I found joy today at the Courtauld Gallery. This cozy art gallery is tucked away in a portion of Somerset House, where I ice-skated long ago on my birthday. The gallery’s art spans nearly a millennium, from medieval to post-impressionism, but its compact size and modestly proportioned rooms allowed me to connect with every single painting, examine each as much or as little as I wanted, and make two or three circles around a room to familiarize myself with the relationship behind its paintings as well as each individually. I especially loved the impressionistic art, including Cezanne’s still lifes and landscapes, Seurat’s pointillism, and Degas’s ballerina sculptures. But I adored dozens of paintings and artists and felt so uplifted and inspired visiting the gallery.

Degas’s “Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot” (1920)

Cezanne’s “Pot of Flowers and Pears” (1890); in the real painting, that apple is mesmerizingly luminous and spherical

Closeup of van Dongen’s “The Violincellist at the Moulin de la Galette” (1905); the paint is applied in thick, textured smears

Somerset House looking stately

It didn’t hurt my spirits that we had another spectacular day, unbelievably sunny and temperate, although with a fiesty wind that kept flinging my hair in my eyes as I walked. Sun brings out a completely different feel in London. Usually grumpy, hurried people are happy and practically skipping instead of clomping down sidewalks. I read a few chapters of Forster’s Howards End in Russell Square this afternoon because I couldn’t bear to go back inside when the weather was so brilliant.

Russell Square in its sunny glory

Daffodils everywhere!

“Symphony in Yellow”
Oscar Wilde (1881)

An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

Reading Oscar Wilde’s 1881 poem “Symphony in Yellow,” I was intrigued to recognize familiar objects around London but to have perceived them so differently. Part of the discrepancy lies in season, part in time period, and surely part in different interpretations of the scenes around us.

While I had never considered it before reading Wilde’s poem, yellow is one of the colors I associate least with London. Having only been in the city for the month of January, I have not had the pleasure of seeing yellow leaves on the trees. Most trees are bare now, with only black spindly branches, although some lucky ones have green leaves. I have seen a fair amount of fog, but it seems to be more of a weather phenomenon, wet and gray with the feeling of imminent rain. Wilde’s fog, however, “like a yellow silken scarf,” sounds more like pollution, despite his pretty imagery. I cannot recall ever having seen yellow fog, which sounds either pleasantly colorful or abhorrently foul, depending on whether I focus on his yellow silken scarf fog or his thick, hanging yellow fog in the following line.

The image of “big barges full of yellow hay” blends industrialized transport of goods with a reminiscence of agriculture, making me imagine the stench of diesel fuel sweetened by the fresh grassiness of hay. Nineteenth century Thames sailing barges, however, look more like giant, elegant sailboats than barges to me, and while there were plenty of unpleasant odors in London at the time, the barges did not contribute, and I like to think the scent of freshly-cut hay alleviated the stench of any remaining flaws in the sewer system. While I have seen barges on the Thames, they are the lumbering fuel-burning type, hauling stacks of brown and black crates instead of yellow hay.

Thames sailing barge (source: Wikipedia)

A bus seeming to inch across a bridge from afar is a familiar sight along the many bridges in London, but my interest is piqued by Wilde’s simile of a bus crawling “like a yellow butterfly.” Besides the fact that I don’t associate crawling with butterflies, or butterflies with buses, I inextricably associate London buses with their bright red color. The butterfly-crawling omnibus suddenly makes sense when I realize that London used exclusively horse-drawn omnibuses until 1902, and I can perfectly picture the carriage moving along with a choppiness of the horses’ gait that would be plodding up close but appear delicate from a distance, like a…well, like a crawling butterfly. However, I cannot reason out the sense behind a yellow London bus. In my experience, red is the only appropriate bus color, and a yellow bus sounds gaudy and subversive.

Horse-drawn omnibus, 1865. An early double-decker? (source: London Historians’ Blog)

The idea of the Thames even remotely resembling “a rod of rippled jade,” however, sounds magnificent. I have never seen the Thames any other color but gray or brown in the daytime, looking contaminated and unappealing. It vastly improves in the nighttime, when darkness hides its grime and the black water shimmers with white accents. At the very most, I could grant a nighttime-only onyx simile, but the river is never lush or clean enough to hint at jade. I hope that Wilde’s rippled jade Thames really existed, and was not just a product of wishful thinking or glamorized imagery. Although I remain doubtful, I am less susceptible to disbelief than if he had declared the river a thread of gold or a bar of amber. I will retain my yellow-skepticism, but I will also be alert for the odd flash of yellow in the city or an obscure gleam of green in the Thames.

The mythical yellow London (source: Simon Anderson, Digital Photographer UK)

I have been wanting to visit Kensington Gardens since we read Peter Pan our very first week in London, and this afternoon I finally did. I was feeling wary of public transportation after a 40-minute bus ride yesterday that should have taken 15 minutes, so I walked the 50 minutes to the park. I went down Oxford Street for a long stretch, which is a hectic shopping street. I was eager to enter the park, and when I finally did, I was immersed in a quiet green haven. There were quite a few people running, walking dogs, and pushing strollers through the park, but it is absolutely massive, so it still felt spacious and uncrowded.

The park was mainly green lawns with winding paved paths. I walked along the river, called the Serpentine, which features prominently in Peter Pan. I saw dozens of species of birds, so it now makes perfect sense that J. M. Barrie wrote a story about a little boy living among the birds in Kensington Gardens.

I found this cool little guy standing by himself near a bush

Giant groups of many species of birds created a mob by the shore

I also found the Peter Pan statue, which is tucked away a little bit in the park. It is very understated yet lovely, with Peter at the top and charming carvings of fairies and rabbits along the base. I enjoyed watching a thirty-year-old guy with a mohawk have his friend take his photo with the statue. You’re never too old for Peter Pan!

Peter Pan statue

After a tranquil stroll through the park, I made the long trek home, this time down Piccadilly, which was still a busy shopping street, but a little more upscale and pleasant than Oxford Street. While it did have the downside of making me feel underdressed, I had fun walking past Rolex and Jaguar shops.

Once I reached home, I was overcome by a wave of sleepiness provoked by my three-hour walk, and I happily napped, just like generations of little kids have done after an energetic afternoon at Kensington Gardens.