Tea, Blooming Marvellous!

The sharp eyed amongst you will spot here that this wasn't yesterday. Half past six and dark outside? These pictures were taken way back in December when I decided I would treat myself to a cup of tea.

The I Heart Cafe at the top of Leith walk in Edinburgh not only does excellent food but takes great care over their tea. But one of their jars of tea contains such unusual stuff that I felt inclined to order some from Eteaket teas. I'm sure the people in the Eteaket warehouse must just have been sitting around after the Christmas rush because this was falling through my letter box almost instantly (actually the postman knocked on the door as it just wasn't letter box sized).

The Chocolate Abyss is also an interesting tea, with it's bits of coconut, which I'm sure you're unlikely to have tasted the likes of before, but it's not what this blog is about. The tea of the moment here is called Blooming Marvellous and it certainly lives up to it's name. Eteaket's website says of it, "In our Blooming Marvellous tea, flavoured Sencha green leaf is expertly coupled with bright mallow and sunflower petals, exquisite rosebuds, vanilla and fresh, tangy fruit. This lively blend will be sure to put a smile on your face and a spring in your step." I say, stick your nose in there, it smells of marshmallows.

Now here's a clever idea, fillable teabags. At last, no more guddling about with loose tea leaves - it really did discourage me away from anything that didn't come in a bag already and so many interesting teas only come loose.

Water - not quite boiled according to the website - who am I to argue.

This is the difficult bit - three minutes of patience.

Tick tick tick........

Then it's time to pour.......

......and drink.

Quite lovely.

Could it be a slight underestimation to suggest that tea has been mentioned in these pages before. I'm not alone in my liking of it though. Dr Johnson, who could not open his mouth without saying something quotable, seemed to run on it,

“Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?”

He seemed to have passed his habit on to his biographer, James Boswell,

 “I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy. ” 

More recently in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent is faced with a potential emergency

“Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realised what it was.

"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.” 

And last, but not least, I leave you with a little bit of Kenneth Green's Wind in the Willows.

“When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.” 

Which is probably more of a toast quote, but there again, man cannot live on tea alone.

More of my paintings

A couple of posts ago I showed some Scottish pictures, or at least with a Scottish connection, from the National Gallery of Scotland which is now allowing people to take photographs. Today here are some more pictures from the same visit but this time of a more international flavour.

For the duration of the year, Auguste Rodin's Kiss is on loan from the Tate. This is one of three large marble versions of this sculpture. The first was made as a commission from the French Government, who even provided the block of marble, for their 1989 Exhibition Universelle. It was late and first appeared in public in 1898. This version, also made by Rodin, was commissioned by Edward Perry Warren for 20000 francs. When he received it in 1904, he found it was too big for his house and had to live in his stables. In 1914 he lent it to the Lewes town council to be displayed in the town hall but there was a certain amount of complaint that it might excite troops billeted in the town at the time and it was returned to Warren in 1917. It eventually found it's way into the Tate in London where it can be seen when it's not appearing elsewhere.

The sculpture, tells a tale from Dante's Inferno, it features Francesca de Rimini who was married to Giovanni Malatesta. This is not he, it is his younger brother Paolo, who has fallen in love with his sister in law while reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. The book is just slipping from his hand as he is about to kiss Francesca, but their lips do not touch on the statue as it was just at that moment that they were discovered.

Across the hall from the Rodin, you can see them in the first picture, are these three paintings by Francois Boucher. They are, from left to right, "L'aimable Pastorale", "L'offrande a la Village", and "La Jardiniere Endormie" - I'm sure your go at translating the French is every bit as good as my efforts would be, so I'll leave that with you. They were all painted in 1761 and 62 and owned by the Marchal de Saincy who used them to decorate their Paris home in the late 18th century. All three pictures have been known to have been cut down since.

There are two sets of rooms upstairs in the gallery. In the one at the back, which the staff call the back bedroom, the impressionists are to be found. These Three Tahitians were painted by Paul Gauguin in 1899.

There are several paintings by Edgar Degas. These ballet dancers are a common subject for him.

Degas also made a number of little bronzes which are of similar subjects to his paintings. The gallery has one of a ballet dancer and this young lady having a bath (another common subject for his paintings)

Poplars on the River Epte painted sometime in 1891 by Claude Monet.

