Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, 2021

We visited Kew in 2016, and I did two longish posts (https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2016/09/kew-gardens-1.html and https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2016/09/kew-gardens-2.html) that pretty much capture what we saw that day. If you like plants, gardens, and such, and the science that goes with them, you have to see Kew. There's nothing better. I'll try to keep it shorter this time, just what was new to us or otherwise special. We pretty much opened and closed the place July 23rd.

Kew is colossally huge: we could go a couple more times
and hardly see it all

New to us department: the Marianne North collection and gallery...
an intrepid Victorian woman who traveled the world more or less
solo for many years, painting the scenes, mostly plants, that she saw;
not that she was poorly connected...her dad was an MP and an
associate of the director of Kew...she visited Australia and New 
Zealand on the advice of one Charles Darwin...anyhow, about a
thousand of her oil paintings are on display at the building she
funded and built; it is the only permanent solo display of art by a
woman in the UK and well worth some time, even at the expense
of other wonders at Kew

Also new to us: the "temperate" building(s) were closed for
renovation when we were there in 2016--they were closed for some
years, and one can understand why, looking at how all the plants
work themselves not only into the ground but also the structure
itself; it's back open now, but we suspect the "palm" building is
in even greater need of renovation

Emerging tree fern frond; we've seen cousins in New
Zealand

Golden lotus banana (flower)

Also new and startling to us: the kiwi is not a kiwi after all:
the Chinese gooseberry was exported and first planted in New
Zealand in the early 20th; WWII personnel stationed there
picked up the name and carried the association with NZ; my 
world is forever changed...

Interior of the Temperate House: the plants are
already taking back over...

Back outside traversing the enormous grounds, admiring the
enormous trees and such

London plane trees are popular in London...our Bloomsbury
neighborhood is loaded with them--this is a particularly large
and old specimen; the 2nd largest and oldest is about a block
away from our flat...

Also new to us: Kew Palace, the sometime abode of King George III,
one of England's least popular kings (after John and the Charles, and
maybe some others); compared with other royal palaces it's just a
cubby-hole

George and Queen Charlotte had fifteen (15) children, as
imaginatively represented here

Two of them, George IV and a William eventually ascended
the throne; but you have to go pretty far down the list to find
a legitimate heir after William...the daughter of Edward, Victoria,
who outlasted and out-bred them all

A bit of the modest interior

Throne Room

Back outside, a particularly nice Monkey Puzzle

Now on the humongous boardwalk with its bed after bed...and
excellent signage

Later July, but still plenty to appreciate as we make our way 
to the Princess of Wales buildings and the Evolution Garden

In the ever-popular giant-lily-pad-that-ate-Cleveland house

New entry emerging from the primordial pond

Another emergent

Rebecca, Penelope: this is what carrots look like, above-ground

Last stop of the day was the Palm House

Emerging palm

Ebony: really is black

More emerging

Plants have completely taken over

Next time we're here we'll probably be riding around in one of
these

"Turner's Modern World"

After our stroll through British painting history I toured the Tate's "Turner's Modern World" exhibition, which, through five large rooms, examines the tumultuous times through which he lived and worked; and his response to them. I thought I knew a good bit about Turner, but this large exhibition, as the previous ones I've seen at the Tate, added new layers and dimensions to my appreciation. Turner's dates, 1775-1851, saw vast change in the world...the height of colonialism, the loss of colonies, the rise of steam, locomotives and steam ships, the growth of the Industrial Age, rapid urbanization, revolution in France, the Napoleonic Wars and a changed Europe, vastly increased travel, the slave trade and its abolition, at least in Great Britain, succession to Victorian times, and great political and social reform in the UK. To name a few. Turned experienced and painted these times and changes, to an extent that no other painter did. He was no revolutionary; his progressive political views are only subtly visible in his choice of subjects and in his work. His experience of the changing world also affected his work over the decades, with radical changes in style, an emerging new language of representation, seen in few other artists. I'm still processing all this, but below are just a few items from the exhibition, not in any particular order. Some just appealed to me, some are just famous, all support the themes of the exhibit in some way or another...

Interior of a Cannon Foundry, watercolor, 1797

A small watercolor he did in a morning to show a friend's son the
size of then-modern warships; Nelson's Victory carried a crew of
875...

