A Sampling of London's Museums

London has numerous highly regarded museums. We focused on the few that  most appealed to us.

Victoria & Albert Museum

We decided to start with the nearby Victoria & Albert Museum since it was the last week of the Taylor Swift exhibit. Interestingly, it wasn't the typical special exhibit confined to one or two rooms. It was spread out all over the museum so you got a good selection of the normal exhibits while hunting down the Taylor Swift ones. They say there are 7 miles of galleries, we missed a couple....

The Taylor Swift exhibits spanned her life and career with vignettes, referred to as "Chapters", featuring costumes and props from her various shows and releases, as well as some movies and photos of her childhood. 

The exhibitions span the world with religions, arts, and fashion. Below are Christian artworks from Europe; an asian statue of Virupa (a Buddhist holy man); a lovely sculptured bust and a very ornate piano.

Below CW from top left: A state carriage, a couple Dacre Beasts, Trajan's Columns (the story of Trajan/Hadrian's battles scroll around the column from bottom to top). and a portion of the massive sculpture display.

The Dacre Beasts, each over six feet tall, are rare survivors of Tudor heraldic woodwork. In heraldic terms, the figures were 'supporters' - the creatures that appear on either side of a shield.

Below are a selection from Pat's favorite galleries, the ones focused on fashion.

And of course there are wonderful glass pieces. Below CW from top left: Deep Blue and Bronze Persian Set by Dale Chihuly 1999, Venetian glass pieces, another Chihuly piece hanging from the dome, and a piece called Tactual Stimulation made from Lamp-worked glass by Kaffeman. "This piece explores the complex psychology around our urge to touch things that are both beautiful and dangerous, alluring and repulsive."

The British Museum 

"Two million years of history and culture across more than 50 galleries".. No wonder it takes days to do it justice. But, having been there before, we relegated it to one morning. We know, we know. We clearly missed some great stuff but we are fine with that.

In the Ancient Egypt galleries we found: 

• The upper part of a colossal seated statue of King Ramesses II, carved from one block, quarried at Aswan almost 200 kilometers further south.
• The Ram sphinx of King Tahargo with the supreme god Amun represented as a ram, protecting a figure of King Tahargo. 

• These colorful mummy cases.

• Roman mosaics from Northern Africa. 
• Gold chariot model with the Egyptian god Bes is depicted on the front. 
• Sculpture of a bearded Mercury. 
• Another mosaic from North Africa.

Some more European focused exhibits include:

• Horned helmet found in the River Thames. It is the only Iron Age horned helmet to be found in Europe. The helmet is made from sheet bronze sections held together with bronze rivets.
• Marble statuette of Bacchus shows Bacchus in a typical pose, holding an empty wine-cup in his right hand and leaning against a tree-trunk which supports a fruiting vine. His panther is at his feet.
• Amphorae.
• Bronze & gold plated rings, bracelets, ingots, coins and broken torcs (a neck ring that opens at the front; we'd call it a necklace).
• The front of the British Museum with a Greek style pediment.

The Courtauld Gallery 

The Courtauld Gallery houses the collection of the Samuel Courtauld Trust and is noted for its remarkable group of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including works  by Manet, van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Renoir, Seurat and more. Additionally there are works from the Renaissance to the 18C. Plus a collection of Medieval and Early Renaissance paintings and decorative arts, as well as Rooms devoted to 20th century art and the Bloomsbury Group.

