Fitzwilliam-museum Cambridge - Private Art Tours

Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, the University Museum.

“One of the best museums of the UK.”

HUGE list of museums for digital visits via my photo files + Zoom.

Covid 19 / Corona times, plan B. Difficult to enter museums these days ! However, I can make an appointment with you to do a Zoom visit through my wonderful photo collection made inside this wonderful museum. I will be your live Guide during this private art class presentation.

Initially open only to University students and faculty staff, with the exception 3x a week for “well dressed” persons. Now open to anyone. Please book a time slot ticket for yourself and for the guide. New: Private Audio system available.

The entry into the “Fitz” main entrance hall is a wonderful experience: an impressive shower of marvellous marble, and stately stairwells leads one up and up to impress the visitor. A breathtaking experience. Upstairs another impressive hall with statues and grand paintings. Then in various wings left and right are wonderful collections. Italian, English art including Pre-Raphaelite, Archaeology, everything first class. Well presented and well explained.

Minuses: Where are the Dutch masters? And way too many glass objects and second rate metal objects exhibited in the lower section.

In a few years, in better situations, I can fly in for personally and be your guide there and then. Do we make a trip to the museums in Middle England? Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester ?

Wow-effect in the Grand Hall. Architecture by George Basevi, student of Sir John Soane, plus Cockerell and E.M. Barry.

Charles V, by an unknown painter.

Cornelis Cornelisz of Haarlem, forerunner of Mannerism. Strangely the Dutch 17th C is thin on the ground!

Another lost Dutchman: Maarten van Heemskerk, Self-portrait with Colosseum, 1553. Yes he traveled there.

Nicholas Hilliard, miniature Portrait of Henry Wriothesley. 1594.

Grand Italian Renaissance art, Veronese, Titian, Palma il Vecchio, plus period furniture.

Early Italian renaissance art, alas lacking the grand names of the period, but still excellent study material for students.

Frederic lord Leighton, portrait of Caroline Isabella Laing, 1853, a romantic friendship with much restraint, as Leighton seemed to have been a-sexual. Food for thought in our days.

In front a Virgin Dolorosa, by Pedro de mean. In the back more Spanish art, including the pink El Greco.

John Everett Millais, The Bridesmaid, 1851. Her trick is to pass a wedding cake through her ring nine times, in order to get a Vision of her future beloved.

French classic art with in the center Nicolas Poussin, Extreme Unction. This is one of the seven sacraments. Performed by a priest with two acolytes, the onlooking family struck with grief.

Rodin, Torso of a Young Girl, close to the Impressionist gallery.

Etruria, c. 100 BCE. Funerary couch (body in wood reconstructed) with attached animal bone fragments, carefully assembled 1974. Late Etruscan or early Roman.

Stanley Spencer, above: nude portrait of Patricia Preece, a nude model and for a short time his wife. Below: self portrait with Patricia Preece. Quite an in-your-face approach!

Stanley Spencer, Self-portrait. 1939. Part of a series made between 1914-1959.

Stanley Spencer, above: Love among the Nations 1935-36 recalling Mostar and Sarajevo; and above Love on the Moor, 1949-1954. with themes such as sexuality, worship, the sacred presence in Cookham.