Lincoln's Inn Fields

An entrance to Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.  Watercolor, approx. 11 x 7", October 2010. Click for large view.

I was looking through old photographs this past weekend and this scene caught my eye so I did a quick watercolor of it. As I worked I remembered so much...

For a number of years, before J.'s parents became really elderly,  we used to go to London for our only vacation, usually at Christmastime. They had encouraged us to go, because one winter they lived there while my mother-in-law helped a former colleague establish a boy's school in Wimbleton. We went over to visit them, and went back many times afterward. We stayed in a cheap hotel in Bloomsbury that my mother-in-law had found, and walked everywhere, and I fell in love not only with London, but with cities; though I had spent more time in New York, London was the first city where I felt comfortable and "at home." Now I'm longing to go back, not only to experience London again, but to see many friends I've made since then -- these were the years before blogging!

We often walked through Lincoln's Inn Fields; this view, on a rainy day, reminds me of the beauty of the old, huge plane trees that live there and the tall holly bushes - really trees - that astounded me when I first saw them. In spite of the name we share, it is a very different climate from northern New England!

I should post some excerpts from my London journals, written in the early 1990s when I was just starting to work on turning my "journal voice" into something written for public consumption -- and maybe try to do a few drawings to illustrate them. Those were wonderful years of discovery and personal growth. I doubt that we'd be in Montreal without having had those experiences, because I was really a country girl before that!

 

 

 

Comments

[Kim]

A lovely piece, Beth. I love London as well. Would love to go there again. We also visited Windsor and Slough. I enjoyed it all but London was my favorite.

[Diana]

Awesome! Totally awesome.

[Frédéric]

Bonjour,
Merci pour votre commentaire, je découvre ainsi votre univers riche et varié sur ce blog.
Frédéric

[Vivian]

Parallel play, Beth: I have been diving in and out of ASByatt's "The Children's Books" all weekend and the world it depicts--the decades in England before WW1--is conveyed mostly through the growing perspective of an extended family of children whose mother writes children's books both to earn money and to touch her own brood. Woods ... normal, and "big bad" have their role, too.

[Jean]

Oh my, you do know that Lincoln's Inn Fields is, like, practically visible from my office and I go there all the time? So I love this painting, of course. You capture very well the height and spread and age of the trees and shrubs in this quite small and very urban green space. I shall go out with my camera and see if I can get the same view.

[margaret]

I love this view of Lincoln's Inn Fields...which I first knew and loved as a student. Am presently planning our annual return to London, my other home, and it enhanced my anticipation.
I do hope you'll post extracts from your time there.
I, too, am a rural or village girl at heart and in my soul, but I have an abiding love for several English cities, and London most of all.

[Natalie]

Beautiful emerald greens, Beth! I will go and have another look at the actual spot and see if it's still as lovely as your version. Do come back to London soon! We can walk down that path, talking non-stop.

[dale]

(o)

[marly youmans]

I haven't visited you enough! Poems, watercolors--what else am I missing, Beth? Oh, for a little more time...

[Vivien]

Lovely painting - lively, and I love the pale violet sky. Rus in urbe! (I'm just showing off...) In Lincoln's Inn Fields did you visit the Sir John Soane Museum there? - one of the best small museums in the world, I should think, crammed full of his collection of objects. I expect you went there, but if not you could see pictures on Google - Images. He used to live in the house and it's much the same as in the early 19th c.)

[Peg]

Oh! It's beautiful, Beth. It makes me want to be at that intersection and smell both the greens and the grays for myself, and to feel that wind whistle against my coat.