My favourite small museum (in Madrid) (so far)

This was my third visit to the Museo Sorolla. I fell in love with Sorolla's work - that's Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida - when I happened on an exhibition in Granada a couple of years ago, and I don't know how it could have taken me a year to visit this special place. Yes I do: unsocial hours. I'm hoping for a better timetable in my second year!

The first room - lots of family paintings. This is his wife Clotilde and their third child, the newborn Elena, in 1895.

The second room. Seaside paintings. Sorolla was born in Valencia. You can almost hear and smell the sea in his paintings, and this is exactly how Mediterranean sunlight bounces and sings and dazzles. Most of these pictures were painted a century ago, but they're so alive and immediate. The clothes may have changed, but mothers still swing children up onto one hip, swathed in a towel, and sunset always glitters across a summer beach, turning the wet sand tawny, picking out iridescent threads of algae, and casting the sea in umpteen shades of jade. The sunlight fairly squeaks off those white blouses and skirts. I'm glad I didn't have to keep up with the laundry in those days!

Clotilde again.

The third room. Sorolla was internationally successful in his own lifetime, a contemporary and friend of John Singer Sargent, and was able to have this house designed by an architect. The first two rooms were exhibition and sale rooms, and this third one was his studio. It was designed to give him as much natural light as possible. What works for an artist doesn't work in a museum: one of the windows has since been blocked up and another curtained off to protect the paintings in the collection, but the atmosphere is still airy and pleasant. This is some house!

Clotilde, and eldest daughter María. María and Joaquín, the middle child, went on to become painters, and Elena became a sculptor. There are a lot of Sorolla pere's sculptures and ceramics in the house, but I have been too absorbed by the paintings to pay them much attention. No matter, I'll be going again.

There's an alcove devoted to small sketches. My photo of my favourite, a quick and very alive sketch of Clotilde, has come out blurred. I'll try again another day.

Almost Beryl Cook. Almost Giles!

There are several photos of Sorolla at work in a three piece suit, or respectable trousers and waistcoat, and a sun hat. No smeary painter's smock or wiping his hands on his trousers!

In the stairwell. 'Mis chicos'. (My Little Ones) This is the closest he gets to sentimental. It's a lovely painting, and there's no mistaking the relationship between the two older children and their little sister, and between little sister and her father. It's difficult not to smile back at the Elena of a hundred years ago. At a time when photographs were - of necessity - posed, and solemn, how wonderful to have a painter in the family.

Upstairs, in the first room.

María, Joaquín and Elena again. The woman's face is merely an impression - a nanny, perhaps? What is Elena doing?!

Clotilde intent on her camera.

The second room.


There's also a room of almost lifesized paintings of people from different parts of Spain, in traditonal dress.

And a room full of ceramics.

And an Andalucian garden which has been beautifully restored as a shady place to while away a hot afternoon or quiet evening, lulled by the trickle of water. While I was inside this afternoon, Habibi sat out and enjoyed the garden.

I have pics, but it's late, and I've got a train to catch in the morning. More when I get back.

Puzzle

Who are they? Where can you see them?

Magdalena Abakanowicz at the Palacio Cristal

In El Jardin del Buen Retiro - Retiro for short - there's a wonderful building, the Palacio de Cristal, which I've written about before. It was built in the late 19th-early 20th century as an exhibition centre, and nowadays, as a satellite of the Museo Nacional Centro Reina Sofia (the Reina Sofia for short!) it is a venue for art exhibitions - smack in the middle of the park!

The current exhibition, called La corte del rey Arthur, or King Arthur's Court, charts the themes that have preoccupied Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz through several decades. I really, really liked this, and the links go some way to explain the flow of her ideas. The artist also designed a canopy to fit the peculiar design of the Palacio de Cristal, and the result is quite spectacularly successful. There is lots of space around the sculptures, enabling people to move freely, and to stop and reflect without causing an obstruction or being edged along by a flow of bodies. Daylight filters through the white canopy, so that every piece is perfectly lit, without shadows, and full of energy. At the same time, the frequent curving gaps in the canvas frame individual pieces so that you can see them in isolation. I loved it. It was only later, though, that I noticed the wonderful shadows that the camera had picked up, as the exhibition hall became part of the exhibition. Marvellous. I must go again.

