Category Archives: Travelog

Duleep Singh – from Punjab to Thetford

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When in Thetford, Norfolk, we visited the Ancient House Museum of Thetford Life, and they had a leaflet about one Duleep Singh, and somehow, I remembered him! The winter before, I had seen a small but really interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, the title of which I couldn’t remember exactly, but I knew it was about people from different parts of the British Empire, who had been in London and how they had been perceived through the eyes of the Londoners of colonial times. Among them, a Maharadjah from Punjab, Duleep Singh who had become one of Queen Victoria’s favourites.
How strange to see him mentioned there at Thetford.
It turned out that he had at some point lived in Thetford and that somewhere in town, there was a statue of him.
Well, if Thomas Payne’s statue was easy for everyone to see, it wasn’t the same for Duleep Singh’s, which it took us time to discover, in the middle of a small island. Exiled there, so to speak.

Duleep Singh statue
Equestrian statue of Duleep Singh aka Dalip Singh

Back home, I googled his name, trying to find the name of that exhibition had seen, and it was this morning, searching The Times online, that I finally found it.
The National Portrait Gallery has a wonderful website, in which they keep track of former exhibitions, so there it was: Between worlds, voyagers to Britain, 1700-1850

Why did he make such an impression on me, in the course of that exhibition, I don’t know. Maybe that portrait of him by Winterhalter, in which he wore a piece of jewelry that is described in The Times

It was Victoria who commissioned Singh’s portrait from Franz Xavier Winterhalter. It’s a flattering piece, but it hides secrets: one assumes that the exiled ruler must be in full possession of his earthly powers — he’s easy and comfortable in traditional dress. But, look just below his chin and you see the symbol of his subservience, the miniature of Queen Victoria. Then look at the diamonds on his turban and you see jewels that the British confiscated and held in the Tower and returned to Duleep only for the purposes of the portrait.

Such an unusual destiny.

Visiting the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

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While in Norwich, after visiting with Cer!se (why on earth didn’t I take photos? Too early?) for a great breakfast, and roaming Earlham Cemetery, Leo and Elly took me to visit the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a beautiful museum situated on the grounds of the University of Anglia estate, where works by Henry Moore were displayed

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich
One of Henry Moore’s reclining statues

We took a walk in the grounds.

Cloudy sky
The Centre in the background

And then went into the Centre. Really a beautiful place. The light and the display of the works of art and artefacts is fantastic

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
I liked the lines in this view

and the students are so lucky to be able to enjoy the centre, which is free, where one can go in, walk around or sit and and read a book

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich
One work I found amazing

And what’s even more, photography is allowed, as long as you don’t sell the photos ;)
More of my photos here.
Don’t miss the Sainsbury Centre website, which is really a must.
Thanks again to Leo and Elly who took me there.

Florence Nightingale Museum in London

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I have been meaning to write a post about the Florence Nightingale Museum in London for quite a while.
I finally went and visited it when last in London, althought I have been meaning to go for years. It’s not really easy to find and is in an area where I only went to take the Eurostar back to Paris, when it was still at Waterloo Station.
This time, I made room for it in my plans.

Florence Nightingale bust

One of the few photos one is allowed to take

It’s a small museum but it has interesting memorabilia and shows a couple of informative videos.
I watched them with two other women, and at the end, one of them said:

I can’t resist asking! Are you a nurse?

When I said I wasn’t, both she and her friend were quite surprised and asked me what had brought me there.
So, I thought it over and replied that I had always been fascinated by women of the past centuries who, in spite of everything that society expected from them, had managed to achieve their plans and accomplish their dreams. And Florence Nightingale was certainly one of those.
In those days, nurses were certainly not well considered and no one from a “good” family would expect their daughter to become one.
But Florence had a dream and, probably due to the Crimean War, changed what nursing and hospitals were all about. Modern nursing and hospitals owe her a lot.
One detail that really amused me was the fact that her parents called her Florence, because she was born in Florence, Italy, while her sister, who was born in Naples, was called Parthenope, the ancient name of Naples. One feels relieved that they didn’t have more children as one wonders what they would have been called! ;)

My thanks to Autolycus for mentioning the link to the recording of Florence Nightingale’s voice, which can be found at the British Library Sound archive. Quite moving!

Two exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts

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I had booked from Paris to see the Cranach exhibition which had started quite recently, but booking on-line was not possible for the From Russia exhibition, which attracted crowds.
So when at the Royal Academy of Arts to see the Cranachs, I bought a ticket for the From Russia and saw it on on the following day.

From Russia exhibition poster (by Claudecf)

This exhibition will be a unique opportunity to explore the fascinating exchange that existed between French and Russian art during a crucial period that was witness to upheaval and revolution. All the paintings have been lent by the four principal Russian museums: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and The State Hermitage Museum and The State Russian Museum in St Petersburg. For the first time, works from these museums have been gathered for a single exhibition.

I found it difficult to follow the links between the paintings, mostly because of my lack of pictural culture. But it was great to see a painting like The Dance by Matisse in the flesh, so to speak ;) or Gauguin‘s Vairaumati Tei Oa (Her Name was Vairaumati).
My favourites were definitely Chagall‘s Promenade and Nathan Altman‘s Portrait of Anna Akhmatova (honestly, I didn’t even know the name of Altman, before I went to that exhibition).

But I enjoyed the Cranach exhibition much more. Not that I knew more about Cranach than I did about modern painting, but somehow, I found it easier to understand. In fact, I like one-artist retrospectives. One has time to get familiar with the paintings, to see a relationship between them.

Cranach exhibition poster (by Claudecf)

As the exhibition booklet puts it, Cranach…

… was one of the most versatile artists of the Renaissance, court artist to the Saxon electors, a staunch supporter of the Reformation, and a close friend of Martin Luther. During the course of his long career, Cranach created striking portraits and expressive devotional works, propaganda for the Protestant cause, as well as his own brand of erotic female nude and inventive treatments of biblical, mythological and classical subjects.

At one point, I noticed that in practically every painting, except for the portraits, there was someone, be it a human or an animal that was looking straight at you. So I walked through the rooms again to find the watching eye ;)
I found the nudes just lovely, like the Venus shown on the exhibition poster, which apparently was found “too risqué for London Underground“, ;) or Adam and Eve.

The Cranach is on till the end of June, but From Russia stops middle of April.

Fun times in London

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Traditionally, when Elly, Leo and I get together, whether in Paris, London, or Norwich, we take a photo of the three of us together.
This year, Elly‘s photo wins the prize !

A fun time in London (by E11y)
From left to right, Marie-Antoinette wigged Claude, Marge Simpson-like Elly, long-face Leo

It was taken, I think, at the National History Museum, last Sunday afternoon. The museum was incredibly crowded with people pushing prams, children running around, and general madness, but we did manage to secure a minute or two in front of those crazy mirrors.

My version of our group here
Some photos I took at the Natural History Museum in 2005 here