Friday morning Rowena departed for work and we caught a number 20 bus into town getting off beside the big indoor Moor Market. High points of that visit were the amount of fresh fish, crabs and lobsters for sale so far from the sea, pigs trotters on display at a pork butchers stall (used to be common in Hull when I was young, but I've never seen one in Brighton) and a wealth of interesting bottled and canned beers on a specialist beer stall.
We walked on to the city library and the top floor Graves Art Gallery where there was an exhibition of works by 'The Scottish Colourists'. Four upper middle class boys born between 1871 and 1883, they all spent time in France, Paris especially, and found themselves (to varying degrees) drawn to Monet and Manet, and soon Matisse, with his use of strong colours, led them away from traditional tonal works towards a colourist approach. It has taken me about 20 minutes to create that sentence, I hope you liked it. I confess, it is a vast simplification of their development, but you can read 'The Scottish Colourists' by James Knox if you want some details.
Let me show you an example of each of their works, from eldest to youngest:
Luxembourg Gardens (c1910) Samuel John Peploe
La Terrace, Dinard (1900) John Duncan Ferguson (watercolour)
Villefranche (1927) Geo. Leslie Hunter
Roses (c 19130) Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell
My favourite is Peploe, and one in particular pleases me in an extra way - it reminds me of the style of a Brighton friend who died recently, Peter Morris. The use of a black outline in 'Trees at Cassis', and that strong light is very Peter Morris.
Trees at Cassis (1913) Peploe
If a city has a tram system I like to try it, so next it was a tram from outside the cathedral towards Kelham Island. I followed our journey on a map, which was good because it let me see that the recorded announcements about 'the next station is . . .' was out of synch with the stations, and we could have overshot our destination. I mentioned it to the conductress, she said "yes, its been like that all week", with apparently no thought that it might confuse newcomers.
Once we found our way to Kelham Island (the signage started us off OK, but then it ceased!) we had lunch and headed to the Kelham Island Museum with its Bessemer Converter front and centre:
This giant steel crucible was filled with molten iron direct from the blast furnace. Then air was blown into the molten mass, which reacted with carbon present in the iron, burning it to carbon dioxide whilst adding extra heat to the liquid iron. Too much carbon in the finished metal makes it brittle, by reducing the carbon to a known small percentage a much tougher malleable steel can be made.
We spent a long time here, enjoying the board-mounted trade displays of Sheffield made knives (made by cutlers, who put on the cutting edge and gave the collective name 'cutlery' to knives. The spoons and forks are made from flat metal sheet and pressed to give them their curves - collectively 'flatware'). Also steam engines, old hand-made cars, 19th century street recreations, artillery and more. But we were due to meet Rowena in the Kelham Island Tavern at 6pm, and I needed to try the beer in the Fat Cat first. Priorities.
The famous Fat Cat pub, once serving beers from the brewery next door which sadly closed down. But Thornbridge brew their beers for them now, so I still got a pint of Pale Rider.
Soon in Kelham Island Tavern which had just hosted a tap takeover by Vibrant Forest so was able to drink (mainly halves of) Pupa, Castanea and Inaudible (the best of those I tried), as well as Marble Brewery's Mild.
The bar of the Kelham Island Tavern - photo by Rowena, her smartphone is better in low light than my camera (actually an old cast-off of Rowena's)
Just in case you are interested (I'm eternally optimistic) Kelham Island is not really an island except in a very particular case. Its north side of the 'island' is the River Don, and the body of water forming the south side is a small mill leat, taking water from the Don a hundred yards to the west, and returning it to the Don downstream a hundred or so yards. On that basis both the Fat Cat and the Kelham Island Tavern are not on Kelham Island at all, but the museum and the now closed Kelham Island Brewery are.
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