Going to the Prado

We went, but we didn't get in. They were queuing round the block. It's a very handsome block, and it was a very relaxed queue, but we didn't feel like standing in it for an hour or so and then walking round a museum which, by all accounts, takes at least two days of serious attention. So we walked round it instead.

Two things: it's free this week, and there's an exhibition of 19th Century paintings that I want to see. Never mind. I'll go another day. Habibi and I are not very good at doing museums and art galleries together. He absorbs detail quite quickly, and can move from work to work quite quickly. I get transfixed by details, and take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get from one end of a gallery to the other. I have an idea that we're not the only couple like this. I always wonder at those who can stroll arm-in-arm from painting to painting in rapt, and evenly paced, concentration. How do they do it? Is one of them secretly frustrated, sedated, or quietly looking forward to the cafe and gift shop at the end? Or treating this trip as a recce, and making mental notes for Next Time?
Is it quid pro quo - Prado today, World Cup qualifier tomorrow?

Or are they soulmates destined for the same lotus blossom for all eternity?

Sigh...

Anyway, we cut through the queue, and walked around the outside, en route for Plan B, the Real Jardin Botanico, which he enjoys, and I love. And somewhere that does breakfast! We found the warm, snug, Cafe El Botánico between the Prado and the RJB, and took a break from the bracing autumn air, for tostadas, tortilla and good coffee. That's one to go back to.

The botanical gardens were full of other people who'd thought better of the three queues for the Prado - and there were more queuing to get in. So we went to El Parque del Buen Retiro instead(El Retiro to us locals.........). Just around the corner.

That was busy too, but part of Retiro's charm is the number and variety of people who go there to do their thing at the weekend - plus the fact that it's big enough to accommodate us all. Skateboarders - mostly young men with serious hand, knee and elbow protection - make the most of the flat ground around the fountain of the Fallen Angel (Lucifer, cast out of Heaven) - and the long slope down to the Atocha gate. Children on in-line skates wobble and loop around parents ambling with push-chairs and toddlers. Joggers. Cyclists. Teens, adults and jubilados (fab Spanish term - beats 'pensioners' and 'senior citizens' in my book) stroll hand-in-hand, or sit at one of the many cafes with friends and newspapers. So do we. There's a playground where you can encourage your four-year-old to the top of a ladder; practise Tai Chi or yoga; strip to your shorts and work your abs and pecs - or just watch....... ;)














Then there's the Palacio de Cristal, overlooking an ornamental lake full of fish (huge fish - huuuuge fish), ducks, umpteen terrapins, and three or four swamp cypresses that grow straight out of the water. Such fun. The Palacio is gorgeous. It's also an exhibition gallery connected with the rather fab Centro Reina Sofia, just across town. I couldn't understand this when we first saw the Palacio in the 35C heat of August. It's an unshaded glass building - probably the most unsuitable venue for any kind of exhibition - unless they bring stone sculpture up those steps?





Today we saw - Andy Goldsworthy's 'En las entrañas del árbol' :

OK!

We walked on, to the cafe overlooking the big ornamental lake, and the statue of Alfonso XII. The last time we stopped there, back in August, in our first week here, we were ready to collapse from a bad case of Overdone Tourist: the heat! - our feet! Basically, we stayed because we couldn't move another step until the sun went down. Of course, on the way back to the hotel, we discovered the Palacio de Cristal, and all sorts of lovely things we'd been too stressed to appreciate earlier.

This time, we had a lovely time watching the world row by in bright blue rowing boats, while sparrows swooped in and out of the flame-leaved trees, and people came and went, all wrapped up in woollies and boots, and all wearing shades against the brilliant autumn sun.

We continued along the lakeside path - across from the statue and mausoleum - and passed at least four puppet booths, a pair of dancers taking a break, a magician in huge fake wig and purple turban, and showbiz Ali Baba slippers; and the tarot souk! There were about a dozen ladies with little folding tables, all with table cloths, some with bouquets of artificial flowers attached, plus lines of elastic to hold the tarot cards in place - presumably to prevent a chance breeze from rearranging someone's destiny.. (There are several TV channels dedicated to tarot. Add that to the national obsession with lottery tickets, and you get an odd slant on what used to be a formidably Roman Catholic country.)

I like Sundays in Madrid.