TRAVELLERS' JOYS

TRAVELLERS' JOYS

Compton Verney, Warwickshire
Compton Verney is an unique art gallery in the heart of England created by one exceptional man, Sir Peter Moores who delights in "getting things done and opening doors for people." The very fine house, designed by Robert Adam in the 1760s, overlooks a lake in a small park designed and planted by Capability Brown.

After many unhappy decades in various ownerships, Compton Verney was purchased by the Peter Moores Foundation in 1993. The house was in a terrible state and was only finally re-opened in 2004 to reveal the fabulous recreation of its interior rooms as an art gallery, and the loving and careful restoration of its exterior - now completed by an entirely modern yet harmonious extension for temporary exibitions.

The permanent collections at Compton Verney reveal Sir Peter's personal, in truth marvellously idiosyncratic, interests as well as his exceptional eye for the fine and rare. One gallery is filled with early Chinese bronzes, another with British portraits, many from the Tudor period. Several galleries are given over to a remarkable collection of Neapolitan paintings 1600 - 1800. Two others house some splendid German sculpture and paintings 1450 - 1650. The attic rooms are filled with British Folk Art originally assembled by Andras Kalman, to which have now been added further examples collected by the textile desiger Enid Marx and her friend Margaret Lambert.

Sir Peter's own long-term commitment to contemporary art is immediately apparent near the front of the house which is commanded by a huge Portland stone sculpture - Untitled boulder by John Frankland. So sensitively made and sited is it, that it looks to have been there always.
Compton Verney, near Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire CV35 9HZ. Tel. +44 (0)1926 645 500. (Open Tues - Sun; closed in winter months.) www.comptonverney.org.uk

Musee National du Moyen Age, Paris
Long known as the Cluny Museum, this is one of the lesser-known yet great glories of Paris, now aptly renamed the Musee National du Moyen Age - the National Museum of the Middle Ages. On the city's left bank, it is housed in two conjoined buildings, a Gallo-Roman thermal bath house dating from the 1st century AD, and, a medieval Gothic mansion formerly the residence of the Abbots of Cluny.

Both buildings have been finely restored and can be appreciated for themselves, but it is the contents that will probably appeal to most visitors. Among many masterpieces, by far and away the greatest and most beautiful are the six tapestries known as The Lady with the Unicorn which have a gallery to themselves.

The strength of the personality of the museum derives, unsurprisingly from that of its founder Alexandre Du Sommerard whose collections and the Cluny mansion in which he housed them were bought by the French state in 1843. Since then the collections have been extended by gift and purchase and include stained glass, ivories, reliquaries, altar-pieces, polychromed wood and stone sculptures, paintings, metalwork, furniture, and bejewelled religious and secular treasures.

One gallery displays in tender array the mutilated heads of the Kings of Judah, all that remains of the statues that used to decorate the facade of the cathedral of Notre Dame until torn down in 1793 during the French Revolution. Sold and piously buried they were rediscovered two centuries later. Modern gardens imaginatively complete the museum's ensemble.
Musee National du Moyen Age, 6 place Paul-Painleve, 75005, Paris. Tel. 01 53 73 78 00. (Open daily; closed Tues) www.musee-moyenage.fr

Luxor Museum, Egypt
Luxor is the tourist heart of the Nile Valley for modern-day visitors to Egypt. Built on the site of the ancient capital of Thebes, the city is dominated by the stupendous remains of two important temples: Luxor and Karnak with, in between, an elegant modern museum.

Luxor Museum is not large but its contents and design are very helpful to visitors otherwise confused by the range and extent of ancient Egyptian civilisation - in a nutshell, 3,000 years of history, 2,000 years ago. The museum was built to display a choice selection of excavated treasures previously in store; to these have been added a gallery devoted to a cache of sculptures discovered beneath Luxor temple as recently as 1987.

