Rowley Gallery Blog
This is the Ponte della Maddalena (Bridge of Mary Magdalene) across the Serchio river in Italy, also known as Ponte del Diavolo (Bridge of the Devil). We visited last year on our way to Lucca and I was reminded of it again recently when it appeared in Il Racconto dei Racconti (Tale of Tales), a magical film shot in spectacular locations all over Italy. It prompted me to go looking for more mementoes. Continue reading “Mementi”
I’d not been to Hastings before. Strange to admit, especially since I lived in Maidstone for three years just 30 miles away, though that was over 40 years ago. Hastings was where John Martyn lived but, as much as I loved his music, we always by-passed the town on our way home from Brighton. Continue reading “Unknown Countries”
In Cambridge to visit the recently opened Heong Gallery, a former stable block in the grounds of Downing College, transformed by architects Caruso St John into an elegant space for the display of modern and contemporary art. Continue reading “Generation Painting”
Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée
MuCEM was opened in 2013 as part of the Marseille Capital of European Culture celebrations. The museum is dedicated completely and totally to the Mediterranean, to its history, civilisations and its culture. It’s all about the life that has developed out of the Mediterranean from its earliest histories to the tensions and conflicts of our own time. Continue reading “MuCEM”
As a birthday treat Sue took me for a walk on the Dengie Peninsula on the far eastern shore of Essex. She had her eyes on the horizon. We arrived via Burnham-on-Crouch, a pretty Georgian estuary town but with the saddest fish & chips and a clown to scare the children. His car was parked next to ours. We made our escape towards Southminster, but we got ensnared by the Burnham Loop where we revolved time and again around the endless fenlands (afeared lest we contract Dengie Fever from the mosquito-infested swamps) until finally we saw the error of our ways (a misplaced signpost) and we were at last expelled to Tillingham and ultimately onwards to Bradwell-on-Sea. Continue reading “To The Horizon”
This is the old mill at Candalla in the hills above Camaiore in northern Tuscany. I think it’s possible to rent it as a holiday home, but it’s perhaps not the most peaceful retreat. The pool attracts lots of visitors in summer, all of them keen to jump in and cool off. Continue reading “Candalla”
A roadside coffee stop en route to San Gimignano. They serve the best espresso macchiato I’ve ever tasted. Immediately refreshed and we’re watching out for our destination’s distinctive towers, checking the horizon for their silhouettes, easily confused by the outlines of countless cypress trees. Continue reading “San Gimignano”
It’s almost 30 years since John Hubbard visited New Harmony, a small town in Indiana, USA, established in 1825 as a model community by the Welsh utopian thinker and social reformer Robert Owen. John was invited by Jane Blaffer Owen, New Harmony resident and the wife of Robert Owen’s third great grandson. Continue reading “From The Poet’s House”
Once a term Holland Park School ask us to frame the cover of their school magazine. Most recently it featured a photo of Antony Gormley to mark the arrival of a specially commissioned sculpture on the school roof. This was a great surprise, and a nice coincidence, just as I was drafting the previous post about his exhibition last year in Florence. Continue reading “Connect”
Palazzo Pitti & Forte Belvedere, one of a series of paintings of Medici villas by the Flemish artist Giusto Utens from 1599. The fort was built nine years earlier, on the highest hill of the Boboli Gardens to protect and watch over and keep an eagle-eye on the city of Florence down below. Continue reading “Forte Di Belvedere”