Another beautiful day. Weather in London every bit as nice as in Spain. I wore a suit (read on). Basked in sunshine in Trafalgar Square before going into the National Gallery to see an excellent small exhibition on the New Age of Science painter Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97).

I didn’t take a single picture in the exhibit both because I was too busy looking and because, appropriately to the canvases, the lighting was very low, almost like candlelight. These are purloined from Wikipedia:

An amazing talent, the images so personal and dynamic. Interesting stuff on “tenebrism” and his debt to Caravaggio. Also on display were an air pump and an orrery of exactly the right date; they looked as if they’d been picked directly from the paintings.

As the blurbs rightly said, Wright is obsessed with hidden sources of illumination and his paintings are all about looking at looking – we’re catching people in the act of noticing, questioning, discovering.

Afterwards Clarissa took us to a lovely and indulgent lunch five minutes away at her club, the Athenaeum, which has a strict dress code, hence the suit.