A refreshing autumn Friday afternoon saw twelve company members and guests headed towards Guildhall Yard, the location at the very centre of the City Livery movement, after a number of us had availed of the bright gastropub over the road for luncheon. The current Art Gallery opened in 1999, with its Victorian predecessor a victim of the Blitz, and is reinforced in steel.

Once there, we were treated to an excellent and informative private tour, by City of London Guide Louise Halfpenny, of the highlights of the Guildhall’s impressive art collection – both the permanent collection in the Guildhall Art Gallery and the changing exhibition in the Heritage Gallery. We saw works of the Clytemnestra and Clytie (from Greek mythology), paintings by the pre-Raphaelite members Gabriel Dante Rosetti and John Everett Millais, and – extraordinarily – the largest oil painting in the UK (at 7 metres by 9 metres), ‘The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar’, by John Singleton Copley. A patriotic demonstration of British military superiority and magnanimity if ever there was one! 

The greatest surprise was however reserved for the basement, where we walked beside the actual Roman gravel, seating and plumbing of the Roman Amphitheatre constructed in the colonia of Londonium over two thousand years ago – and which was only re-discovered in 1985! Next came a study of London landscapes old and new (with a particular personal highlight being John Atkinson Grimshaw’s ‘The Thames by Moonlight with Southwark Bridge’) and a introduction to the Fire Judges who affirmed city land rights after the 1666 Great Fire. We finished – appropriately enough, given the time of year! – comparing and admiring depictions of the Lord/Lady Mayor’s Show painted over 120 years apart. These atmospheric pieces offered a reminder of just how special and enduring livery traditions here in the City of London truly are. 

A wonderful visit, and I would encourage anyone who has yet to visit to take the opportunity (especially as, remarkably, the gallery is free to visit).