My delivery shift today was in Cambridge. So I took the opportunity, once finished, to park in town, and visit The Fitz, for another look at their current William Blake show.
Our previous visit was great. But not sufficient to properly take it all in. On the walk from the car park to The Fitz, there’s loads of triffick architecture. Here are a few snaps:
The above door is opposite Pembroke. I’m not sure which College it belongs to. I’m assuming it’s part of the all powerful University? Could it be part of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science? I don’t think it’s part of the Museum of Zoology…
We love the chimney stack along this road. So grand, and yet so much a thing of their times.
And so, to the Fitzwilliam Museum itself. First port of call, the subterranean toilet block. Just as I enter the latter, a stream of young foreign students exit, one of whom says ‘hello!’, in a rather impish manner. Young scamps!
The above sculpture is placed just outside the loos. Wonder what the subject would make of his situation now?
I love the (?) ceramics. And I’ve had numerous postcards of his work over the years. I may even have a wee book (poss’ from the Shire series?) or summat like it, on him? I hadn’t realised that this particular design was slightly 3-D!
The above is a wooden Bodhisattva. Looking very relaxed, despite missing his right hand and poss also his right foot.
And finally, to the show itself… William Blake…
I took another snap o’ this ‘cause I am one of the Lustful. And I was intrigued by my Dantean Doom.
This pair of prints is interesting. Separated by many years, and based on the work of another artist, what I particularly like is how Blake develops the detail of the setting. Which is entirely his own contribution. The original source is the figure alone.
The exhibition as a whole is great for setting Blake in the context of his times, amongst his peers. And showing such things as the veneration of classicism in art education, at that period. How Blake reacts to it all over time is fascinating.
There are some very intriguing prints in the show which illustrate Blake’s, erm… commercial illustration work. The above is one such. And it’s doubly fascinating, because it’s one of several he contributed to a work about slavery in British Guiana.
My wife’s family are from Guyana. A legacy of the slave trade, returned to British shores.
Blake was very much anti-slavery. Although the book for which this and other illustrations by him were commissioned wasn’t published as an anti-slavery work – the author (a former soldier) had been complicit in putting down slave results – it was adopted by the movement on account of its unvarnished accounts of the brutality of slavery.
On leaving The Fitz, the eye is once again constantly arrested by architectural splendour and beauty.
In addition to the several Colleges along Trumpington St, there are many churches. Further into town it becomes Kings Parade, then Senate House Hill. All of which feel, to the pedestrian, like a single street.
If you take Great St. Mary’s, on Senate House Hill, as a start or end point, and work backwards towards the Fitz, there’s an ecclesiastical embarrassment of riches, including such jewels as King’s College Chapel, St Botolph’s, and the above pictured Emmanuel, which is right beside Little St. Mary’s, this last of which has an enchanting graveyard/garden.
I then met Teresa, at Heffers bookshop. Whilst waiting for her I had a brief look over this:
I bought a set of 10 Bill Blake postcards, from The Fitz. I’m massively tempted by two Blake books: the exhibition catalogue, and a Complete Illuminated Manuscripts.
And, as a final money-saving thought. Next time, Park & Ride and buses! Parking in The Grand Arcade cost me just under £10! Street parking opposite The Fitz is insanely expensive, at £7.20 per hour!