tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92093313310974441022024-03-13T01:53:27.561+00:00The Victorian PeeperNineteenth-century Britain through the looking glassDr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.comBlogger202125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-15470181215190811142016-10-01T18:16:00.000+01:002017-07-15T06:23:02.120+01:00Scheherazade on the English Stage: The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments and the Georgian Repertoire<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Playbill for the 1826 Drury Lane </i>Aladdin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><b>From the
appearance of the first English translation of the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the dazzling
tales of Scheherazade have been mined for their dramatic potential. Indeed,
it would be hard to imagine a playwright not intrigued by the obvious
theatrical scope offered by fables that feature enchanted objects, titanic
rivalries, and romantic passions assisted by the supernatural. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In his catalogue
of plays produced or printed in England between 1660 and 1900, Allardyce Nicoll
lists more than a hundred based on the story of Aladdin, nearly sixty on the
story of Sinbad, and about three dozen on the story of Ali Baba. Of course we
know these characters today primarily in their pantomime incarnations, but
during the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth
century, their adventures were also the subject of more or less straight
melodrama and opera, spectacles combining breathtaking stage effects, a few
favourite singers, and musical numbers that could be transferred easily to
concert hall and home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Most of
these were derived from the first English version of the tales, the anonymous
“Grub Street” edition that appeared between 1706 and 1721. This was a
translation of a twelve-volume work by the French diplomat and classicist
Antoine Galland, which was itself based on a fourteenth-century Syrian
manuscript. Some of the most famous stories, including <i>Aladdin, </i>are thought to
have been interpolated into the collection by Galland himself but have
nevertheless come to be considered part of the Arabian Nights canon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">At their
heart, these are stories about the power of stories, and certainly we can agree
with G.K. Chesterton, who said that few other books can match their splendid
tribute to the omnipotence of art. You are all familiar with the framing device
used in the tales: in revenge for the infidelity of his first wife, a sultan
has vowed to kill his future wives the day after he marries them. His latest
wife, Scheherazade, avoids this fate by ensnaring the sultan in a web of
story-telling that keeps him in suspense for a thousand and one nights. By that
time, the sultan has become so enthralled with her that he spares her life.
Scheherazade’s cunning stories save her. Drawn from Indian, Persian, and Arabic
oral traditions, they include fables, fairy tales, proverbs, riddles, songs,
love poems, and historical anecdotes. They are populated by genies,
fairies, demons, and magicians and abound in passion, pathos, violence, bawdy
humour, and fantasy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">To discover
the appeal of these oriental tales to Georgian audiences, let's take a closer look at <i>Aladdin</i> – the “fairy opera” written by
George Soane with music by Henry Rowley Bishop that was first produced in April
1826 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. The production was not successful; in fact, after a year in
preparation and months of intense puffery, it failed miserably. As far as I can
tell, it had only ten performances. I have chosen to focus on it because
of the extraordinary cast of characters involved in its production – many of
them among the most prominent figures of the Georgian theatre – and because it
represents an important milestone in the popular reception of the Arabian
Nights stories.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_wi-_x1HRXw/VQHfuDpUOSI/AAAAAAAACUs/W7YGgxQ7x9g/s1600/Drury%2BLane%2BTheatre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="394" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_wi-_x1HRXw/VQHfuDpUOSI/AAAAAAAACUs/W7YGgxQ7x9g/s1600/Drury%2BLane%2BTheatre.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, c. 1826</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />In its
review of this production, <i>The Times</i> stated that such was the
popularity of the Arabian Nights tales in the Georgian era that none in the
audience could possibly have been unfamiliar with them: “they are read with
avidity in early life,” the reviewer noted, “and the memory, even in age, delights
to dwell on the marvellous powers of Aladdin’s ring and lamp, on the narrow
escapes of the enterprising Sinbad, on the wonders of the city of enchanters,
and the various strange adventures with magicians and genies to which the
heroes and heroines are so frequently exposed.” The same week that Aladdin opened
at Drury Lane, <i>The Times</i> reviewed yet another new print edition of
the tales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The first
English play based on the Aladdin story was written by John O’Keefe in 1788 for
Covent Garden. This was followed by numerous other versions in London and
the provinces over the next few decades, all of which were intended to
capitalise on the Georgian fashion for stories set in enchanting and enchanted
places.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the
autumn of 1825, Covent Garden produced a pantomime <i>Aladdin,</i> which was
followed in the spring of 1826 by the fairy opera <i>Oberon</i> by the
German composer Carl Maria von Weber, then at the height of his popularity in
England. Oberon boasted a libretto by James Robinson Planché set in
Baghdad that combined the brave deeds of a Christian knight, the cruelty of a
Muslim caliph, the trial of true love, and a flock of Shakespearian fairies,
including Oberon and Puck. With Weber conducting, the opera was an instant
success.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Over in
Catherine Street, things were not going as well. Robert Elliston, the
proprietor of Drury Lane, had suffered a stroke the previous autumn and was
drinking heavily as his theatre approached bankruptcy. He had already produced
his own ersatz <i>Oberon</i> two weeks before the Covent Garden production
opened, but to no avail. He needed desperately to have a hit, something that
could serve as a rival attraction. The year before, he had successfully
produced Weber’s early opera <i>Abu Hassan, </i>based on the Arabian Nights story
“The Sleeper Awakened,” and so he decided to go to the Scheherazade well once
again.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Henry Bishop. composer of the 1826 </i><br />
<i>Drury Lane </i>Aladdin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This time
the subject would be Aladdin. George Soane was asked to prepare a libretto and
Henry Bishop was assigned to furnish the music. Bishop had been serving as
composer and music director of Covent Garden for fifteen years when a
disagreement over his salary prompted him to move to Drury Lane for three years
beginning in 1825. Today he is perhaps most famous for the song “Home, Sweet
Home,” but over the course of his long career he composed or arranged some 120
dramatic works, including 80 operas. His modern reputation is not high,
probably because his role as music director required him to produce a great
deal of forgettable hackwork. He was, however, very highly regarded in his day
and was knighted in 1842.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Soane was
the youngest son of the famous architect Sir John Soane and although he is all
but forgotten today, he was among the Georgian theatre’s most prolific playwrights.
In addition to writing libretti for Bishop, Soane wrote for other distinguished
opera composers of the period, including Michael Balfe. Soane is a very
interesting character. He was by all accounts brilliant and often charming, a
graduate of Cambridge and fluent in several languages. Yet he married an
unsuitable woman, in his parents’ estimation; he may have had a child with his
sister-in-law; and he was often imprisoned for debt. In short, he continually
dashed his family’s high hopes for him. Things came to a head when George
published two defamatory articles criticising his father’s work and
disproportionate influence on English architecture. These vicious diatribes
have been blamed for hastening the death of his ailing mother; whatever the case,
Sir John instantly disinherited him and eventually left his estate to the
children of his other son and – as I’m sure you know – <a href="http://www.soane.org/" target="_blank">his magnificent home in Lincoln’s Inn Fields</a> to the nation, where it can be visited to this day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">For Aladdin,
which is in three acts, Soane closely followed the traditional storyline. An
African sorcerer named Mourad arrives in Isfahan, Persia, in search of a magic
lamp hidden in a cave in the desert. He encounters Aladdin and promises him
great riches if he will descend into the cave and bring out the lamp. Mourad
gives Aladdin a gold ring and Aladdin descends into the cave. In the middle of
the cave, which sparkles with jewels, sits a giant figure clutching a rusty
lamp. Aladdin takes it but as he tries to climb out of the cave he falls and
the opening above closes over him. Angry at Mourad, who has left him to die,
Aladdin rubs the lamp in an attempt to clean it and the three genies of the
lamp appear, ready to do his bidding. They take him back to Isfahan and he
falls in love at first sight with the princess Nourmahal, the sister of the
shah. Aladdin asks the shah for permission to marry Nourmahal, which is granted
after Aladdin conjures forty gold urns borne by forty black slaves and forty
white slaves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In his joy, Aladdin has the genies of the lamp create a magical
palace suitable for his bride. Mourad, meanwhile, learns that Aladdin did not
die in the cave. He poses as a tradesman offering new lamps for old and tricks
Nourmahal into giving him Aladdin’s enchanted lamp. Mourad summons the genies
and makes them transport the new palace, with Nourmahal and himself inside, to
Africa. Frantic at the loss of his sister, the shah sentences Aladdin to death
but gives him seven days in which to find her. The seventh day arrives and Aladdin
prepares to take poison to avoid the worse fate of impalement. He realises that
he is still wearing the gold ring given him by Mourad, and in his attempt to
remove it summons the genie of the ring, who at his request takes him to
Nourmahal. The scene shifts to the palace in Africa, where Mourad tells
Nourmahal that she must marry him or die. Aladdin arrives, dressed as a
minstrel, carrying the poison. He tells Nourmahal to pretend to accept Mourad’s
overtures and then to slip the poison into his goblet. Mourad drinks from the
goblet and Aladdin reveals himself. As he dies, Mourad has one last trick up
his sleeve: he tells Aladdin that if he lights the enchanted lamp, he will gain
the wisdom of Solomon. Nourmahal seizes the lamp, lights it, and the lamp
disintegrates, freeing the genies. The final scene is a tableau of all the
characters in the cave seen at the beginning of the opera. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Although
Soane’s libretto had been trimmed by James Winston, who was at this time the
theatre’s acting manager, the opera was still unbearably long. Weber was
present at the premiere and later described the experience in a letter to his
wife. The performance, he wrote, lasted four-and-a-half hours – long enough to
kill the audience as well as the work. Apparently, the first act alone took two
hours; one London paper noted that when the drop fell, “the half price gentry
were scrambling over the gallery benches.” Weber went on to say that the
libretto was weak; the music rarely more than pretty; and some of the singing truly
atrocious. The audience had cheered Weber as he entered the box that had been
placed at his disposal, and when a hunting chorus of Bishop’s was sung they
actually hissed and began whistling the hunting chorus from another of Weber’s operas, <i>Der
Freischütz.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Catherine ("Kitty") Stephens, star of the <br />1826 Drury Lane </i>Aladdin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The part of
Aladdin was sung by the soprano Catherine, or “Kitty,” Stephens, one of the
most popular English opera and concert singers of her generation. Stephens had
joined Drury Lane in 1824 after falling out with the managers of Covent Garden,
where she had made her debut eleven years earlier. <i>Oxberry’s Dramatic
Biography</i> described Stephens as about medium height, with a pretty figure,
dark hair and eyes, and a countenance that reflected the simplicity and
sweetness of her nature. The prevailing narrative about Kitty Stephens, as
evidenced in Oxberry’s and other popular works of Georgian biography, stressed
her respectability and exemplary conduct. Ballads, especially pathetic ballads,
were her specialty. Her singing made Kitty Stephens rich. In 1838, three years
after she retired from the stage, she married the 80-year-old Earl of Essex and
became even richer. In 1826, though, she was still at the height of her powers,
captivating those who came to see her in <i>Aladdin.</i> In a review that was
otherwise critical of the production, <i>The Times</i> praised her acting
abilities, which had charmed the audience nearly as much as her expressive
style of singing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Songs such
as “In My Bower a Lady Weeps,” “Sister, I Have Loved Thee Well,” and “Beautiful
are the Fields” were published as sheet music within weeks of the production,
but many critics noted that the music was not up to Bishop’s usual standard. The
<i>Musical Times</i> thought that “in spite of all of Bishop’s earnestness, or
perhaps because of it, <i>Aladdin</i> shows little of the vigour and
brightness so conspicuous in many works which were merely dashed off as
required. It is, indeed, a curiously disappointing work.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Despite its
shortcomings as music, the opera successfully evoked the popular Georgian
conception of the East. <i>Aladdin</i> was calculated to provide maximum
opportunity for scenic display and it was advertised to appear with entirely
new scenery, machinery, dresses, and decorations. The production featured 15
different settings including
the jewelled cave, raging storms, an elegant imperial palace and harem gardens,
a flying palace that lifts off from Persia and lands in the African desert,
bustling streetscapes, panoramic city views, and a mosque with a practicable
minaret. Most of this was devised by the great Clarkson Stanfield, who was
assisted by the Scottish artist David Roberts, a specialist in architectural
subjects. Roberts had a longstanding interest in the Near East and today he is
remembered primarily for a series of drawings and watercolours he made during a
trip to Egypt at the urging of his friend JMW Turner. Soon after he finished
work on <i>Aladdin,</i> Roberts left Drury Lane for Covent Garden, where his
expertise in painting Eastern subjects was put to good use in the London
premiere of Mozart’s <i>The Abduction from the Seraglio.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Lighting
and machinery played a crucial role in <i>Aladdin.</i> Scenes go dark as storm
clouds gather, vivid flashes of lightning illuminate acts of sorcery and magic;
a bright flame guides the way to the mouth of the enchanted cave; clouds and
mist rise and then vanish to reveal splendid scenes; characters sink through
the stage floor as buildings rise from it; the genies of the lamp appear in
clouds dripping fire; a mechanical dove swoops in occasionally; and the magic
lamp glows and then shatters at the end of the opera.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
management of all the moving parts of this production proved tricky on opening
night, with <i>The Times</i> calling attention to the fact that the actors
were often obliged to stand still while the audience was regaled with the loud
swearing of the carpenters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><i>Aladdin</i> was one of three operas by Bishop written for Drury Lane that have Eastern
settings. <i>The Fall of Algiers, </i>which was produced the year before <i>Aladdin,</i> is
based on England’s 1816 battle with the pirates known as the Barbary Corsairs,
who operated out of Tunisia and preyed on shipping in the western Mediterranean. <i>Englishmen
in India,</i> produced the year after <i>Aladdin,</i> is a sentimental love
story involving an Indian girl and her English guardian.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hC8tYDjsYRo/VQHS6J4b6hI/AAAAAAAACUI/CsZ2KugPcJ8/s1600/Aladdin%2Bscore%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hC8tYDjsYRo/VQHS6J4b6hI/AAAAAAAACUI/CsZ2KugPcJ8/s1600/Aladdin%2Bscore%2Bcover.jpg" width="536" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The cover of Henry Bishop's score for the 1826 Drury Lane </i>Aladdin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt;">These
works, and many others like them, drew audiences interested in the picture they
presented of life in the East. This was a picture generally derived from
partial and faulty knowledge that produced a vision of the Orient as
simultaneously mysterious, enticing, and threatening.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt;"> In the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, travel to the East was still unusual and difficult
and the theatre served to educate the
public—at least that segment of it that attended plays—in a linguistic and
pictorial vocabulary that organised and interpreted the regions east of Europe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">For the
Georgian period, the oriental tale had a two-fold attraction: the exotic appeal
of the setting, and the comfortable familiarity of its moralising themes. In
the preface to an 1807 edition of the Arabian Nights, the universal human
responses of the reader are appealed to as a way of overriding his or her
ignorance of an alien culture. In fact, the English treatment of the stories,
