A Visit to The National Portrait Gallery London

While running around our Capital gathering up some festive images for our final end
of year post which should be up next week, I managed to pop in to The National Portrait
Gallery. My aim was to catch the new show at the Gallery which featured some family
portraits by the great English painter Thomas Gainsborough, an artist also known
for his scenes of the English countryside. But this collection on show was something
more personal to Gainsborough as it featured many of his family members,
including his young nephew and studio assistant Gainsborough Dupont,
certainly one of the big attractions of this collection. Dupont went on to become
an artist himself even adopting a similar style to his Uncle Thomas Gainsborough.

Above: Portraits of the young Gainsborough Dupont.
Image via London Visitors website (plus a full exhibition review).
The 1773 portrait on the left of the older Dupont was restored by
conservators at The National Portrait Gallery in which more
than a century's worth of yellowing varnish was removed
revealing the original portrait of the handsome youth, a portrait
that apparently took Gainsborough only an hour to paint.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to take any photographs in this
Gainsborough Exhibition Room so afterwards I moved on
upstairs to the galleries featuring works and portraits from
the 18th Century, portraits of The Tudors, The Stuarts and some
works from the early 19th Century.

Above & below center portrait: William Pitt the elder
1st Earl of Chatham 1708 - 78.
British Statesman and Father of William Pitt the younger.

Above left: An oil on canvas portrait of George Washington, the First
President of the United States from April 1789 - March 1796.
Artist - Gilbert Stuart
From a copy of a sitting in 1796

Above right: English Diarist and Naval Administrator
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703).
Oil on Canvas by John Hayls.

Above: King Charles I    ( 1600 - 1649 )
Oil on canvas by Daniel Mytens  -  1631.

Above: William Henry West Betty.  1791 - 1874.

Oil on canvas image of child actor William Betty in the role of
Young Norval in John Home's play 'Douglas.'
William retired from acting in his early twenties.

Portrait by John Opie  1761 - 1807.

Above:  William Shakespeare   1564 - 1616.

This is the only portrait of him that has good claim to have
been painted from life. It was the first portrait to be acquired
by The National Portrait Gallery when it was founded in 1856.

OIL ON CANVAS - ASSOCIATED WITH JOHN TAYLOR   c 1600.

Above left: King Charles II  (1630 - 1685 )
By John Michael Wright  -  oil on canvas  1660-1665

Above right: King George II  (1683 - 1760 )
by Thomas Hudson  -  1774
oil on canvas.

Above:  Exhibits from The Tudor Gallery

Above left: Queen Victoria  (1819 - 1901)
Portrait by Lady Julia Abercromby.
Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 - 1901.

Above right:  King Edward VII   ( 1841- 1910 )
Eldest son of Queen Victoria reigned from 1901 - 1910.
Oil on canvas  by Sir Luke Fildes  between 1902 - 1912.

Below: Sculptures and portraits from The Victorian period.

Canary Wharf... A City Emerging.

It seems like only a few years ago that the Canary Wharf Tower was the only tall standing 
building in the area known as The Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. But
today it's surrounded by more accompanying structures that form what's now known as our
main Financial District in London. And yet the whole area is still evolving with yet more new
buildings currently under construction.


The area around the Wharf Tower also known as One Canada Square was first completed in
1991 and it's 50 floors still makes it the second highest building in the U.K with The Shard being
the tallest.
And yet this whole area of London was new to me until yesterday. And to get there by the Tube,
I had to get off the Northern Line and take my first ride on the DLR, the Docklands Light
Railway. I had worked out that to get the best views of the towers 
that I would need to take the DLR across the River and get off at Cutty Sark
 for Greenwich, which worked out just right. Although looking up Wikipedia's 
official picture of the Towers (HERE) I realized that I could have
walked further up the side of The Thames for an even better view.

Below: a few pictures taken from across the River just a few feet away
from the famous dry docked Cutty Sark.

Above: looking further up The Thames towards the Shard and it's light beam.

Below: The Cutty Sark.

From a Small Clothes closet to a Cozy Room

I'm quite pleased with my long Summer project of transforming my small clothes closet
into an extra little spare room. And last weekend I went about building a book shelf
cabinet which I fitted on to the back wall. And it does seem to add some charm to
this small space. Perhaps with a more comfy chair and it would make a nice reading room.
Of course I still keep that fold up bed in there as the room is also a guest room.
And yes those shelf candles are battery operated. We don't want any accidents.

Further down below are a few pictures of the room building and transformation.

The original post on this room construction can be seen HERE.
 

Above:  September 2018 when the newly converted space was turned
into a guest bedroom.

Vintage Chat Show Anecdotes

Above: Two British actors no longer with us, Oliver Reed and
Richard Harris, share a few anecdotes on The Michael Parkinson
show back in 1973.
Oliver Reed conveys a story on how George Bernard Shaw was
propositioned by a young socialite at a cocktail party.
While Richard Harris reflects back to the time on the set of that great
troubled movie Mutiny on the Bounty and how the star of the
film Marlon Brando had problems remembering his lines.

I suppose for some fans of vintage tv it must seem strange seeing
Oliver Reed completely sober on a tv chat show as he was well
known for turning up completely plastered while sipping from
a large jug of vodka and orange as he famously once did on
The Michael Aspel show back in the late 1980's.

Above video was taken from The Best of Parkinson.

My Cabinet Console.... A Test Video.

Below is a slightly disappointing test video of my home built Console which was
originally a vintage cabinet. I think this video was the fourth one I filmed.
And it looks like the new phone I recently bought is a bit of a letdown. It won't
even film in low light and with only 8GB of internal memory I'm lucky if 
I can film anything over three minutes.
What I don't get with a lot of these phones is that if you buy one with only 8GB of
internal memory they actually already use up 7GB due to the preloaded apps,
apps that I don't even need, one or two which I did indeed get rid off.
But the answer and solution might lie in reverting to my Lumix stills camera as it
has a HD built in video camera, and a good one too. So I've downloaded what I'm
guessing most people use and that's Windows Movie Maker.
So hopefully once I'm able to work it all out then I can make videos without all
the stress.

The original blog post of this building project can be seen HERE.

 Above & Below: Evening low light images of the Console. Something
my stills HD Video camera can capture, but sadly not my
phone.
Although the one and only saving grace of the phone is that
it has a video stabilizer, a vital facility that Youtube sadly withdrew.

Above: The start of the project last year.

Below: The original Cabinet.

Below: The Cabinet as I first saw it in a local second hand shop.