Exit Through The Giftshop - Pictures At An Exhibition #22

More treasures of pleasures past...

1) STILL LIFE ON CORNER OF A MANTLEPIECE (1914) - Vanessa Bell

  

I bought this at the Dulwich Picture Gallery at their impressive Vanessa Bell exhibition in 2017 which sought to celebrate her as an artist rather than as merely a member of the Bloomsbury Group. 

Painted in her living room in Gordon Square, the composition shows her continued interest in post-impressionism, with a spray of paper flowers from The Omega Workshops providing inspiration for the painting and it's harmony of colours.

2) THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH SAINT JOHN AND ANGELS (circa 1494) - Michelangelo

As this painting is in the National Gallery collection, I presume I bought it there as part of a Renaissance exhibition.  It is understood to be one of the earliest surviving paintings of Michelangelo and, due to it's inclusion in the 1857 Manchester Art Exhibition, it is known widely as 'The Manchester Madonna',

Odd that if it is one of his earliest paintings he could never be bothered to finish it!  But it's the unfinished state that appeals to me, the ghostly angels at the left of the painting and the unpainted sections of the Virgin's cloak give it a solarised look that looks almost surrealist against the fully realised infant Christ and John the Baptist.  I like the small detail of the infant Christ reaching for the book that the Virgin is trying to keep away from him... As usual, Michelangelo's figures have a marble-like solidity.  And on the subject of Michelangelo's marble...

3) THE PIETA BANDINI (Detail) (1547-1555) - Michelangelo

This was bought at the Museo dell' Opera dei Duomo in Florence; it's a strange museum which houses most of the original works once in the Duomo... like, they could just move them back?  Michelangelo struggled with the sculpture for eight years before he damaged it, allegedly, in a fit of wilful destruction stating that the marble was flawed.  It is widely believed that the looming figure of Nicodemus is a self-portrait of the artist, then in his mid-seventies. 

Michelangelo's damage was extensive but was mostly restored by a sculpter named Tiberio Calcagni who had helped the Master with some of his commissions.  It had been allocated to Calcagni by Francesco Bandini, prelate of Siena, who had acquired it when Michelangelo left it with one of his servants.  It was originally to be used as decoration for Michelangelo's tomb but his unhappiness with it put paid to that.  The supporting figures of Mary Magdelene and the Virgin Mary are fairly unremarkable but the figure of Christ has a slippery solidity while the figure of the standing Nicodemus / Michelangelo commands the attention.

4) PORTRAIT OF MARIE ADELAIDE OF FRANCE IN TURKISH COSTUME (1753) - Jean-Etienne Liotard

I bought this at the Uffizi in Florence where the French Princess reads on, unconcerned at the steady stream of visitors to the gallery.  Liotard was fascinated by all things Turkish and he had a penchant for dressing his subjects in exotic clothing.  What I love about this is the thought that Princess Marie-Adelaide got all dressed up to go to a costume party then changed her mind and started reading on her couch!

Marie-Adelaide was the fourth daughter of Louis XV and lived at Versailles up until the Royal family were taken to live in Paris at the start of the revolution.  She never married due to a dearth of available Catholic princes but was a favourite of her father and as such, took a dislike to his official mistresses Madame de Pompadour and later Madame du Barry.  She attempted to recruit her niece by marriage Marie Antoinette to have du Barry socially ostracised but failed when the Dauphine spoke to du Barry.  This put Marie Antoinette on the Princess' hate list too.  She and her sisters managed to escape to Italy before the reign of terror and died in exile aged 67.

5) THE SITTING ROOM, MONK'S HOUSE, RODMELL, EAST SUSSEX

A very happy memory is visiting Monk's House on a sunny day in 2014.  Virginia and Leonard Woolf bought the house in an auction in 1919 for £700 and over the years, as they both became successful, they started making improvements to the rudimentary interior and garden.  They lived increasingly at Monk's House during the 20s and 30s due to Virginia's recurring mental breakdowns which were exacerbated by London life, and became a much-loved part of their life.  After Virginia's suicide in 1941, Leonard lived on at Monk's House until his own death in 1969.