whether in books or on stage, was a constant oscillation between a
domestication of them and an attempt to view them in their own context.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
audience of Bishop’s opera is never allowed to forget that the world of Aladdin is
an Eastern – specifically a Muslim – world. The Prophet Muhammad’s name is
invoked constantly and Allah’s protection is sought at every turn. Characters
swear by Muhammad’s beard and by his sacred tomb. One character struggles to
observe the Muslim prohibition against the drinking of alcohol. All the men
wear turbans, all the women are veiled; all the Christians are called “dogs”
and “pale infidels.” Aladdin’s marriage to Nourmahal is said to represent the
will of Muhammad; when the shah later discovers that his sister is missing, he
calls to Muhammad to forgive him for allowing his sister to marry a wizard. The
second act ends with an extraordinary tableau: as night falls, the Muslim call
to prayer is heard and all the characters kneel and pray.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But it’s a
magic world, too. The plot, after all, revolves around a magic ring, a magic
lamp, and magical beings who are enslaved to these objects. The villain,
Mourad, is an African sorcerer whose use of magic to achieve his own nefarious
ends marks him as corrupt, a recurring type in Georgian orientalist literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Despite its
ravishing scenery, which critics without exception called “truly beautiful” and
“very grand,” <i>Aladdin</i> did not attract. A mere six days after it
opened, Elliston announced that it would be played just once a week, ostensibly
because of the preparations required for a new production of Shakespeare's <i>Henry the
Fourth, Part One, </i>with William Charles Macready as Hotspur. Elliston
recovered enough of his health to create his last original role, Falstaff, in
this production, and played it to great acclaim for several more years at the
Surrey. On May 16 the imitation <i>Oberon</i> was put back on the Drury Lane
schedule, alternating with Macready’s <i>Othello,</i> and on May 30 <i>Aladdin </i>was
produced for the tenth and final time as a benefit for Kitty Stephens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Although
the work was written and billed as an opera, its similarities to the pantomime
form are obvious: the free-spirited Aladdin, played by a female singer, is a
principle-boy figure who shares many traits with Harlequin; Nourmahal, a young
woman under the controlling thumb of her domineering brother, is related to
Columbine; Aladdin loses his magic lamp, analogous in this way to Harlequin’s
magic bat, and loses his power temporarily; the lovers are tested by adversity
and threatened by a lecherous older man who embodies all of the so-called
Oriental evils, including greed and trickery; a benevolent fairy in the shape
of the genie of the ring intervenes to bring the lovers together in a final
spectacular scene in the dwelling-place of the genies of the lamp. Six months
after Bishop’s opera opened and then closed in London, a version of the Aladdin
story squarely in the pantomime tradition opened at Christmas in Glasgow,
complete with the magician Abanazar and featuring interpolated songs
from Bishop’s opera.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XsYznSP-dnA/VQHWX-4ithI/AAAAAAAACUc/9AdEoOQPBrQ/s1600/new%2Bwimbledon%2Baladdin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="419" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XsYznSP-dnA/VQHWX-4ithI/AAAAAAAACUc/9AdEoOQPBrQ/s1600/new%2Bwimbledon%2Baladdin.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A modern </i>Aladdin, <i>New Wimbledon Theatre, 2013</i><br />
<i><br /></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">By the
second half of the nineteenth century, theatrical adaptations
of the Arabian Nights had veered once and for all
into the land of pantomime and extravaganza, acquiring titles like <i>Aladdin and
His Wonderful Lamp; or, Harlequin the Wicked Wizard and the Forty Thieves</i> in
1884 and <i>Aladdin; or, The Naughty Young Scamp Who Ran Off with the Lamp</i> in
1897. These later versions continued to feed the public’s fascination with the
East, sometimes combining several strands of interest, as in <i>Aladdin and the
Wonderful Lamp or the Willow Pattern Plate and the Flying Crystal Palace” </i>in 1884.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>What did
not change, and never will, I think, is the fact that the telling of tales and
the desire to listen to the tales of others is a defining human characteristic,
perhaps <i>the</i> defining human characteristic – one that is perfectly
exemplified by <i>The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments</i> and its early stage
adaptations.</span><br />
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Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-62186580198076517262014-11-01T13:38:00.002+00:002022-06-12T00:08:46.697+01:00The 'Peeper' on Pause<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pNeN4fPmfnI/U6bMbN9u7dI/AAAAAAAACQ8/eNl3_iOeR0M/s1600/medieval_court_edited-1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="451" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pNeN4fPmfnI/U6bMbN9u7dI/AAAAAAAACQ8/eNl3_iOeR0M/s1600/medieval_court_edited-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Just a quick note to readers of The Victorian Peeper: as more and more of my time is devoted to writing up my PhD thesis, I have temporarily shifted my focus away from this blog and towards Twitter (<a href="http://www.twitter.com/Tetens" target="_blank">@Tetens</a>). Please follow me there for the latest information on books, exhibitions, and events of interest to Victorianists. I will continue to update the "Exhibitions and Events" listing here, as well as the lists of search tools and resources. I will return to writing this blog as time permits. Thank you all very much for your understanding and support.<br />
<br />
<i>Shown above: Louis Haghe (1806-85), The Great Exhibition: The Medieval Court (1851)</i>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-59016598867541436232014-06-20T01:09:00.000+01:002015-08-03T15:57:32.564+01:00Sack and Slaughter: Representations of the Crusades on the Nineteenth-Century Stage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Blood Red Knight" by J. H. Amherst, lithograph with hand-coloring and tinsel, c. 1850, <br />published by John Redington</span></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Although historians of the British theatre have long been interested in representations of the “East” on the nineteenth-century stage, few have explored plays depicting the medieval Christian quest to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule.</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The popularity of theatrical representations of the Crusades in the first half of the nineteenth century coincided with the British public’s growing curiosity about the Near East. Tourism to the main Crusade sites rose sharply with improvements in transportation. Artists and engravers brought images of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Damascus Gate, and the Dome of the Rock directly into homes; the exploits of archaeologists in Palestine made newspaper headlines; and enormous, topographically accurate panoramas of biblical landscapes drew crowds across London. A gigantic moving diorama of Jerusalem, for example, complete with Mount of Olives and Garden of Gethsemane, drew crowds to Hyde Park Corner in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. Eastern-themed novels, poetry, children’s literature, missionary tracts, journals, and pictorial art of all kinds were widely available.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Theatrical managers, ever on the lookout for new ways to tap into the public’s enthusiasms, were quick to take advantage. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The following examples, which are representative of the genre, demonstrate how playwriting offered considerable scope to the romantic imagination and plenty of room for an idiosyncratic interpretation of historical events.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Blood Red Knight; or, The Warriors of Palestine, </i><br />Penny Pictorial Plays</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Blood Red Knight</i> by William Barrymore was first produced in 1810 at Astley’s Amphitheatre on the south side of the Thames. There were many versions of it, over many years, by many playwrights. Its first production ran for 175 nights and made more than £18,000, an enormous sum at the time. The plot revolves around the attempts of the Blood Red Knight to seduce Isabella, wife of his brother Alfonso, the crusader. Alfonso returns, is defeated, but then calls in reinforcements, when “the castle is taken by storm, the surrounding river is covered with boats filled with warriors, and the battlements are strongly contested. Men and horses are portrayed slain and dying in various directions, while other soldiers and horses are submerged in the river, forming an effect totally new and unprecedented in this or any other country, and terminating in the total defeat of the Blood Red Knight.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Characters from the play were depicted in tinsel prints, a uniquely nineteenth-century art form that was popular between 1815 and 1830. Tinseling enthusiasts bought plain or colored prints, then added costumes made of die-cut metal foils, called tinsel, as well as bits of fabric, leather, or any other material. The blood-red knights shown at the top of this post and below might once have had real feathers on their helmets. When completed, tinsel prints would glow like religious icons.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Mr. Gomersal as the Blood Red Knight," c. 1835 (Edward Alexander Gomersal, 1788-1862)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A lavishly tinselled version of "Mr. Gomersal as The Blood Red Knight"</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Crusaders; or, Jerusalem Delivered</i> at the Royal Coburg Theatre in 1820 was billed as “an Entirely New and Splendid Melodramatic Tale of Enchantment, the Main Incidents of which are Taken from Tasso's Poem of ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ Interspersed with Songs, Duets, Glees, Choruses, Marches, and Combats, with Entirely New Scenery, Extensive Machinery, Dresses, Properties, and Decorations.” The First Crusade was less popular than the Third Crusade as a dramatic subject during the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, playwrights inspired by Tasso’s “Gerusalemme Liberata” could depend on their audience’s knowledge of that poem, which was available in a number of English editions and translations. Its lyrical passion found a warm reception among the Victorians later in the century, who could appreciate the struggles of characters torn between love and duty and for whom historical inaccuracy was no impediment to enjoyment. <br /><br />The Royal Coburg production appeared the same year that Charles Mills published his magisterial two-volume <i>History of the Crusades for the Recovery and Possession of the Holy Land,</i> one of the earliest studies devoted specifically to that topic – and one critical of the Western religious fanaticism that inspired the wars. Yet the impact of such historical scholarship was negligible on a general public that preferred to get its history lessons in the popular theatres of the day. This has not changed much from the Victorians’ time to ours. Compare the number of people who have dipped into <i>The Oxford History of the Crusades</i> (thousands, maybe?) with the number of those who have seen Kevin Costner’s <i>Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves</i> or Ridley Scott’s <i>Kingdom of Heaven </i>(millions). These recent films are the direct descendants of the nineteenth-century sack-and-slaughter plays.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />In 1827, seven years after producing <i>The Crusaders,</i> the Royal Coburg produced <i>The Unhallowed Templar, </i>a three-act play billed as “an entirely new Grand Historical-Romantic Legendary Spectacle.” This time the subject was the Third Crusade, with much of the action focusing on the various engagements between the Christian forces commanded by the English King Richard I and the Muslim forces led by Saladin. In fact, this encounter of two towering personalities is tailor-made for the stage, which is why plays based on incidents of the Third Crusade outnumber all others during the nineteenth century. No matter that Richard and Saladin never actually met face to face – that inconvenient historical truth did not trouble the playwrights who wrote to fill London theatres. In nearly every one, there is stage combat of the most sensational kind, often on horseback, between the two leaders.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Combat Between Richard and Saladin," Astley's Amphitheatre,<br /><i>Illustrated London News,</i> 20 May 1843</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So we have, in 1843, a play at Astley’s Amphitheatre called <i>The Crusaders of Jerusalem, </i>which featured a violent encounter between Richard and Saladin. Above is an artist’s rendering of this scene. Such depictions must have made an indelible impression on audiences and shaped how they thought about England’s role in the historical Crusades. Certainly they had an impact on later artistic representations, including the work of Gustave Doré, who illustrated an English edition of Joseph Michaud’s <i>History of the Crusades</i> in 1877. Below is a plate from that work featuring the iconography that had developed around the completely fictional meeting of Richard and Saladin.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Gustave Doré (1832-1888),"Richard the Lion-Heart and Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf,"<br />from <i>History of the Crusades</i> by Michaud (1877)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In these plays, Richard is always portrayed as a heroic exemplar of English honour and liberty. Saladin himself behaves in admirable ways – and he was revered by some British writers, including Sir Walter Scott, who compared him favourably with European sovereigns. Still, these plays leave no doubt that the “barbarism” of the Muslims must be extinguished, and that is invariably what happened on stage.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />And speaking of Sir Walter Scott … it would be hard to overstate his influence in creating and perpetuating nineteenth-century romantic notions of the Crusades. Productions of plays based on <i>Ivanhoe </i>and <i>The Talisman, </i>in particular, were instrumental in transmitting these ideas to an audience well beyond those who read the books. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The first dramatisation of <i>Ivanhoe,</i> for example, appeared at the Surrey Theatre in 1820 within weeks of the novel’s publication and inspired a further 290 versions over the following decades. One witness of the Surrey production compared its effect to the feeling inspired by a stained glass window or a Gothic chapel full of shrines, banners, and knightly monuments. Dramatists often played fast and loose with Scott’s story, creating pastiches derived from multiple sources in the interest of heightening its spectacular elements. It was also transformed into opera, pantomime, burlesque, and toy theatre versions.<br /><br />Although <i>Ivanhoe</i> was the most widely adapted of Scott’s Crusade novels, <i>The Talisman</i> was also extremely popular. The first theatrical adaptation of this story of the Third Crusade was produced in Edinburgh in 1825, and more than 70 other versions followed over the course of the century. In the novel, which is set in Palestine, the Scottish knight Sir Kenneth is charged with guarding the standard of Richard the Lionheart’s camp overnight, a task he undertakes with his faithful deerhound Roswal. When Kenneth abandons his watch temporarily, the villain Conrade of Monserrat steals the banner, wounding Roswal in the process. Later, as Conrade marches in a procession before the king, the dog leaps at him, seizing him by the throat, revealing him as the thief.<br /><br /><i>The Knights of the Cross; or, The Dog of the Blood-Stained Banner</i> was just one of many mid-Victorian plays that used this plot as a starting point. It was performed in 1841 at the Royal Albert Saloon, an establishment specializing in burlesque, comic ballets, and melodramas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the poster for this play (above), you can see Roswal, played by a large dog called “Victor,” fighting Conrade for King Richard’s standard. Below that we have the list of characters with the names of the actors portraying them, and below that is a synopsis of the play and its key settings. Act One alone featured a hermit’s cave, a gothic chapel, King Richard’s tent, and a “Grand Eastern Procession” featuring “six suits of real armor.” Act Two included Richard’s camp with a distant view of Jerusalem at sunset, Queen Berengaria’s tent, and St. George’s Mount in the center of Richard’s camp. Note the action described here: Kenneth is seduced from his duty by the queen and one of her ladies, leaving his faithful dog to guard the English banner; Roswal is attacked by Conrade and an “awful, desperate, and protracted conflict ensues … the noble creature fights until his Blood bedews the Mount, and true to the last lies weltering as the Sentinel of his Master’s Honor.” Then follows an “Affecting Meeting of the Dying Dog and the Knight” that was apparently a masterpiece of the histrionic art, both human and canine. The final act began with scenes in King Richard’s tent and the Crusaders’ camp and concluded with a tournament in which “desperate broadsword and shield combat” ended in the “pride and glory of the English crusaders.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />The success of this adaptation led to a vogue for plays featuring trained dogs, who often upstaged the human actors and became stars in their own right. <br /><br />A slightly earlier play called <i>The Siege of Jerusalem,</i> also based on <i>The Talisman</i> and shamelessly mixing fact and fantasy, featured Saladin’s capture of the Holy City, a view of the Dead Sea, the arrival of the French and Austrian fleets, the burning sands of the desert, an appearance by Saladin’s white bull, a “Grand Asiatic Ballet,” the encounter between the Leopard Knight and the Templar – which is straight from Scott – and a feast in Saladin’s camp. The audience certainly got its money’s worth from that one.<br /><br />Each of these plays referenced tropes about the Crusades that swirled through Victorian society. Crusade plays simplified these down to their basic elements and then exploded them out into a three-dimensional sensory feast, using every trick and technique in the arsenal of stage management. They were, truly, spectacles that cemented a highly romanticized version of the Crusades in the nineteenth-century British imagination.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Suffragettes Posting Bills," c. 1910<br />(Library of Congress)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, I’d like to share an image that brings the legacy of nineteenth-century theatrical representations of the Crusades crashing into the modern age – one that links the world of stage melodrama with the beginning of the modern age of film. The image on the right shows two American suffragette bill posters, one of whom is just outside the frame on the right. They're pasting their “Votes for Women” posters over two advertising posters for a silent Italian film called <i>The Crusaders, or Jerusalem Delivered</i> that was released in the U.S. in 1911. The film was based on Tasso’s poem, making it a direct descendant of the Royal Coburg play of the same name. With one swipe of a big brush, one historical crusade is replaced by another.</span></div>
Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-83698344404197601312013-11-27T18:37:00.000+00:002013-11-27T22:59:00.461+00:00Henry Mayhew Takes to the Sky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><i>In 1852, the year after his groundbreaking survey of London's working classes was published in book form, Henry Mayhew (1812-1887; DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101018433/Henry-Mayhew">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mayhew">here</a>) climbed into the wicker basket of a hot air balloon piloted by the legendary aeronaut Charles Green (1785-1870; DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101011379/Charles-Green">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Green_(balloonist)">here</a>). </i></span></o:p><i><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I had seen the world of London below the surface, as it were, and I had a craving to contemplate it far above it – to behold the immense mass of vice and avarice and cunning, of noble aspirations and humble heroism, blent into one black spot," he writes in his vivid account of the evening voyage, which began in the bright pleasure-grounds of Vauxhall Gardens and ended in a Surrey swamp. And indeed, as the </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>famous Royal Nassau balloon rose into the air, the geography of the lives of the costermongers, oyster sellers, flower girls, hawking butchers, and pickpockets whose activities he recorded in </i>London Labour and London Poor<i> came into undifferentiated view. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This occasion marked Green's 500th ascent in the Royal Nassau; in 1836, in the same balloon, he had led a voyage from London that ended 480 miles and eighteen
hours later in Weilburg, Germany—a flight that was at the time (and until 1907)
the world’s longest. </i></span></div>
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<o:p><i><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"In the Clouds,” </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some Account of a Balloon Trip with Mr. Green</span></b></i></o:p></div>
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<o:p><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>By Henry Mayhew</b></i></o:p></div>
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<o:p><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Illustrated London News, 18 September 1852</b></i></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am naturally a coward – constitutionally and habitually
timid – I do not hesitate to confess it. The literary temperament and sedentary
pursuits are, I believe, seldom associated with physical courage. Fear, or the
ideal presence of prospective injury, is necessarily an act of the imagination;
and the sense of danger, therefore, closely connected with a sense of the
beautiful and the aesthetic faculties in general. Your human bull-dogs are
mostly deficient in mental refinement, and perhaps if there be one class of
characters more fancyless than the rest of the world, they are those who are
said to belong to the </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“fancy.”</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> My
creed is that all imaginative men are cowards; and that I am one I have at
least moral courage and honesty enough to acknowledge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then why go up in a balloon?</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, why? These are times when men’s principles of action
are sure to be canvassed; so, to prevent the imputation of any false motives, I
will make a clean breast of it, and confess that it was merely “idle
curiosity,” as the world calls it, that took me into the air.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had seen the great metropolis under almost every aspect. I
had dived into holes and corners hidden from the honest and well-to-do portion
of the cockney community. I had visited Jacob’s Island (the plague spot) in the
height of the cholera, when to inhale the very air of the place was almost to
breathe the breath of death. I had sought out the haunts of beggars and thieves,
and passed hours communing with them as to their histories, habits, natures,
and impulses. I had seen the world of London below the surface, as it were, and
I had a craving to contemplate it far above it – to behold the immense mass of
vice and avarice and cunning, of noble aspirations and humble heroism, blent
into one black spot; to take, as it were, an angel’s view of that huge city
where, perhaps, there is more virtue and more iniquity, more wealth and more
want huddled together in one vast heap than in any other part of the earth; to
look down upon the strange, incongruous clump of palaces and workhouses, of
factory chimneys and church steeples, of banks and prisons, of docks and
hospitals, of parks and squares, of courts and alleys – to look down upon these
as the birds of the air look down upon them, and see the whole dwindle into a
heap of rubbish on the green sward, a human ant-hill, as it were; to hear the
hubbub of the restless sea of life below, and hear it like the ocean in a
shell, whispering to you of the incessant strugglings and chafings of the
distant tide – to swing in the air far above all the petty jealousies and
heart-burnings, and small ambitions and vain parades, and feel for once
tranquil as a babe in a cot – that you were hardly of the earth earthy; and to
find, as you drank in the pure thin air above you, the blood dancing and tingling
joyously through your veins, and your whole spirit becoming etherealised as
Jacob-like, you mounted the aerial ladder, and beheld the world beneath you
fade and fade from your sight like a mirage in the desert; to feel yourself
really, as you had ideally in your dreams, floating through the endless realms
of space, sailing among the stars free as “the lark at heaven’s gate,” and to
enjoy for a brief half-hour at least a foretaste of that elysian destiny which
is the hope of all. To see, to think, and to feel thus was surely worth some
little risk, and this it was that led me to peril my bones in the car of a
balloon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is true that the aerial bulls and ponies of late had
taken nearly all poetry from the skies, reducing the ancient myths to the mere
stage trickeries of an ethereal Astley’s; true that the depraved rage for
excitement</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">-- that species of mental
dram-drinking which ever demands some brutal stimulant – had given a most
vulgar, prosaic character to a voyage which, when stripped of its peril, is
perhaps one of the purest and most dignified delights that the mind is capable
of enjoying; still, quickened with a love of my own art, and heedless of any
silly imputations of rivalry with quadrupeds and mountebanks, I gladly availed
myself of a seat in the car which Mr. Green had set aside for me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At about a quarter to seven o’clock, six of us and the
“veteran aeronaut” took our places in the large deep wicker buck-basket of a
car attached to the Royal Nassau Balloon, while two gentlemen were seated
immediately above our heads, with their backs resting against the netting and
their legs stretched across the hoop to which the cords of the net-work are
fastened, and from which depends the car. There were altogether nine of us – a
complete set of human pins for the air to play at skittles with – and the
majority, myself above the number, no sylphs in weight. Above us reeled the
great gas-bag like a monster peg-top, and all around the car were groups of men
holding to the sides of the basket, while the huge iron weights were handed out
and replaced by large squabby bags of sand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the course of about ten minutes all the arrangements for
starting were complete; the grapnel, looking like a bundle of large iron
fish-hooks, welded together, was hanging over the side of the car. The
guide-rope, longer than St. Paul’s is high, and done up in a canvas bag, with
only the end hanging out, was dangling beside the grapnel, and we were raised
some fifty feet in the air to try the ascensive power of the machine that was
to bear us through the clouds. Then, having been duly dragged down, the signal
was at length given to fire the cannons, and Mr. Green loosening the only rope
that bound us to the Gardens, we shot into the air—or rather the earth seemed
to sink suddenly down, as if the spot of ground, with all the spectators on it,
and on which we ourselves had been lately standing, had been constructed on the
same principle as the Adelphi stage, and admitted of being lowered at a
moment’s notice. The last thing that I remember to have seen distinctly was the
flash of the guns, and instantaneously there appeared a multitude of upturned
faces in the Gardens below, the greater part with their mouths wide open, and a
</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cheveux de fries</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of hands extended above them, all signaling farewell to us.
Then, as we swept rapidly above the trees, I could see the roadway immediately
outside the Gardens, stuck all over with rows of tiny people, looking like so
many black pins on a cushion, and the hubbub of the voices below was like the
sound of a distant school let loose.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And here began that peculiar panoramic effect which is the
distinguishing feature of a view from a balloon, and which arises from the
utter absence of all sense of motion in the machine itself. The earth appeared
literally to consist of a long series of scenes, which were being continually
drawn along under you, as if it were a diorama beheld flat upon the ground, and
gave one almost the notion that the world was an endless landscape stretched
upon rollers, which some invisible sprites were revolving for your especial
enjoyment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then, as we struck towards the fields of Surrey, and I
looked over the edge of the car in which I was standing, holding on tight to
the thick rope descending from the hoop above, and with the rim of the wicker
work reaching up to my breast, the sight was the most exquisite delight I ever
experienced. The houses below looked like the tiny wooden things out of a
child’s box of toys, and the streets like ruts. To peer straight down gave you
an awful sense of the height to which the balloon had already risen, and yet
there was no idea of danger, for the mind was too much occupied with the
grandeur and novelty of the scene all around to feel the least alarm. As the
balloon kept on ascending, the lines of buildings few smaller and smaller, till
in a few minutes the projections seemed very much like the prominences on the
little coloured plaster models of countries. Then we could see the gas lights
along the different lines of road start into light one after another all over
the earth, and presently the ground seemed to be covered with little miniature
illumination lamps, such as may be seen resting on the grass at the sides of
the gravel walks in suburban gardens of amusement. The river we could see
winding far away, undulating, as it streamed along, like a man-of-war’s
pennant, and glittering here and there in the dusk like grey steel. All round
the horizon were thick slate-coloured clouds, edged with the orange-red of the
departed sun; and with the tops of these we seemed to be on a level. So deep
was the dusk in the distance, that it was difficult to tell where the earth
ended and the sky began; and in trying to make out the objects afar off, it
seemed to be as if you were looking through so much crape. The roads below were
now like narrow light-brown ribbons, and the bridges across the Thames almost
like planks; while the tiny black barges, as they floated up the river,
appeared no bigger than insects. The large green fields had dwindled down to
about the size of kettle-holders, and the hedges were like strips of </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">chenille.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When we were about a mile above the ground some of us threw
pieces of paper into the grey air, and these, as we rose and left them below,
fluttered about like butterflies as they fell. Then some of the more noisy of
the crew struck a song; while I heard a dyspeptic gentleman immediately behind
me, as I was kneeling down (for there was but one seat), and stretching my head
over the side of the car, contemplating the world of wonder below, confess to
feeling a little nervous, saying that he was a man of natural moral courage,
but his body overcame it as he was subject to fits of indigestion and as a preventive
to extreme nervousness had taken nothing but vegetables for dinner that day.
And I must confess myself that, poised up high in the air, as we were, with but
a few slender cords to support us, I could not help thinking of the awful havoc
there would be if the twigs of the wicker car were to break and the bottom to
give way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On what sharp church steeple thought I should I be spitted,
and as I looked down the beauty of the scene once more took all sense of fear
from my mind, for the earth now appeared concave with the height, and seemed
like a huge black bowl—as if it were the sky of the nether regions. The lights
of the villages scattered over the scene, were like clusters of glow-worms,
from the midst of which you could here and there distinguish the crimson speck
of some railway lamp.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“There, I’ve thrown over a letter, directed to my house,”
said one of the passengers, “telling ‘em we’re all safe up here”—and as I
stretched over the car I saw the little white fluttering thing go zigzagging
down the air, while we still mounted the sky.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then some of the passengers, who had supplied themselves
with an extraordinary stock of courage previous to starting, by means of sundry
bottles of “sparkling champagne,” which had the effect of making them more
noisy than agreeable in such a situation, must needs begin quarrelling with a
rose-water Captain in the hoop, as to whether they belonged to the “Snobocracy”
or the “Nobocracy,” and at one time their words were literally so high that
could the pair have got to close quarters the dispute would certainly have
assumed a more serious character, for jammed tight together as we were in the
car, the least attempt at violence would certainly have ended in discharging
the whole human cargo into the railway station below. But as it was, it
certainly did appear most ludicrous that two rational beings must choose that
place of all others for engaging in some paltry squabble as to the vulgar division
of the human family into “Nobs” and “Snobs.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Silence, however, was soon restored by Mr. Green reminding
the disputants that we were descending at a rapid rate, and it was time they
began to look out for their safety.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The dyspeptic passenger, who during the dispute had
evidently been suffering from another attack of nervousness, was at length
terrified beyond human endurance by the gentleman who was rather the worse for
champagne indulging in even warmer language than he had yet given vent to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“For mercy sake don’t swear up here, my good man,” shivered
out the poor invalid. “Wait till you get down below, if you must swear. We are
always in the hands of Providence; but up here, it strikes me, that our lives
are literally hanging by a thread.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The collapsing of the bottom part of the balloon to which
Mr. Green here drew our attention as evidence of the rate at which we were
descending, soon restored order, and made every one anxious to attend to the
directions of the aeronaut. We could now hear the sounds of “Ah bal-loon” again
rising from the ground and following in our wake, telling us that at the small
villages on our way the people were anxiously looking for our descent. A bag of
ballast was entrusted to one of the passengers to let fall at a given signal,
while Green himself stood with the grapnel ready to loose immediately he came
to a fitting spot. Presently the signal for the descent of the ballast was
given, and as it dropped it was curious to watch it fall; the earth had seemed
almost at our feet as the car swept over the fields, but so long was the heavy
bag in getting to the ground that, as the eye watched it fall and fall, the
mind was filled with amazement at the height the balloon still was in the air.
