St Mary's School Calne

Blenheim Palace, the National Gallery and Courtauld Institute

The History of Art department ran two trips for UVI students this week. The first was a visit to the magnificent baroque Palace at Blenheim, set in superb rolling countryside outside Oxford.  Typically Mrs Lowe managed to pick the only rainy day in a succession of three dry weeks on which to view the palace and grounds.  Students were given a fascinating tour of the house with a specifically architectural focus by the ever amusing head of Education at Blenheim Palace, John Forster.  This was followed by a visit to Oxford in the afternoon, to study the Baroque architecture of the city as built by Wren, Hawksmoor and Gibbs, who the UVI Form have been studying for their A level.

The second visit was to London, to the National Gallery and Courtauld Institute, to study paintings of the Impressionist era at first hand.  This proved to be a very worthwhile revision session, despite the fact that the National Gallery had either re-hung or loaned out almost their entire collection of Impressionist paintings, which made the morning similar to a sophisticated game of hide and seek around the gallery!  However, the visit to the Courtauld was, thankfully, more straight forward and the students were able to see some of the most important works they have been studying, which made for a very interesting day.