Two Temple Place, The Age of Jazz exhibition and the Courtauld Gallery – Thursday 8th February 2018

Guided Tour of Two Temple Place, an opulent neo-Gothic mansion built for William Waldorf Astor and visit to the Age of Jazz  exhibition sponsored by The Arts Society. Afternoon visit to the Courtauld Gallery and its remarkable collection of old masters and impressionists.

A visit report is available in News and photos from the visit are available in the gallery.

One of London’s architectural gems,  Two Temple Place is an opulent neo-Gothic mansion built for William Waldorf Astor on the Thames Embankment in 1895. No expense was spared by Astor, then perhaps the richest man in the world. Among the many notable features are wonderful carvings in wood, stone and silver gilt, rich marble and beautiful stained glass. The house is now owned by a charity, The Bulldog Trust, who have opened it to the public each winter since 2011 alongside special exhibitions.

The 2018 exhibition, The Age Of Jazz, is sponsored by The Arts Society. It will mark 100 years of Jazz reaching Britain and explore the impact that jazz had on Britons from 1918. The exhibition will show the aesthetic and cultural impact of Jazz on artists and society at large. It will bring together a range of media from painting, printmaking and cartoons, to moving film, instruments – and of course the sound of jazz. We will be free to look round the exhibition individually.

We will then take the short walk to Somerset House for an afternoon self- guided visit to the Courtauld Gallery with its remarkable collection of old masters and impressionists. Named after one of its founders in 1932, philanthropist Samuel Courtauld, paintings range from the Renaissance to the 20th century, with major collections of Italian art from Fra Angelico and Botticelli to Tiepolo and Tintoretto, many by Rubens and in particular a large number of impressionist and post –impressionists from Cézanne to Renoir and Van Gogh. Well represented also are Pissarro and Seurat, on whom we had talks this year.

There is a small café at Two Temple Place and several cafés and restaurants around Somerset House (or in the Strand) where we can get coffee or tea and lunch.