It’s Friday September 5th
and we are on the train to Edinburgh trying to remember what I wrote about last
time. The quick summary on the paintings
is that we saw everything we planned to see in the Manchester area. So we
have now seen 457 of the 1001. We
visited museums in Manchester, Liverpool, Wirral, Sheffield, Bradford, Leeds
and the Chatsworth House in the Peaks National Park. We spent a lot of times on trains, and a few
hours on buses, but it was all worth it.
The five paintings at the
Manchester Gallery were all on display so we didn’t have to arrange a special
viewing. On Monday. But we did pick up a
“substitute” for the Banksy painting on the 1001 list. The photo of the plaque tells the story. This painting at the museum is a prototype (a
study in art speak) for probably Banksy’s most famous painting. Since we will never get to the West Bank in
Gaza we are counting this one. If you
didn’t know, Banksy is now a famous “street artist”, i.e. a painter of
graffiti. He is from Bristol where we
saw the “Well Hung Lover” painting from the bus last week.
I took the photos of “Willy” out
of cigarettes because we saw a similar piece at the private home we visited
last fall on our east coast trip. Willy
looks like one of the Seven Dwarfs from Disney’s Snow White. This is one of those pieces of art that take
skill to make, but the appeal to me is the creative idea the artist had to make
it out of cigarettes.
Then because we were in Manchester we went to see the “Old
Trafford” the stadiums for Manchester United.
This was just a short tram ride from the city center. The Team Store was open, and they have a lot
of neat gear, but we didn’t buy any. It
was warm enough that I had my Barcelona FC jacket around my waist, I didn’t
want to run into a Man U fan who might take exception to my jacket. After that we were off to see the stadium for
Manchester City. The Team Store was not
open so there were only a few tourists like us taking photos. Next door to the stadium was an athletic
field (track & field are called athletics over here) and that is where we
saw the pole vaulter strapping his poles to the top of his car, so I thought
that was worth a photo.
Monday we were off to the Walker
Gallery in Liverpool where again all six paintings we wanted to see were on
display. The Walker Gallery and the
Museum in Manchester are in beautiful Victorian buildings with large gallery
spaces.
After the Walker it was off to the Lady Lever Gallery in Wirral which is
now a suburb of Liverpool. The guy who
started Lever Soap collected art, so he built a museum to show it off. It is just about the right size for an art
museum. Large enough to have a large
collection of paintings, but also sculptures, furniture, ceramics and other
stuff I’m not really interested in. But
the place isn’t so large that that we become exhausted trying to see
everything. There was one painting here
“The Tepidarium” by Alma-Tadema. But there was also a larger copy of a
painting on the list that we saw in Manchester.
This copy of “The Scapegoat” by Hunt at the Lever makes the Manchester
painting look like a study he made before he made the final painting that is
now at the Lever. Now it is possible
that I made a mistake when I made my spreadsheet listing the museum for each
painting, but until I can look at the book, I’m saying the book made the
mistake.
Being in Liverpool we had to go see their football team’s
stadium. The bus let us off at the Team
Store, so Sue asked one of the attendants where the main gate was. He asked if we meant the gate with the slogan
“You’ll Never Walk Alone”, and we said yes assuming this the main gate. Well it is much more than a gate. This was a memorial to the 96 people killed
in the Hillsborough Disaster that occurred in 1989 at an FA Cup semi-final playoff
game in Sheffield. Sue talked to a
couple of construction workers who explained that at every special event, i.e.
anniversaries and birthdays people add flowers and scarfs to the memorial. Amazingly that evening there was a report on TV
about the inquest that is looking into the tragedy. The families finally got it started all these
years later to look into the police behavior at the stadium. Police were blamed for not controlling the
crowds. The police opened gates just
before the game started that were not normally used. The crush of people entering the stands
eventually caused some of the stands to collapse and then it went downhill from
there.. There was a cover up about why
emergency services weren’t called immediately.
The first inquiry determined that 41 of the 96 fatalities may not have occurred
with prompt emergency treatment. Another
problem is that police wouldn’t let people onto the pitch to escape the crush
and eventually 96 people died, crushed or trampled. The game was stopped after six minutes.
