Last Wednesday a small group of us went in the early morning to the Whitechapel Gallery to see some paintings and sculpture of artists who had been supported by the British Council and whose work now formed part of the BC’s collection. Very sensibly, we focussed on just a few, for example an early Henry Moore sculpture and a Lucien Freud portrait of his first wife – full of tension and uncertainty clasping as she did the thorny stem of a rose – all this background conveyed to us by the director of the collection. There were too works by Graham Sutherland, Anish Kapoor, Bridget Riley and Damien Hirst. A real treat.
On the bus returning to the House of Lords, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, kept up a running commentary about the various historic sites we passed: Vintners Hall was famed for being the only site in London to have hosted a dinner at which five reigning monarchs dined – in the 14th Century. This record was only broken in 1992 when the Queen hosted a dinner for seven Nordic heads of state at the opening of the Scandinavian Exhibition. The statue of Eros in Piccadilly is apparently a pun; he faces Shaftesbury Avenue (originally owned by the Earl of Shaftesbury) and is intent on burying his shaft.
We agreed by the end of the bus journey that Peter Brooke was like the rogue Autolycus in the Winter’s Tale “a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.”
Your bus full of peers – surely there should be some comedic collective noun for peers on the lines of a shrewdness of apes / parliament of owls 😉 – rather reminds me of an image halfway between Summer Holiday (1963) and the parody of the same name ending the Young Ones!
The statue of ‘Eros’ as I remember is not Eros but I believe his brother Anteros which would have suited the primness of Victorian society much better.
I was aware of Lord Brooke but didn’t know until googling that both his father and mother (Can anyone pronounce her title correctly on the first attempt?!) also received life peerages which must amount to something of a record only almost matched by the likes of the Asquiths – which in finding that out I see one of the Lords of the Blog is the son of another Asquith! 😯
Isn’t the statue meant to represent Eros’ brother Anteros?
A quick search seems to suggest that it is Anteros not Eros. And that the official name may be simply ‘The Lord Shaftsbury Memorial’.
Another bit of trivia, the pun of the archer burying the shaft on Shaftsbury Avenue was undermined when the statue was moved. Originally the archer pointed his bow and arrow in the direction of Shaftsbury Avenue (to the north-east of the circus), however if you look at Anteros now, he faces away from Shaftsbury Avenue to the south-west.
(That’s what I was told at any rate!)
Matt Korris
Hansard Society
Matt: With a hat tip to laidbacklazyman I’ve just been looking at some photos which seem to answer the direction question.
Darn, I was wrong. Cheers Croft!
You are such a cultured lot! Words fail me but I shall most certainly point Lord Brooke in the direction of these comments.