Now operated by the National Trust, the sitting room is one of the ground-floor rooms available to view and it is a particular thrill to walk around it's stone-flagged floors and wondering how on earth the long and lanky Lytton Strachey managed to not brain himself on the low ceilings.  The sitting room has light green walls, painted by Virginia, which gives the room a cool, subterrranean feel.  I'd love to visit again.

"That will be our address forever and ever"

After my emotional visit to the National Portrait Gallery for their exhibition  VIRGINIA WOOLF: ART, LIFE, VISION, the next day was given over to something I had been planning for a long time - going to Virginia Woolf's country home Monk's House in the small Sussex village of Rodmell.

We got the train from Victoria, changing at Lewes for the one-an-hour train to the unmanned station of Southease.  It is a mile walk from there to Rodmell and, for a city mouse like myself, it was an oddly disconcerting feeling for us to be the only ones on the road for as far as you could see!

We walked for a while until we saw a signpost saying 'Rodmell 1/2 Mile' which led us to a country path that wandered up a hill, down a hill, down some roughly constructed stairs and along a field's edge, all the time being fluttered around by butterflies and at one point a rather large Dragonfly that sat quite happily on a flower as I stroked it's wing but flew away sharpish when I opened my Pepsi Max bottle.  Maybe it preferred Diet Coke?

 

Then just as I was beginning to tire of walking, there we were in the village and turning down the quiet road which eventually leads to Monk's House.  The garage was been converted to a shop/visitor centre and, very excited, I opened the gate and walked up the side of the house to the entrance at it's back.  Virginia and Leonard bought the house in 1919 and were able to make much-needed renovations and additions as Virginia's books became more and more successful during the 1920s and 1930s. 

At once I felt happy to be there.  There are very friendly volunteers in each of the four public-access rooms, very happy to tell you about the history of the items on display and the Woolf's life in their home.  The living room is the first you enter and what strikes you first is the low ceiling and the cool, green colour-scheme that makes it a wonderfully calm area.  The colour was one of Virginia's favourites and it adds to the ambiance of the room, the easy chairs facing each other by the fire giving the impression of the Woolf's companionship, Leonard's writing desk open and waiting for him to tear off another letter railing at the injustices of the world...

On all the walls are paintings by those close to the couple, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant are of course represented highly, but there are also paintings contributed by Trekkie Parsons, who shared the house with Leonard after Virginia's death, up until Leonard's own death in 1969.  I was very taken with the low tables in the living room and bedroom, covered with gleaming tiles painted by Grant.

The dining room and kitchen are also on display as is Virginia's small, neat bedroom which was built onto the side of the house in 1929, originally as a writing room but she found it to be an ideal bedroom, it's windows letting in lots of sunlight and surrounded by the garden.

It was humbling to be there and see her personally hand-covered collection of Shakespeare plays and Vanessa's delightful tiled fireplace, painted by her for Virginia to mark the success of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE.

There is also Virginia's writing lodge in the gardens, a short walk away from the house across the lawn, it's doors opening up onto an unspoiled view of the Downs.  We were told that we were lucky that they had a full compliment of volunteers so the lodge was actually open to visitors and it was wonderful to stand there by her writing desk, her glasses and cigarettes still there waiting to be used.  The volunteer said sadly all we could do in there was look and breathe in the air.  That was fine for me.

There is also the very large garden to explore which, like the house, was made bigger as the Woolf's fortunes grew, allowing them to buy up adjacent plots of land.  We were blessed with sunny, warm weather which made it a delight to wander around it's terraces, hidden nooks and allotments.

For a Friday lunchtime it was nicely busy but not excessively so it was easy to wander around at your own pace, doubling back on yourself and exploring all the turnings.  On our wander we discovered the shell of Leonard's greenhouse which they are hoping to renovate and nearby was the side-gate out onto the adjacent lane.  It slowly dawned on me that this was the gate that Virginia used to slip away on that March day in 1941, physically and metaphorically turning her back on her life and writing to walk to the River Ouse.

