I took my now-retired English teacher from school at
Uppingham, Gordon Braddy, on a day trip to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at
Birmingham University.
We saw so many fine works there ‒ Botticelli, Veronese, van Dyck, Rubens, Poussin, Dahl
(above*), Murillo, Gainsborough, Turner, Rossetti, Pissarro, Manet, Degas,
Monet, van Gogh, Rodin, Gauguin, Derain, Magritte, Hodgkin… His first time
there.
The journey was some two hours by car in each direction
(including me losing my way in both directions, somewhere around Spaghetti Junction).
We talked intimately and continuously.
At one point, Gordon remarked how good such journeys are in
promoting rich conversation… ‘much better than trains.’
I suppose the fact that driver and passenger sit so close to
one another, but necessarily without eye contact, has a lot to do with that.
*Johan Christian Dahl (1785-1857, Norwegian), ‘Mother and Child by
the Sea’
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