Ecce Ancilla Domini - Rosetti
AKA "Couldn't you afford a whole bunch?"
For some reason, on a wild whim I took a trip to Tate Britain today. I decided to drive as
a) No congestion charge on a Saturday
b) Some little known free parking slots right by the side of the gallery
c) The gallery is free too! (nothing to do with driving but there we go!)
Pulling up I reflected on a hypothetically similar situation from the 1880's when an equivalent art
lover would have alighted from his or her version of my carriage, horses snorting and sweating
almost as much as their passengers on this pseudo mediterranean summer day.
Confession : I've never felt as though I truly belong in London. I imagine "Old hand" cosmopolitans pointing accusing fingers at my (imagined as highly visible) city novice inexperience. Then, however when I go I mentally admit, somewhat reluctantly, at how vibrant varied and jam packed with interesting places and
people it is and feel moments of almost superiority recalling that both my father and mother were born in the Greater London area after all, the former starting in 1899!! just 3 years after Millais death!
To the crux of the matter however and I found myself idly wandering through the "1500 to 1900" British art section on the first floor looking vaguely like an art critic. Moving from room to room there were glimpses both aural and visual of incongruously loud and modern fanzine photocopying sessions occurring in some of the great exhibition spaces. Earnest looking children in turquoise tee shirts scuttled about piling pamphlets into
publically accessible shelves in which only "they" were actually interested, quite bizarre...is it not possible to have a "Normal" reverential gallery atmosphere without some former art students' idea of "Integrating the community":)
After a while though the hypnotic pull of the preraphaelite room (14) became irresistable.
Startlingly simply put; there it was!...the painting I have idolised as my first and best glimpse of art in an old childrens encyclopaedia when I was around 10. Millais' Ophelia!..I ventured as close as I could without actually licking the glass. :) Simply breathtaking and doubly so as I imagined myself in the same proximity as the great man would have been when painting it. A type of superimposition of the revered ghost on my own body..shiveringly exciting....next to this to add glorious agony to why I had not visited for centuries..."Mariana" also by Millais, "Christ in the House of his Parents" , "Ecce Ancilla Domini" -Rosetti, as well as numerous Holman Hunts etc.
In the next room a group of extravagently dressed partygoers were revelling in a private tour including enormous and considerably more coarse, almost impressionistic Millais' like "Hearts are Trumps", (recently restored superbly)..they were like a grown up Sunday School outing, off to have cucumber sandwiches and "Tiffin" afterwards, quaint in it's own way though..the things you see when you don't use your phone camera! :)
Hearts are Trumps - Millais