The Field of Waterloo, 1818, quoting Byron's line "friend, foe,
in one red burial blent"

Ploughing up Turnips, Near Slough, 1809; new farming policies
dispossessed small farmers...Windsor Castle in the distance

George IV at the Provost's Banquet, 1822; Turner tried mightily
for Royal patronage, but never got even close

Slave Ships Throwing over Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming
On, 1840; they also threw slaves-to-be at the approach of
any warship that might have caught them at the slave trade

Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1834; removed explicably
from the exhibition

Salisbury, from Old Sarum, 1827; the point here would appear
the storm of reform about to break: for centuries, abandoned
Old Sarum had sent two MPs to Parliament, elected by eleven
absentees; the reforms of 1832 would change that and more

Rain, Steam, and Speed--The Great Western Railway, 1844;
Turner was the first to paint railways, steamships, etc.

Snow Storm--Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth making Signals
in Shallow Water, and going by the lead. The Author was in this
Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich, 1842. OK, he was
not into the whole brevity thing. Muy famoso.

The Thames Above Waterloo Bridge, 1835; showing two steamships
not far away from where the first were built; there was already 
public concern about their waves eroding the banks, about smoke
pollution, etc.

The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to be Broken
Up, 1839; towed by a steam tug; Turner's favorite, which he
refused to sell, but willed to the Nation...to be displayed, as it
usually is, at the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square

Whalers Entangled in Flow Ice, Attempting to Extricate

Themselves, 1846; perhaps a comment on the failing British

whaling industry 

War. The Exile and the Limpet, 1842; after Napoleon's death,
and apotheosis in France; displayed alongside...

Peace. Burial at Sea, 1842; commemorating the death of his
friend David Wilkie, of typhoid fever, and who was denied a
funeral and burial on land

Tate Britain, 2021

We've visited the Tate Britain several times before, mostly for the Turners and the special exhibitions, which are always superb. I'd hoped to refer to previous posts and avoid going through the scores of pix I took this time, but, alas, my previous posts from the Tate are less than representative nor comprehensive. The most recent is 2016, when we toured with grand-daughter Penelope, https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2016/09/tate-britain.html, and it is mostly about the Rex Whistler dining room murals, wonderful place, which is closed now. So here is a brief sampling of the earlier bits of British painting history at the Tate Britain.

Old entrance to the Tate Britain

But before getting to what you came here to see,
you have to process through a massive multi-media
installation, Heather Phillipson's Rupture No. 1:
blow-torching the bitten peach

The description here says it all...click to enlarge

Homage to Dali? Except they're not all Michelins
nor of the same size...

Phallic halo?

"We have lift-off!" Of course this all proceeds
through two or three large halls and is accompanied
by all kinds of sound, including, possibly, some music

Still from a video of a rising and setting peach (not bitten)

OK, right...take a deep breath...here, The Chomondaley Ladies,
1610, unknown artist...notable because they were twins, born 
the same day, married the same day, and giving birth to their
first offspring the same day...definitely worth so documenting

Nathaniel Bacon, Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and
Fruit, c. 1620

Peter Lely, Susanna and the Dirty Old Men, 1650

Thomas Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Carter, 1747;
critics hypothesize that Mrs. Carter's representation
is perhaps a joke of some sort...maybe the one
about "gimme a little head"?

Evidently Canaletto wanted to be closer to his clients and so took
some time off from Venice to do the Thames, at Greenwich, 1750

Vicki studying the painting below; notice the place isn't
exactly packed

John Singleton Copley's The Death of Major Peirson, 1781; this
is from the battle for the defense of Jersey, which the French had
invaded (other Jersey)...sort of a Falklands thing?

There was a mini-exhibition on fairies in art, so Turner's Queen
Mab's Cave (references from Shakespeare, Shelley, et al.), 1846,
is on view

George Frederic Watts, Sic Transit, 1891; not funny

Charles Wellington Furse, Diana of the Uplands,
1903; the model was his wife, Katherine, who
also carved the frame; Vicki sat through a mini-
lecture on this; I played solitaire; turns out Furse
painted brown over his wife's gold frame; she
divorced him...