Suddenly the sound as of a gun announced that the bag had struck the soil, and
then we were told all to sit low down in the car and hold fast; scarcely had we
obeyed the orders given than the car was suddenly and fiercely jerked half
round, and all within it thrown one on top of another; immediately after this,
bump went the bottom of the car on the ground giving us so violent a shake that
it seemed as if every limb in the body had been simultaneously dislocated. Now
the balloon pitched on to its side, and lay on the ground struggling with the
wind, and rolling about, heaving like a huge whale in the agonies of death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“For heaven’s sake! Hold fast,” shouted Mr. Green, as we
were dashed up and down in the car, all rolling one on the other, with each
fresh lurch of the giant machine stretched on the ground before us, and from
which we could hear the gas roaring from the valve, like the blast to a
furnace.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Sit still, all of you, I say!” roared our pilot, as he saw
someone endeavouring to leave the car.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again we were pitched right on end, and the bottom of the
car shifted into a ditch, the water of which bubbled up through the wicker work
of the car, and I, unlucky wight, who was seated in that part to which the
concussions were mostly confined, soon began to feel that I was quietly sitting
in a pool of water.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To move, however, was evidently to peril not only one’s own
life, but that of all the other passengers, but still no one came to us, for we
had fallen into a swamp, which we afterwards found out was Pirbright-common,
situate some half-dozen miles from Guildford.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Presently, however, to our great delight, some hundred
drab-smocked countrymen appeared, almost as if by magic, around the edges of
the car; for some little time they were afraid to touch, but at last they got a
firm hold of it, and we were one after another extricated from our seats.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To tell the remainder of the adventure would be tame and
dull: suffice it after some two hours’ labour, the aerial machine, car,
grapnels, and all, was rolled and packed up in a cart, and thus transported, an
hour after midnight, to Guildford; the voyagers journeying to the same town in
a tilted cart, delighted with their trip, and listening to the many curious
adventures of the veteran aeronaut who had successfully piloted them and some
hundred others through the air; and who, now that the responsibility of their
lives rested no longer in his hands, seemed a thoroughly different man: before
he was taciturn, and almost irritable when spoken to; and now he was garrulous,
and delighting all with his intelligence, his enterprise, his enthusiasm, and
his courtesy. Indeed, long shall we all remember the pleasant night we passed
with the old ethereal pilot on his 500th </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ascent with the Royal Nassau
Balloon.</span></div>
Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-69185316962946735952012-02-20T04:32:00.000+00:002012-05-22T23:14:16.853+01:00A Fondness for Fronds - Book Review<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T2ai7nTnBw4/T0HI6m4ZYnI/AAAAAAAACKg/s_TR1PK9XCw/s1600/2008BU5446_jpg_l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T2ai7nTnBw4/T0HI6m4ZYnI/AAAAAAAACKg/s_TR1PK9XCw/s400/2008BU5446_jpg_l.jpg" width="305" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Kate Dore with frame of plant forms,"<br />Victoria & Albert Museum, PH.258-1982</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Among the items in the V&A’s remarkable photography collection is <a href="http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O88580/photograph-kate-dore-with-frame-of/">a small portrait</a> by Oscar Rejlander (DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/56/101056872/">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Gustave_Rejlander">here</a>) of the Pre-Raphaelite favorite Kate Dore (at left). The leafy frame that surrounds the sitter, made by pressing ferns between the photographer’s glass plate negative and light-sensitive paper, was added later by Julia Margaret Cameron (DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/4/101004449/">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron">here</a>), perhaps during a visit by Rejlander to <a href="http://www.dimbola.co.uk/">Dimbola Lodge</a>, Cameron’s Isle of Wight home, in 1863.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a striking image that illustrates a fad then at the
height of fashion, one recounted with great style in </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Frances Lincoln Limited, 2012),</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sarah Whittingham’s new book
on the Victorian obsession with what one journalist writing in 1891 called the "tasseled, feathered, fringed, frilled, crimped, and curled" plant. It was an enthusiasm that manifested itself in the passionate </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cultivation, collection, and exchange of fern varieties, both native and exotic, and one that quickly developed a full panoply of related interest groups, specialist growers, and publications.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term "pteridomania" is derived from pteridophyte (a vascular plant that reproduces by spores, from the Greek <i>pteri,</i> feather, and <i>phyte,</i> relating to plants), and <i>mania </i>(madness or frenzy). It was coined by the clergyman and naturalist </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Charles Kingsley in <i>Glaucus; or, the Wonders of the Shore</i> (1855), his call for better science education among the young. Addressing the parents of mid-Victorian girls, he wrote: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Your daughters, perhaps, have been seized with the prevailing 'Pteridomania' and are collecting and buying ferns, with Ward's cases wherein to keep them (for which you have to pay), and wrangling over unpronounceable names of species (which seem different in each new Fern-book that they buy), till the Pteridomania seems to be somewhat of a bore: and yet you cannot deny that they find enjoyment in it, and are more active, more cheerful, more self-forgetful over it, than they would have been over novels and gossip, crochet and Berlin-wool."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Yet as Whittingham convincingly shows, the passion for ferns transcended gender and could be identified in men, women, and children of all ages and classes throughout the English-speaking world. She finds examples not only in Britain, but also in the far-flung corners of the Empire and in the United States. Her material is (more or less) </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">neatly organized into three main areas of activity: collecting, cultivation, and public
display. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z26L_09a8jo/T0HCx5mqfvI/AAAAAAAACKQ/eW3crFZ8dsM/s1600/Fern+Fever_61.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z26L_09a8jo/T0HCx5mqfvI/AAAAAAAACKQ/eW3crFZ8dsM/s640/Fern+Fever_61.jpg" width="432" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania (c) 2012 Frances Lincoln Ltd. <br />and Sarah Whittingham. National Library of Australia, Canberra.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first part of the book is enlivened by contemporary descriptions of "fern hunts," rambles over the countryside conducted with "trowel, satchel, and stout stick" in search of specimens in the wild. Whittingham's discussion of the tools used during such forays is fascinating. Tucked into bags and pockets were fern spade and hatchet, frond pattern book (for identification) and magnifying glass. The "vasculum" -- a cylindrical tin case in which the collected plants were carried home -- was ubiquitous. This was a physically demanding outdoor pursuit with a thrilling edge, and, as Whittingham notes, it could be extremely dangerous: "The overwhelming desire to find a rare fern led the hunter or huntress to lean over fast-flowing rivers, descend precipitous ravines, wade through bogs, and scale rock faces and waterfalls." </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1864 the novelist Eliza Lynn Linton recounted a gruesome accident in the Lake District. "</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A fine athletic young man, in the very prime of his life and flower of his strength, lost his life at the [Stock Ghyll] Force while we were there. Looking for ferns, he overbalanced himself and fell -- dashed into eternity in a second among the rocks." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xtJD-p0edYg/T0HE3RurQ3I/AAAAAAAACKY/IZtVLmzkobE/s1600/Fern+Fever_116_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xtJD-p0edYg/T0HE3RurQ3I/AAAAAAAACKY/IZtVLmzkobE/s320/Fern+Fever_116_2.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania<br />(c) 2012 Frances Lincoln Ltd. </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and Sarah Whittingham.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once prised from rock or ground, a fern could be transplanted into the large glass display boxes known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardian_case">Wardian cases</a>, which became the <i>sine qua non</i> of the fashionable drawing room, or into the garden. In the second part of her book, Whittingham describes the varieties of these cases in some detail, along with other forms of home display and cultivation, including nurseries, "stumperies," grottos, and conservatories.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third part of the book describes how fern motifs were applied across the fine and decorative arts, adorning everything from majolica plates and pitchers to cast-iron fire grates and garden benches. The most original section here is a profusely illustrated consideration of the Victorian ferneries that were built into botanic gardens, winter gardens, and aquaria. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These long chapters are complemented by a pair of fine short essays,
the first describing the links between ferns and fairies, the second providing
an entertaining capsule biography of the painter Edward William Cooke
(1811-80; DNB bio </span><a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/6/101006160/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, Wiki bio </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_William_Cooke" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">), who experienced, according to Whittingham, what was probably “the
most intense and long-lasting attack of fern fever in the nineteenth century.”</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rounding out this useful 256-page oversized volume are
extensive notes; a list of surviving and restored ferneries in Britain,
Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States; an exhaustive
bibliography; and a thorough index.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The book is largely descriptive, an approach that will suit
many readers. Others will be frustrated by its superficial analysis of the
cultural and social contexts in which pteridomania flourished. The book’s colorful
anecdotes sometimes feel strung together in pursuit of a point that never quite
gets made. Quotes from contemporary books and periodicals might have been
selected more judiciously in service to a sustained argument about the needs,
desires, and aspirations that fern fever (and indeed other Victorian plant obsessions, such as those for orchids, roses, coleus, and palms) represented during this
period. Advances in the nineteenth-century understanding of fern biology are cursorily treated. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating survey and one that is sure to
inspire additional studies.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read more...</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Judith Flanders, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (Harper Press, 2006).</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Catherine Horwood, <i>Potted History: The Story of Plants in the Home</i> (Frances Lincoln Ltd., 2007).</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mary Kocol, </span><a href="http://www.marykocol.com/images/GardenInEarlyPhoto_GardensIllustrated_MKocol-web.pdf" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Garden in Early Art Photography,"</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gardens Illustrated</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (November 2010).</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peter D. A. Boyd, </span><a href="http://www.peterboyd.com/pteridomania.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Pteridomania: The Victorian Passion for Ferns,"</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Antique Collecting</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> 28 (1993), 9-12. </span></div>
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<br /></div>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-73373217408104083362011-04-25T18:12:00.014+01:002011-05-20T19:07:56.837+01:00Dishing the Victorian Dirt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="427" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dQ_MjeWQW5c/TbVz4nKRLqI/AAAAAAAACJI/eoiKxHtYlqc/s640/Filthy-2.jpg" width="640" /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
Imagine living anywhere near this gray mountain of trash in the first year of Queen Victoria's reign. It's the "Great Dust-Heap at Kings Cross" as seen from Maiden Lane (now York Road), painted in 1837 by the watercolorist E. H. Dixon, surrounded by slum housing and adjacent to the <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project/institutions/smallpox_hospital.htm">Smallpox Hospital</a>.<br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
The crud all around us is the focus of a fascinating new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London. <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/dirt.aspx">"Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life,"</a> brings together a variety of art, documents, cultural ephemera, photos, videos, and art installations to -- as curator Kate Forde puts it -- "uncover a rich history of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">disgust and delight in the grimy truths and dirty secrets of our past."<br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
The exhibition uses six different historical times and places as starting points for exploring attitudes towards dirt and cleanliness: a home in seventeenth-century Delft, a street in Victorian London in the 1850s, a hospital in Glasgow in the 1860s, a museum in interwar Dresden, a community in present-day New Delhi, and the Fresh Kills landfill site in New York City. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
<br />
Highlights include paintings by Pieter de Hooch, Joseph Lister's medical instruments, and a wide range of contemporary art on related themes. You can peer through one of the first primitive microscopes used to discover bacteria (which had been collected from the mouth of a Dutch scientist), learn about the cesspools that turned the Thames into a "monster soup" in the early nineteenth century, and gaze on "Laid to Rest," a sculpture by Serena Korda featuring bricks that incorporate dust sent to her by modern Londoners.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
<br />
The exhibition's display on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in London's Soho district, ground zero of a cholera epidemic in 1854 that killed more than 600 people, is particularly interesting. At the time, an infecting "miasma" was thought to cause the disease. It took the brilliant detective work of the physician (and royal anaesthetist) John Snow (<a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/25/101025979/">DNB bio here</a>; </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow_(physician)">Wiki bio here</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">) and the Rev. Henry Whitehead (</span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverend_Henry_Whitehead">Wiki bio here</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">) to find the true culprit: fetid water that was being distributed through a public water pump. Snow's famous "ghost map," which traced the progress of the terrifying disease through the city, is included in the exhibition.<br />
</span></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OT89gqnt0oc/TbWk1FXVZVI/AAAAAAAACJM/0k_OKBec_3c/s1600/0.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="301" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OT89gqnt0oc/TbWk1FXVZVI/AAAAAAAACJM/0k_OKBec_3c/s400/0.jpeg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">As for Kings Cross ... similar dustheaps featured in Charles Dickens's <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> (the "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Golden Dustman" </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">Noddy Boffin is one of the writer's most indelible creations) and were the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">subject of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.victorianlondon.org/professions/dustyard.htm">"Dust, or Ugliness Redeemed,"</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"> an essay by the poet R. H. Horne that appeared in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><i>Household Words, </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">the weekly journal Dickens edited from 1850 to 1859. Horne vividly describes the underclass of "Searchers and Sorters" who scaled the debris and painstakingly raked through the refuse, separating animal and vegetable matter from broken pottery, bones, rags, metal, glass, and other detritus. Everything was sold off and recycled: coarse cinders were sold to brickmakers, bones to soapmakers, threadbare linen rags to papermakers. [Shown here: The sifting process at a dust-yard in nineteenth-century London; Mayhew, 1862.]</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
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The Kings Cross dustheap pictured at the top of this post was packed up and shipped to Russia in 1848 when city developers decided to convert the site into what is now the Kings Cross railway terminus. The Russians mixed ash from the pile with local clay to make bricks that were used to rebuild their war-ravaged country.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
<br />
This exhibition is part of the Wellcome's <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/dirt-season/bbc-filthy-cities.aspx">"Dirt Season"</a> that involves a collaboration with the BBC (a series called <a href="http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/2011/News/WTVM050777.htm">"Filthy Cities"</a> with accompanying scratch-and-sniff cards), <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/dirt-season/music-festivals.aspx">an environmental theatre piece</a> at this summer's Glastonbury Festval, <a href="http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/dirt-season/eden-project.aspx">related events for children</a> at the Eden Project in Cornwall, a <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/04/a-filthy-night-ill-never-forget.html">"Dirt Banquet"</a> held earlier this month at Joseph Bazalgette's <a href="http://www.crossness.org.uk/">Crossness Pumping Station</a>, and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/app/filth-fair/id417576702">a free iPhone/iPad word-puzzle app called "Filth Fair."</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
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"Dirt" runs through 31 August at the Wellcome Collection, 215 Euston Road, London.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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Read more...</span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/mar/23/wellcome-collection-dirt-exhibition">"Wellcome Collection Takes a Filthy Look at an Age-Old Obsession," <i>The Guardian,</i> 23 March 2011</a>.<br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
Henry Mayhew, <a href="http://dickens.ucsc.edu/OMF/mayhew.html">"Of the Dustmen of London.</a>" <i>London Labour and the London Poor, </i>1851.<br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br />
Brian Maidment, <i>Dusty Bob: A Cultural History of Dustmen, 1780–1870. </i>Manchester University Press, 2007.<br />
</span></span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br />
H. P. Sucksmith, "</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">The dust-heaps in <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Our Mutual Friend</i>," <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Essays in Criticism</i> <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">23.2 </span>(1973), pp. 206–212.<br />
</span></span></i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br />
Costas A. Velis, David C. Wilson, and Christopher R. Cheeseman, "19th century London dust-yards: A case study in closed-loop resource efficiency." </span>Waste Management<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> 29.4 (April 2009), pp. 1282-1290.<br />
</span></span></i></span></span></span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><br />
Steven Johnson, <i>The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World</i>. Riverhead Press, 2006. <a href="http://www.theghostmap.com/">There's a wonderful website for this book here. </a></span><br />
