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Where I Went in the Holidays

To Hamburg, Lübeck and Travemünde

I came to the conclusion some time ago, after years of puzzlement, that I don't really like any weather. My favourite sort of day is a dry day, a little chilly, in spring or autumn. I was once in Dallas, and the temperature was more than 40⁰C. My day at the Southfork Ranch was a trial.

We had a miserable English winter this year, then a heatwave from June. I suffered. In Germany it was worse - even in the north, supposedly subject to sea breezes. In Hamburg I hunkered close to the Kunsthalle, discovered Cranachs, appreciated an exhibition about disasters.

Lübeck and Travemünde: no Brookner connection, other than Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks in particular, which plays its role in The Next Big Thing. I've been to the Buddenbrookhaus before. It is, like many such buildings in Germany, largely a reconstruction. Then to Travemünde, where the Buddenbrooks took their holidays, now a sizable port serving destinations as far away as Helsinki. I stayed a little along the coast at Timmendorfer Strand, a long beach, almost exclusively German. One could hire a Strandkorb, of which there were thousands, like a larger wicker porter's chair. This is apparently a great tradition.


Below: Planten un Blomen, Hamburg; Eugène Isabey, Wreck of the Emily; Cranach the Elder, Christ Blessing the Children; detail of last; Timmendorfer Strand; parched England









To Brussels and Ghent

 A much milder, pleasanter break in Belgium at the end of the holidays. Ghent is a discovery. Previously I've been only to the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, where I like to visit the Géricault portrait it is my pleasure or burden to use as an Internet avatar. (Click on the Géricault label below for more posts relating to the artist.) The museum retains its charm (it's virtually unvisited), despite a rather savage recent rehang.

Ghent itself is a delightful bourgeois city, with much in common with Bruges: a medieval centre, canals, churches. Then to Brussels - edgy as always, edgier still this time, or so it seemed to me. But I had my usual mooch around the art museums, revisiting the Bruegel that inspired Auden's poem, the Davids Brookner revered - all those.


Below: [Ghent] an old friend in new company; Casorati, Girl on a Red Carpet, 1912; Navez, St Veronica, 1816; Paelinck, Anthia Leading Companions to the Temple of Ephesus, c. 1820; detail; De Vigne, Fair in Ghent in the Middle Ages, c. 1862








Below: Ghent by night and day







Below: [Brussels] Khnopff, Listening to Schumann; Jordaens's Bacchus, a lesson for us all


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Comments

Rosemary Kaye said…
That is exactly the weather I love - still, cool, preferably autumnal (but far away from Christmas not to have to think/worry about that). I remember a day I was driving though Aberdeenshire. It was autumn, cloudy, still. There were men (farmers, not rich bankers) shooting in one of the fields, but for some reason they had all stopped and lowered their guns, and were just standing, waiting. I loathe blood sports but the atmosphere at that moment so perfectly matched the kind of weather that I like that I have never forgotten it - must be 20+ years ago now.

I very much enjoyed seeing all these pictures. I have never been to Belgium. I especially liked “listening to Schumann’, so much story in one painting.

Thank goodness the hot weather has gone. I was in southern France this summer and the heat spoiled it for me really. MIght just stay in Scotland next summer.
8 September 2018 at 09:09
The Brooknerian said…
Great to hear from you, and your evocation of an autumn scene is magical.

I certainly found refreshment in art this year. A painting can create a kind of microclimate on even the most oppressive of days.
8 September 2018 at 11:15
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