Welcome to week six of our forum. I have been having a go at making a mask. Whether they are effective or not is open to much debate, but I realise they might be mandatory on public transport and as I don't drive that's quite important for me.
Making the mask was quite straightforward, the difficult part was ensuring it actually was a good fit. There was much to and fro-ing to the mirror and back to put in extra tucks and adjust the ties. I manged in the end and now have one mask ready in case it is needed !
Below there is a fascinating article by Anne one of our valued committee members. I have uploaded it on her behalf. Thank-you Anne.
Unfortunately the pictures important to the article wouldn't transfer over. However they are in the pdf which is below.
well post! and informative
David Tabraham-Palmer has contributed this interesting piece which follows on from the Art Bites on Gainsborough. Thank-you David for your interest and involvement.
Many of us will have read and enjoyed Mary Alexander's recent article on Gainsborough in The Wire. Poor Gainsborough: in the years following his death, his stock fell, as fashionable interest in portraiture shifted from him to Lawrence, and his landscapes had to wait until the later twentieth century before being appreciated afresh. In the final sale of his work in 1799, a rustic scene fetched only half the low price offered for it ten years earlier.
Coincidentally, in that same year 1799, with Bonaparte poised to launch his political coup in Paris, two enterprising private galleries in London staged exhibitions of paintings previously belonging to the Bourbon family. They clearly made an immense impact on one eager twenty one year old, still star struck by his stay with Coleridge and Wordsworth in Somerset in the previous year. This is how he described his moment of epiphany:-
" I was staggered when I saw the works there collected, and looked at them with wondering and longing eyes....A new sense came before me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before me.....We had all heard the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido, Domenichino, the Carracci - but to see them face to face , to be in the same room with their deathless productions, was like breaking some mighty spell.....was almost an effect of necromancy. From that time I lived in a world of pictures."
I suspect that William Hazlitt's recollection of that pivotal moment may strike a chord with us, in our own journeys towards a discovery of the power of the visual arts, and what better sentiment to share with fellow members as we see out this strange uncharted world of isolation and closed galleries. Incidentally, Hazlitt held a low opinion of Gainsborough's output, but that's another story
This time last year I was in Washington. Amazing to think of boarding the plane, arriving and walking into my hotel room without a care in the world. What a difference a year makes.
I enjoyed my short stay, visiting those landmarks I had seen so frequently in films and dramas. Although I had done my research before the trip I wasn't quite prepared for the long distances between these landmarks. One could never call Washington a compact city.
One of my most memorable experiences was visiting the wonderful museums. No time to visit them all of course, but the Art Gallery was a must and I spent a wonderful afternoon revelling in masterpieces.
Looking at the White House was an experience I had looked forward to. The best view is from the back of the White House
and it was smaller than I had imagined. A far cry from the imposing Capitol building. I later read that this was quite deliberate, so a president would never be led to think he was greater than the democracy Americans had fought for in the past.
The foyer of the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art.
Anne Freimanis our outings committee member has sent this fascinating article for our forum. I lacked the technical skills to transfer all her pictures but Rembrandt's tulips can be seen online quite easily.
Rembrandt tulips are works of art but did Rembrandt paint them?
Rembrandt tulips are some of the most beautiful of all the varieties and one of the glories of spring. You may well grow them yourself.
Originally these tulips had a base colour, often red, pink or purple and then flames of a contrast colour, often yellow or white. The fabulous flowers were enormously varied in their colouration. People believed that they were natural variations that be cultivated through careful breeding. In fact the colour breaks were caused by a virus transmitted between bulbs by an aphid. Modern Rembrandt tulips are entirely disease free and the effect is indeed achieved by genetic breeding. They only come in a few colour combinations, such as white or yellow with red streaks and feathers.
It was this fascination with the beauty, and the financial rewards of investing in the most desirable bulbs that led to the speculative market bubble that we know as Tulip Mania.
Here are some of my favourite old fashioned tulips.
However did Rembrandt ever paint tulips? The tulip capital of the Netherlands is Leiden, where Rembrandt was born and started his artistic career. In naming the tulips, the growers acknowledged the city’s most famous son and the attractive power of the link to one of the world’s most famous artists. Rembrandt himself was most famous for his great religious paintings as well as portraits, the insightful selfportraits and the great ensemble portraits such as The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp. Rembrandt would have been very aware of Tulip Mania as he was a prosperous, established artist of thirty when it peaked in 1636-1637. No doubt he would have known many of the people who made, and lost, fortunes during this period.