• A Don Quixote work by Honoré Daumier, a caricaturist for French newspapers but also a painter. He devoted over 20 works to the story of Don Quixote. "This piece conveys the tragic and comic qualities of the story. The proud, chivalrous but deluded knight is contrasted with his down-to-earth groom, Sancho Panza. The gaunt horse and plump donkey gently mock the unlikely pairing of these two men."
• A  painting by Alfred Sisley shows a view of the river Seine. "The brushstrokes are remarkably rough and sketchy. They help to give the picture its sense of immediacy."
• Eugène Boudin typically depicted fashionable Parisian visitors at seaside resorts. "The figures in this scene - beachgoers and local fishermen with their horse-drawn cart - are captured with quick strokes of paint. The main subject is the sky and the effect of light on the billowing clouds."
• A troupe of dancers perform a high-kicking dance popular in Parisian nightclubs in the late 19C ...by Georges Seurat.
• This haymaking scene in Brittany, captured by Paul Gauguin, is typical of the radically simplified approach with forms "rendered as flat patches of vibrant color, while three-dimensional relationships and perspective are deliberately ignored. Gauguin reduces the peasant women raking hay to the basic shapes of their black-and-white regional dress, presenting their actions as a timeless ritual."

• Claude Gellée, nicknamed 'Lorrain' spent his entire career in Rome, favoring idyllic landscapes set in the town of Tivoli, outside of Rome, "which combined ancient Roman ruins with expansive views of the countryside. More than an accurate depiction, however, Claude sought here to render a general atmosphere."
• Pesellino specialized in small-scale pictures for private devotion. The Annunciation was a common theme for such works. In this piece, "the angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary outside her chamber, telling her she will soon give birth to the son of God."
• Pieter Bruegel "depicts the story of Mary, Joseph and their infant son Jesus on their way to Egypt, fleeing persecution. However, Bruegel sets the scene in a dramatic European landscape, perhaps recalling his experience of crossing the Alps." 
• This bust of Mette, Paul Gauguin's "Danish wife, is one of only two marble sculptures he ever made. The other is of their son Emil. The finely ruffled collar and gap between collar and neck demonstrate a level of technique surprising in someone with no formal sculptural training." 

The National Gallery

Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalizing an existing royal art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1824. And it grew and grew from there later spinning off the Tate Gallery. Some of the highlights (for us) are:

• Hendrick Avercamp's  "A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle". This busy winter scene, reflects the unusually cold winters Holland experienced in the 17C. 
• Andrea Mantegna's "Samson and Delilah" with Delilah cutting Samson's hair as he sleeps with his head in her lap. "The painting imitates ancient Roman relief sculpture. The boldly patterned marble background suggests the dawn sky.'"
•  Van Dyck's "The Balbi Children".  "Their intricately ornamented attire and elegant bearing suggest their high birth." 
• Jan van Eyck's "The Arnolfini Portrait" ... "probably shows Giovanni Arnolfini, a wealthy Italian merchant resident in Bruges, and his wife. ...The painting is signed on the wall above the mirror, 'Jan van Eyck was here'."

• Claude Monet's "Snow Scene at Argenteuil". "It evokes the cold winter atmosphere through a steely palette of blues and greys, occasionally given depth by sharp accents of colour."
• Vincent van Gogh's "Farms near Auvers,"  "A row of dilapidated farm buildings dominates this picture, made a month before the artist's death. Their shapes are mimicked by the fields and hills behind. The hasty brushwork and blank sky suggest that the painting is unfinished."

• "Coastal Scene" by Théo van Rysselberghe, a Belgian artist who adopted the pointillist painting technique of Georges Seurat. 

The Museum of Natural History

Another museum close to our apartment is the Natural History Museum. IThe building is gorgeous. In front of the entrance is the Nature Discovery Garden. Below are two views of the building and a small Wollemi pine tree, once thought to be extinct until being found in Australia in 1994...see story below. 

Here is the story of the Wollemi pine tree.

There are fine carvings and sculptures of animals. Some as design details on the building and some as parts of exhibits. Below: Monkey on a column inside the museum, bird carving on panels inside, a mini dinosaur replica, a Pterodactyl on the outside of the building, and a small furry creature (maybe 6 inches long) that lived 200 million years ago and is one of the earliest known mammals.

This sign displayed in the Nature Discovery Garden tells the story of the 79 feet long Diplidocus (long necked dinosaur)

We enjoyed this display of Macaws, the suspended skeleton of a Blue Whale, and a slice of a sequoia was a seedling in the year 557 and was felled at the age of 1335.