An old friend told me this week that he is taking an evening course at the Slade School of Fine Art but The Faultless Painter doesn’t refer to him. It is the title of a poem by Robert Browning about the Renaissance artist, Andrea del Sarto.
This is by Hilda van Stockum, a Dutch writer of childrens books and an artist. She spent part of her life in Ireland where she met Evie Hone and painted this portrait, probably at Marley, in Rathfarnham, where Evie had a house and studio.
Andrew Ritchie’s encounter with Princess Anne, related in a comment on Man in Taxi, leads me to speculate whether he met any other members of the Royal Family.
London is full of lesser known galleries and Barons Court has one. It is less than five minutes walk from my front door on the Fulham Palace Road, so really Hammersmith.
A goddaughter had her first child on St. Stephen’s Day, known in the UK as Boxing Day, this year. Mother and daughter are both well and the chosen names are Meredith Grace Albinia.
It’s usually something old on here so, for a change, here’s something new; talking statues. The first one I saw was Queen Victoria in Kensington Gardens.
Maddy, I hope you don’t mind if I recount a story you told me many years ago. You used to bicycle home from work through Hyde Park and receive the attentions of a flasher who would jump out from behind a tree and expose to you those bits of him in a southerly direction.
I hadn’t visited the Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields for about a decade. It has had some major work done in that period and now looks even more like it did on the day of Soane’s death in 1837.
How many times have you been told not to be fobbed off with second best? This is usually followed by being told that it’s worth paying a bit more for something that is higher quality. This is misguided advice.