Tuesday we took an early train to Sheffield so we could
catch a bus to get to the Chatsworth House that is located the Peaks District
National Park. Let me tell you this was
some bus ride! The bus was a couple of
minutes late per the schedule at the bus stop when it came into view. This bus stop is right in front of the
Sheffield train station so one would expect that the driver would be prepared
to stop. I could see that he wasn’t
slowing down even though we were standing in the proper spot, so I waved to
indicate that we wanted to get on. The
bus overshot the stop and was angled from the middle of the road to the
curb. We got on and bought our
tickets. Before we could get to our
seats the bus lurched off sending us running toward the back. We took the first seats we could fall into. The bus surged and braked and swerved all the
way through Sheffield. Most of the
passengers on the lower level were older than us, an all were holding on with
two hands. But they didn't seem to be
concerned. But at every bus stop the
driver swerved to the side of the road while hitting the brakes hard. This went on for about half the trip. And the bus was always on the bumper of every
vehicle it followed. Once we were out of
Sheffield and into the park the rock and roll really started. It was a thrill ride, at least to us
anyway. As I said above the locals
didn’t seem to mind. We did make it to
the Chatsworth House ahead of schedule.
The Chatsworth House is huge. It
has been in the same family since the late 1600s. I don’t know the extent of the land that was
originally part of this estate but it sits in a beautiful setting. There were hundreds of cars in the parking
lot. Some of those people may have just
gone walking in the park, but I know that all the people on the many tour buses
were visiting the house. This place is
not part of the National Trust so it is run as a business too
Our arrangements to see our painting had to be cleared with
the Duke and Duchess no less! It turned
out that the painting is normally in the Duke’s sitting room, and that area is
not open to the public. So they had to
bring the painting to a study room. We
were met by the curator who again turned out to be a really nice guy. He explained a bit about the painting and how
it came to be at the House, and we (I) of course had to tell him about our
quest of the 1001. He apologized because
we had to pay £25 to see the painting.
We knew this from the web page, and we thought it would be £25 for each
of us. But he said it was only £25 since
we were together. As Sue said, that was
a bonus. He wrote us a receipt and I had
to remark that I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen anyone use carbon
paper! Sue said I should take a
photograph of that. He laughed and said
they were a bit behind the times in this regard. He then asked if we had toured the house
yet. We explained that we had just
arrived shortly before our scheduled visit.
He then arranged for us to get into the house without paying! The entry fee for seeing the house and
gardens would have been more than the £25 we paid to see the painting. The house is amazing! They have stuff everywhere: paintings,
sculptures, furniture, ceramics, weapons, jewelry, clothing and what all I
can’t remember. There were even two
installations of video art. I haven’t paid
attention to previous works we’ve seen, but I took a photo of one that the
attendant pointed out to us. The photo
shows about three Abor Vitae against a white, gray and black background. The trees are moving in the wind, and if you
look closely at my photo about a third of the way down from the top you can see
a line of small black figures. These are
people walking from left to right, and as the line moves a new person appears
at the left. There is a second line of
figures below the first, but you can’t see it in the photo. These figures are not all the same, I don’t
know if they are all different, but it is kind of mesmerizing to stand there
and watch the trees/shrubs swaying in the wind and the lines of people move
across the screen. I can’t even begin to
describe the tour except to say it’s good to be a duke! We didn’t walk around the garden because a
return bus was going to show up shortly.
We took the bus and got off in a tourist trap village that we went
through on the way to Chatsworth. This
is where most of the people on the thrill ride bus got off on our way to
Chatsworth. We did a little shopping and
amazingly I got another pair of pants and Sue didn’t get anything. Then we had lunch at a pub in the center of
town. We headed out of the pub a few
minutes before the bus was schedule to show up.
Well the bus was already at the stop across the street. We panicked and ran across the street through
traffic to get to the bus, because the next bus wasn’t scheduled for one
hour. Well we made it, and the bus then
sat there for a good five minutes. The
ride back to the train station was NOTHING like the first ride. This driver knew how to drive; there was no
lurching and swerving. We made it to the
station without a problem and then it was just about an hour back to
Manchester. We went out to a Greek
restaurant that night for dinner.
