National Portrait Gallery

Trafalgar Square with the National Gallery on my right and St Stephens in the Fields behind me. 

Visiting the National Portrait Gallery

Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson

The Duchess of Cambridge better known as Kate

There is a large exhibit of paintings and photographs dating from 1960.  I didn't see any of them and so I expect I will be going to the museum again soon. 

Currently, the Gallery has a special exhibit of Cezanne portraits.  I am only familiar with his landscapes.  In particular, a bridge painted in shades of green and brown. 

Being the penny pincher that I am, I gasped when I saw that a ticket to visit the exhibit was 18 Pounds.  I am afraid I will have to check it out some other day.  

From the main ticket area of the museum, a very long escalator stretches up to the Victorian era art. 

Since I had arranged to meet Earl in only half an hour, I started looking around for all of the beautiful women on the wall.  There were companion pictures of Victoria and Albert.  Massive.  I wanted to take a picture of Victoria, but the lighting in the gallery made it impossible to take a flashless picture of her. 

I know nothing about Agnes Strickland but was struck with how lovely she is in her portrait.  With the brief knowledge that I now have of this extraordinary woman who had a very unusual father, I would love to see her volume on the queens of England.  However, I suspect that I would probably enjoy the abridged volume more than the original.

I recently went to see a new movie about P T Barnum called the Greatest Showman. Jenny Lind is one o the historical characters featured in the film.  I think she was known as the Swedish Nightingale. She certainly looks lovely and innocent in this portrait of her.  

As you can see from the plaque this is a copy of the clasped hands of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.  The two poet lovers.

Much to my surprise I apparently did not feel moved to take a picture of either of the poets.  

Elizabeth Barrett Browning from the National Portrait Gallery 1806 -1861

This article acknowledges that the painting is in the National Portrait Gallery but says nothing about the painter,  Michele Gordigiani,  or the painting itself.  In the painting, she has a very wrinkled face.  Probably smoother than mine but I think I was so surprised that she was not a younger woman.  This portrait was painted of her when she was in her 50s. She "caught a chill and died" while still in her 50s.  

This surprising painting of her is in the Library of Congress.  It is listed as being in the public domain. It is described as being painted in her youth

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ggbain03571)

These are interesting paintings of the Bronte sisters. The one of a woman alone is of Emily.  Both pictures are heavily cracked and look as if no one thought to preserve them until they were well-worn portraits.  

Emily Brontë

by Patrick Branwell Brontë
oil on canvas, arched top, circa 1833
21 1/2 in. x 13 3/4 in. (546 mm x 349 mm)
Purchased, 1914

Primary Collection 

This is the only surviving group portrait of the three famous novelist sisters - from left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë. The portrait was known from a description of it by the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell who saw it in 1853. It was thought to have been lost until it was discovered folded up on top of a cupboard by the second wife of Charlotte Brontë's husband, the Reverend A.B. Nicholls, in 1914. In the centre of the group a male figure, previously concealed by a painted pillar, can now be discerned; it is almost certainly a self-portrait of the artist, their brother Branwell Brontë.

The Brontë Sisters (Anne Brontë; Emily Brontë; Charlotte Brontë)

by Patrick Branwell Brontë
oil on canvas, circa 1834
35 1/2 in. x 29 3/8 in. (902 mm x 746 mm)
Purchased, 1914

Buckingham Palace, St James Park, and Tafalgar Square

This forecast for today was for no rain and higher temperatures.  I put on my raincoat instead of my 5-10 winter coat and we started off.  We passed all of the usual scenes on our way to Buckingham Palace.  As we got close we came to a group of the Household Guard out practicing wheels and turns. As we were approaching Earl saw one of the soldiers fall off a horse.  Something neither of us has ever seen before and I assume that it happens rarely.  Earl said that he thought that the horse had actually reared up causing the rider to fall.  I noticed them when there was a riderless horse, a man standing on the ground and one of their supervisors holding a sword. 

No idea how much the "armor" that they wear is but I imagine it is awkward at least. After a moment the unseated rider was given a "leg up" to help him get back into the saddles. 

Of course, the photographer could not take pictures without getting me into at least a corner.  Hat hair and unruly curls included.

The band leaving the palace grounds.

Waiting for soldiers to pass.

Household guard seated on horses and wearing cold weather gear. 

Police making sure that the crowd is back off the road. 

The band approaching.  A group of musicians was playing some type of reed instrument while hanging off their shoulder was a trumpet. When I was a child, we called my father's winter gray uniform coat a "great coat." 

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• /Military%20Coat/Double

If I remember correctly the Pochard ducks were imported from North Aftrica in the hope that they could repopulate the bird hunting areas of England where hunting had diminished the ducks.  However, it took awhile for the experiment to succeed since none of the imported ducks had ever faced a winter before. 

David Shrigley's giant thumb

 Canada High Commission  Historically Canada has been a part of the British Empire.  Although the ties are less clear, Canada still does not have an embassy in the UK.

a 711a England - Canada - Canada House

Canada House is a Greek Revival building on Trafalgar Square in London that is part of the High Commission of Canada in London. Canada House hosts the cultural and consular sections of the High Commission, while the political, trade and administrative functions are carried out from Macdonald House in Mayfair.

Gate to Chinatown