National Gallery, London

‘You’re the National Gallery, You’re Garbo’s salary…

…You’re cellophane…’ says Cole Porter in the song ‘You’re the top’,* rustling up superlatives, but keeping part of his tongue in his cheek.§ One of the superlative stars of the Boris Anrep mosaics in the National Gallery foyer is Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, whose face – and hairstyle – are based on those of Greta Garbo. Garbo was so famous for being famous, so well known for being able to name her price when it came to a starring role in a movie, so notorious for wanting to reject the trappings of fame (‘I want to be let alone’†), that it’s easy to forget how good an actress she was. Boris Anrep, who had an eye for female beauty, must have found her face captivating but, an artist himself,. no doubt responded to her art too.

A couple of weeks before the virus made travel unwise, let alone proscribed, I spent a short while in the National Gallery looking at some Dutch paintings, and made what has become a habitual stop to look at the mosaics on my way out. They have become for me one of the symbols of what this blog is about. That’s to say, they’re not architecture, but one of the adjuncts to or enhancements of architecture; they’re fun and a bit whacky (people playing cricket and Christmas puddings sit near Apollo and the Muses), and they’re not much noticed.

Now the gallery routes visitors in via another entrance, the mosaics are on the way out and people think as they leave that they are done with art and are making singlemindedly for the door. When people did come in this way, they were heading singlemindedly for the galleries, so didn’t notice the mosaics then either. Now of course the gallery is closed to visitors, no one sees them at all and Garbo, along with Anrep’s other models (Virginia Woolf, Anna Akhmatova, Edith Sitwell, Bertrand Russell, and the rest), are let alone at last.

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* From the musical Anything Goes, 1934.

§ Cellophane? Well, although it was invented in 1908, Cellophane was only licensed for US distribution in 1923. An enhanced version of 1927 made it waterproof and suitable for wrapping food. So in 1934, when the Porter song appeared, it was still a modern wonder-material.

† Which everyone remembers as ‘I want to be alone,’ because the actress was later given this line in the film Grand Hotel. Thanks to the Resident Wise Woman, my go-to authority on Garbo (and much else) for helping me get that straight.

National Gallery, London

 Season’s Greetings  

It is time once more for me to say ‘Happy Christmas’ to my readers. I know no better architectural way of doing this than with the floor mosaic of a Christmas pudding, by Boris Anrep, from London’s National Gallery. Regular readers may feel that the Christmas pudding mosaic is an old friend, and I’ve written about these mosaics in an earlier post. So for now I’ll add one further panel from Anrep’s National Gallery mosaics, one that I’ve not posted before, to express the hope that your lives be filled with wonder this Christmas.

National Gallery, London

Architectural delicacy

One of my most popular posts of 2016 has been the one I did back in August on the floor mosaics by Boris Anrep at the National Gallery in London. These lovely floors in the old gallery foyer, hardly noticed by many gallery-goers who are, not unnaturally, keen to look at what's on the walls, are a project of the 1920s by an artist (a Russian who had settled in England) making his name in the medium of mosaic. My earlier post concentrated on their wealth of contemporary portraits – Anrep's friends and acquaintances pose as personifications of virtues or pleasures, or as the nine Muses, and they're mostly a cross-section of cultural London, from Bertrand Russell to Margot Fonteyn. They contain more than a hint of the exotic, but many of their subjects are quintessentially English, as if Anrep is paying homage to the qualities of his adopted country. The pleasures of life include universals such as Dance (this being the 1920s, it's the Charleston) or Speed (an invigorating ride on a motorcycle), but also very traditional British activities such as hunting, football, and cricket. One of the most British of all is the seasonal delicacy shown above.

Christmas pudding, for my non-British readers, is a very rich concoction containing a lot of dried fruit, sweet spices, and alcohol. It is traditionally decorated with a sprig of holly and when served it is doused in spirits which are set alight, hence the flames in the mosaic. I am one of those who think Christmas is pudding is very much one of the pleasures of life, and I'm rather touched that the Russian Anrep thought fit to include this British dish in one of his mosaics. I offer it with all my best wishes to my readers everywhere. Thank you for reading the blog this year, and may you have an enjoyable festive season, wherever you are.

National Gallery, London

The floor is yours…

We often don’t give much thought to the interiors of art galleries. It’s what’s on the walls that counts, and that holds our attention. But there are some galleries in London with architecture or decoration that repays a good look. If you’ve ever cast an eye down as you’ve entered the National Gallery and made your way through the old foyer (it’s no longer the building’s main entrance) you’ll know what I mean. The mosaic floors are a sight for sore eyes, and a fascinating window on a past world. Their story* is interesting too…

In 1926 the Russian (but British-resident) mosaic artist Boris Anrep, was disappointed when an expected commission from the industrialist and art collector Samuel Cortauld didn’t materialise. Cortauld was sympathetic, and said that if Anrep ever had a project in a public building he’d back it financially. The canny Anrep went straight to the National Gallery and said he had a potential patron – why didn’t they commission him to make a series of mosaic floors for the building’s entrance hall? The gallery was enthusiastic, so Anrep went back to Cortauld and said he’d found a project. Cortauld backed Anrep even though the cost turned out to be some ten times the donation he’d originally expected to give, and the mosaicist was launched on the most high-profile project of his life.

