, led by none other than
Charles Dickens... |
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| Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52; muy famoso |
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| Now into the Turner wing, his very early self-portrait |
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| Turner, View of Orvieto, Painted in Rome, 1830; we also like Orvieto |
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Turner, Snowstorm--a Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth, 1842;
among the births of Impressionism... |