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</span></span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-25467137586618431112011-04-11T18:32:00.002+01:002011-04-11T18:33:57.719+01:00"From Mama V.R. to Helena"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EKEIgOH8KBE/TaMzb-6PYgI/AAAAAAAACJA/7audwBZhh4E/s1600/erez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EKEIgOH8KBE/TaMzb-6PYgI/AAAAAAAACJA/7audwBZhh4E/s400/erez.jpg" width="243" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">A gold, enamel, and garnet bodice brooch from 1830 that belonged to Queen Victoria made fourteen times its pre-sale estimate at auction last week, selling for £11,400. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">The intricately worked brooch features two large cabochon garnets in a setting of green and red enamel. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">The brooch (shown at left) originally belonged to Victoria, Duchess of Kent (<a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/28/101028273/">DNB bio here</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Victoria_of_Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld">Wiki bio here</a>), who on her death in 1861 left her jewelry to her daughter, Queen Victoria. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Queen Victoria subsequently gave the brooch to her fifth child and third daughter, Helena, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (<a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/41/101041067/">DNB bio here</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Helena_of_the_United_Kingdom">Wiki bio here</a>), as a present on her 24th birthday in 1870. The reverse of the brooch has a simple yet very personal engraving: “Belonged to dear Grandmamma V. From Mama V.R. to Helena 25th May 1870." </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Although Princess Helena married the German prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein in 1866, the couple remained in Britain close to the Queen, who liked to have her daughters nearby. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Helena was an extremely active member of the royal family, carrying out an extensive program of royal engagements. She was also a committed patron of charities, and was <a href="http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/Museum-and-archives/Historical-factsheets/The-founding-of-the-British-Red-Cross">one of the founding members of the Red Cross</a>. She was also <a href="http://www.royal-needlework.org.uk/content/13/royal_school_of_needlework_history">the first president of the Royal School of Needlework</a> and <a href="http://www.rbna.org.uk/origins.asp">the first president of the Royal British Nurses' Association</a>.<br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">She is, perhaps, my favorite of Queen Victoria's children...the Jan Brady of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha clan. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">She fell in love with her father's German librarian, who was promptly sent back to the continent when "Mama V.R." discovered the liaison. There is an excellent biography of her by Seweryn Chomet</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, </span><i>Helena, A Princess Reclaimed: The Life and Times of Queen Victoria's Third Daughter </i>(New York: Begell House, 1999).</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-79840672250105816592011-04-06T12:24:00.027+01:002014-01-30T11:22:19.974+00:00Restored: Ellen Terry's Beetle-Wing Dress<div class="readTitle" style="clear: both;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't."</i></b> This briefest of lines from Act I, scene 5, of Shakespeare's <i>Macbeth</i> inspired one of the most famous stage costumes ever constructed.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5sv6Ly6vvhw/TZxpYE86VbI/AAAAAAAACI0/x3cs3tv5jHA/s1600/Ellen+Terry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5sv6Ly6vvhw/TZxpYE86VbI/AAAAAAAACI0/x3cs3tv5jHA/s640/Ellen+Terry.jpg" height="640" width="324" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">When the Victorian actor-manager Henry Irving [DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/34/101034116/">here</a>; Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Irving">here</a>] decided to produce "the Scottish play" in 1888, with he playing the title role and Ellen Terry, his acting partner, playing his wife, Terry [DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/36/101036460/">here</a>; Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Terry">here</a>] called on her close friend Alice Comyns Carr to design her dresses. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Carr wanted one of them to "look as much like soft chain armour" as possible and "yet have something that would give the appearance of the scales of a serpent." Working with Lyceum dressmaker Mrs. Nettleship, Carr devised a garment "</span>sewn all over with real green beetle wings, and a narrow border in Celtic designs, worked out in rubies and diamonds, hemmed all the edges. To this was added a cloak of shot velvet in heather tones, upon which great griffins were embroidered in flame-coloured tinsel. The wimple, or veil, was held in place by a circlet of rubines, and two long plaits [of hair] twisted with gold hung to her knees."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The result was magnificent, and John Singer Sargent painted Terry as Lady Macbeth in 1889 (shown at left, on display at Tate Britain). </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now this costume, an irreplaceable link to the Victorian theatre and one of its most famous and fascinating stars, has been restored and put back on view at <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-smallhytheplace/">Smallhythe Place</a>, Ellen Terry's former home in Kent.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-national-trust-announces-return-of-famous-beetle-wing-dress-118238864.html">[Read the National Trust's press release here,]</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Via <a href="http://www.kentnews.co.uk/p_12/Article/a_12282/Ellen_Terry_beetle_dress_goes_back_on_display_at_her_Tenterden_home">Kent News</a>: </i> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'One of the most iconic dresses of the Victorian era – shimmering with 1,000 real beetle wings – is returning home to Kent. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The emerald and sea-green gown, which is covered in iridescent wings of the jewel beetle, was made famous by the celebrated actress Ellen Terry in her portrayal of Lady Macbeth in 1888.</span></div>
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'The 120-year-old dress was one of the most iconic costumes of the time, immortalised by the John Singer Sargent portrait at the Tate Gallery. Now, after 1,300 hours of painstaking conservation work costing £50,000, the gown is on display at Smallhythe Place, near Tenterden, where Ellen Terry lived between 1899 and 1928. House manager Paul Meredith said the beetle wings that had dropped off were collected and reattached along with others that had been donated by an antiques dealer.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'"The 100 or so wings that were broken were each carefully repaired by supporting them on small pieces of Japanese tissues adhered with a mixture of wheat starch paste," he said. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"But the majority of the work has involved strengthening the fabric, understanding the many alterations that were made to the dress and ultimately returning it to something that is much closer to the costume worn by Ellen on stage in 1888."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.ecouterre.com/victorian-era-dress-made-from-1000-beetle-wings-restored-for-50000/">[Read a description of the restoration and see additional photos here.]</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'The actress, known as the Queen of the Theatre, was famed for her portrayal of Shakespearean heroines and played opposite Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in London for more than 20 years.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Her beetle dress stage costume was one of the most important items in the National Trust’s collection and was on the priority list to be conserved. Brighton-based conservator Zenzie Tinker and her team carried out the work.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'"We have restored the original shape of the elaborate sleeves and the long, trailing hemline that Ellen so admired," Tucker said. "If she were alive today, I’m sure she’d be delighted. She really valued her costumes because she kept and reused them time and again. I’d like to think she’d see our contribution as part of the ongoing history of the dress."<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'The gown is now in a new display space at Smallhythe Place alongside other features from Ellen Terry’s dressing room which have never been viewed by the public before. The half-timbered house, built in the early sixteenth century when Smallhythe was a thriving shipbuilding yard, was Terry's home from 1899 to 1928 and contains her fascinating theatre collection. The cottage grounds include her rose garden, orchard, nuttery, and the working Barn Theatre.</span></div>
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'Mr Meredith said the setting was an intimate area, bursting with theatre history and stage costumes. "Now the beetle wing dress is back and we finally have a really good contemporary display space, we hope to show many more people just how special the house and collections are."'</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-actor-and-the-maker-ellen-terry-and-alice-comyns-carr/">"The Actor and the Maker: Ellen Terry and Alice Comyns-Carr,"</a> V&A </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=13110&roomid=6657">Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth,</a> Tate Collection</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/mar/11/ellen-terry-beetlewing-gown-macbeth">"Ellen Terry's Beetlewing Gown Back in Limelight,"</a> <i>The Guardian,</i> 11 March 2011<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alicia Finkel, <i>Romantic Stages: Set and Costume Design in Victorian England </i>(McFarland, 1996) </span><br />
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Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-72663558297684210172011-01-03T04:55:00.004+00:002011-01-03T05:32:21.761+00:00Picture Show<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition to providing a useful list of nineteenth-century illustrated newspapers, this page from the 6 December 1890 issue of <i>The Graphic</i> is...well, just beautiful.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Papers in the UK, US, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Denmark, Holland, and Russia are represented.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Click the image and then the magnifying glass icon for a much larger (and readable) version.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TSFXiT4GmDI/AAAAAAAACIg/h1gVnNll-uc/s1600/Ilustrated+Papers+of+the+World+--+Graphic+6+Dec+1890.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TSFXiT4GmDI/AAAAAAAACIg/h1gVnNll-uc/s640/Ilustrated+Papers+of+the+World+--+Graphic+6+Dec+1890.jpg" width="586" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-80883133466504991022010-12-31T21:37:00.006+00:002010-12-31T21:43:58.913+00:00Undershaw Under Threat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="470" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TR5KI4dKKpI/AAAAAAAACIU/UiUHIh7mIUg/s640/mini-Cropped-Windsor2.jpg" width="640" /></span></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://victorianpeeper.blogspot.com/2007/02/doyle-digs-dissed.html">I previously posted about the threat to Undershaw, the Surrey home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in 2007</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br />
As I noted then, quoting </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><em><a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2008110,00.html" style="color: #cc6611; text-decoration: none;">The Guardian</a>, </em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">it was at Undershaw that Doyle "wrote the 'Hound of the Baskervilles' and a patriot defence of Britain's Boer War; resurrected Sherlock Holmes, having previously thrown him off the Reichenbach Falls; campaigned for justice for the falsely accused solicitor George Edalji, and attempted to learn the banjo."</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
Anyone who has read Julian Barnes's magnificent novel</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><em><a href="http://www.julianbarnes.com/bib/arthur&george.html" style="color: #cc6611; text-decoration: none;">Arthur & George</a></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">will feel that they know every inch of this house (shown above in 1897). At the time, I expressed the hope that the worldwide network of societies devoted to Doyle and his immortal creation, Holmes, would be able to rally private support to rescue the house from developers.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">The following update is c</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">ross-posted from <i>The Folio Newsletter, </i>December 2010.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br />
"Undershaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's home in Hindhead, Surrey, is the subject </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">of a legal bid by campaigners aiming to prevent it from being converted into </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">flats. The house, which overlooks the South Downs, was built by Conan Doyle </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">in 1897 for his wife Louisa, who suffered from ill health. After her death a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">decade later, he sold it. The house is virtually untouched from the period and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">retains such features as the family coat of arms, which appears on the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">impressive stained glass windows. Undershaw also remains significant to fans </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">of Conan Doyle as the place where he wrote many of his most famous works. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">With continued uncertainty about its future, however, it is in a state of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">neglect and has been boarded up because of recent acts of vandalism.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
"The Undershaw Preservation Trust claims to have identified a buyer for the property who wants to restore it to its former glory as a single family home, but has so far failed to convince the local council to stop developers from pushing forward with plans to convert the property despite its status as a listed building. Julian Barnes, Stephen Fry, and Mark Gatiss are among those supporting the Trust in its legal action.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
"The Trust sees Undershaw as the last physical link to Conan Doyle. 'This house is part of Conan Doyle's history and it is important to remember that if these plans go ahead, there will be no going back,' say Trust representatives. 'The work will be irreversible.'"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br />
You can read more about the Undershaw Preservation Trust and how you can help its efforts at </span><a href="http://www.saveundershaw.com/">http://www.saveundershaw.com</a> and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><a href="http://undershawhelp.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1c51a8;" target="_blank">http://undershawhelp.blogspot.<wbr></wbr>com</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">.</span></span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-12346698866088280682010-09-12T15:41:00.007+01:002010-09-12T15:55:37.839+01:00Portraying Poverty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIzcjvP1WuI/AAAAAAAACIA/Z2cMHNlSGhI/s1600/AugustusEdwinMulready-1_410.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIzcjvP1WuI/AAAAAAAACIA/Z2cMHNlSGhI/s400/AugustusEdwinMulready-1_410.jpg" width="292" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More news from the art world...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Four paintings by Augustus Edwin Mulready (1844-1904) are to be sold at Bonhams' </span><a href="http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=EUR&screen=catalogue&iSaleNo=17844"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nineteenth-Century Paintings sale</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> on 29 September in London.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mulready's works frequently highlighted the social issues of the Victorian era -- particularly the poverty experienced by homeless street children, whom he often depicted gazing despairingly out at the viewer. The artist returned again and again to this subject in an attempt to draw official and public attention to the condition of these children. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mulready (Wiki bio </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Mulready"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) was a member of the Cranbrook Colony, a small group of painters who lived and worked in the picturesque town of Cranbrook, Kent. They were influenced by Dutch and Flemish genre painting and shared a sustained interest in child subjects. (Other members of the group included Frederick Daniel Hardy, Thomas Webster, John Callcott Horsley, and George Bernard O’Neill.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the quality of Mulready's works as paintings leaves much to be desired, they are important social documents. As art reviewer Keith Roberts has noted, "Children could be used to publicize the iniquities of the social justice system without seeming to attack the social structure; reform might well be achieved by appeals to the conscience through sentiment rather than by reasoned argument and criticism of an overtly political character." This was an approach that Charles Dickens knew well and deployed to devastating effect in his novels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In <em>Uncared For</em> (1871, shown above), one of the works that will be sold by Bonhams (estimate: £10,000-15,000), a pale, barefooted waif stares miserably at the viewer and a young boy buries his head in his hands. Their desolation contrasts powerfully with the more privileged group in the background. Above their heads is a torn street poster ironically proclaiming "The Triumph of Christianity." The juxtaposition would have been considered more provoking and subversive by Victorian viewers had the subjects been adults.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIzdai-imQI/AAAAAAAACII/ClEiHzjgros/s1600/Mulready.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="460" ox="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIzdai-imQI/AAAAAAAACII/ClEiHzjgros/s640/Mulready.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In <em>Fatigued Minstrels</em> (1883), also to be sold by Bonhams (estimate: £4,000-6,000), a pair of exhaused young street musicians slump against a stone pillar as a well-dressed family and couple walk along the brightly lit street opposite. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"This is a fascinating group of pictures, and it is particularly poignant to be selling them at a time when the plight of the urban poor is so much in the public eye," says Charles O'Brien, head of Bonhams' Nineteenth-Century Paintings Department.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such paintings were soon eclipsed by documentary photography, which could induce an even more profound shock in viewers through their harrowing realism.</span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/articles/poverty.html">Poverty and Families in the Victorian Era</a> (part of the superb "Hidden Lives Revealed" website)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.victorianlondon.org/childhood/streetarabs.htm">Childhood -- Children -- Street Arabs</a> (part of Lee Jackson's "Victorian London" website)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Pamela Horn, <em>The Victorian Town Child</em> (Sutton, 1997)</span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-432826587049791052010-09-11T02:33:00.005+01:002010-09-15T14:23:56.239+01:00"Eadweard Muybridge" at Tate Britain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIrLqDBO21I/AAAAAAAACHo/erqT1oLu6yg/s1600/DancingfancyMovementsFemalePlate188.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" ox="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIrLqDBO21I/AAAAAAAACHo/erqT1oLu6yg/s640/DancingfancyMovementsFemalePlate188.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The pioneering Anglo-American photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is the focus of a new exhibition that opened earlier this week at Tate Britain.</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Bringing together more than 150 works, the exhibition demonstrates how Muybridge broke new ground in the emerging art form of photography. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Born in Kingston-upon-Thames in 1830, Muybridge (DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101035174/Eadweard-Muybridge">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge">here</a>) studied photography in England before starting his career in the United States. Perhaps best known for his studies of animal and human subjects in motion, he was also a highly successful landscape and survey photographer, documentary artist, war correspondent, and inventor. Muybridge’s revolutionary techniques produced timeless images that have profoundly influenced generations of photographers, filmmakers, and artists, including Francis Bacon, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Douglas Gordon. