From Frankenstein to The National Gallery to Fleet Street

Clever me, after several hours of  'all is lost without Phyllis type thinking', I turn on the lap top and google 'how to fix a bike chain'.  I watch a u tube video, turn Phyll upside down, pick up the chain, plonk it back on and Phyll is fixed in two seconds. Unbelievable.  And such a relief. Now I can go out to the Corn Exchange to see the live streaming of Frankenstein from the Royal Ballet and drink craft beer.  
Wow!  I have never done this before but what a fantastic experience.  It is better than actually  being there at The Royal Opera!   I would imagine.  There are interviews with the stars and other insights as well as great views of the performers. 
Frankenstein qathe ballet is based on the book by Mary Shelly and directed by the young Liam Scarlett.  The performance is true to the eighteenth century settings and costumes.  Laura Morera, Federico Bonelli, and Steven McRae are fantastic in the lead roles.  The latter takes the part of the creature and is totally convincing.  His dance is out of this world.  McRae, the son of a car electrician, grew up in Sydney and came to Britain in 2003, aged 17, receiving a scholarship to study at the Royal Ballet School.   Laura is from Madrid and has been in the school two decades from the age of 11. The little boy who plays William is lovely.  

Mary Shelly was an nineteenth century writer.  Her mother was the wonderful Mary Wollstonecraft, who died giving birth to her.  So terrible.  We have come a long way.  The young Mary had four children, only one of which survived to adulthood.   Her famous work Frankenstein is based on the Greek myth, Prometheus.  This is the story. 

 Victor Frankenstein is sent away to university, away from his family and his closest friend Elizabeth, who the family adopted after she was shipwrecked.  She is a lovely sunny person.  Just before Victor leaves, his mother dies in childbirth. Distraught, Victor throws himself into his studies, learning obsessively all that he can from his Professor. Fuelled by his experiments and in a desperate hope to find a way to bring his mother back, Victor works furiously, and eventually succeeds in giving life to non-living matter – but, horrified at what he has done, Victor abandons his Creation. The creature has other ideas and follows Victor.  He is not human, he is more simple.  He loves his creator, seeking his attention constantly.  Victor's rejection of the creature has terrible, violent consequences for all involved.  

I detect a Buddhist interpretation.  Karma refers to deliberate actions, that is those driven by intention; deeds done deliberately through body, speech or mind.  These karmic actions always have karmic consequences.   Unskillful actions such as creating a monster and rejecting it are always going to end badly.    

The unkarmic (accidental) action of dropping my phone through the cracks in the floor has no karmic consequence.  It is rescued at the interval by the manager.  More of a Good Samaritan act really!   

Next day the totally recovered Phyllis and I head off again to the station.  This time I meet my chum to go to The National Gallery to see 'Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art'.  First we watch a short film about the life of this artist.  Here is a self portrait.  Note the crevat, this artist was a hypochondriac and had to protect his neck. We know little about his private life.

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798 – 1863)

As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement.  This was the focus of the exhibition.
Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic.   Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron. 

There is reason to believe that Eugène's father was infertile at the time of Eugène's conception and that his real father was Talleyrand, who was a friend of the family and successor of Charles Delacroix as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and whom the adult Eugène resembled in appearance and character.  Throughout his career as a painter, he was protected by Talleyrand, who served as ambassador of France in Great Britain, and later by Talleyrand's grandson. His presumed father, Charles Delacroix, died in 1805, and his mother in 1814, leaving 16-year-old Eugène an orphan.

The Barque of Dante, was Delacroix's first major work.  It caused a sensation, and was largely derided by the public and officialdom.  This pattern of widespread opposition to his work, countered by a vigorous, enlightened support, would continue throughout his life. Two years later he again achieved popular success for his Massacre at Chios.  This again was comtroversial; it did not seek to glorify war or victory.  It merely portrayed terrible suffering as did Picasso's Guernica in the following century.   Delacroix's most influential work came in 1830 with the painting Liberty leading the People.  This is an unforgettable image of Parisians, having taken up arms, marching forward representing liberty, equality, and fraternity. Although Delacroix was inspired by contemporary events to invoke this romantic image of the spirit of liberty, he seems to be trying to convey the will and character of the people, rather than glorifying the actual event, which did little other than bring a different king to power. 