I'm not really a Van Gogh fan but from time to time he paints a picture which I like better than the rest. There are three at least in the collection and here are two of them. This is Orchards in Blossom (Plum Trees), Arles from 1888.

And Olive Trees from 1889.

"Pas Meche" by Julien Bastien-Lapage. According to the label, the title is short for "Il n'y a pas Meche" which means, "there is nothing doing". The boy is probably a barge boy with his whip for driving the horses and the horn on his back would have been used to call the Lock keeper.

Malvina mourning the death of her fiance Oscar by Anne-Louis Girodet

Not so sure about mourning, to me it's the expression of somebody who, listening to music on a Greek hillside, has just realised that, back in Blighty, she's left the iron on.

El Greco's Saviour of the World. It's nearly 400 years since El Greco died but there seems to me to be something much more modern than that in this picture.

Ah Titian. Venus Anadyomene (Venus rising from the sea)

Most of the pictures we see in the galleries around the country are indeed ours (or at least the Brits amongst you - I'm sure the Americans and other nations have their own pictures). It isn't for no reason that the BBC have titled their website of the countries paintings, Your Pictures. How good my Titian of Venus would look in my garret. I think though, I might be stretching the boundaries of mine if I was to pop round and suggest it was my shot to have it for a week or two. At least they let me take pictures of it now.

Not all the pictures in the gallery are owned by me and it is not unreasonable to ask us not to photograph these. One of my favourite paintings in the gallery is Titian's Three Stages of Man which was bought by the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. His descendants have passed this and the rest of his art collection on to the National Gallery of Scotland to look after and display, which is very kind of them considering just what you could get for them on a good afternoon at Christies. Even if it was mine, The Three Stages of Man is a bit larger then Venus and might not fit in the garret all that well. Here's the painting on the Galleries own  website.

Another picture from the Bridgewater collection that is on display is one of Rembrandt's excellent self portraits (see it here). He painted himself many times over the course of his life. This Rembrandt of a lady in bed does belong in the main collection.

A wintery mix

On my travels I occasionally drive up a wee bit of the Ayrshire coast, where you get a good view of the Isle of Arran. The Arran hills, the tallest of which is Goat Fell at 2866 feet, are often called the Sleeping Warrior due to the way they appeared from the mainland and when I passed in march they looked good with their dusting of snow. The last remnants of Winter I thought.

It seems that I was quite wrong about that one. Winter returned with avengeance a few weeks later. I was at work at the time but I was sent these pictures of Kirkcudbright in the snow - I've never seen anything like this much snow there before. 

Amongst the ferries and fishing boats and other sorts of marine vessels that are to be found on the Clyde, these sinister little beasties are often to be spotted sneeking through.

I had a wander out to the 13th century Glenluce Abbey one rather drippy afternoon with a view to waving my Historic Scotland pass about and wandering in, unfortunately I was still a couple of weeks away from opening time so here's a few shots from outside the perimeter.

My little Galloway tour of closed places (I had already admired the locked gates of the Newton Stewart Museum before Glenluce Abbey) then led me to Port William where I spotted some pigs in a backyard. Not common and certainly worth stopping for.

Turns out that these pigs at the Killantrae Burn cottages aren't made from bacon at all, but from oak and carved with a chainsaw.

In celebration of it's history as village piggery, butcher and that rather unpleasant inbetween stage we try to pretend doesn't exist, the cottages have this little fellow hanging outside it.

Port William has a statue, known locally as The Man by Andrew Brown

Mr Brown has some photographs on his website of the making of the sculpture here.

The statue has a plaque which quotes the famous lines, "What is this life, if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?" . To me the fellow is wringing his hands and looks distinctly worried.

It is actually not the original statue, which was made of ferroconcrete and didn't survive very well so a new one was made on bronze. The old statue, also by Andrew Brown (as far as I can see), has been refurbished and is now owned by a local person - a picture of it appears on Wikipedia and it certainly looks a bit more relaxed.

Meanwhile in Castle Douglas, an old unused shop front has been subject to a little decoration.