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The exhibition, which was organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is presented chronologically, with an emphasis on the rapid technological and cultural change that occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century. It features Muybridge's celebrated experimental series of motion-capture photographs, including <em>The Attitudes of Animals in Motion</em> (1881) and <em>Animal Locomotion, </em>a series of 781 collotype prints in 11 volumes published by the University of Pennsylvania in 1887. The exhibition also considers how Muybridge constructed, manipulated, and presented these photographs. A special highlight is an original "<a href="http://www.kingston.gov.uk/browse/leisure/museum/museum_exhibitions/muybridge/machinery_and_equipment/zoopraxiscope.htm">zoopraxiscope</a>," a device Muybridge invented that projected his images in a way that created the illusion of movement.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIrXqHqkn7I/AAAAAAAACH4/RMguEqUVT58/s1600/AthletesPosturingPlate1151879fromTheAttitudesofAnimalsinMotion+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="390" ox="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIrXqHqkn7I/AAAAAAAACH4/RMguEqUVT58/s640/AthletesPosturingPlate1151879fromTheAttitudesofAnimalsinMotion+small.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Muybridge’s motion studies and carefully managed studio photographs of celebrities contrast with his panoramic landscapes of America. He was fascinated by change and progress and his photographs recorded both the natural beauty of this vast continent and the rapid modernization of its towns and cities. The exhibition includes many of his images of the Yosemite Valley, along with views of Alaska and Guatemala, urban panoramas of San Francisco, and a photographic survey of the construction of the Central Pacific, Union Pacific, and Californian Pacific railroads. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In conjunction with the exhibition, the Tate is launching a new iPhone photo app called "The Muybridgizer," which will allow users to freeze-frame the moving world around them just as Muybridge did and to apply grids and sepia tones that will simulate his motion-capture photos. The app is expected to be available in iTunes by the end of September.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Eadweard Muybridge" runs through 16 January. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Shown at top: Eadweard Muybridge, <em>Dancing (fancy.)</em> (Movements. Female). Plate 188, <em>Animal Locomotion</em> (1887). Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Museum Purchase, 87.7.188. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Shown above: Eadweard Muybridge, <em>Athletes. Posturing.</em> Plate 115, 1879, from <em>The Attitudes of Animals in Motion </em></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">(1881). Albumen silver print. Courtesy Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Read more... </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.kingston.gov.uk/browse/leisure/museum/museum_exhibitions/muybridge.htm">The Eadweard Muybridge Bequest</a> (Muybridge returned to Kingston in the 1890s and when he died in 1904, he bequeathed his equipment and prints to Kingston Museum; this website provides an excellent overview of his life with extensive documentation and images)</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125899013"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Muybridge: The Man Who Made Pictures Move,"</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> National Public Radio, 13 April 2010</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://oaj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/3/407.extract">"Iron Horses: Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge, and the Industrialised Eye,"</a> <em>Oxford Art Journal</em> (October 2005) 28 (3): 407-428. </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.stephenherbert.co.uk/muybCOMPLEAT.htm"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Compleat Eadweard Muybridge: His Life, Work, and Legacy</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (a superb blog by Stephen Herbert with links to a wide range of resources)</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-4629242808380798042010-09-06T04:42:00.005+01:002010-09-12T13:48:03.641+01:00“A New Land at Last to Be Seen”: William Morris and Iceland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIRf7hVJ6kI/AAAAAAAACHY/SrNeFlOnEcI/s1600/104.1939.27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TIRf7hVJ6kI/AAAAAAAACHY/SrNeFlOnEcI/s640/104.1939.27.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Lo from our loitering ship a new land at last to be seen;</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Toothed rocks down the side of the firth on the east guard a weary wide lea,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>And black slope the hillsides above, striped adown with their desolate green:</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>And a peak rises up on the west from the meeting of cloud and of sea,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Foursquare from base unto point like the building of Gods that have been,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>The last of that waste of the mountains all cloud-wreathed and snow-flecked and grey,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>And bright with the dawn that began just now at the ending of day.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Ah! What came we forth for to see that our hearts are so hot with desire?</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Is it enough for our rest, the sight of this desolate strand,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>And the mountain-waste voiceless as death but for winds that may sleep not nor tire?</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Why do we long to wend forth through the length and breadth of a land,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Dreadful with grinding of ice, and record of scarce hidden fire,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>But that there 'mid the grey grassy dales sore scarred by the ruining streams</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Lives the tale of the Northland of old and the undying glory of dreams?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">-- William Morris, “Iceland First Seen” (1891)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tucked away in a small cabinet in a corner of <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-redhouse">William Morris’s Red House in Bexleyheath, Kent</a>, are several small objects that tell an unlikely tale of adventure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 32 items, all on loan from the <a href="http://www.rammuseum.org.uk/">Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter</a>, were collected by Morris on two trips to Iceland. Among the eclectic group are a sixteenth-century Bible; carved horn containers, drinking vessels, and utensils; and various items of clothing, including woven belts, a bodice, a girdle, a cap, slippers, and a corded sash.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The container shown above, made from goat horn and adorned with an intricate floral design reminiscent of some of Morris’s own patterns, was carved in honor of Morris if not at his express direction. His initials are engraved in its brass cap.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Morris visited Iceland for six weeks in 1871 and for two weeks in 1873. The first trip was a watershed event in his life. Morris biographer J.W. Mackail called it a journey that “had to be taken in adventurous explorer's fashion, with guides and a string of pack horses ... it was a prolonged picnic spiced by hard living and rough riding.” It is described well in materials that accompany the display at Red House, which draw on Fiona McCarthy’s <em>William Morris: A Life for Our Time</em> (1994) and Jan Marsh’s <em>Jane and May Morris: A Biographical Story, 1839-1938</em> (1986).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Morris’s Expedition to Iceland, 1871</em></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Morris went to Iceland as a place of pilgrimage. The importance that the journey had for him is suggested by the way in which Morris, the atheist, would refer to it afterwards as his ‘Holy Land.’ He went there to see for himself the landscape that had inspired the Sagas, the folktales of a race who had survived the barrenness and stark reality of Iceland by sitting out the winters conjuring tales of their steely tribal forebears.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Morris had begun his literary journey in advance of his first expedition and had been devotedly translating the Sagas over the preceding two years, ensconced in his study at Queen Square with his Icelandic interpreter and collaborator, Eirikr Magnusson. Magnusson noticed early on how clearly Morris identified with the defiant spirit and unflinching sense of duty shown by the Sagas’ heroic warriors.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Morris and Magnusson set off with the faithful Charley Faulkner, one of Morris’s inner circle, in July 1871. In many ways the expedition reprised those of his bachelor days; perhaps this was part of the motivation for the trip, as Morris particularly admired the Saga treatment of male friendship. The concept of returning albeit briefly to the carefree life he had enjoyed before Rossetti and pre-Raphaelite influence took hold must have been an attractive proposition. His new passion for the Sagas was itself in effect a discarding of those old allegiances: he regarded the bluntness of the Old Norse literature as ‘a good corrective to the maundering side of mediaevalism.’</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Morris’s pursuit of the Saga sites gave shape to the itinerary and slowly Iceland seemed to justify the writer’s calling: here were people saved by literature. At the same time, the artist in Morris was buoyed up by the Icelandic folk art he saw. The daughter of a doctor they lodged with briefly was introduced in full gala dress which included a spectacular silver belt, dated by Morris as not later than 1530. He observes that ‘the open-work of the belt was very beautiful, the traditional northern Byzantinesque work all mixed up with the crisp sixteenth century leafage.’</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Morris also came to greatly admire the traditional turf-walled Icelandic farmers’ houses. Indeed, he seized on them as a confirmation that beauty was a matter of the functional and decorous (‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’). In these so-called bonders’ houses Morris took note of how the loom was never cast out into an outhouse but regarded as the family furniture, so essential was weaving to the economy of rural self-sufficiency.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iceland had an effect on Morris that was purgative and cathartic. He wrote that ‘the glorious simplicity of the terrible and tragic, but beautiful land with its well-remembered stories of brave men, killed all querulous feeling in me, and have made all the dear faces of wife and children, and love, and friends dearer than ever to me.’ Certainly he began to allow himself to long for the familiar sweetnesses of domesticity. He returned from Iceland at the end of the summer with a treasure trove of mementos. As they had travelled around Iceland, he and Faulkner had scoured the steads they stayed in and negotiated prices for desirable objects. Faulkner had acquired some Icelandic silver spoons. Morris’s hoard comprised some of the objects shown here.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">"Morris related his traveller’s tales and demonstrated his success in cooking on an ‘outdoor kitchen’ built of bricks. Thirty years later his daughter May discovered the ‘rather melancholy remains’ of such a campfire in one of the garden fields. Morris’s trip to the land of glaciers and geysers meant that ever after Iceland was to her both a real and a legendary place, overpoweringly beautiful and sad. For the rest of her life, she dreamt of voyaging there herself.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In fact, the items that Morris collected were donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in 1939 by Mary Frances Lobb, May’s companion. Lobb had been a “land-girl” during World War I (a member of the Women’s Land Army), putting skills she had learned during her West Country upbringing to use as a farm laborer. She moved in with May at Kelmscott Manor following May’s divorce from her husband and failed affair with George Bernard Shaw.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The collection can be seen at Red House, a National Trust property, until at least March 2012. For visiting information, click <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-redhouse">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Read more…</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">William Morris, <a href="http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1506.html">“Iceland First Seen,”</a> 1891</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John Purkis, <em>The Icelandic Jaunt: A Study of the Expeditions Made by William Morris to Iceland in 1871 and 1873</em> (William Morris Society, 1962).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.cinoa.org/antiques/d/william-morris-climbing-a-mountain-in-iceland/12655">“William Morris Climbing a Mountain in Iceland,” caricature by Edward Burne-Jones, c. 1871</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/oxford/article_3.shtml">“William Morris and the Legendary,”</a> BBC</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Richard L. Harris, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40001839">“William Morris, Eiríkur Magnusson, and Iceland: A Survey of Correspondence,”</a> <em>Victorian Poetry,</em> vol. 13, no. 3/4, Fall-Winter 1975, pp. 119-130. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Summary: The diversified interests of William Morris led him, in the late 1860s, into a serious study of Iceland and its literature. With his Icelandic friend, Eirikur Magnusson, who taught him the language and collaborated with him in translating a number of sagas, Morris visited Iceland in the summer of 1871. He returned there in 1873 and maintained an interest in, and contacts with, the country and its people until his death. Letters and documents found recently in Iceland suggest the extent, depth, and nature of the poet's relationships with Eirikur Magnusson, his fellow countrymen, and their culture. This material is helpful to a better understanding of Morris' desire to provide a true representation in English of the sagas as he saw them, his concern for Iceland during a period of famine in 1882, his views on the possibilities of economic reform there, and his lifelong friendship with Jón Jónsson, the saddlesmith from Hliðarendakot, who was his guide on the 1873 visit. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/27/william-morris-iceland-ian-mcqueen">“William Morris in Iceland,”</a> <em>The Guardian,</em> 27 March 2010 (describes how Morris’s travels inspired “Earthly Paradise,” a new work for chorus and opera by Ian McQueen named for an epic poem written by Morris). </span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-89691218989604960462010-08-17T17:16:00.028+01:002010-08-26T18:15:01.510+01:00Restoration of Tennyson's Farringford Continues<div class="separator" style="border: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqvXG5MyMI/AAAAAAAACGw/0EV7Z5QEVRQ/s1600/tennyson+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" ox="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqvXG5MyMI/AAAAAAAACGw/0EV7Z5QEVRQ/s400/tennyson+001.jpg" width="362" /></a></div><div style="border: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://victorianpeeper.blogspot.com/2009/08/tennysons-isle-of-wight-home-opens-as.html">I last wrote about Farringford, Tennyson’s Isle of Wight retreat, one year ago, when the poet laureate’s library there was the site of a small but exquisite exhibition of manuscripts, printed works, paintings, photographs, and furniture celebrating the <span style="font-family: inherit;">bicentenary</span> of his birth.</a> Since then, there have been important developments in the building’s restoration.</span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tennyson lived at <a href="http://www.farringford.co.uk/">Farringford</a>, near Freshwater, with his wife, Emily, and their sons, Hallam and Lionel, from 1853 to his death in 1892. (Lionel died in 1886; Emily and Hallam outlived Alfred.) <i>Shown at left: Alfred and Emily Tennyson with their sons Lionel, left, and Hallam, right, in the garden at Farringford, May 1863; photograph by Oscar Gustave Rejlander.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Among the writers, artists, politicians, and philosophers who visited Tennyson there were Prince Albert, Edward Lear, Charles Dodgson, Frederic Denison Maurice, William Allingham, Helen Allingham, Thoby Prinsep, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Bram Stoker, George Frederic Watts, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Julia Margaret Cameron (whose own home, Dimbola Lodge, was nearby) and many, many others. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Major restoration work on Farringford began last October and is expected to continue for the next year to 18 months, according to Rebecca FitzGerald, who with Martin Beisly, international director of Victorian & Impressionist Pictures at Christie's, bought the property four years ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“Our intention is to return the house as much as practically possible to how it was when Tennyson lived here. The library was the first room to be fully restored. Farringford has been a hotel since the mid 1940s and was in a state of considerable disrepair when we took it on in January 2006. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">"However, to our delight we have uncovered original flagstones, working shutters, and plastered-over staircases and bookshelves fitted in the original study on the top floor. We are carefully stripping back layers of wallpaper and paint and discovering the original paint colour beneath, and we have a fair idea of how the house was furnished and the furniture arranged.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(Shown below: Tennyson's library at Farringford in 1892, with dog, writing desk, and other furniture; drawing by W. Binscombe Gardner.) </i></span><br />
