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 ?
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Wow-effect in the Grand Hall. Architecture by George Basevi, student of Sir John Soane, plus Cockerell and E.M. Barry.
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Cornelis Cornelisz of Haarlem, forerunner of Mannerism. Strangely the Dutch 17th C is thin on the ground!
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Another lost Dutchman: Maarten van Heemskerk, Self-portrait with Colosseum, 1553. Yes he traveled there.
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Early Italian renaissance art, alas lacking the grand names of the period, but still excellent study material for students.
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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.
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In front a Virgin Dolorosa, by Pedro de mean. In the back more Spanish art, including the pink El Greco.
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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.
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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.
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Etruria, c. 100 BCE. Funerary couch (body in wood reconstructed) with attached animal bone fragments, carefully assembled 1974. Late Etruscan or early Roman.
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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!
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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.
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Spencer, Love on the Moor, 1949-1954. with themes such as sexuality, worship, the sacred presence in Cookham.
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Eliah Walton, desert landscape with Tombs of the Sultan near Cairo, 1865. He wrote a book on The Camel.