Fanatics of Tangier, 1838, 

In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa.  He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture.  He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism.  Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece. Fanatics features in the exhibition and reminds me of dervishes.

From 1833 Delacroix received numerous commissions to decorate public buildings in Paris. In that year he began work for the Salon du Roi in the Chambre des Députés, Palais Bourbon, which was not completed until 1837. For the next ten years he painted in both the Library at the Palais Bourbon and the Library at the Palais du Luxembourg. In 1843 he decorated the Church of St. Denis du Saint Sacrement with a large Pietà, and from 1848 to 1850 he painted the ceiling in the Galerie d'Apollon In the Louvre. The exhibition contains a short film showing these frescoes. 

 And here is the Pietà, which shows his changing style, which is becoming more naturalistic. 

Van Gogh was staying in a mental hospital in Saint-Rémy when he made this painting. This pietà (Mary in sorrow over her dead son) is strongly inspired by Delacroix. Van Gogh had a litho of that painting with him. He copied the subject and the composition, but added his own colours and the strong expressions on the faces. 

From 1857 to 1861 Delacroix worked on frescoes for the Chapelle des Anges at  St Sulpice in Paris. They included "The Battle of Jacob with the Angel", "Saint Michael Slaying the Dragon", and "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple". The second of these is in the exhibition and makes me feel uncomfortable despite it's skill.  

The work was fatiguing, and during these years he suffered from an increasingly fragile constitution. In addition to his home in Paris, from 1844 he also lived at a small cottage in the countryside where he found respite. From 1834 until his death, he was faithfully cared for by his housekeeper, Jeanne-Marie le Guillou, who zealously guarded his privacy, and whose devotion prolonged his life and his ability to continue working in his later years.

After his death, his legacy lived on and this was the focus of the exhibition.  "We all paint in Delacroix’s language,” observed Cezanne.  From the bold colours and abstract shapes of Matisse and Kandinsky, to the expressiveness of Van Gogh and Gauguin, to the vibrant complementary colours of the Impressionists . All can be traced back to Eugene Delacroix.  He was arguably the last painter of the Grand Style but equally one of the first modern masters, who transformed French painting in the 19th century.

Vincent Van Gogh Olive Trees 1889

An expressionist response to Delacroix

https://next.ft.com/content/f555d3b6-d40f-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54. Here is a very helpful review of the exhibition.

Very impressed, we debrief in Pret a Manger.   Then to 22 Fleet Street to a

Sheffield Alumni event.  Ye Olde Cock Tavern originally dates back to 1549 and is well known as the pub with the narrowest frontage of any London pub. 

It was originally on the North side of Fleet Street, but has been on its existing site since 1887 and was the preferred watering hole of famous historic figures such as Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickins and Doctor Johnson. The pub closed briefly in 1665 because of The Great Plague but reopened in 1668 as Ye Olde Cock Tavern and has traded as an 'ale house' ever since.

The pub's first famous resident was the diarist Samuel Pepys (1663-1703) who mentioned in one of his works how he arrived at Ye Olde Cock Tavern by boat and dined on beer and lobster. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who wrote the first English dictionary and Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) poet, playwright and novelist were also both guests in the 18th century and their friendship was said to have blossomed over an ale or two in the pub. Other famous faces that have drank in the pub include Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).

Downstairs does not impress but upstairs a tasty buffet is served and we enjoy a couple of decent blond beers.  Shame on me, I have forgotten the brewer.  We also meet a nice lady from Germany.  The theme is 

The evening is run by the Intoxicants Project.  

http://www.intoxicantsproject.org/

We have a raucous time learning about the beer, the tankards, the drinkers, the laws, the social situation and other things. All of this is  interspersed with songs and wit.  It is such a pity I have to leave before the end to get the last through train at 22.20.  

This is a come down.  Get your act together #GWR, it is like the black hole of Calcutts and no way to treat travellers in the 21st century.  Get me a coach and highway man! 

Phyllis, my trusty steed, and I enjoy cycling home at midnight! 

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