Tuesday in London

This was the last day of my flying visit to London.

I had tickets for the Lucien Freud and Anthony Gormley exhibitions at the Royal Academy.

Lucien Freud's work is not to my taste, but I tried to keep an open mind for this exhibition of self portraits. I was very taken with his technical skills. As a school boy her started portraying himself, using pencil drawings, moving on to pen and ink. The skill comes out of the page at you.

Later he used watercolour before settling for the oils which he then used for many years. We followed the development of his skills as he aged in the portraits. I was so glad I went to see this.

It was the last day of Anthony Gormley's exhibition and it was predictably very crowded. My favourites were not there. No sign of Field or of the ephemeral figures we saw in the Baltic a few years ago. I was not impressed by the room of water or by his drawings. I did enjoy most of the rest of the sculptures. Here you see the room with figures at right angles to each other. I used a long exposure so that the people were relatively ephemeral.

Wandering around the RA I found an "Architecture room" with a film and a display about the use of algae as pigments. I was less excited when I discovered they were using the pigment so dye plastics.....
Correction (see below) https://www.dezeen.com/2018/10/09/bioplastic-projects-algae-corn-starch-beetle-shells/

After lunch in the RA café, a treat when I'm in London, I walked to the National Portrait Gallery. Here I saw the Pre Raphaelite Women. This is a beautiful exhibition, but I found myself feeling quite sad as I looked at all the mournful faces. The visitors were quiet and no one smiled. I did try to talk to one or two others, but was regarded with suspicion! 

I moved on to the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. (How would I love to have a picture in there!) Here some viewers were smiling and enjoying the photographs.
The first and second prizes would not have been my choices, but I wasn't on the judging panel!!

I was in good time for my train from Kings Cross so I entertained myself watching the people queuing up to be photographed on their way to Hogwarts. One image is in the extras. Look out for the shadowy figure behind the window.....

I treated myself to a first class seat on the way home. The cost was more or less cancelled out by being provided with my dinner which was delicious. The wine flowed freely too.

Eventually I was home and was too tired to post a blip.