Saturday, January 19, 2008

interrred on this spot ... the founders of the dulwich picture gallery


3 comments:

Lucy said...

That's a bit amber-lit gorgeous...

tristan said...

Thanx. The drawings follow that mouth-watering trail of decadence in the work of British illustrators from 1890 to 1930, but I was distracted from the exhibition by the entrance to an elegant classical mausoleum, a cool dark place lit only through thick orange and yellow windows which contains three coffins for the two men and one woman, lifelong companions, who founded the gallery in the 1830s. A conversation with one of the gallery-minders brought out an interesting story. The gallery was wrecked by a bomb during the war and then re-built. Whatever remained of the scattered contents of the three friends’ coffins were scooped up and shovelled into boxes until the war ended and then the mixture was evenly distributed between three new boxes.

Lucy said...

Well, that's similar to the idea of an ossuary, I suppose, and fairly much what happens with crematorium ashes I think...