We Take A Train

We haven't been very good about travelling by train in recent years. We have grown used to dual modes of transportation: in London, we always take public transport options, especially since turning 60 gives you free transport with the beloved Freedom Pass; leaving London we always drive so we can detour to any churches we want to see, but mostly to find a special pub for lunch. The cost of petrol is skyrocketing here, so Bob said, we really should take more trains. Yesterday we stopped off at Euston Station to buy ourselves some Senior Rail Passes. £26 for an annual pass, and we can lop one third off the cost of train tickets.  Train tickets are not cheap, but may balance out the cost of petrol, and of course we can claim ecological virtue.

We pulled out our passes today and travelled to Brighton in East Sussex. The hour train ride cost us £22.40, saving us £11 — only £41 until we break even on the passes. Nevertheless, Bob says it costs £70 to fill the car's tank, so I think I see the costs balancing here pretty quickly. We chose a day of perfectly beautiful weather with a bright blue sky lasting all day long.

Our first stop was St Bartholomew's Church (#290), another 19th century Anglo-Catholic congregation, that is the tallest parish church in the country. The interior is massive, taller than Westminster Abbey according to the verger. All brick with lots of shiny metals, gold mosaics and a silver altar in the Lady Chapel.

Then on to a delicious traditional fish and chips and mushy-peas lunch at a pub recommended in the CAMRA restaurant guide. The Basketmakers Arms only serves meat raised locally and fish caught locally.

Then we were off to the real destination, the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery which is set in the Royal Pavilion Park. The Royal Pavilion is the Prince Regent?George IV's seaside folly, built when the healthful benefits of seaside saltwater bathing became the vogue in the early 19th century. We have been to visit the Royal Pavilion years ago, but today we just made do with its fantastic exterior.

The Museum is hosting an exhibition entitled From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Boxted House was the home of a gifted and glamorous couple, Natalie and Bobby Bevan.  Bobby was the son of the Camden Town painters Robert Bevan and Stanislawa de Karlowska. Natalie was a beautiful young woman who was painted by artists including Mark Gertler, whose studio was on Rudall Crescent, a few blocks from our flat, (and I believe is now where David Hare writes his plays). She also was an artist in her own right as a painter and a ceramicist.
Bobby, who likely grew up in penury, chose advertising as his gig and was highly successful at it. Boxted House was filled with art from Bobby's parents, from their Camden Town colleagues, from Natalie's artist friends, and from Bobby's brilliant purchases of works on paper by the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec and Gaudier-Brzeska. The exhibition included dozens of pieces that had hung in Boxted House, photographs of the Boxted rooms, and documents from the lives of Bobby and Natalie.

Natalie, age 18, painted by Mark Gertler in Hampstead

Robert Bevan's early Fauve style

 Bevan's Camden Town style. The house is part of a school in Belsize Park that I pass regularly 

Bought by the Brighton Museum when it was first exhibited in 1910. The only work by Bevan purchased by a public gallery during his lifetime. Bevan was born in Hove, the partner city of Brighton.

If that wasn't enough, the Brighton collection of art and artifacts from local history was both amazing and imaginatively displayed. There is a truly superb wall of paintings in one gallery that creates a synthesis of artistic creation which transcends the quality of each individual painting. From Ivon Hitchens' abstract Forest to Charles Ginner's Leicester Square, the eye is drawn from wild nature to domestic nature to house plants into domestic interiors and finally a quintessential urban exterior.

A quick walk back to the train station through some of Brighton's trendy shopping areas, and we were home in time for dinner.