In my quarter of a century as a chemist, it is still find it is the alchemy of the kitchen which produces the finest results. I'm far from an expert, though I can find my way into a tin of beans and produce a passable jam sandwich (not at the same time). I gathered these ingredients together in a moment of ambition.

....and....Tada!

It's not the greatest ambition a chap could have but I'm really rather fond of macaroni and cheese and this is about the best one I've made (by a country mile - previous attempts at cheese sauce have been quite disastrous).

I shall leave you with a sunset shot of Carlingwark Loch in Castle Douglas.

The National Gallery of Scotland

Set half way along Princes Street, in a small break in the gardens, where a road has been built between the old town and the new town, is the building of The National Gallery of Scotland. It was designed by William Henry Playfair, who designed many buildings in the new town, and opened in 1859.

Since I was a student some years ago in Edinburgh, I've spend many hours wandering around it's halls. It's huge collection, both international and Scottish, but it wasn't until the beginning of this year that they changed there rules to allow photographs, so yesterday I wandered round with my camera and took a great pile of pictures.

Most if the works in the hall below are international, including Rodin's Kiss which is currently on loan from the Tate, but in this blog I'm concentrating on pictures of a Scottish connection.

This picture by Robert Burns (the painter  not the poet) was part of a commission by D.S. Crawford for decorating his tearoom at 70 Princes Street. Since this was just across the road this may be one of the least travelled pictures in the gallery.

Seems like a good excuse to show you a picture of the tearoom from the net.

Most of the William McTaggart  paintings I've seen are seaside paintings, and mostly delightful too. This is A Summer Day at Carnoustie.

Machrihannish Bay, also by Mr McTaggart

Master Baby by William Quiller Orchardson. This is Sir Williams wife, Ellen, and his son, Gordon (minus one sock).

 

There are four wonderful tapestries by Phoebe Anna Traquair who frequently appears on these pages. Due to the glass on the pictures and not being able to stand all that far back, my photos of them are a bit rubbish. This one is taken from the gallery's own website and all four can be seen of this blog.

I did manage to get some close ups.

This painting of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch was painted by Henry Raeburn. The gallery use this painting as one of their main images for merchandise even though it is particularly atypical of Sir Henry's style. A recent article on the BBC suggests that it may not have been painted by him at all.

This portrait of Mrs Robert Scott Moncrieff and his famous portrait of Sir Walter Scott are much nearer his usual style.

A generation before Raeburn one of the great portrait painters of his day was Allan Ramsay. This one is of one Thomas Lamb who was mayor of Rye twenty times.

This, one of his earlier paintings, is of Katherine Hall of Dunglass.

A painting of a Geisha Girl painted George Henry. In 1893 he went on a tour of the Orient with E.A. Hornel and he painted this picture soon after his return.

William Bell Scott took a scene from Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene for this painting of Una and the Lion.

Entrance to the Cuiraing, Skye by Waller Hugh Paton. He was the brother of Sir Joseph Noel Paton who has paintings elsewhere in the gallery and I intend to give him a blog all to himself later.

Anne Emily Sophia Grant (Daisy) as painted by her father Sir Francis Grant. He also painted Walter Scott (though not as famously as Raeburn)

John Singer Sargent may be an American (born in Italy just to confuse) but this portrait is of a Scottish person, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. It is a painting I have seen used a book cover before.

 Also by an American artist on a Scottish theme, this painting by Benjamin West is the biggest painting in the collection. The painting shows the moment when Alexander III, about to be killed by a stag while hunting, is rescued by Irish exile Colin Fitzgerald. The king was suitably grateful and gave Colin the castle of Eilean Donan (see this blog). It is from Colin Fitzgerald that the clan Mackenzie descends and the clan coat of arm bears has a stag on it. Unfortunately 400 years later the clan was finding itself a bit out of favour when it picked the loosing side in the Jacobite uprising. It was for this reason that in 1784, Francis Humberston Mackenzie, the clan chief at the time, commissioned this painting to try and show his clan in a better light again.

In 2004 the painting was in need of some restoration but due to it's size the gallery were concerned about moving it far. This led them to restore it in the gallery, cornering of a section of the room. It also meant that the general public was able to see the whole process for themselves. The gallery has an article on the restoration here.