LONDON 2016

I finally got to see a Barbara Hepworth for the first time this trip. It wasn't a sculpture, however.

After breakfast at the Blue River Cafe, we walked the 2+ miles to the National Portrait Gallery. It took about 45 minutes. We initially went there to see the William Eggleston Portraits exhibition. Like many museums in London there is no entry fee except for special exhibitions. We decided to start at the top and work our way down to this special exhibition on the ground level. But, after spending hours on the top two levels, our feet and legs were telling us to take a tea break. After our tea and a shared shortbread cookie in the basement level cafe, we decided that we had absorbed as much as we could for one day and planned to come back for William Eggleston (maybe on a Wednesday when seniors get an even greater reduced admission). We have until 23 October.

But back to Barbara. We saw a lot of interesting portraits including this self-portrait by Dame Hepworth.

Other highlights for me included:

This portrait of Ira Aldridge, the first acclaimed black actor on the London stage in 1825, and who played Othello there in 1833. The play Red Velvet, which I've seen twice (once in Brooklyn and once in Lennox, Massachusetts) was based on the London part of his life.

This portrait by Georgina Brackenbury of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), suffragette and leader of the campaign to give women the right to vote, most recently portrayed by Meryl Streep in the 2015 movie Suffragette.

A number of portraits of and by the Kitchen Sink painters of the early to mid 1950s and about whom I need to learn more. They include Jack Smith, Derrick Greaves, John Bratby, and Edward Middleditch.

A 1938 portrait of Beatrix Potter by Delmar Banner.

A 1931 lead sculpture by Stephen Tomlin of Virginia Woolf.

A portrait of Vanessa Bell (sister of Virginia Woolf, a fact that I had forgotten) by Duncan Grant.

A 1984 portrait of Francis Bacon by Ruskin Spear.