Immediately on entering the museum, one is entranced by a beautiful standing sculpture of a smiling Tutankhamun, discovered as long ago as 1904, two decades before his famous tomb was found by the English archaelogist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings, on the other bank of the Nile from Luxor. Also on view in fact are some of the treasures from his tomb loaned from the great Cairo museum, including a spectacular carved and gilded wooden head of the cow goddess Hathor.

While Tutankhamun's own mummy lies as it should in his tomb, another Royal mummy, possibly that of Rameses I, can be seen here. It was found in a museum in Niagara Falls, Canada, and bought by a museum in Atlanta, USA, from where, after close study, it was returned "as a gift to the people of Egypt." US archaeologists were also responsible for the discovery in the 1930s of a statue of Rameses III; further fragments were found in 2002 and the whole reassembled in 2003.
Luxor Museum, Corniche el-Nil, Luxor, Egypt. (Open daily).

Blackwell, Cumbria
Blackwell was the early 20th century holiday home of Sir Edward Holt, a Manchester brewer who had business interests in England's Lake District. Having purchased a hill-side site overlooking Lake Windermere with views of the Coniston fells, he commissioned the architect Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott to design his new house built between 1898 and 1900.

Baillie Scott was one of the most important exponents of the Arts and Crafts style. This was largely inspired by the writings of John Ruskin (another Lake District resident) whose idealistic principles for simpler living and traditional ways of working were expressed discreetly yet triumphantly at Blackwell.

Miraculously, almost, Blackwell has remained largely in its original state. The principal rooms (and corridors) reveal not only an amazing range of concentrated and diffused light (and darkness) but an equally astonishing range of craftsmanship: carved stone and wood, tiled fireplaces, mosaic floors, stained glass, wrought iron, paper, hessian and plaster friezes. The carved wooden panelling was supplied by Simpsons of Kendal.

Purchased from former and benign owners in 1999 by the Lakeland Arts Trust, Blackwell was fully restored and opened to the public after four and a half years work and the expenditure of nearly £3.5 million.

Nothing remained of its original contents which anyhow, on photographic evidence, were comfortably Edwardian rather than compatibly Arts and Crafts. Given fully restored but empty rooms, the Lakeland Arts Trust decided to follow Baillie Scott's own preferences and to furnish them with 17th century oak pieces as well as with very fine examples of Arts and Crafts work - some designed by Baillie Scott himself and others by his peers including Edward Barnsley and William de Morgan. These come from the extensive collections of the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, Blackwell's sister institution.

Despite its size, Blackwell retains its sense of intimacy and welcome, notably in an enchanting series of inglenook fireplaces and settles. The principal bedroom has also been restored and appropriately furnished; others have been converted into exhibition galleries, education and study rooms. The garden with slate-walled terraces overlooking the lake has been replanted in accordance with its original relatively simple style, so directly linking it once again with the landscape below and beyond.
Blackwell, Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria LA23 3JR. Tel +44 (0)15394 46139. (Open daily; closed in January) www.blackwell.org.uk

Alnwick Garden and Castle, Northumberland
The Garden is Alnwick's newest glory. It is the creation of Jane Northumberland, wife of the present Duke, who in a very few years and with the expenditure of a great deal of time, energy and money (from many sources) has realised her ambition of making a great contemporary garden on the site of a once famous predecessor.

Unlike its forerunner, the new Garden is open to the public every day of the year, with such success that since its opening in 2002 it has attracted more than a million visitors and so helped to revitalise the local economy, near and far. Like all successful visionaries, the Duchess has called in aid a number of experts: the Belgium landscape designer Jacques Wirtz and his son Peter to make the Garden and the British architect Sir Michael Hopkins to design the new visitor centre.

Alnwick's Garden is entrancingly family friendly - who could not be delighted by the fountain displays on the Grand Cascade? Bewitched by the planting in the Ornamental Garden? Genuinely educated by the Poison Garden? Enthralled by the myriad shrubs and climbers supplied by David Austin for the Rose Garden? Delighted and bemused by William Pye's water sculptures in the Serpent Garden?

