Lister Park, Bradford, where the Cartwright Memorial Hall is situated was the home of the Bradford Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1904.

It is named after Samuel Cunliffe Lister who sold the land to the town at half its commercial value.

A statue to Lister sits near the main entrance:-

Bandstand (used at the 1904 Exhibition I believe):-

The pond/lake at the park was spanned at the Exhibition by a ‘Fairy Bridge’ and utilised  for a Water Slide and for re-enactments of naval battles. The pond today:-

There is a statue of Peter Pan on an island in the pond/lake:-

Information about the 1904 Exhibition can be found here. In what to modern eyes is a somewhat unsavoury aspect of the Exhibition was the Somali village to which admission was 6d (sixpence) (children got in for 3d.)

I have a souvenir tin from the Exhibition. It originally contained ‘Cobra’ boot polish. Its lid features the Cartwright Memorial Hall:-

On the side is a depiction of the Industrial Hall:-

I also own several postcards of the Exhibition (some colourised) as well as the Exhibition Official Souvenir:-

Photos from within the Official Souvenir can be seen here.

Named after Edmund Cartwright and situated in Lister Park this was home to the Bradford Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1904. Due to my interest in such exhibitions of the early twentieth century this was one of the reasons we visited. The Hall now acts as Bradford’s civic Art Gallery.

Hall facade:-

Rear of hall. (Stitch of two photos):-

Model of hall inside the hall:-

Statue of Edmund Cartwright:-

Plaque commemorating the Bradford Exhibition of 1904:-

More from the Vaughan bequest transfer (see last post.)

Fittingly, this one is of Edinburgh:-

The West Gate, Canterbury:-

Shipping:-

The Doge’s Palace and Piazetta:-

Storm at the Mouth of the Grand Canal:-

Bellinzone, Switzerland:-

Ostend Harbour:-

Plymouth:-

Every January the Scottish National Gallery in Princes Street, Edinburgh, displays its bequest of works by J M W Turner. The terms of the bequest by Henry Vaughan dictated that these works could only be shown in January in order to protect them from damage by light.

In 2025  there was a variation to this practice in that the Edinburgh Gallery swapped its collection with that of the National Gallery of Ireland.

The day we went there was a long queue to get in (in normal years there isn’t) but we did we get to see a lot of Turners new to us.

Clovelly Bay North Devon:-

Chatel Argent above Villeneuve:-

Beech tree:-

A river in the Campagne:-

Old Dover Harbour and Shakespeare’s Cliff:-

Bellahouston Park in Glasgow, where the House for an Art Lover is situated, was the site of the Empire Exhibition 1938.

Towards the exit of the House a digital reconstruction of the Exhibition was on display. This one is from YouTube:-

There was also a small cabinet containing some memorabilia from the Exhibition:-

The memorabilia in the picture are: a toasting fork, a bronze model of the Tower of Empire (Tait’s Tower,) a metal badge in the shape of the Tower, the official Guide to the Exhibition, a glass dish on which there is a season ticket for the Exhibition, the book entitled The Empire Exhibition Fifty Years On and a Birrell’s chocolate box. Presumably the structural engineering company whose plaque is also present had a stand at the Exhibition.

Last week we went to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to catch the exhibition Alfred Buckham, Daredevil Photographer. It’s fantastic. The images are breathtaking.

You’ll need to be quick to see it, though. It’s only on till 19th April.

Buckham’s career started in the RFC (later the RAF) in the Great War. He took his photographs from an open cockpit, leaning out of the aircraft with his leg strapped to the seat as his only safety concession. After the war he began taking photographs of British scenes, images which lent a new perspective to otherwise familar places. He later made a trip to South America.

One of his most famous pictures is of Edinburgh. Unfortunately my photo is marred by the reflection of a blue light:-

This is not simply photography. It’s Art. His final images were carefully created by layering of negatives. Hre are the three he combined for that Edinburgh shot. Again, sorry for the blue lines:-

This is the original Edinburgh photo unenhanced. Not anything like as dramatic:-

I’m a sucker for airships so these photos of R101 and R100 delighted me:-

During the Great War Lavery was commissioned as a war artist. Several of his war paintings are on display at the Lavery on Location Exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery.

Mine-Laying Submarines Harwich 1917:-

Hendon 1917. Hendon was a Royal Flying Corps training base. I really liked this as I’m a sucker for biplanes:-

More sombrely this is The Cemetery, Étaples:-

Daylight Raid from my Studio:-

A Coast Defence. An 18-Pounder Anti-Aircraft Gun, Tyneside:-

Lavery was almost alone in portraying those who became casualties. Wounded, London:-

More of Lavery’s works can be seen on the Ulster Museum’s website, here.

Lavery made his name when he was commissioned to paint the State Visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition 1888. For this he had individual sittings for the privileged invitees so that he could then incorporate accurate portarits of them into his final composition.

He painted many pictures of the International Exhibition including this one of the main building. Along with many other depictions of various International or National Exhibitions, plus the Festival of Britain, I have a copy of this hanging on my study wall:-

Lavery also painted A View from the Canal, Kelvingrove, showing one of the gondolas which plied the waters of the River Kelvin as an amusement attraction:-

And this one of the exhibit The Blue Hungarians:-

One of the features of the international Exhibition was an array of restaurants and café including The Dutch Cocoa House (as depicted by Lavery below) which dispensed Van Houten products.

The above for some reason reminds me of both Edwin Hopper’s Nighthawks and Edgar Degas’s The Absinthe Drinker.

Lavery exhibited this painting in the Art Gallery at the International Exhibition. Dawn after the Battle of Langside. Mary, Queen of Scots in the aftermath of the battle:-

For some reason the title the Scottish National Gallery has given to its exhibition featuring the painter John Lavery is “An Irish Impressionist.”

I had always considered Lavery to be a Scottish painter, even if he was born in Ireland. He moved to Scotland as a child and started his career in Glasgow.

The Exhibition is on till 27^th October.

Lavery’s early work resembles paintings by The Glasgow Boys. This is The Intruders, very reminiscent of a painting by James Guthrie:-

His style soon developed as he took to painting more impressionistic works such as these two of the Bridge at Grès (Grez-sur-Loing):-

Then we have Windy Day:-

and The Harbour of St Jean de Luz:-

There are two versions of On The Loing in the exhibition. This one was a study for the larger painting exhibited beside it.

The current Exhibition at Modern One, Edinburgh, is Tracing Time by the Korean artist Do Ho Suh, of whom I hadn’t heard until the exhibition came on. It ws quite interesting, though some of the exhibits were a bit of a miss rather than a hit.

The outline of this reminded me of the shape of the Korean peninsula:-

A fairly crude drawing of an odd subject:-

Circles or swirls feature in a lot of the exhibits:-

A somewhat scatological drawing:-

This seems to be just a shape:-

Houses, too, are a feature:-

This walk-thorough installation recreates the entrances to several of the homes in which the artist has lived:-

The Exhibition is on till Sep 1st.