Another day of culture (apart from the Wetherspoons full english for breakfast). In the morning we visited the Wallace Collection which seemed to be old masters and armour although several galleries were closed. The picture above shows one of the galleries, the building is as interesting as the paintings.
We particularly like paintings by David Teniers (1610 – 1690) who paints ordinary life in Holland with a little humour, we first noticed his pictures in France a couple of years ago. This picture “The Smokers” has someone urinating in the corner.
Then a nice cycle ride through Hyde Park to Tate Britain for an exhibition of Turner's work.
I always imagined his paintings were like the examples above “Rain, Steam and Speed” and “The Fighting Temerarie tugged to her last berth”
but his earlier paintings were more detailed and were often subjects from the wars against the French. Two examples were a depiction of the deck of the Victory at the battle of Trafalgar and another of the battle of Waterloo. Both events whipped up jingoistic euphoria in Britain but Turners paintings emphasised the loss of life and were not glorifying war, very unusual for the time. An interesting afternoon.
Not sure what we are doing tomorrow, we are now off for hopefully a nice Greek dinner.