art today

I took a day off from the garden (didn't miss anything as it rained all day here) and managed to catch a couple of exhibitions I wanted to see in London before they ended.  As I yomped over from Liverpool Street to the West End I made sure I swung north of St. Pauls to take in the Elizabeth Frink statue of the shepherd and his flock and Temple Bar.

New to me is Asia House, which is showing The Tiger in Asian Art until 12th February.  This is not a large exhibition, but fascinating, assuming you like Asian art, and tigers.  Admission is free, though there are collecting boxes for tiger conservation projects.  The building, an eighteenth century town house in New Cavendish Street W1, is charming, and the high-ceilinged cafe looked an oasis of calm if you should happen to want somewhere to meet a friend north of Oxford Street.

Running until 23rd January at the National Portrait Gallery is an exhibition of the work of Regency portrait painter Thomas Lawrence.  This is an absolute delight and I can see why the papers gave it rave reviews.  Lawrence's portraits are extraordinarily lively.  A couple of his young ladies make recent sexed-up Jane Austen adaptations look quite understated, staring directly at the viewer with a very saucy gaze.  Field Marshall Blucher stands on the field of battle, arm outstretched, with a big moustache (and very shiny boots), looking every inch the man who breakfasted on raw garlic and gin.  It is easy to imagine Richard Payne Knight, with protruding lower lip, receding chin, and eyes cast querulously upward, spending his time building a grotto and rustic bridges in his estate in rural Herefordshire and complaining about Repton; harder to imagine that his first published book was 'The Worship of Priapus'.  Lawrence was a flatterer, making some of his standing figures impossibly tall long before John Singer Sergent,and you would never guess from her portrait that poor Princess Sophia was 48.  I did become slightly fixated in the last room or two on how lavishly Lawrence used the colour red.  Constable made do with the odd red waistcoat in the middle distance, but Lawrence has red uniforms, red velvet suits,puts women in red dresses, or seats his subjects on red chairs or surrounded by red curtains and draperies.  Still, his pictures would have brightened the place up.  Well worth a last-minute dash to see it.