Starting from 1540s through to present day, you can see paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture from all the great British artists of the past half-millennium. On of my favourites that I always look for in the Tate is “The Cholmondeley Ladies”; Besides the lovely palette, and skilful rendering, I always play “Spot the Difference between the two portraits” and I’m up to 11 right now.

I really went to the Tate to see the new staircase…

Rotunda staircase in the newly-refurbished main entrance to Tate Britain, Millbank. Image courtesy The Telegraph.
Rotunda staircase in the newly-refurbished main entrance to Tate Britain, Millbank. Image courtesy The Telegraph.

And this staircase is something to behold, that’s true. After I’d recovered from its sublime beauty, I blinked a few times, took a deep breath and began my tour of BP’s Walk through British Art. Really, I wanted to find two things: firstly, a painting that adeptly illustrates Orientalism in art, and secondly, something amazing. Or uplifting.

Martin Creed, 'Work 227: The lights going on and off', 2000, lights and timer. Image courtesy ArtIntelligence.net.
Martin Creed, ‘Work 227: The lights going on and off’, 2000, lights and timer. Image courtesy ArtIntelligence.net.

This piece by Turner Prize winner Martin Creed, a seemingly empty room until the light flicks on then off again, is not either of those things to one visitor, an older woman 50-60-something, who noted to her companion with a mildly haughty sniff, “What a waste of a perfectly good gallery.”

Perhaps the lady would prefer a room filled with oil paintings like this one in Room 1930:

Ithell Colquhoun, 'Scylla', 1938, oil paint on board in 'BP Walk through British art', at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.
Ithell Colquhoun, ‘Scylla’, 1938, oil paint on board in ‘BP Walk through British art’, at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.

Hoping to find one of Holman Hunt’s pictures from his trips to the Holy Land, I keep wandering room to room, and still haven’t found a painting that adroitly captures an imperialist (or colonial view) of Orientalism. I suspect I’ll find it somewhere around the 1800s.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 'The Girlhood of Mary Virgin', 1848-9, in 'BP Walk through British art', at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’, 1848-9, in ‘BP Walk through British art’, at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.

Yep, just what I was looking for:  Rossetti’s picture of young blonde Virgin Mary getting a sewing lesson from her mother, with her pet dove succumbed in a golden bubble, watched over by ginger Gabriel guarding a stack of books in the corner. Because we all know that sewing is better than reading for young girls, and all the blonde people are good and holy when seen in the lands of brown people.

But then it gets weirder than a fair Mary and book-hoarding copper-haired heavenly messengers…

Glyn Warren Philpot, 'Ropose on the Flight into Eqypt', 1922, in 'BP Walk through British art', at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.
Glyn Warren Philpot, ‘Ropose on the Flight into Eqypt’, 1922, in ‘BP Walk through British art’, at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.

In Glyn Warren Philpot’s version of the Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s run to Egypt to escape Herod’s decree, scary pagan creatures encroach with wanton sexuality on the Holy Family in the middle of their night’s sleep. (Room 1910)

Creepy and weird. I’m still not uplifted yet. Maybe something by Francis Bacon would make my soul sing.

Francis Bacon, 'Three studies for figures at the base of a Crucifixion', 1944, in 'BP Walk through British art', at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.
Francis Bacon, ‘Three studies for figures at the base of a Crucifixion’, 1944, in ‘BP Walk through British art’, Room 1940, at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.

Emotive? Definitely. But somehow a Henry Moore piece is more to my liking today…

Per Tate’s website, this beech wood sculpture is “…what a reclining woman would look like if flesh and blood were translated into the stone before him [Moore]

…the translation of meaning from one material into another.

That’s exactly what I wanted to see today; Moore never disappoints with his elegant simplicity wrapped in beautiful workmanship.

Henry Moore, 'Figure', 1931, in 'BP Walk through British art', Room 1930, at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.
Henry Moore, ‘Figure’, 1931, in ‘BP Walk through British art’, Room 1930, at Tate Britain. Image courtesy Tate Britain.

Truth be told, there’s bound to be something for everybody’s tastes in the hundreds of works on display in the circuit of Tate’s BP Walk through British Art. But don’t stop with these 10 or 15 rooms; art lovers could spend a whole day at Tate Britain.

And don’t forget to enter by the front entrance on Millbank. In a dictionary, the word “grandiose” would be accompanied by a picture of this foyer and its spiral staircase. See also, “eye catching” and “wowzers”.

More links and information

Exhibition details: BP Walk through British art is on at Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG, daily. Free admission

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