I can only find one picture where Rembrandt included a tulip. It is in the bouquet of Saskia Van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume (National Gallery) - and that is clearly
not a Rembrandt tulip. Do you know of others? If so please let me know. There is no prize I am afraid except the glory of having your name published here.
Anne Freimanis
Earlier I copied the poem " Loving the Rituals" onto our forum. It led me to consider how delightful it is to receive a letter or card as opposed to the ubiquitous email. Cards and letters can be kept faithfully for many years, I have kept my Mother's Day cards even though space is always at a premium.
It is even better to send a letter or card of course. This thought led me to this snippet of good advice from Lewis Carroll as described in Simon Garfield's book " To the Letter".
"When you take your letters to the Post, carry them in your hand, if you put them in your pocket you will take a long country walk ( I speak from experience), passing the Post Office twice, going and returning, and, when you get home, you will find them still in your pocket."
I love it and how true it is, I have lost count of the times I have walked past the letter box with a letter in my bag, only to discover it is indeed still there on my return.
Have a nice day!
"Loving the rituals"
Loving the rituals that keep men close,
Nature created means for friends apart.
pen, paper, ink, the alphabet,
signs for the distant and disconsolate heart.
Palladas (4th century AD) translated by Tony Harrison
Looking through my copy of the tenth edition of "Poems on the Underground" I came across this short poem which jumped out at me, as epitomising our present situation.
True our means of communication have moved on since the fourth century but the sentiments remain true. The need we have to communicate and stay in touch.
Although our lockdown is easing slightly, there will still be those we cannot be close to and what better communication can there be than a letter or card.
The postman walking up the drive, the whisper of the envelope as it falls on the mat, and the delight of reading the news from a friend or relative. Zoom and emails are brilliant but a letter or card is somehow more tangible, even in the 21st century.
Today is Nurse's Day, a celebration of the work of nurses everywhere. This year they have been in the spotlight far more than usual and deserve praise for their unstinting efforts to help their patients.
Florence Nightingale is rightly remembered and much of her advice, although couched in Victorian language is totally relevant today.
I was reminded, while listening to a radio article about her, of another Victorian who also carved a path for herself away from the "angel in the house" image favoured by artists and novelists.
Mary Kingsley was an adventurous explorer. She travelled alone throughout West Africa dressed in heavy Victorian clothes with no concessions to the climate of the country she was exploring. Her adventures and life are described in a biography by Katherine Frank that I read some years ago.
Called "A Voyager Out" it was a fascinating read and returning to it now, I am reminded that Mary Kingsley died at the early age of 35 while nursing Boer prisoners in Capetown.
So a big cheer for all our nurses, past and present.
I am Anne Freimanis and I organise our Arts Society visits and Days of Special
Interest. I was fascinated by Sarah Dunant’s 15-minute lecture ‘Venice – Dressed and Undressed’ www.connected.theartssociety.org/talks-lectures . Sarah looks at Bellini and Titian in the context of Venetian state craft and love of sumptuous art.
Before lockdown I was looking forward to visiting the National Gallery’s exhibition Titian: Love, Desire and Death. Let’s hope it is open later in the year as this was the first time this great cycle of paintings has been brought together for four hundred years. I started out studying Titian as a substitute for not going to the exhibition, and indeed for not being able to visit Venice any time in the foreseeable future.
I then found out that Durer had visited Venice, studied under Titian’s master
Giovanni Bellini and met Titian himself, so I started to explore Durer’s life and work.
What a fascinating artist. We mostly know him for The Praying Hands, The Hare and the terrifying and prescient Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In life, he drew and painted almost endlessly, often simply sketching exactly what was in front of him - his left foot or a shoe or three aspects of his own fist. He also painted the most beautiful water colour sketches of places as he travelled through them, maybe just because the horse needed
to rest or because the mountainous landscape was so impressive. All that famous fine detail was a result of incredible hard work and microscopic observation.
Straight out of lock down I’m going back to the National Gallery to see those Titians and then in February to see their exhibition Durer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist. I will now see Durer with fresh and open eyes.
Durer: Young Hare, 1502
Durer: Study of Three Hands, 1490
Durer: The Willow Mill, 1498