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</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">The house will be closed to all but a few private functions until completion, although 23 self-catering cottages on the property are available to rent with a minimum stay of two nights. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Nine have full central heating. Five also have wood burning stoves and therefore can be rented throughout the year.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"> The new Garden Restaurant serves both guests and visitors all year, using local and seasonal produce including vegetables from the kitchen garden. A wood-fired oven is a beautiful feature in the dining room.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Guests staying in our self-catering accommodation have full use of the grounds within the estate and enjoy direct access to Tennyson Down, which Tennyson walked daily with his dogs, and which so inspired his best-loved poems,” says FitzGerald. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To book a cottage, call 01983 752500 or 01983 752700 or e-mail <a href="http://www.blogger.com/redir.aspx?C=3aa3769c7e8a41baaac3c569f283c5cb&URL=mailto%3acontact%40farringford.co.uk">contact@farringford.co.uk</a>. More information is available online at <a href="http://www.blogger.com/redir.aspx?C=3aa3769c7e8a41baaac3c569f283c5cb&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.farringford.co.uk" target="_blank">www.farringford.co.uk</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Once opened the house will no longer be a hotel but an exclusive wedding venue that can also be reserved for private functions, conferences, and workshops, as well as weekend courses and retreats with an emphasis on the creative arts.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqw1-2dQ7I/AAAAAAAACG4/fmh7DoxSB1w/s1600/tennyson+009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" ox="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqw1-2dQ7I/AAAAAAAACG4/fmh7DoxSB1w/s400/tennyson+009.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“The house will have four principal beautifully restored bedrooms where the bride, groom, and respective parents can stay, these being Alfred and Emily’s rooms and the two original guest rooms. We will take additional private bookings in the house for those looking for an exclusive, private country house experience, but principally for those with a keen interest in Tennyson. Our intention is to mount regular exhibitions, host concerts and poetry readings, and give regular tours.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Tennyson at Farringford,</i> a beautifully produced catalogue of the 2009 exhibition edited by the curator Veronica Franklin Gould with an introduction by Leonée Ormond, is also available. It can be ordered online <a href="http://www.farringford.co.uk/index.cfm?order=1">here</a>, by e-mail at <a href="mailto:contact@farringford.co.uk">contact@farringford.co.uk,</a> or by <span style="font-size: small;">calling </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">01983 752500 or </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">01983 752700.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The exterior of the house today:</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqyoEIhI9I/AAAAAAAACHI/Gbqxh8pqZi0/s1600/farringford+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqyoEIhI9I/AAAAAAAACHI/Gbqxh8pqZi0/s400/farringford+2.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">And the library before restoration: </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqy7IVTPbI/AAAAAAAACHQ/QlROqtqfsd4/s1600/library.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" ox="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGqy7IVTPbI/AAAAAAAACHQ/QlROqtqfsd4/s400/library.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Read more...</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.farringford.co.uk/index.cfm?page=1">Farringford: Home of Alfred, Lord Tennyson</a></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="border: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-49505479590068152752010-08-15T22:56:00.000+01:002010-08-15T22:56:23.729+01:00Lewis Carroll and Xie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGhgTHBRwtI/AAAAAAAACGo/iRLgZr1OmSQ/s1600/Lewis-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" ox="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TGhgTHBRwtI/AAAAAAAACGo/iRLgZr1OmSQ/s640/Lewis-2.jpg" width="498" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This charming photograph is one of three albumen print portraits of Alexandra ("Xie") Rhoda Kitchin (Wiki bio </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Kitchin"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) by Lewis Carroll that were sold recently by Bonhams for £24,000.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alexandra (1864-1925) was the daughter of Rev. George William Kitchin, who for 15 years held a theological position at the University of Oxford, where Carroll, a fellow of Christ Church, lectured on mathematics. Kitchin later became Dean of Winchester and Dean of Durham. Alexandra was named for her godmother Alexandra, Princess of Wales, wife of Prince Albert Edward (later King Edward VII). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The three photos show Alexandra in Danish and Oriental costumes. They were given to her by Carroll’s brother, William, on the occasion of her marriage to Arthur Cardew in 1890, along with a copy of <em>The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll,</em> in which two of the photographs are reproduced.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>Read more...</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Helmut Gernsheim, <em>Lewis Carroll, Photographer</em> (Dover Publications, 1969)</span> Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-6449257284698645222010-07-23T21:42:00.009+01:002010-08-17T18:02:59.402+01:00Playing with Pictures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TEnQnMluzqI/AAAAAAAACF0/f2lReHIN_lw/s1600/photocollage_11__EL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" hw="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TEnQnMluzqI/AAAAAAAACF0/f2lReHIN_lw/s640/photocollage_11__EL.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Constance Sackville-West (English, 1846–1929) or Amy Augusta Frederica Annabella Cochrane Baillie (English, 1853–1913), u</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ntitled page from the Sackville-West Album, 1867/73; c</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ollage of watercolor and albumen silver prints; 9 5/8 x 11 13/16 in. (24.5 x 30 cm); </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film</span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">This wonderful collage combining photography and watercolor, part of an album created by relatives of Vita Sackville-West, is featured in the fascinating exhibition "Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage," which originated at the </span><a href="http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/VictPhotoColl/index"><span style="color: black;">Art Institute of Chicago</span></a><span style="color: black;"> last autumn, made a stop at the </span><a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId=%7B07E0F589-3CF2-4929-9F71-469BC40A403E%7D"><span style="color: black;">Metropolitan Museum of Art</span></a><span style="color: black;"> in New York earlier this year, and is now at the </span><a href="http://www.ago.net/playing-with-pictures"><span style="color: black;">Art Gallery of Ontario</span></a><span style="color: black;"> in Toronto through 5 September.</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anticipating the avant-garde collages of Braque and Picasso by about six decades and showing a sly, absurdist sense of humor, aristocratic women of the 1860s and 1870s cut figures from photographic cartes de visite and glued them onto watercolor backgrounds in ways that created new and surprising narratives, simultaneously validating and parodying </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">the exclusive circles in which they moved. Photos of people known to the artists, and in many cases photos of the artists themselves, imbue several of the collages with personal meaning. Others seem to be constructed in the same way that a teenager today would assemble magazine clippings of her favorite celebrities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The compositions are whimsical and fantastical, combining human heads and animal bodies, placing people into imaginary landscapes, and morphing faces into common household objects," say the Art Institute of Chicago curators.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is it possible that the creators of these collages anticipated literary modernism, as well? Their works remind me of many contemporary novels in which minutely observed characters are foregrounded against the barest suggestion of a physical setting, forcing the reader's attention onto the specific and idiosyncratic. Playthings of the artist, plucked from disparate sources, the characters in these collages find themselves arranged against one another in dramatic juxtaposition, prompting the viewer to imagine the story behind each one.<br />
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What story does the Sackville-West collage suggest to <em>you</em>? </span><br />
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Read more...</strong></span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Pictures-Victorian-Photocollage-Institute/dp/0300141149?ie=UTF8&tag=thevictpeep-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank"><em>Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage</em> (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009)</a></span> <br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Marvelous-Album-Madame-Handiwork-Considerable/dp/1857595793?ie=UTF8&tag=thevictpeep-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The Marvelous Album of Madame B: Being the Handiwork of a Victorian Lady of Considerable Talent</em> (Scala Publishers, 2009)</span></a> <br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/arts/design/05victorian.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>New York Times,</em> 4 February 2010, "The Pastime of Victorian Cutups" (exhibition review)</span></a> <br />
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<a href="http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/whatson/article/821482--the-roots-of-surrealism-in-victorian-collage"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Toronto Star,</em> 9 June 2010: "The Roots of Surrealism in Victorian Collage" (exhibition review)</span></a>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-61266853761877901452010-06-23T15:30:00.008+01:002010-07-12T18:01:09.951+01:00How I Would Spend £18 Million<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TCIaSR8pR0I/AAAAAAAACFk/sKtmi_c9cgg/s1600/JMW-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" ru="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TCIaSR8pR0I/AAAAAAAACFk/sKtmi_c9cgg/s640/JMW-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">J.M.W. Turner's <em>Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino</em> (1839), to be sold by Sotheby's in London on July 7.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>Read more...</strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=37071">Overview of the sale at artdaily.com</a></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.sothebys.com/liveauctions/Turner_Vanity.pdf">Sotheby's exquisite sale catalogue</a> [PDF]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>Update via <em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/arts/09iht-melik9.html">The New York Times</a></em>...</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LONDON, July 8 — A world record was set for Turner on Wednesday night when a landscape, "Modern Rome. Campo Vaccino," was sold for £29.72 million, or $45 million. The large canvas, 90.2 by 122 centimeters (35 by 48 inches), was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles bidding through Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, the London dealers specializing in Old Masters and 19th century painting. <br />
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The panoramic view was done by the English painter from memory, without paying much attention to the many precise sketches that he had done in the course of his various trips to Rome. It is an impressionistic evocation of the city bathed in a golden sunset haze touched with salmon pink, and some liberties are taken with topography. <br />
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Very few Turners of this size and caliber remain in private hands — five or six at the most, according to David Moore-Gwyn, Sotheby’s distinguished expert in British painting. This one was acquired directly from the artist when it was included in the Royal Academy show of 1839. The buyer, Hugh A.J. Munro of Novar, was a close friend of the artist and the executor of his estate who oversaw the vast bequests made by his late friend to the National Gallery, which together with the Tate Gallery holds the largest collection of Turners in the world. “Modern Rome. Campo Vaccino” remained in Munro’s family until April 6, 1878, when his collection was dispersed at Christie’s London. It was then bought by Archibald, the fifth earl of Rosebery, and his wife Hannah (née Rothschild), for 4,450 guineas, a huge price at the time. The landscape remained in the hands of their descendants until a family trust consigned it this year to Sotheby’s. <br />
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The historical background of the picture, preserved unlined in its plaster gilt and glazed frame, played its part in the enormous interest aroused. <br />
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The price is in line with the previous record set when another large painting, a Venetian view of "Giudecca, la Donna della Salute and San Giorgio" appeared at Christie’s New York on April 6, 2006, where it fetched $35.85 million. <br />
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The likelihood of another Turner of remotely comparable importance coming up at auction in the near future is slim. While Wednesday’s picture cannot really compare with the greatest Turners in which the visible world is reduced to luminous impressions, now in the two London museums, a few professionals seemed disappointed that it had not gone for even more. <br />
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Awareness of a unique opportunity regarding the work of the greatest British painter of all times and of the urgency of acting there and then was evidently a factor in the wise decision of the Los Angeles museum’s board of trustees to go all out, despite the current mood favoring austerity and financial restraint. </span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-78876005978803550962010-06-20T17:11:00.019+01:002010-06-21T01:24:24.128+01:00Notes on Faraday Lectures Come to Light<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB47PxSH5vI/AAAAAAAACFM/krOPOJfhvbo/s1600/lecture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="462" qu="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB47PxSH5vI/AAAAAAAACFM/krOPOJfhvbo/s640/lecture.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://bit.ly/b10ycp">Notes taken during Michael Faraday’s groundbreaking Royal Institution lectures on the nature of light and magnetism were sold last week by Bonhams for £5,400</a>. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The notes, bound in one volume, were compiled by Maria Herries, daughter of the politician and financier <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_Herries">John Charles Herries</a>, and cover many of Faraday’s lectures from the mid 1830s to 1850. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also included are letters to Maria Herries from Faraday’s close friend, The Reverend John Barlow, who took over the running of the <a href="http://www.rigb.org/registrationControl?action=home">Royal Institution</a> from Faraday in 1843 and who, with him, introduced reforms to admit women members and ensure them equal access to lectures. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next to nothing is known about Maria Herries, although women such as <a href="http://www.rsc.org/images/Woman%20that%20inspired%20Faraday_tcm18-87904.pdf">the popular-science writer Jane Marcet, whom Faraday called his "first instructress"</a> (DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101018029/Jane-Marcet">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_marcet">here</a>) and the painter Harriet Moore (Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Jane_Moore">here</a>) played important roles in the shaping of Faraday's thought and legacy.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In one letter included in the Herries material, Barlow writes of his excitement at Faraday’s announcement of his discovery that all substances are magnetic. “Wonderful as was his discovery about light,” he says, “this seems still more surprising and comprehensive in what it leads to.” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Faraday (1791-1867; DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101009153/Michael-Faraday">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday">here</a>) was one of the key figures of the Victorian era and, indeed, one of the most influential scientists in history. His discoveries laid the foundations of the field theory of electromagnetism and much of modern science. A modest man – he refused a knighthood and turned down the honor of burial in Westminster Abbey – Faraday was also a man of strong principle who declined to participate in the development of chemical weapons for use in the Crimean War. Passionate about education, he established the Royal Institution's <a href="http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000001882">Christmas Lectures</a> for children and the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1892170815"></span>Friday Evening Discourses<span id="goog_1892170816"></span></a> for members – two series that continue to this day.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Shown above:</em> Michael Faraday delivers a Christmas Lecture at the Royal Institution, c. 1855, with Prince Albert and his eldest son, Albert Edward (later King Edward VII), in attendance. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>Fur</strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>ther reading...</strong></span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Life-Discovery-Michael-Scientific-Revolution/dp/1422394565?ie=UTF8&tag=thevictpeep-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">James Hamilton, <em>A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution</em> (Random House, 2002)</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thevictpeep-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1422394565" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;" width="1" /></span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-27539597685884962672010-06-19T09:28:00.001+01:002010-06-20T17:44:43.841+01:00Victorian Things: Galleon Tile Panel by William De Morgan<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB2y1P42IYI/AAAAAAAACE8/L4yDEum2klA/s1600/galleonpanel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" qu="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB2y1P42IYI/AAAAAAAACE8/L4yDEum2klA/s640/galleonpanel.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Galleon Tile Panel</em></span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">William De Morgan (1839 - 1917)</span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Medium: painted earthenware tiles in oak frame </span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dimensions: 60.5 x 153 cm </span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Created: De Morgan's Sands End Pottery in Fulham, London</span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consisting of 40 handpainted six-inch-square tiles backed by unglazed stoneware tiles, this gorgeous panel depicts a colorful and exotic scene of sailing ships, birds, and cavorting sea creatures in a tropical setting [click on it for a larger version]. It was one of twelve designs created by William De Morgan (DNB bio </span><a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101032779/William-De-Morgan"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">; Wiki bio </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_De_Morgan"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) between 1882 and 1900 for the luxury liners of the </span><a href="http://bit.ly/cIJo4Z"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peninsular and Oriental (P&O) Steam Navigation Company</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Although all of the installed panels have been lost, four duplicate sets are known to survive, including this one, which was acquired in 2006 by the <a href="http://www.demorgan.org.uk/">De Morgan Foundation</a> in London from a private American collection. (The others are held by the Southwark Art Collection.)</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
The galleon panel, comprising what De Morgan called "two flank panels [of 20 tiles each] -- crusaders in wessels [sic] on the sea," was most likely designed for the SS <em>Malta.</em> Look closely at the ships' pennants. De Morgan has slapped on some ersatz heraldry: in addition to symbols associated with the Christian crusaders, he also uses (on the ship at right) the star and crescent, that potent symbol of the Christians' enemy, the Ottomans. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The De Morgan Foundation's website, which is in the process of being updated, offers </span><a href="http://www.hattondevelopment.co.uk/demorganfoundation/collection/ceramics/galleon-tile-panel/galleon-tile-panel"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">some additional information about the panel here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 2002 until last year the foundation's collection of more than 1,000 ceramic pieces and 500 paintings and drawings was exhibited</span> at the De Morgan Centre in southwest London. The centre closed to the public when the foundation lost its lease in a library operated by the Wandsworth Borough Council. A new venue for the collection, which is truly one of the nation's cultural treasures, is being sought.</span></span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-33908082661171378802010-06-14T21:39:00.035+01:002010-06-19T16:52:15.592+01:00In the Footsteps of Leighton and Carlyle<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I admit it: I'm a house museum junkie. (I'm guessing you are, too.) Visiting the homes of the individuals I'm researching never fails to give me a <i>frisson</i> of pleasure at the thought that I'm walking where they walked (more or less) and seeing what they saw (more or less). They often provide intimate insights into past lives that are impossible to gain any other way. In the words of the biographer Richard Holmes, writing in <i>Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer</i> (1985), such places provide an essential reversal of perspective: instead of looking in from the outside, you are quite literally looking outward from within a life...it allows the historian to recapture time by "turning the viewpoint inside out, if only for a moment." For more on the various delights of house museums, see </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/small-wonders.html">this article</a> by Tony Perrottet at Smithsonian.com. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The two house museums below -- the first an artist's spectacular palazzo in the middle of bustling London and the second a modest family home in a tiny Scottish village -- are not to be missed. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBaLA9ClVrI/AAAAAAAACCk/SfU-K0zD0C0/s1600/exterior_front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" qu="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBaLA9ClVrI/AAAAAAAACCk/SfU-K0zD0C0/s400/exterior_front.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/museums/leightonhousemuseum.aspx">Even before its recent £1.6 million ($2.4 million) restoration was completed, Leighton House, the Holland Park home of the painter Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-1896), was a magical place to visit</a>. <br />
