Leonardo da Vinci - painter at the Court of Milan

; This exhibition was a much awaited visit and proved to be all that we hoped it would be. Our slot was 1pm and due to take about half an hour. It turned out to be two hours long in the main galleries and then we moved on to the Last Supper which was housed in another part of the National Gallery. Exhausted by the end,  but such a privilege to see this once in a lifetime exhibition of most of Leonardo's work.

Leonardo trained in Florence where his gifts as a painter and musician were soon recognised. He moved to Milan in the late fifteenth century and sought patronage of Ludovico Sforza, whose aspiration to create a perfect city inhabited by exceptional men of talent made Leonardo the ideal court artist.

Amongst the many paintings exhibited were The Musician, The Lady with an Ermine, Saint Jerome, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Madonna Lita, Christ as Salvator Mundi (the recently restored painting) The Madonna of the Yarnwinder. Lastly we viewed the full-scale copy of his Last Supper painted by Giampietrino about 1520 which includes details permantently lost in the original which was one of Leonardo's most celebrated works of art painted as a fresco on the wall of a refectory of the Domenican Convent adjoining the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

The process of drawing was vital to Leonardo's investigation of the world and the evolution of his compositions and many of his sketches are exhibited alongside his paintings as well as sketches of anatomical studies. Other works by Leonardo's pupils and followers reveal his tremendous impact and are included to explore issues of attribution.

The National Gallery have many upcoming events in the form of courses,workshops, talks and lectures and more exhibitions planned for 2012 including Turner and Titian.

www.nationalgallery.org.uk

A walk down memory (Pottery) lane

On a recent trip to London I headed for Notting Hill where I knew my great grandmother Fanny had been born. She had lived in the Pottery Lane area, historically known as the 'Piggeries and Potteries' owing to the many pig-keepers and brick makers who had migrated from Ireland to the area during the 1840s because of the potato famine. In fact the actual kiln still remains. During Fanny's time this area was known as 'laundry land' because of the many hundreds of housewives, including Fanny's mother and grandmother who had to take in washing and ironing for the families in the posh houses at the top of the hill in order to earn a shilling or two to help out with the family income.

Fanny was born in 1873 and after many years of searching I discovered that her mother had given birth to Fanny 'out of wedlock' in the Kensington Workhouse a stigma that must have remained with her all her life and was never talked about amongst the family, in fact I doubt that even her daughter, my grandmother knew the circumstances of her birth. Fanny's mother Elizabeth was just 17 years of age at the time and it is unsure why she was in the workhouse. Her own parents were living in very overcrowded conditions in streets of tightly packed houses and where over the years with an increasing family, they relentlessly moved from one set of crowded rooms to another, paying about two shillings a week for the privilege. The family consisted of eight children who  slept at least four, top-to tail in one bed and this maybe the reason that Fanny's mother ended up in the workhouse. Often there were another three or four other families living under the same roof, where sanitary conditions were appalling and in turn encouraged rats to roam freely in the filthy and polluted streets. When Fanny was three years old her mother married and they went on to have several children of their own. Fanny however, at aged seven years old was found to be living nearby with her mother's parents in 1881. For how long, no one knows but it is possible that she was either abandoned by her mother or there simply was no room for her at home. It was not uncommon at that time for an eldest child to live with their grandparents. She attended the local school which cost one penny a week.

When she was twelve years old she was 'put into service' where she worked as a scullery maid doing very menial tasks including scrubbing floors, stoves, sinks and dishes for a mere pittance of about one shilling a week and a room in the attic and where she would have only had a few hours off each week. By the time she was 18 she was working for a household in Earls Court Road as a cook. She married in 1894 to Charles, a carman (another story for another time) and raised ten children of her own in slightly more improved but similar conditions to that of her own childhood in the same area around Pottery Lane. She was supposedly estranged from her mother in later years - was this because she  couldn't forgive her mother from keeping her illegitimacy and the workhouse from her? or maybe that she never knew who her father was (I do!) - but this is all conjecture and we will never know the truth. Fanny died aged 90 years old in 1963.