Amazingly we had a wonderful dinner, I know Jude will be surprised. We started out with pita bread and hummus and
Greek olives. I love those salty Greek
olives; the pits just fall out after the first bite. Then I had a selection of sausages, one beef
and one pork that were delicious. Sue
started with bean soup and then had lamb meat balls. I then had a fish entrée. We shared baklava to finish off the
meal.
Wednesday morning we had an appointment to see a painting at
the Cartwright Gallery in Bradford. To
get there we took a train to Leeds and then a tram to a stop in Bradford. From there we walked about 20 minutes to the
Cartwright Gallery. The gallery is
located in a park amid a beautiful garden.
We were met by Jill, a wonderful curator. She showed us one painting that she had taken
out of storage for us, “The Strand by Night” by Nevinson. Then she gave us a personal tour of the
gallery. The second painting on our list
“The Brown Boy” by Reynolds supposedly.
She explained that all of the lasts opinion was that this painting was
probably not by Reynolds, so that on the museum’s description of the painting
they listed as by the “British School”.
It wasn’t a big gallery but she took us to each painting and told us
about the artist and how the museum came to own the painting. Basically back when manufacturing was
thriving in the midlands the business owners were collecting paintings and they
were eventually donated to the museum.
There is a Bradford museum about the history of manufacturing, think
Bessemer, cotton mills, railroads, etc. but we had another appointment in
Leeds. I may have to go back in October
after we’ve seen all of our paintings.
So after thanking Jill for our tour we went back to Leeds to meet Nigel
and see two more paintings. We went to a
pub to have lunch as our next meeting wasn’t until 15:00. We had another wonderful lunch. I had something called a beef shin bake. It was bits off beef with potatoes, carrots
and root veg (British for vegetables) in a beef gravy, and of course a cask
ale. I’m getting into these cask ale
bitters. Sue had carrot soup Yorkshire
sausages. We got to the museum early and
told the information desk that we had an appointment with Nigel. It is always good when the information desk
knows that we were expected. We toured
the museum while we waited. Part of the
main gallery was blocked off as the staff was changing the paintings on
display. The time for our appointment
passed so I went back to the front desk to see if Nigel was available. It turns out he was one of the guys hanging paintings
in the gallery. Again he was more than
eager to show us the two paintings in storage and to share his knowledge about
these paintings and the artists. I guess
it shouldn’t be too surprising that all of these curators are willing to talk
about the art and the artists. They are
where they are because they love art and they just love to share with aficionados
like us who are learning about art. It
was back to Manchester and rest for the next day.
Thursday we were back to Sheffield to make what I thought
was an appointment at the Graves Gallery.
Well in my correspondence with the curator I overlooked the fact that
the museum store was NOT at the museum!
So when we showed up at 11:00 Hannah wasn’t on site. After a phone conversation with Hannah we set
out to find the off-site location. It
was a twenty minute bus ride and then a walk into an industrial park. I took a photo of the foot bridge over the
rail tracks that we had to cross. I
eventually had to call Hannah to have her come outside to find us in the
road. But she did find us and we got to
see our two paintings. Then it was a bus
ride back to the train station. The bus
driver recognized from our accents (we have accents, who knew?) that we weren’t
locals. When we told him were from
Chicago he immediately said that is where Route 66 starts and he wants to drive
it. When we got to the stop closest to
the station he stopped to bus, got off and told us how to get there and shook
our hands! I told him I hoped he would
get to Route 66. This is part of what
makes travelling fun. We took the train
to Liverpool to see “The Wild American Turkey Cock” by Audubon at the
University of Liverpool Victoria Art Gallery.
The gallery wasn’t open on Sunday or Monday. This painting was painted while Audubon was
in Liverpool raising money to publish his great book The Birds of America. After that it was on the train back to
Manchester. We went back to the Greek
restaurant because we had enjoyed ourselves so much the first time.
We have arrived in Edinburgh and checked into our hotel that
is only about a 10 minute walk to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. So we set off to the Gallery because it has
eight paintings on our list. Two of
these are off site, so we saw seven today, because a painting that I had at the National Gallery was in the Portrait Gallery. We will see the other two later this
week. Tomorrow we’ll do laundry and maybe visit two more
museums and hope to see five more. paintings. Later
in the week we will visit the National Museum Stores to see four paintings that
are in storage. So Scotland should be
good for us.
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