Wyndham Lewis at the National Portrait Gallery

I had never visited the national portrait gallery before, and my I really have missed out. It is a stunning gallery with breathtaking art all over the place. I rarely walk through a museum or gallery and find myself distracted by every single thing I pass, and I found the experience delicious. We went to see the Wyndham Lewis Exhibition. Wyndham Lewis (who ditched his first name, Percy, as he didn’t like it) 1882-1957 wrote numerous books, edited magazines and painted. Geometric abstraction is often thought of as Cubism, but Lewis thought Cubism lacked an ‘alive’ element, and thus came Vortiscism developed by Lewis and so called by his friend Ezra Pound. Vorticism is a combination of cubism and futurism, and I loved it!



While we were there we decided to have a cuppa. The café at the gallery was full, so we popped next door to the national gallery. We ALMOST paid 2.50 for a cuppa, but thankfully found our way through some double doors where tea was 1:50 in paper cups. There is something most delicious about sitting drinking tea and observing the world around one. There was a lady dripping in jewels having trouble eating her salad from a cardboard box with plastic knives and forks, the lettuce kept trying to escape down her chin. Another rather badly dressed man came in, but he had the most stunningly beautiful moustache with twiddles on the end, unfortunately he sat with his back to us so the admiration was only fleeting.

revived by the cuppa we took a quick look in the national gallery at some Zubarans (1598-1664), I just LOVE them, so full of life and feeling!!