Cathy's Art Diary

Enlightening online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the relationship between the British monarchy. Desmond Shawe-Taylor, former Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, explained the concept of the Grand Tour using pictures from the Royal Collection where possible. I thought I knew a lot about the Grand Tour but I had never thought about the political background to it before and the fact that the Old Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie had set up a rival court to the Hanoverians in France and then Rome. Young gentlemen were travelling through Europe at a time when the British were out of favour and had no ambassador in Italy. He also talked about how the monarchy tried to acquire the knowledge and kudos of the tour when they couldn’t actually go on it themselves and in particular, he took us through George III’s purchases of prints, drawings and paintings to fill that gap. He was also very good on the difference between the earlier Grand Tourists, who were going to see things relate...

A delightful evening opening at the Wallace Collection taking the form of following the Grand Tour round Europe. You began with a glass of wine which you could take round the gallery with you while you dropped into various talks on aspects of the collection themed to match the night. My friend and I did the French section, which looked particularly at objects such as a Rocco chest of drawers and some Sevres porcelain, and the Italian section, looking at Canaletto and how you might spend your time in Venice on the Grand Tour. We missed the Dutch talk as by then we were musing on life! There were also unstructured activities such as a wine tasting, creating a postcard or a masque and period make up. I loved the period make up section as it basically amounted to face painting for adults and as the evening wore on more and more people emerged with glittery masques drawn on their faces!

Fabulous exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford looking at the capture of a ship in the 18 th century which was carrying tourists cargo back from their Grand Tours. It was fascination on many levels. Firstly that it was a great piece of detective work/scholarship to have traced back the story of the ship and where the cargo had gone. The work which had gone into working out what had been in each crate and them trying to trace who had owned each one was stunning. Secondly is shed light on what the Grand Tour was like, painting a picture of a number of your men through the objects and books they chose to send home. Thirdly there were just some lovely objects including a some nice portraits by Battoni and a number of prints by Piranisi who I have encountered in Edinburgh the week before!