Liverpool: Walker

During my recent visit to Liverpool, I also visited the Walker Art Gallery, one of a massive collection of Victorian public buildings in a heavy Victorian classic style, with good views out across the city.  Sadly, they've slightly lost their sense of place, with major roads too close behind them - but out to the front, there are gardens and a square - with Wellington on a huge column.  The Walker calls itself one of the great art collections of the world, which is frankly ridiculous, but it's a good collection with some interesting pieces.

There is quite a lot of Victorian sentimentality - sickly genre pictures and very dramatic pseudo-historical themes (And When Did You Last See Your Father?)  but I wanted to see two things. 

First was the well known painting just completed by Ben Johnson, an immensely detailed cityscape, which I found rather sterile and disappointing.  But the earlier cityscapes were of interest, showing Liverpool at the height of its mercantile prowess in the nineteenth century - and like Johnson's work, showing as complete various buildings which were in fact still under construction, which is why the cathedral has the wrong number of towers in one picture!

And my other aim was to see a handful of British and continental pictures of some distinction, and here are a few of them.  Below is Jan Beerstraaten's Warmond Castle in a Winter Landscape from the seventeenth century, a bright crisp winter scene of some drama.  The castle is an accurate representation of the building in question, but the church is imaginary!

Below are two powerful ladies: on the left is Marguerite of Navarre (wife of King Francis I of France) by Jean Clouet, active in the early sixteenth century; note the marguerites in her hair - and note also the ring-necked parakeet on her wrist, perhaps an emblem of chastity or a family emblem.  Then an exotic bird, it has become very familiar in south-eastern England, where its brilliant green, long tail, and loud screeching has become part of any walk along the Thames in west London, for example. And on the right is a very white Queen Elizabeth, allegedly by Nicholas Hilliard, though he normally worked, very finely, in the miniature format. It's known as the Pelican portrait, although it's not a good one, as the face is completely empty and something appears to have gone wrong with the perspective there - but as a political document, its fascinating, for this is presumably how she wanted to be seen, stern and slightly inhuman.

 

To the left is a British painting of 1577, but of hand unknown.  It is a detail from a double portrait of Sir George Delves and his wife - their conjoined hands are at the head of this post - and has an elegance and grace that the portrait of Elizabeth, which must have been painted with a couple of decades, wholly lacks.  I like the individual leaves on the tree, the careful detail of his ruff and his sword hilt, and I like the way the painter has fused emotional alertness with calm and delicacy.

And below is a detail from a large family portrait, of Sir Thomas Lucy and his family, showing seven of the thirteen children he was to have; it is an eighteenth century copy of a seventeenth century original by Cornelius Johnson.  I like the quiet solidity and calm of such paintings, which change in style as the centuries pass, but which are common over some three hundred years.

Liverpool has a whole number of galleries and museums I didn't have time to visit, and I must arrange another visit - though sadly, I gather the lambananas have gone, auctioned off for charity at several thousand pounds apiece.

Comments

[glo]

I can't tell you more about the symbol and the meaning of the exotic bird in Marguerite of Navarre's portrait, sorry. And the unquestionable and well-known emblem of King Francis I was the salamander.
While watching this painting, I notice the dramatic contrasts between the four dominant colours featuring in this picture: black, white, red and green. The right side is black and white (ie her pale skin and her dark clothes) and the left side has vibrant tones (ie the red wall and the vivid green bird). And at the same time, black is opposite to white and red is considered opposite to green for painters.

I don't see what's wrong in the perspective of Queen Elizabeth's portrait and I find it rather fine but of course she had a very, very pale skin. On the other hand, I see something wrong in Sir Delves' neck and ruff; the neck is too long and the ruff is misplaced as it is apparently not well-balanced between the right and the left side. But the hands are really lovely indeed.