Day 26: Faces I Remember

The National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery is one of the most beautiful museums I have been to, not just here in London, but anywhere. The content, the display, the framing, the lighting, the selection of included pieces, are magnificent. Every detail, a reflection of the great thought and care put into it. Unlike any other museum I have been to thus far, the National Portrait Gallery, is an entire building filled with rooms of just portrait; paintings and photographs of royalty, rock starts, world leaders and long forgotten heroes. Some of the paintings there are iconic ones I have seen reprinted on cups and posters and T-shirts all my life, but have never actually seen such as a famous portrait of Lord Byron wearing a Turkish head cloth painted by Thomas Philips or a portrait of Shakespeare with an earring, “The Chandos Portrait,” which is listed as the Gallery’s first ever acquisition. 

Harold Pinter

There are wall sized paintings of Prince Charles, Lady Diana, Queen Victoria and the Beatles. There are miniature paintings on decorative charms that are equally as detailed and astonishing as room sized tableaus. There are modern paintings on the first floor of famous British actors like Judy Dench and Kate Winslet and paintings that are so convincing as photographs, that unless you are within 2 inches of the piece you cannot tell the difference. The framing, the floorplan, everything, is simply exquisite. There are no photographs allowed in the museum, so except for the one that I snuck of Harold Pinter, there are none that I can show you.

 I spent a good long time at the National Portrait Gallery, relishing portraits room by room, absorbing all the details of their display, moving from rooms of kings and commanders, to rooms of poets and scientist. 

Every famous British person of history, I imagined, old or new, had a portrait hung in this Gallery. Faces of long forgotten pasts immortalized in temperature and light controlled walls for all of time and memoriam, the details of their likeness so crisp, they could almost speak to you from their canvased sheets. 

Faces looking at faces looking back at them.  Observing the mastered strokes of Joshua Reynolds and Johannes Vermeer, I wondered if anyone in the world living today could paint portraits of such attention and refinement anymore, with such elegance and finesse.  Perhaps the art of that level of mastery was as dead as the people who sat for these portraits and would never be learned again.

I bought a couple post cards at the gift shop and headed back toward Leicester Square. 

Dragon Beard Candy

I inadvertently found myself in the middle of London Chinatown where lion gates, hanging ducks and dragon beard candy could be found on every corner. Pork buns, noodles, acupuncture and ancient herbs, all served up in narrow alley ways that instantly made you forget you were in London. The faces in these streets had changed as well. There were more Chinese speaking Chinese here than I had seen in my last three weeks, going for a meal or doing their grocery shopping for the week, it was Chinatown after all. A new face of London.

Chinatown

I made my way to Bank Station where I was meeting Caroline for dinner. I have known Caroline since I was 6 or 7 years old. Her family lived across the street from our house in London. Her parents still live there now. I hadn’t seen Caroline for almost 20 years! And except for one photograph she has posted on facebook, I only remembered her face as it was not 20 years ago, but almost 30 years ago! It’s funny the things you remember and how people stay branded in your memory in a way you can never forget. I remember when we were children, she and my sisters and I would walk down to the corner store and spend the better part of an afternoon making a decision on what sweets to buy with the 20p we had. I remember reading Enid Blyton and Mr. Men books with her on our living room floor. I remember her brother Daniel was always somewhere around, but he never came out to play with us girls very much. The last time we were together in London, Prince Charles and Lady Diana were getting ready to be married, this time, their son. So much time had gone by.

Caroline was now a sophisticated broker in the financial district of London. Seeing her for the first time in her elegant coat and heels I hardly recognized her. She was taller than me, but she had always been. Her hair was darker, but her trueness, what she said and the way she said them, were still the same. We sat across the table from each other at an old “boys club” sort of pub, surrounded by business men in suits who had just ended the work day, and caught up on each other’s lives. Caroline was getting married soon, in weeks in fact, and despite her frenetic schedule of work and wedding planning, she still had time to meet me. I was touched. 

Sushi!

We fondly remembered old stories about the past and our siblings and our parents. We talked about how fast time had gone by, and how it all just seemed like yesterday really. We talked about when we were kids, and we talked about when we would have kids. I enjoyed being there with Caroline. I couldn’t help but feel a sentimental nostalgia for a long forgotten past just talking to her. As we sat inside the sushi restaurant, adjacent to the moving conveyor belt of edamame and spicy tuna rolls, I looked into Caroline’s face. 

The beautiful bride to be.

We meet again after 20 years!

And there for the first time that evening, since I saw this sophisticated young woman who came to greet me at the tube ticket office, I saw the Caroline I remembered in her face. There in her eyes, in the curve of her smile, in the laughter of her cheeks, I saw the Caroline I knew as a little girl, the memory of a face I would hold forever.