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Designed by George Aitchison and built in several stages between 1865 and 1895, the house included private living quarters, an expansive working studio, and glamorous reception rooms that became the hub of Victorian artistic life in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Its centerpiece is the gorgeous <a href="http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/LHLeightonHouse/HouseTour/arabhalltour.asp">Arab Hall</a>, built to accommodate Leighton's priceless collection of Islamic tiles. The meticulous </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/museums/leightonhousemuseum/news/therefurbishment.aspx">restoration</a>, undertaken by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which owns the house, involved extensive repairs to the original fabric of the building as well as the redecoration of the main rooms. </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">There's no substitute for visiting this stunning temple of art in person but you can enjoy several of its glories -- including the Arab Hall, Narcissus Hall, and Leighton's studio -- by way of a cleverly designed <a href="http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/leightonarabhall/tour/virtual_tour.html">interactive online tour</a>. <span style="font-family: Arial;">Read more: <i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/may/26/lord-leighton-decorator-artist">The Guardian</a></i> (26 May 2010); <i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/apr/17/frederic-lord-leighton-house-restored">The Guardian</a></i> (17 April 2010); <i><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/richarddorment/7556732/Leighton-House-return-to-dazzling-magnificence.html">The Telegraph</a></i> (5 April 2010).</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBZmTKpWsxI/AAAAAAAACCc/2-VU9-5hwyM/s1600/TC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" qu="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBZmTKpWsxI/AAAAAAAACCc/2-VU9-5hwyM/s400/TC.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/60/">The Arched House in Ecclefechan, Scotland, in which the writer and historian Thomas Carlyle was born on 4 December 1795, reopened its doors to the public earlier this month</a>. “Thomas Carlyle is one of Scotland’s greatest men and his birthplace provides an insight into the times he inhabited as well as his life," says Richard Clarkson of the National Trust for Scotland, which manages the house. <br />
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Built in 1791 by Carlyle's father and uncle (both of whom were master masons), the simple two-story, whitewashed house (shown above) is currently furnished to reflect domestic life in the early nineteenth century and contains a fascinating collection of portraits and some of Carlyle's personal belongings. It owes its name to the large keyed arch that divides the house in two and leads to a courtyard and garden. Carlyle reportedly was born in a small room directly above the arch. He lived in this house until he was 13, when he left to study at the University of Edinburgh. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Carlyle's grave is located in the nearby Ecclefechan churchyard. When he was buried there next to his parents in 1881, the village had fewer than 800 residents, approximately the same number it has today. Ecclefechan is located off the M74 about five-and-a-half miles southeast of Lockerbie. (You can also visit <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-carlyleshouse">Carlyle's London house</a>, which is decidedly more upscale than his humble birthplace; its peaceful walled garden is one of my favorite spots in the entire city. Another Carlyle home, <a href="http://www.thomascarlyle.eu/Welcome.aspx">Craigenputtock</a>, located just 30 miles by road from Ecclefechan, is open to the public by appointment. Carlyle lived there with his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, from 1828 to 1834, when the couple moved to London. It remained a cherished retreat for the rest of Carlyle's life.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Do you have a favorite house museum? Please share in the comments.</b></span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-62975073615431948282010-06-14T04:20:00.015+01:002010-06-19T19:34:16.144+01:00Rescued!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="border: medium none;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB0Njc9IhBI/AAAAAAAACEE/0KPgjkdsz4w/s1600/Lawrence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB0Njc9IhBI/AAAAAAAACEE/0KPgjkdsz4w/s400/Lawrence.jpg" width="325" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Speaking of Lawrence Alma Tadema (see "<a href="http://victorianpeeper.blogspot.com/2010/06/victorian-masterpieces-at-auction.html">Victorian Masterpieces at Auction</a>" below), his original autograph stock book, found earlier this year nestled in a box of discarded 1960s girlie magazines, was sold in May for £25,000 at the Shropshire auctioneers <a href="http://www.mullocksauctions.co.uk/">Mullock's</a> in Ludlow. <br />
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<a href="http://www.mullocksauctions.co.uk/lot-5589-autograph_%E2%80%93_art_and_artists_%E2%80%93_sir_lawrence.html">The morocco-bound ledger</a> is an inventory of the paintings completed by Alma Tadema between 1851 and 1912 and those completed by his wife, Laura, between 1872 and 1909. It was uncovered by a vendor at a clearance auction in the London area earlier this year. <br />
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“The man who spotted it rang me up and asked me for my opinion as to whether he should bid for it,” says Mullock's historical documents specialist Richard Westwood-Brookes. "I told him immediately that what he had discovered was a true art historical treasure and he should try to get it at any price. In the end he paid just a few pounds for the whole carton, and then the underbidder asked him if he would sell him the magazines – which I gather he did.<br />
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“Alma-Tadema has listed everything he ever painted and everything which has been attributed to his wife, so this is a definitive record of what is and what isn't an original painting by him," says Westwood-Brookes. "Of particular interest are the copious notes which he wrote about both sets of paintings – and also the indication that some of them were overpainted, altered, and given different titles. There are also details on where paintings were exhibited and who the original customers were.” </span></div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;"><div style="border: medium none;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB0KgmK5y3I/AAAAAAAACD8/j-m1c7HxkVg/s1600/Laura.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" qu="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TB0KgmK5y3I/AAAAAAAACD8/j-m1c7HxkVg/s400/Laura.jpg" width="291" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The book also contains a number of original poems written by Alma Tadema, each assigned to specific pictures.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
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At the Mullock's sale on May 27, the ledger attracted international interest from private, trade, and institutional bidders, but sold to an anonymous buyer.</span></div><div style="border: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></div></div><br />
<div style="border: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Shown here : Lawrence Alma Tadema and Laura Alma Tadema.</span></div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-30880893300859519772010-06-13T20:38:00.024+01:002010-06-19T16:56:34.365+01:00Victorian Masterpieces at Auction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBUrAj1ekWI/AAAAAAAACBA/5DnmZHwohaE/s1600/Alma-Tadema.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" qu="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBUrAj1ekWI/AAAAAAAACBA/5DnmZHwohaE/s640/Alma-Tadema.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Via <a href="http://artdaily.org/">artdaily.org</a>)<br />
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Works by some of the most important British painters of the nineteenth century will be auctioned at <a href="http://www.christies.com/">Christie's</a> later this week, including <a href="http://bit.ly/cwlwkR">Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema's <em>Under the Roof of Blue Ionian Weather</em> (1901)</a> (shown above), which is expected to fetch at least £1,000,000. <em>[Note: it sold to a private buyer in Europe for £1,026,850 / $1,516,657 --KT]</em></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The market for Victorian paintings and drawings has been on fire for the last several months, and <a href="http://bit.ly/cH95kL">the sale on Wednesday</a>, comprising 108 lots, is expected to realize approximately £6 million. The star lots include, besides Alma Tadema's masterpiece, <a href="http://bit.ly/a1Hf1Q"><em>Chloe</em> (1893) by Sir Edward John Poynter</a> (estimate: £600,000-800,000) and <a href="http://bit.ly/cksgay"><em>The Sea Maiden</em> (1894) by Herbert James Draper</a> (estimate: £800,000-1,200,000). Works by John Ruskin, Frederic, Lord Leighton; Edward Burne-Jones; Edward Lear; George Frederic Watts; J. W. Waterhouse; John Lavery; John Everett Millais; and Laura Knight will also be sold.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101030396">here</a>, Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_Tadema">here</a>), one of the great exponents of High Victorian classicism, worked on <em>Under the Roof of Blue Ionian Weather</em> for more than two years as a commission for the financier Ernest Cassel. The title is adapted from Shelley’s "Letter to Maria Gisborne." The painting bathes the viewer in glorious sunshine, the generous sweep of marble benches with reclining sitters against an azure sea and sky suggesting infinite beauty and tranquility. It received extensive critical acclaim when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1901.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBU10nBe8RI/AAAAAAAACBg/6K9Fg2EZA_I/s1600/chloe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="524" qu="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBU10nBe8RI/AAAAAAAACBg/6K9Fg2EZA_I/s640/chloe.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Poynter's <em>Chloe</em> (above) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1893, three years before the artist's appointment as president of the Royal Academy (Poynter's DNB bio <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101035600/">here</a>; Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_John_Poynter">here</a>). The rich tapestry of colors and textures in this highly decorative work is enhanced by the graceful elegance of the sitter and the presence of music in the form of pipes, a lyre, and a small bird. <em>[Note: this painting was unsold -- KT.]</em></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBUrUJ3joeI/AAAAAAAACBQ/1MummI3Lc7M/s1600/draper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" qu="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBUrUJ3joeI/AAAAAAAACBQ/1MummI3Lc7M/s640/draper.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Draper's <em>The Sea Maiden</em> (above) was the artist's first popular success when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1894 (Draper's Wiki bio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_James_Draper">here</a>). Studies for the background were made in the Isles of Scilly and in Devon, where Draper joined a fishing trawler at sea to observe the nets being hauled in; afterward he made a model of the boat to examine the way it caught the light. This work belongs to the genre of mermaid subjects that figures so prominently in Victorian art, including Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s <em>The Depths of the Sea</em> (1886) and J. W. Waterhouse’s <em>The Siren</em> (1900). Unusually, Draper’s sea maiden has no fishtail, an artistic decision guided by the authority of Swinburne's tragedy <em>Chastelard</em> (1865). <em>[Note: This painting sold to a private buyer in the United States for £937,250 / $1,384,318 -- KT] </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><a href="http://www.christies.com/about/press-center/releases/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=4163">Read the auction results press release here</a>.</em></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-7445975870207821912010-06-13T00:56:00.039+01:002010-06-19T19:37:51.762+01:00Kevin Bacon and the Pre-Raphaelites<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBWkujCDe9I/AAAAAAAACCM/zruOqdbEyUM/s1600/FriendsLoversFamily2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBWkujCDe9I/AAAAAAAACCM/zruOqdbEyUM/s640/FriendsLoversFamily2.png" width="403" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The literary magazine <i><a href="http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/index.php">Lapham's Quarterly</a></i> has an interesting take on the "</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Six Degrees of Separation</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">" idea, which posits that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else in the world by a chain of no more than six acquaintances. <br />
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One popular version of this idea is </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">a game in which players link any living actor -- through his or her roles in films or commercials -- to the American actor Kevin Bacon within six steps</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> By expanding the number of connections to accommodate historical figures, the editors of the magazine have managed to show that a host of eminent Victorians are connected to Mr. Bacon, whose movies include </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Footloose, Flatliners, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Mystic River, and The Woodsman.</i><br />
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The social flowchart “</span><a href="http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/visual/charts-graphs/friends-lovers-and-family.php"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Friends, Lovers, and Family</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">” (shown at left, click for a larger version) is a color-coded web revealing the surprising connections between 70 art-world personalities, including writers, painters, architects, and actors. The Bacon connection to the Victorians goes roughly as follows: Kevin Bacon > Edmund Bacon (Kevin's father, a noted urban planner) > Buckminster Fuller > Margaret Fuller > Ralph Waldo Emerson > Walt Whitman > George MacDonald (1824-1905), the influential Scottish author (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">DNB</span> bio </span><a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101034701/George-MacDonald"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">; Wiki bio </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">). </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From MacDonald, Bacon's links to the Victorian great and good expand exponentially to include John Ruskin, John Everett <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Millais</span>, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (and through <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Millais</span> and Rossetti to the other <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Pre</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Raphaelites</span> and their circle), William Morris, Ford <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Madox</span> Brown, Lewis Carroll, and Elizabeth <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Siddal</span>, among others.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Through his father, Bacon is separated by just four degrees from Thomas Carlyle and Leigh Hunt. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Even Queen Victoria can be linked to the star of <i>Animal House</i> (through her son Prince Leopold, a lover of Alice Liddell and godfather of her second son; it was Alice Liddell who inspired Lewis Carroll's <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i>).</span>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-17846590940629782552010-03-11T13:03:00.019+00:002010-06-19T16:58:27.925+01:00Full Steam Ahead<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/S5kNVW5wIbI/AAAAAAAACAE/eBQGEfmBbPA/s1600-h/3-11-2010+10-29-54+AM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447399884857549234" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/S5kNVW5wIbI/AAAAAAAACAE/eBQGEfmBbPA/s400/3-11-2010+10-29-54+AM.jpg" style="float: left; height: 374px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 240px;" /></a>To accompany its spectacular exhibition on Steampunk, which closed in February after drawing more than 70,000 visitors in four months, the <a href="http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/">Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University</a> published <a href="http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/steampunk/">a mini-website that continues to provide the perfect introduction to the genre</a>. A well-organized set of links takes you to resources that include informative videos, a virtual tour, and a photo gallery.<br />
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The exhibition showcased the work of 18 internationally acclaimed Steampunk artists. Shown here: a mechanical man by Winchester-based artist Amanda Scrivener. "As her creator persona, <a href="http://professormaelstromme.wordpress.com/">Professor Maelstromme</a>, Scrivener crafts items in her laboratory that bring to mind romance by gaslight, arcane science, the steam age, and carnival sideshow curios inspired by aged materials from the tombs of Victorian England," says exhibit curator Art Donovan. "All in all the Professor’s curiosities have been hailed as imaginative oddities epitomizing the rich landscape of Steampunk design." Check out Scrivener's weird and wonderful <a href="http://www.etsy.com/shop/ProfMaelstromme">Etsy store</a>, where she sells clockwork cannibal dolls, razor necklaces, and Steampunk-style top hats festooned with feathers, ribbon, old watch faces, metal stamping, broken spectacles, and keys.<br />
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This five-minute video provides an overview of the Oxford exhibition and captures its look and feel through interviews with curator Donovan, museum director Jim Bennett, and several of the featured artists:<br />
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In other Steampunk news, <a href="http://www.orbitbooks.net/">Orbit Books</a>, a major fantasy/sci-fi imprint owned by Hachette, has just issued a short video that compresses the process of creating the cover of <em>Blameless,</em> a new novel by <a href="http://www.gailcarriger.com/">Gail Carriger</a>, to just two minutes. The book is the third in Carriger's "Parasol Protectorate Series," comprising "comedies of manners set in Victorian London: full of vampires, dirigibles, and tea" that feature the predicaments and peregrinations of the intrepid Alexia Tarabotti. The first book in the series, the Steampunk-vampire mashup <em>Soulless</em>, will be followed by <em>Changeless </em>on 30 March; <em>Blameless</em> is due to be published in September.<br />
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<object height="285" width="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yoDCiTsS7dU&hl=en_US&fs=1&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yoDCiTsS7dU&hl=en_US&fs=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="285" width="340"></embed></object>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9209331331097444102.post-10093779306839937272010-01-27T01:30:00.008+00:002010-06-19T19:44:57.660+01:00Snippets #2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBrKNeAozkI/AAAAAAAACDk/khjvY9dgt94/s1600/1CAWGW7FF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="385" ru="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y5f92e5LEa8/TBrKNeAozkI/AAAAAAAACDk/khjvY9dgt94/s640/1CAWGW7FF.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/FWYgWOCSSpKKuF3pctC6tA">An early Victorian tea set of unglazed red earthenware mounted in silver by Josiah Wedgwood that may have belonged to Queen Adelaide (above) is featured in "A History of the World in 100 Objects" organized by the British Museum and the BBC...</a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage/2010/01/john-galliano-mens-aw10-runway-collection-paris-sherlock-holmes.html">John Galliano channels Sherlock Holmes...</a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/libraries/archives/victorian-clerk/intro/">The racy love life of a 19-year-old Victorian clerk is serialized online...</a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/blog/2009/nov/12/english-exam-computer-dickens-austen">Charles Dickens fails to make the grade...</a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/child_health/article6997656.ece">A disease prevalent among the Victorian poor makes an unexpected return...</a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And finally: <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6991020.ece">The prime minister is inspired by a Victorian poem... </a></div>Dr Kristan Tetenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12888441669738348470noreply@blogger.com2