Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
I was really looking forward to visiting Leeds not having been for a long time. As we waited on Skipton platform an excursion Pulman slowly passed on its way to a starting point for some lucky customers. Arriving at Leeds station I was disappointed by how old-fashioned it looked compared to Manchester, and on exiting our first impressions were not helped by huge works going on in the square outside. The Queen's Hotel (Eddie Waring's favourite bolthole) looked the same, and gets very good reviews on Tripadvisor. As we wandered through the city centre we were struck by the amount of building going on, and the totally unplanned mix in the building stock, with quite a lot of shabby areas. Some buildings were worth looking at however........ Our first objective was The Art Gallery, and going to the famous Tiled Hall we thought it similar to the V&A if a lot gloomier. The croissants and much else looked dispiriting, so we settled for a cup of tea The Gallery itself? Very provincial, unlike Manchester's I'm afraid. The main event is the Victorian room with mainly secondary artists. A lot of the Victorian stuff is sentimental which can appeal sometimes but not in overdoses! Here two Victorian drummer boys left behind in Afghanistan and subsequently murdered (and revenged). Here A Pauper's Funeral well painted. The last time i had seen this was a copy on the bedroom wall where I used to sleep in at my Coventry grandmother's. The sort of 'Empire' picture which a lot of households no doubt inherited. The charge of The Scots Greys at Waterloo. Impressive detail and unusually for such a military picture by a female artist. These atmospheric paintings were by a local painter with the lovely and somehow appropriate sounding name of Atkinson Grimshaw. Leeds when there was a strike and the steel foundry was shut down, and the Embankment London...... There was a limited amount of modern art, most of it unknown to me and limited in its appeal too. This however I did find interesting - a whole room devoted to one painting Wyndham Lewis's Praxitella, 1921, oil on canvas. "The story of how a lost masterpiece was hidden for more than 100 years under another famous 20th Century painting is being told in Leeds. Atlantic City depicted an abstract vision of a modern city. It was discovered in 2019 under a portrait called Praxitella, by Percy Wyndham Lewis, the founder of the short-lived Vorticists movement. Two students at the Courtauld Department of Conservation in London, used X-ray analysis to find it. Praxitella has been part of the collection at Leeds Art Gallery since 1945, and was created by Wyndham Lewis in around 1921. A spokesperson for the gallery said subtle clues, including raised paint lines and tiny surface cracks, led experts to believe there might be a second painting underneath it. However, with no way of knowing for sure the concealed composition's true nature remained a mystery. That was until Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn were researching Praxitella, which was on loan from Leeds Art Gallery, and found Atlantic City, by Helen Saunders, the artwork which had been a secret for so long. Jane Bhoyroo, principal keeper at Leeds Art Gallery, said: "Praxitella has long been one of the most renowned works in the gallery's collection and is rightly recognised as a hugely important piece in its own right. "The discovery of a completely different work beneath it adds a whole new dimension and significance to Praxitella, giving its story even more depth and complexity." " I can't summon up much enthusiasm for much of the 'modern' art on display. Here a vulture (apparently) on the left and in the middle a bust of Apollo looking at two urns and on the right who knows? The other main display was the portrait wall on the landing, only one painter we recognised, some ordinary portraits, and not much to detain you. A single sheet of paper was left lying around showing the artist for each picture and that was that! Leeds Art Gallery? Disappointing. Next, to the so-called Victorian Quarter with its several Arcades. Pretty well done. Kirkgate Market however, supposedly the largest indoor market in Europe, was a complete flop. It was much smaller than Bury Market and a lot of it closed off. I saw one fruit and veg stall and not much else. And surely anyone, anyone, can be a bit more imaginative in showing where Marks and Spencer started............. ....all there is is a repro stall, completely closed, 200 yards from where the original was and with no explanations or anything else. What a disappointment........it's as if Leeds is showing this grudgingly. And the outside of the Market is disfigured with Sixties style signboards covering up what were some beautiful Edwardian ones as far as we could see (only one out of dozens on display). We decided to walk down to the Canal Area for something to eat, passing some worthwhile buildings ....and including the Corn Exchange, like a very small cousin of the magnificent one in Manchester....... We couldn't access the canal area. There were no restaurants, pubs or cafes which we fancied. So we hopped on the train and got off at Saltaire on the way back to have a perfectly satisfactory lunch at Salts MIll. What a huge disappointment Leeds had been!
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August 2023
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