Victoria Art Gallery and Coursham Court

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The weather forecast of 14 May wasn’t very promising. We tried to make most of it. We walked along the riverside walk towards Pulteney Bridge. As planned, we looked round the Victoria Art Gallery. The gallery possessed excellent collections of Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, Modern, and Contemporary masterpieces, sculptures, Bristol glassworks and porcelain, and wonderful sketches and landscape of Bath and Bristol. It was, once again, free entry and we felt it was very generous of the Custodian to offer free entry public entry. Mark treated me to the special exhibitions of Henry Moore and abstract photographs.



We had cream tea in the tea room for lunch.



Unfortunately, it started raining from the mid morning and it continued till next day’s morning.



After the lunch, we went to the bus station and caught the bus for Corsham village. Corsham Court is located in the heart of the quiet Wiltshire village of Corsham between Chippenham and Bath. As directed, we entered the south front gate from Church Square. There were a couple of peacocks patched on the wall and making distinctive noise. Sadly, the wet weather didn’t seem to encourage them to show their elegant wings. Upon the arrival of the entrance hall, we were asked to pay for the admission fee (£8 each) and advised to start looking round from the Picture Gallery. We were amazed with scores of Old mater paintings, religious paintings, still life paintings, and famous paintings by Van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, Turner, Claude Lorrain, and dozens of Chinese, European, and Japanese porcelain kept in the country house. As well as art works and historic furniture, e.g. Chippendale furniture and cabinets, valuable music instruments, many of the 17^th or 18^th century interior decorations, e.g. 17^th century silk wallpapers on the Picture Gallery, ornate fringes looked very well-preserved. It was interesting to know that Capability Brown was involved in designing and enlarging the Picture Gallery and surrounding rooms to accommodate Methuen family’s collections of large paintings, quality of which are equivalent to the National Gallery and Courtlaud Gallery in London. In fact, they sold some of their collections to London and New York’s galleries in the past.



Despite the rain, we walked round the landscape garden and park, which were designed and redeveloped by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton. We found a number of garden ornaments, e.g. urns, Bath House, artificial lake, fountain, which were positioned in an orderly manner, and they were blending with lush parklands and a clump of spring flowering shrubs and wild flowers.

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