London Calling
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
This one begins with a sulk.
A very English sulk.
Picture it. London, 1804. A coffee house just off Oxford Street. The air thick with tobacco smoke, argument and ambition. Outside, rattling coaches, muddy boots, horse muck, the roar of a city on the rise.
Inside, nine painters.
And they’re fed up.
Fed up because the Royal Academy didn’t take watercolour seriously. Oil painting, that was the grand thing. The aristocrat of art. Watercolour was the poor cousin. Nice for topographical sketches, perhaps. Pleasant enough for amateurs. But not proper art.
Or so they were told.
And those nine painters said, in effect, “Stuff that.”
So they started their own society.
The Society of Painters in Water Colours.
Today we know it as the Royal Watercolour Society.
A rebellion in water.
And I love that.
Because it’s such a London move.
Don’t like the establishment? Build your own establishment.
It’s the same city instinct that gave us coffee houses, clubs, newspapers, dissenting chapels, learned societies, political factions and probably the world’s first queue for something pointless.
And what a year to start.
Napoleon has just crowned himself Emperor. Pitt’s in Downing Street. Trafalgar is just over the horizon. London’s expanding like yeast dough.
And in this great smoky, muddy capital, these painters launch a revolution.
A quiet revolution.
Because watercolour is quiet.
But don’t let that fool you.
It’s the most dangerous medium there is.
Oil forgives.
You can scrape it off, paint over it, rethink it.
Watercolour says, “Nope. That’s your mistake. Live with it.”
It’s all nerve.
All timing.
All confidence.
Like tightrope walking with a wet brush.
And London, of course, was made for it.
Take J. M. W. Turner. The Thames in Turner isn’t a river. It’s weather with boats in it.
Or Thomas Girtin, dead at just 27, but in that short life he changed how London looked on paper.
Before Girtin and Turner, London was buildings.
After them, London became atmosphere.
That’s the thing.
Watercolour catches the fleetingness of London better than almost anything else.
The light changing on the river.
Rain coming in over the rooftops.
Steam off the cobbles.
A shadow moving across a church tower.
London’s never still.
And watercolour is the perfect medium for a city that won’t keep still.
Fast forward 222 years.
The Royal Watercolour Society is still going strong.
And right now it’s got an exhibition on.
It’s called “London Calling.”
Well.
What could I do?
Ignore that?
Not a chance.
It’s on at Bankside Gallery.
And if you know London, that’s a fascinating little spot.
A few yards downstream looms the great hulking Tate Modern, the behemoth, pulling in millions of visitors a year like some vast cultural magnet.
A little further downstream again, Shakespeare’s Globe, all oak beams, Shakespeare and selfies.
It’s a remarkable stretch of river.
Big London.
Blockbuster London.
But the Bankside Gallery is something else.
Small London.
Intimate London.
It’s just one room.
One lovely, manageable room.
The kind of gallery that doesn’t overwhelm you.
No maps. No strategy. No museum-leg.
You can see the whole thing in one go.
Look properly.
Linger.
And attached to it, a delightful little bookshop. The sort of place that invites browsing, not marching.
It’s the kind of gallery that receives you.
And if you want to do it right, here’s my tip.
Start at St Paul’s Underground Station.
Come out, walk half round St Paul’s Cathedral and there, right in front of you, is the approach to the Millennium Bridge.
The wibbly-wobbly bridge.
And here’s the little thing to clock.
On the north side, the St Paul’s side, you walk straight onto the Millennium Bridge.
Make a mental note of that. Fix it in your mind.
Because when you get to the south side, the Bankside side, you don’t walk straight off it.
The bridge does a full 180.
And that turn does something clever.
It turns you round.
Suddenly, directly in front of you, across the river, is St Paul’s Cathedral.
Not to the side.
Not behind you.
Right there.
Its great dome filling the view.
It’s one of the neatest bits of urban choreography in London.
The bridge – the city –making sure you get the full effect before letting you go.
You come off the bridge, the hulking Tate Modern is right there.
A few yards upstream, the Founders Arms at the water’s edge. Quite possibly the best-positioned pub in London.
And tucked in behind it, almost hiding in plain sight, the Bankside Gallery.
That’s London.
The blockbuster next to the hidden gem.
The grand thing beside the smaller thing that, sometimes, turns out to be the real discovery.
And here’s where it gets even more London Walks.
Our Along the Thames Pub Walk goes right there.
Right past it.
That’s one of the glories of that walk. It threads you through this astonishing concentration of London riches. The river. The pubs. The bridges. The stories. The theatre. The art.
And tucked into the mix, this little jewel.
And “London Calling” as an exhibition title is perfect because what is London if not a city constantly calling?
Calling painters.
Calling writers.
Calling dreamers.
Calling opportunists.
Calling drunks.
Calling visionaries.
Calling fools.
Calling all of us.
And every generation answers in its own way.
That’s what this exhibition is.
London seen now.
Not old London.
Not Dickensian London.
Not fog and gaslight London.
Now.
The towers.
The cranes.
The glass.
The grit.
The markets.
The melancholy.
The rain.
The river.
The accidental splendour of a city forever half-finished and somehow always complete.
And maybe that’s why the Royal Watercolour Society still matters.
Because London is a watercolour city.
Paint it in the morning and by afternoon it’s changed.
A new light.
A new crowd.
A new cloud.
A new mood.
And if you’re heading for Tate Modern, or the Globe, or better still joining us on that Along the Thames Pub Walk, do yourself a favour.
Slip into the Bankside Gallery.
See “London Calling.”
Because in London, sometimes the best thing is the thing beside the thing everybody else came to see.
See you tomorrow.