In a rather adventurous turn for me, I took out my passport and headed to suburbia in order to see an exhibit of Berthe Morisot at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which was on the edges of my consciousness for having held a British Surrealism exhibit some few years ago featuring of course Carrington and others. Morisot appeared in one of my novels so you may guess my fondness for her. Despite my trepidation it was probably easier to get to than many London locations being a short walk through a park from the station which was just a couple stops from Victoria. Having been through the awe of Hilma again the day before, I don’t know — I guess I thought it would be very low key and inspiring but I wasn’t prepared for how emotional her pictures were. The gallery is a strange place with a lot of very ugly paintings on the whole (Reni’s Sebastian a definite exception) plopped in a tony suburb.

In contrast, what smacked me in the face seeing the actual paintings by Morisot is their essential honesty. It is not an easy honesty, indeed facing her self-portrait brought a lump to my throat to see how clearly she viewed herself, her life, and the cheeky little self-award — the red flower mimicking the légion d’honneur — she knew she was good and that the likelihood of anyone else acknowledging that was slim. All her women have clear interior lives that dance out of the canvas. Even with the coy looks away from the viewer they feel complete.

I won’t upload all the pictures here (I will on the ‘book) but her eye is amazing both on the level of the composition as a whole and in the details — look at that foot! Simply glorious. If you can go, do.

There were a few other things enjoyable there: the Sebastian, a fun Judith (yes, obsessing with a particular reason), and the crypt. Also I bought a Leonora Carrington silk scarf marked down (Pomps of the Subsoil the image on it).

Afterward I was walking back through the park snapping photos of flowers and decided to have lunch at the swish restaurant that seemed completely empty. A lovely lunch with good company — and a last cheeky shot of Dulwich the village preservation society would doubtless disparage.