Art and Feasting

A lovely day.  We had a slow start and then went down to the West End on the Lizzie Line, a hop and skip from Farringdon. Popped into Liberty to get a couple more presents for the next few days and bought a top in the sale.  V bought some new trousers too.  We then had lunch at Goldies in Kingly Court as rec’d by Jay Rayner before walking down to see the Van Gogh at the National Gallery 

It was as wonderful an exhibition as everyone had said placing VG as a serious,  studied artist rather than simply a tortured genius.  All the paintings were from the last two years of his life and there were many I hadn’t seen which were stunning.  Also interesting in terms of how they were hung and how the NG was in the forefront of collecting him, thanks to Courtauld.  We had to become members to get in so one spends half the time wondering how all the people around you were so well organised.  A lot of tourists and a huge queue for general entry, presumably because of the eco attack on the paintings.  They have stopped doing captions to help the flow but you had free booklets with lots of info.  Also I did the guided tour (via phone) which was excellent.  This is a pic of V who is rare amongst the crowd in that he doesn’t listen to anything, doesn’t take pics, is always slower than me and notices more.  There was a lot of modern behaviour, selfies in front of the famous paintings,  people photographing everything but rarely looking and my favourite, a young Chinese man who had a huge camera and took photos of his phone taking photos of the paintings. 

Back to the hotel to change before going to dinner with Anthony and the fam.  Rory joined us and it was a lovely evening which ended in playing the Name Game again.   Uber to the hotel at midnight.