Of their nature gardens change and develop and much is planned for Alnwick's. "My vision," states the Duchess, "is to create a beautiful public space accessible to everyone," especially children, adding, "my task is to continue to raise funds to complete the vision."

The present Duke of Northumberland, the 12th in the line, disarmingly remarks that his family "have lived at Alnwick for nearly 700 years." The huge castle "a wonderful family home" comes complete, so as to say, with a keep, barbican and encircling baileys. Yet, its stolid aspect and real antiquity belie the major changes made to the castle's exterior appearance and interior splendours by two in particular of his ancestors.

In the 18th century James Paine and Robert Adam turned the castle into a Gothick palace. In the 19th century their architectural work was replaced by that of Anthony Salvin and their interiors supplanted by the Roman architect Luigi Canina, who created the almost overwhelmingly splendid series of state rooms we see today. The amazing carved decorations were made in workshops established in the castle's coach yard.

The contents at Alnwick are amazing and reflect the passions, knowledge and wealth of those who collected them in past centuries. Here is a remarkable library of books, stupendous furniture, lovely porcelain, spectacular silver, and a wondrous variety of paintings including major works by Canaletto, Titian, Claude, Lely, Gainsborough and William Dobson.
The Alnwick Garden, Denwick Lane, Alnwick, Northumberland NE66 1YU. Tel. +44 (0)1665 511350. (Open daily). www.alnwickgarden.com Alnwick Castle, Alnwick, Northumberland NE66 1NQ. Tel. +44 (0)1665 510777. (Open daily - April through October). www.alnwickcastle.com

The Foundling Museum, London
The Foundling Museum owes its origin to Captain Thomas Coram, a retired sea-farer who in 1739 established London's first "Hospital for the Maintenance of Exposed and Deserted Children." Funded neither by the state nor religion, it took Captain Coram 17 years to find the means through subscriptions and donations to set up and build his Foundling Hospital. Not only did he attract the necessary support of Fashionable Society, he received practical help from the artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel.

In his shrewd way Hogarth saw an opportunity not only to help the Foundlings but to promote his own work and that of his colleagues; he donated a magnificent portrait of Captain Coram and encouraged other artists such as the sculptor John Michael Rysbrack, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, and the marine painter Charles Brooking to contribute. These works of art attracted crowds of visitors not least to the magnificent Court Room decorated, at his own expense, by the plasterer William Wilton.

Handel was equally generous. He organised and conducted many musical events in aid of Coram's Foundlings: attending performances of his Messiah annually until his death in 1759, upon which he bequeathed the Hospital a fair copy of his great oratorio. Handel's concerts took place in the Chapel - long gone, but remembered by two carved and gilded cartouches given by the artist Edward Ives. Both are painted with Biblical quotations of which one from the 27th Psalm is particularly touching: "when my Father/ and my Mother/ forsake me/ the Lord taketh/ me up."

The Foundling Hospital's long and important musical connection was to lead in recent years to a major bequest: the Gerald Coke Handel Collection. Comprising manuscripts, scores, memorabilia and books this unrivalled resource has its own gallery and library on the top floor of the new Museum.

In 1926 Coram's original hospital was demolished on its move to the country. A new headquarters building was erected near the original site incorporating the original 18th century rooms for the display of the Foundling Hospital's unique collection. And there everything slumbered until in 1999, the renamed Coram Family was faced with having to decide between the needs of its vastly changed charitable activities and its responsibilities towards the works of art in its care.

With the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund and an endowment provided by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, the Coram Family was relieved of the burden of its collections which are now on show once again as the independent Foundling Museum. Housed in the original 1930s building, this has been skillfully restored and seemlessly extended to include not only the original 18th century rooms, but a new education centre in the basement and an inviting new cafe overlooking the square.

