History in Preston
Jul. 25th, 2019 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcLast Saturday we visited the Harris Museum in Preston. It is certainly modest, easy to get around it in a day even at a leisurely pace. The building is rather nice, perhaps benefiting from Preston's Victorian economy with active mills and docks. A Foucault pendulum hangs through the full height of the center of the building down to a modest area in the ground-floor cafe which offers decent light food and drinks at a good price, definitely a pleasant place to rest awhile on their variety of chairs. The museum has some chairs and benches throughout.
I mostly wasn't much taken with the sculpture, half of it was random local aldermen and whatnot. The top floor has plenty of fine art which was my favorite part. It was peculiarly arranged in quite a mix of what was next to what and they clearly have more to show than optimal wallspace for it. I was surprised that it seemed many of their better paintings were from further away, like scenes in Devon and Cornwall rather than, say, the Manchester area. For instance, they exhibited a painting of Susie, the girl from Mousehole whom Laura Knight painted a few times. Some of the larger paintings placed high up were best viewed from a distance. The collection is small enough that I had an easy favorite, Waterhouse's
There is a previous piece that I have not seen,
The above are from
Later in the evening the Flying Scotsman, the one whose centenary is soon, was leaving Preston pulling the fancy Northern Belle coaches and I went along to see it though I failed to anticipate being rather surrounded by eager trainspotting people and becoming an incidental extra in their YouTube videos. At least I got to see a nicely restored and maintained steam train running on a lovely evening.
I mostly wasn't much taken with the sculpture, half of it was random local aldermen and whatnot. The top floor has plenty of fine art which was my favorite part. It was peculiarly arranged in quite a mix of what was next to what and they clearly have more to show than optimal wallspace for it. I was surprised that it seemed many of their better paintings were from further away, like scenes in Devon and Cornwall rather than, say, the Manchester area. For instance, they exhibited a painting of Susie, the girl from Mousehole whom Laura Knight painted a few times. Some of the larger paintings placed high up were best viewed from a distance. The collection is small enough that I had an easy favorite, Waterhouse's
Psyche Opening the Door into Cupid's Gardenwhich I went back to a couple of times:
There is a previous piece that I have not seen,
Psyche Opening the Golden Box:
The above are from
The Art and Life of John William Waterhousevia Wikimedia. I guess that Psyche doesn't change her look frequently. Rather earlier he had painted a striking Cleopatra, also on Wikimedia:
Later in the evening the Flying Scotsman, the one whose centenary is soon, was leaving Preston pulling the fancy Northern Belle coaches and I went along to see it though I failed to anticipate being rather surrounded by eager trainspotting people and becoming an incidental extra in their YouTube videos. At least I got to see a nicely restored and maintained steam train running on a lovely evening.
