Hanging the picture

Since we moved in, a large heavy painting has been sitting in the corner of the drawing room.  It came from Norfolk, and in fact only came with us by mistake as I have never liked it and I intended to leave it with the house.  However, the removers packed it in error so here it is.

It is not as big as the huge one of Bristol harbour in the dining room which we had to have professionally hung because it was so heavy, but it still probably weighs about 20kg, so although we had always intended to hang it over the mantlepiece, it was one of those things which we never got round to.

So yesterday we decided to hang it, and very quickly the whole affair started to turn into an argument (if you remember the description in “Three men in a boat” of Uncle Podger trying to hang a picture, you will get the idea), so I knocked it on the head, and proposed that we hung this picture in the dining room and something a bit lighter over the mantlepiece.  Both R and J seemed to accept this idea readily, and it was not until we got it into the other room, and had removed the picture that was on that wall already, that J started to raise objections.  At this point I started to lose my temper, so J backed down and we hung the damn thing.

It has grown on me and I think it looks nice where it is now, although J may have a point because it is a little low on the wall.  But at least after six months it is actually up.

It is by Reginald Smith 1855-1925 and is entitled “Rocky Shore”.  He was a tolerably famous member of the Royal Academy, so the painting was definitely worth bringing with us.