Sadly the two elm trees - which the couple named 'Virginia' and 'Leonard' - that their ashes were buried under are no longer there.  One died through Dutch Elm disease while the other was blown down in a gale and one of the volunteers told me they would love to replant them if they could find an elm resistant to the disease.

After the necessary purchases from the garage shop, it was time to reflect and have lunch in the nearby village pub then to do the walk back though the fields to the station and return to London.  Virginia loved London life with it's teeming vibrancy and cultural whirl but when it all got too much for her, there was Monk's House to regain her equilibrium and to sink into the quiet she so desperately needed.

I am already looking forward to visiting again...

Moments of Being

When I heard that the National Portrait Gallery were staging an exhibition about Virginia Woolf I was excited but worried too - she is my favourite writer and the concern is how do you do an exhibition of her which would include her writing as well as her personality.

 

Although I loved walking around the exhibition, the curator Frances Spalding (whose books on Bloomsbury I have enjoyed) has not really addressed that central problem of balancing the woman and her art.  That would not stop me however recommending it to anyone who admires Woolf and her work.

As you enter the exhibition you are confronted by a close-up of that extraordinary face along with a photograph of her bomb-shattered house in Tavistock Square in 1940, setting up the premise of the fragility of life.  After that it is a fairly chronological exhibition which only takes up four rooms.  This was also a bit disappointing, it gave the exhibition the air of skimming the surface.

Through the exhibition it was interesting to see the constant representations of Virginia through photographs, paintings and even sculpture.  The now-iconic Beresford photographs of the 20 year-old Miss Virginia Stephen share space with snapshots from family and friends - Bloomsbury loved to photograph itself! - and with professional photographers such as Giséle Freund and Man Ray.

Paintings of Virginia by her sister Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry share space with portraits of fellow Bloomsbury figures such as the artists named, Lytton Strachey, Desmond McCarthy, Saxon Sidney Turner, Dora Carrington and of course Leonard Woolf.  Also included is Stephen Tomlin's haunting life-size bust of her, eyes wide with mouth open as if about to speak.

There were of course her publications: from her first novel THE VOYAGE OUT to the first Hogarth Press publications, hand-bound and printed by Virginia and Leonard, hand-written proofs as well as her great works where she wrestled the novel form into something new, something closer to life in all it's complexity.

The final room is called "Thinking Is My Fighting" and covers the growing threat of Fascism in the 1930s.  There is a drawing by Picasso called "Weeping Woman" which he donated to a fundraising event for Basque children which Virginia, Leonard, Vanessa and her youngest son Quentin had supported.  The title proved sadly prophetic when three weeks later, Vanessa's oldest son Julian was killed driving an ambulance for the Republicans in Spain, leaving Vanessa inconsolable.  Also on display is the Nazi 'black book', of intellectuals and writers who were to be arrested after a Nazi invasion, with Leonard and Virginia's names printed within.

All the way around the exhibition I felt Virginia eluding one's grasp, slipping around the far corner of the room, but here in the final room she was suddenly very close by.  Displayed in the same case as Virginia's taut, nervy letter to Hogarth Press editor John Lehmann on March 20th 1941 stating she felt her recent novel BETWEEN THE ACTS was unpublishable, was her walking stick that was found eight days later lying on the bank of the nearby River Ouse.

Facing this, framed together, were Virginia's last two letters, one to Vanessa, one to Leonard.  Although I have read these letters transcribed in countless biographies of her, to actually see them was incredibly moving and I cried as I looked at them.  Virginia the novelist, writing now for the last time to her sister and husband, the people who she loved the most.  Not writing to stretch the form or to test boundaries, just to express her love to those who would miss her the most and her apology that now she was losing herself to another of her terrible depressions she knew she could not find her way back this time.

And I thought of the last words of MRS DALLOWAY “...For there she was.”  For, finally in the exhibition, there she was.