Anrep planned and executed a series of three floors (there was later a fourth, sponsored by a different benefactor), each involving a complex design with several mosaic panels. The subjects were The Labours of Life, The Pleasures of Life, and The Awakening of the Muses; the later fourth floor portrayed The Modern Virtues. The Pleasures included Dance (a girl dancing the Charleston) and Speed (another young woman, this time riding pillion on a motorcycle), and also Hunting, Football, and Cricket. The Labours are such things as Commerce (a market porter carrying baskets), Science (a figure in the Natural History Museum), Exploring (filming a zebra), and Engineering (a man wielding a drill). Anrep (one for serial affairs) could not resist including Sacred Love as a Labour and Profane Love as a Pleasure.

On the half-way landing is the third of the original three mosaic floors: The Awaking of the Muses, in which Apollo and Bacchus preside. The figures here (as in many of the other mosaics) are based on real people that Anrep knew. Euterpe the Muse of music, for example, is Christabel, Lady Aberconway, beloved of William Walton and dedicatee of his viola concerto. Clio is Virginia Woolf, Terpsichore the ballerina Lydia Lopokova, Melpomene is Greta Garbo.

Fred Hoyle reaches for the stars: Pursuit

The fourth mosaic floor, The Modern Virtues in the North Vestibule, is also full of portraits: Defiance is Winston Churchill repelling a monster, Lucidity is philosopher Bertrand Russell, Pursuit the astronomer Fred Hoyle. Two of Anrep’s own loves are here too: the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova† is Compassion and Maud Russell (below), patron of this fourth floor, is Folly. This lovely mosaic portrait is perhaps a private joke, referring to Anrep’s and Russell’s folie à deux.

Maud Russell personifies Folly

I’ve not listed all the portraits – and there’s so much else here: a resplendent Christmas pudding, a pub sign (yes, these are very British subjects), a harpsichord (being played by the Hon Edward Sackville-West while Margot Fonteyn listens (photograph at the top of this post). That scene represents Delectation (a pleasure of life, obviously). And I hope I have convinced you that there is much here for your delectation too. The consistent clarity of Anrep’s line (in a medium that hardly seems to encourage it), the telling use of colour (the huntsman’s ruddy face, for example, is terrific), the period touches (cigarette holders, the old-fashioned football), the range of poses, the use of frames and borders. It’s a set of pictures fit to stand beside those in the gallery, and a fitting prelude to London’s palace of art.

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*Lois Oliver, Boris Anrep: The National Gallery Mosaics (National Gallery London, 2004) tells their story in detail.

†Anna Akhmatova (pronounce the name with the stress on the second syllable): one of Russia’s great 20th-century poets, much translated into English. She and Anrep were close when they were young, but did not see one another for decades once Anrep had left for western Europe. They met again in old age. A number of Akhmatova’s early lyrics were dedicated to Anrep; these poems are in her volume White Flock; most of what I know of her life is from the biography by Amanda Haight, Anna Akhmatova: A Poetic Pilgrimage.

St Martin's Lane and Trafalgar Square, London

A new view (1)

For many years I worked in London’s Covent Garden, and day after day I passed Trafalgar Square and the Georgian church of St Martin in the Fields on my way to and from the office. I’d always admired St Martin’s, which is one of the most influential churches in the history of English architecture. It was created in the 1720s by James Gibbs, who in his design tackled headlong the question of how to build a church with both a columned classical portico and a steeple. These two elements, the one Greek or Roman, the other English, didn’t rightly belong together, and Gibbs combined them by simply sticking one behind and above the other. It ought not to work, having a tower emerging out of the top of a Roman portico like this, but it does, somehow, or we are so used to St Martin’s, and the many churches built in imitation of it, that we don’t see any incongruity any more. And the whole thing is now a London landmark, its steeple – with its square tower and octagonal spire and its marvellous rhythm of arches and circles – dominating its corner of the great square.

Having admired this church for years, I’d never photographed it, partly because there seemed to be no adequate viewpoint. Too near, and you can’t get it in the frame; farther away and you end up with a picture full of red buses and dashing pedestrians. Then the other week I was coming out of the National Gallery and at the top of the gallery steps spotted this view, which encompasses the whole façade without letting the buses spoil one’s view of the architecture. Finally I appreciate the National Gallery for something other than the paintings.