Dulwich Picture Gallery

Despite living close by for almost four years, I had failed to make it to Dulwich Picture Gallery until last weekend (I am closer to the Horniman Museum, you see). Dulwich Picture Gallery is the oldest public art gallery in England, and it's been open to the public since 1817 (more history here). The building was designed by Sir John Soane. 

  

The gallery has paintings, furniture and... other things (what do you classify vases and clocks as? Homewares sounds like a department in BHS). The building's a lot lighter than you might expect.

(If you look closely at the penultimate picture there it's a view of inside the gallery, and you can see a version of the last picture - some of the details, such as the weird lion, were only discovered in later cleaning, so it doesn't look exactly the same)

Oh, and finally, outside the gallery there's a rather odd phone box...

While on balance I'm still more loyal to the Horniman (they have an aquarium in the basement, which basically trumps pretty much everything), I'm really glad that we went on this walk, and DPG a small gallery that doesn't feel crowded the way the bigger ones up in town can. I'd recommend it if you're in the area, and if it's a nice day you're only over the road from Dulwich Park. 

Website: http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/

Dulwich Photography Walk

Last weekend Crishna and I went on a photography walk in Dulwich organised by Dulwich OnView, an online magazine that celebrates people and culture in South East London.

Luckily, it was a lovely day. A small group of us started off at Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Crishna and I went off through Dulwich Park in the direction of some street art we were interested in (pictures below).

The first bit of art we found was near Dulwich Library by Nunca, and it's a giant bee holding a load of mugs of tea. And she's on a throne, but I only just realised that when I read the description. 

We then went to Goodrich Road to see a piece by someone calling themselves Phlegm. Lovely. 

There's an online map here showing where the rest of the artworks are - I will be doing this as soon as I have a chance. 

We also took some general photos around Dulwich, although we only had an hour for the first walk so it was quite quick. We got back to the photo gallery in time, though, and had some lunch (yay) and photo discussion, followed by a wander around the gallery.

(Picture gallery photos in the next post)

Tree Trail

I decided my pictures were good enough to post, although I did just go through them going 'that's a tree, that's a tree, so's that...'. Basically what I'm saying is that it's a good idea to do this walk with someone who knows about trees. I have enthusiasm for trees and plants but nooooo idea what I'm looking at, so I went out with my stepmum this morning :-).

The tree trail was developed for the City of London Festival, a series of free events/things that is now mostly over, sadly. Still, it will be around next year and if you download the map for the tree trail you can do it whenever.

http://www.colf.org/whats-on/704-tree-trail

There are a few different trails to choose from on the map - Lesley and I went for the 2-mile walk, and for some reason we started near the end and worked backwards (it made sense at the time, I swear), and I've not posted photos of all of them as some of them really do just look like...trees.

I am not very good at this nature stuff.

ANYWAY, the first place we went was Cleary Gardens, which I recommend at any time because it is a lovely little oasis in the middle of a lot of very big buildings. It's off Queen Victoria Street, and I should probably do a whole separate entry for it. The tree here is a Swamp Cypress, apparently.

 

(the little house in this picture is an insect habitat)

There are Elms on Queen Victoria Street:

Gingko Bilobas on the footpath up to St Paul's Cathedral:

A tulip tree (apparently) outside the Old Bailey:

A fig tree at West Smithfield Rotunda Garden:

(you can just about see some figs in the second picture)

A huuuuuuge Sweet Gum outside St Paul's Cathedral:

And a London Plane just off Cheapside (also huuuuuge):