MAYFAIR was our last Life Lately, at the beginning of October, and it was all beautifully laid out in wide-screen format⏤best viewed on a desktop⏤but now more of you are here via your phones, so we’ll make this one (which is actually in two parts) a single layout to fit your screens while you’re out and about. Mayfair is looking especially festive at this time of year, with Fortnum and Mason all ready for the holidays, which you will see in second part of this series as it has a more autumnal, Christmassy feel. Here, it’s the beautiful architecture of Mayfair in the rain; ducks and swans at golden hour over the Thames on the way home from Kingston; a very good bowl of soup in Soho, after which, incidentally, we ended up in a very old whiskey bar…
Trying to wear a little less makeup lately, and Mayfair in the rain…
Golden hour over the Thames, on the way home from Kingston.
Wong Kei, a Cantonese restaurant in Soho, was once described as “the rudest restaurant in London” and customers hilariously went as much to be yelled at by the servers as for the food. That all changed in 2014 when it was under new management. Located on 41-43 Wardour Street, it’s one of the largest restaurants in the UK, with seating for around 500 diners. It’s funny, because when we were there, I had no idea it was so cavernous. We went for the Wun Tun Noodle Soup, which is delicious. There’s also chilli crisp oil already on the table if you like things spicy (we do), and the tea is always free. (Don’t forget that service is not included on the bill.)
We randomly walked into a Soho whisky bar after soup on Wardour Street (not realising it was London’s oldest whisky shop) and had a drink at the copper bar. Founded by two brothers in 1964, it appeared in nearly every London travel guide for 10 years after, before being taken over by two large corporations that ultimately ran it into the ground. Word has it that it’s now being brought back to life by a young group of whisky connoisseurs. It was a bit rustic for our tastes and not really our vibe, but little did we know that behind the faux bookcase hides a candlelit cellar bar which is definitely more our scene. Next time.
Boats and blue skies on the Thames, just before the leaves turned. (Outfit details: Barbour long quilted jacket, Tue Es Mon Tresor jeans, Belgrave Crescent Mayfair Canvas Tote, Birkenstock shoes)
David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967
A quick early morning trip to the Tate before it got busy, to vist A Bigger Splash, the large pop art painting by British artist David Hockney. Measuring 242.5 centimetres (95.5 in) by 243.9 centimetres (96.0 in), it was painted in California between April and June 1967, when the artist was teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. Created using acrylic Liquitex on a white cotton duck canvas with no underdrawing, the painting depicts a swimming pool beside a modern house, interrupted by a large splash of water created by an unseen figure who has apparently just jumped in from a diving board. Hockney used a limited palette (cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, Hooker’s green, Naples yellow and titanium white) applied either mixed together or as tints. Apart from the splash, the painting was finished very evenly and flat with a paint roller, in two or three layers, with the few details (trees, grass, chair, reflections) overpainted. The central splash was heavily worked over a period of about two weeks using a variety of small brushes. A wide border and central narrow stripe at the pool’s edge are left unpainted, creating a Polaroid photograph affect.
There are many pubs along the Thames, but this one (so far) is our favourite. Behind the large terrace at the back of the pub, there are a row of lower tables right on the mooring dock and it’s the most perfect place to sit with good company and a drink and watch the ducks and swans and boats glide by. This place is wonderful, of course, under the blue skies and golden sun of summer, but we recently discovered that it was equally lovely in the autumn, despite the crisper air, just leisurely sitting there, talking and watching the leaves turn under cloudy skies. We’ll include this place in an upcoming edition of our London Pub Guide series.
On the way to the experimental Turners there was a Rothko! As you may or may not know, the North American abstract artist very much admired J.M.W. Turner’s colourful, emotive landscapes. In 1966, Rothko playfully quipped, “This man Turner, he learnt a lot from me,” though Turner preceded him by over a century. The unfinished, luminous paintings from Turner’s last years that are displayed in this room spoke to Rothko’s sensibilities. Later in Rothko’s own career, he created works such as the one here, using rectangles of vibrant, saturated colour to evoke mood. In 1969, hoping to have his paintings shown alongside those of his inspiration, Rothko generously gifted a series of his pieces to the Tate collection.