One of several beautifully designed new galleries is devoted to the story of the Foundlings, the children whose plight first attracted Thomas Coram: many of them so touchingly commemorated by the "tokens" or keepsakes left by their sad and anonymous mothers. www.foundlingmuseum
The Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ. Tel. +44 (0)20 7841 3600. (Open Tues - Sun).

Shanghai Museum, China
This stupendous museum, originally founded in 1952, is well worthy of the thriving and now largely modern city of Shanghai. Set at its heart, in People's Square, which give plentiful views of the many tall and often beautiful buildings that dominate the city yet, because carefully spaced are not overpowering, the Museum itself is also a thoroughly modern building. Opened in 1996, its design reflects the ancient Chinese belief of a circular heaven over a square earth, so confirming from the outset the embrace of the long and honourable Chinese tradition of respecting past values.

The galleries are arranged on four floors with the exhibits beautifully and tactfully arranged so as not to overwhelm, as so many objects of fine quality might well, the first time visitor. Of outstanding interest are the displays of ancient Chinese sculpture and bronzes as well as rooms devoted to ancient and later ceramics; in addition there are separate galleries devoted to superlative Chinese painting and calligraphy.

To these are added other sections devoted to jade, coins, seals and furniture as well as one devoted to China's Minority Nationalities. Panels and labels include English translations and in addition there are helpful background leaflets for each gallery in the same language.

Temporary exhibition galleries give freshness to the permanent collections. One, at the time of writing, was devoted to a loan exhibition of ancient Etruscan art, setting up intriguing and illuminating resonances with Chinese works of the same era, seen elsewhere in the museum. www.shangaimuseum
Shanghai Museum, 201 Ren Min Da Dao, Shanghai 20003, China. Tel. 8621 63732500. Open daily (late Sat).

Hong Kong, China
In Hong Kong, its Museum of Art is set on the Kowloon waterfront in a sensitively designed modern building. Its collections, spread over four floors, are relatively small yet attractively refined. They include antiquities and fine art as well as contemporary painting and a visit is highly recommended. Temporary exhibitions are a feature: that at the time of writing was devoted to a US collection of art from India, Nepal and Tibet.
Hong Kong Museum of Art, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Tsa Tsui, Kowloon. Tel. (852) 2370 3860. Open Fri - Wed. www.artmuseum

The city's Museum of History is also well worth visiting: the modern often interactive displays, spread through eight galleries over two floors, tell the story of Hong Kong from its geological and prehistoric beginnings to today's thriving metropolis. Sections include the natural environment, the opium wars and the Japanese occupation.
Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. Tel. 2724 9042. Open Wed - Mon. www.historymuseum

Ringling Museum of Art, Florida
Sarasota, on the west coast of Florida, is the unexpected location for a major art museum. It was the creation of John and Mable Ringling and followed their building in the 1920s of an extraordinary Italian style house overlooking a white sand beach so typical of the Gulf of Mexico.

The museum is at the heart of the estate. With shady loggias on three sides of a garden courtyard, the museum has 21 galleries. The first provide a stupendous experience for they house a series of huge paintings by Rubens - full-size cartoons for tapestries. John Ringling was essentially self-taught but had the wisdom to rely heavily on the advice of the art dealer Julius Bohler in the course of collecting, on a very large scale in the late 1920s and thus long before they became fashionable, European paintings in the Baroque style current from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

Flemish, Dutch, French and Italian paintings predominate and are attractively installed in comfortable abundance, enhanced by architectural fittings as well as polychrome sculptures, early portrait busts and other medieval works of art. John Ringling bought for his museum two panelled rooms from the Astor house in New York - one now containing a mysterious masterpiece The Sirens by the English artist Edward Burne-Jones and a unique collection of Cypriote antiquities sold off by the Metropolitan Museum.

A Circus Museum forms the third element of this astonishing place - for John Ringling was one of six brothers who presided over the family's famous circus.
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota, Florida 34243, USA. Tel. +1 941 359 5700. Open daily. www.ringlingmuseum

Please check opening times and days before travelling any distance.