Saturday 26th March 2022

A Peruvian Exhibition was given at the British Museum. There was a preoccupation with severed heads. The blanket work was charming but not to be trifled with. Persons were depicted as monkeys and composed of squares. In the ceramic area there was also excellence. A vessel sprouting scallops was a striking oddity. But I think one would fear the Incas.

At Kensington Palace an exhib opened on the theme of Royal photography. Intriguing but a little incidental. We know how the iconography of Royalty has thrived through photography and that Royalty were photographers themselves from earliest days. Queen Alexandra’s Box Brownie album – utter Heaven. Tiny snaps of shapes on yachts which the captions inform are the Empress Minnie, a clutch of half-baked Wales girls etc. In the exhib I loved the Cecil Beaton of the Winz with their pugs and the Princess Alix of Wales with one of her children on her back – so new in its informality. Also Queen Victoria knitting with Princess Beatrice in their private sitting room, which towers around them in monumental grandeur but stuffed with knick-knacks. Queen Mary visiting the less fortunate – surprising the deep care on her face, her closeness to those she has come to care for. But her fabulous Royal shape, a lampstand gone mad, in utter evidence.

An evening function opened privately a selection of prints and drawings from the collection of Sir John Soane at the Soane Museum. Royston thought the world of the John Soane museum as reflected in the guests invited open to question – only a small corner of the world represented, not even Guardian-reading. Giving her speech, the curator of the exhib was overcome with coughing. Amazingly the room didn’t empty. Her claim to asthma was readily embraced. Later Royston encouraged her to take over the V&A with a bigger exhib. The actual show was superbly selective: just the one Grinling Gibbons drawing. The Piranesi was amazingly wild and uncharacteristic. Of huge interest were the architectural drawings Soane devised for teaching purposes, technical but giving a flavour of a place the student could not hope to see.

We didn’t dine after this exhib. Royston had been in committee all day and pronounced dining after finished as a thing.

Peruvian Blanket Work

A Peruvian Table Piece

The Winz with their Pug by Cecil

Out-takes from a Shoot thought Too Intimate for Publication at the Time

Princess Alix with Back Baby – Daring and New in Its Day 

Incredibly Informal – Queen Victoria Knitting in Her Private Sitting Room with Princess Beatrice – Note the Gruelling Informality of the Private Sitting Room 

Queen Mary – So Caring

Her Late Majesty Queen Mary – A dazzling Glimpse of Her Care and Intimacy

Sir John Soane’s Realisation of Stonehenge for his Students Who Could not Visit it

Uncharacteristic Piranese

Robert Adam – a Design for the Drawing Room Ceiling at Harewood House