My discoveries and trip gave me a snapshot of the lives of those who went before me and an insight into what life would have been like in 'Dickensian' London.     

Bleak House

If anyone missed the BBC series of Dickens' Bleak House back in 2005, this is definitely one to buy on DVD. It's one of those feel good dramas that I indulge in annually at this time of year when the cold winter evenings are drawing in.

Bleak House was Dickens' ninth novel published between March 1852 and September 1853 and thought to have been one of his finest. A story of dark secrets and forbidden love involving many sub-plots. The story revolves around a lengthy court case at the Court of Chancery in London - Jarndyce and Jarndyce where John Jarndyce's two wards Ada and Richard are pinning their hopes on a princely inheritance.

John Jarndyce takes Esther Summerson  (Anna Maxwell Martin)  a girl without a past, under his wing as a companion for Ada, but then falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Esther's mysterious connection with Lady Dedlock may bring ruin to them both  As ever Dickens bases his characters on people and situations well known to him. A cast of many well known actors include Gillian Anderson, Dennis Lawson, Alun Armstrong, Warren Clark, Matthew Kelly, Charles Dance and Pauline Collins, to name but a few.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/bleakhouse/welcome.shtml

Some quotes from my collection of favourites

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to

be useful, or believe to be beautiful"

William Morris (1834-96)

"The essentials to happiness are:

something to do;

something to hope for;

and something to love.

William Blake (1757-1827)

A spectacular evening at the Royal Albert Hall

The Royal Albert Hall is one of the most famous venues in the world, regularly presenting some of the best known performers in a range of genres on its stage. From classical music concerts to rock and pop, from opera and ballet to circus, from community events to tennis, the Hall’s programme is  incredibly diverse.  

We spent a wonderful evening there on Sunday to see the Classical Spectacular concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by John Rigby. The music was outstanding and included arias from Puccini’s La Boheme and Nessun Dorma, Verdi’s La Traviata and Aida and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance as well as many other popular favourites. The evening concluded with some much-loved pieces such as Rule Britannia and Jerusalem which induced the audience into finally waving their flags with abundance. The piece d’resistance was the finale which featured the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky in all its magnificence and aided by  lasers, lights, fireworks and cannons, finished with hundreds of red, white and blue balloons cascading over the audience.  A very moving occasion and certainly makes you proud to be British. These concerts are put on at least twice a year and definitely not to missed.

My favourite book of all time..

What better book to feature on my very first Library page, than A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

It's that time of year when this old favourite comes out again. I have at least six different copies in all shapes and sizes and this one published by Dorling Kindersley in 1997, being illustrated and annotated gives so much information about life in Victorian London.

When Charles Dickens wrote his Christmas Carol in 1843 he had his 'social reformer' hat on. Few people knew London as well as Dickens. He had seen the overcrowding, the diseases and the poverty which were all widespread at that time. The themes of many of Dickens' novels were mostly aimed at making his readers understand how hard life was for the working poor, and how horrible it was for London's vast underclass of jobless, often homeless people. A Christmas Carol  was no different and he shows us a cross-section of London society from the very rich to the very poor. Dickens himself had endured a poverty stricken childhood and had worked in a filthy factory and it was these memories that haunted him for the rest of his life.

A Christmas Carol is the story of the miserly Scrooge and the apparition of three ghosts of Christmases past, present and future which were sent to make him see the error of his ways. The lessons learned by Scrooge and the moral of the story being that there is more to life than money - it's people and families that count and that we should all make the most of life and enjoy every minute.

The Preface written by Dickens in a very early edition of the book reads as follows:

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,

CD

December 1843

Remembering with pride......

Our thoughts go out on this Remembrance weekend to all those who served their country in times of war and for those who paid the ultimate price and did not return. In my family special thoughts to a few brave men whom I did not know but 'found' them whilst tracing my family history.

Morris Bones - Flanders 1917
Horace Bones - Flanders 1916
Charles Bones - Salonika 1918
John Kimber Curtice - Flanders 1917

Great Uncle Fred Dean aged 22 who died on the beach at Salerno in 1943

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun

and in the morning. We will remember them. For your tomorrow we gave our today....