London Calling: The View From Saturday

Throughout the course of my art history class, we are studying the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the ways that it changed the British Art world. In the 1800s, the Royal Academy Schools ruled the art world, including the painting styles, colors, and techniques. A student at the academy was restricted not only on his subject matter, but on the colors of paint and even the brush he used, based on his age and grade. In 1848, a group of 7 rebellious, young painters and writers formed a secret society. Believing that art went wrong with Raphael (and the Renaissance), they refered to themselves as Pre-Raphaelites and strove to achieve art resembling that of medieval art. Their subject matter was Biblical stories, Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, and other poems, including anything with a moral story. These painters would mix their own colors and paint subjects that the academy would not allow. While the Brotherhood only lasted a few years, the Pre-Raphaelite thought persisted. For our class trip a couple of weeks ago, our tutor took us up to Oxford for the day. It was a packed day, but our guide was lucky enough to get us into some great places to see the remains of some of the Pre-Raphaelite art, mostly in stained glass.

The library below was a very special privelege for us. Usually only Oxford students are allowed in, but our guide pulled some strings. The library is the building on the right in the picture below. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burnes Jones, and William Morris painted the murals on the ceiling. However, having no experience painting frescoes, their work has mostly faded or chipped away.

I could be an Oxford student...

Last weekend, we finally decided to book tickets for the London Eye. It is a giant, slow-moving ferris wheel that overlooks the Thames, Houses of Parliament, Westminster, and a good portion of London. We originally wanted to take a sunset "flight," so we could catch the views both in the daylight and at night. However, since it was a Saturday, the line was so long that by the time we boarded, the sun had already set. It was beautiful, but the glass/plastic windows reflected the flash of our cameras, so we were left with either very blurry pictures, or under-exposed pictures (an example of each is below).

The picture below is possibly the best of my batch, but the colors are not nearly as vibrant as in-person. I guess that is one of the limitations of cameras. I tried a different setting for the second picture below, but it turned out very blurry. Still a little artsy, right?

This weekend, my Shakespeare class took a day-trip to Stratford on Avon to see the Bard's birthplace, grave, his daughter's house, and his mother's house. While it was a good trip, sometimes I feel like restoration societies try to make too much out of what they have... The house in the first picture is of his Birthplace.