Sidebar book cover thumbnail pictures are affiliate links to Amazon, and the storefront links to Blackwell's and The Book Depository are also affiliated; should you purchase a book directly through those links, I will receive a small commission. Older posts may also contain affiliate links to one of those bookshops. I am not paid to produce content and all opinions are my own.
If you're in Edinburgh over the next six or seven weeks, do visit The Lost Words exhibition at Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Garden.
I'm sure you're already familiar with the book by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris which "celebrates the relationship between language and the living world". A fair number of its artworks are included in the show, each subject being treated in three ways: an "absence", an icon, and a contextual piece, showing "things that are missing and things that are hidden, [...] absences and appearances". Run your tongue around the "spells" and linger on the images, but if - like me - you are unnerved by large pictures of certain birds (magpie and raven, for instance), you should be fine enough in the gallery but turn the book's pages with care!
I blame the heat - 32 degrees - for my failure to take note (or even notes) of what I was seeing at Kelmscott Manor last weekend. It was so sapping that I wilted, wandered round in a dwalm, and didn't think to ask the guide about this design sketch in William Morris's bedroom, so I can't tell you whose hand is behind it or what, if anything, it eventually became. I must go back on a cooler day.
Whatever the weather, though, I recommend The Bell Inn at nearby Langford for lunch.
"Mary Frances, having reconciled me to olive oil, did something greater still: she won me over to butter. It was her skirling* that did it. Now, when I make eggs, I cut my measure of butter (Mary Frances would probably still think me very stingy) and skirl it in the base of the pan, making it figure-skate over the surface. And I think of her skirling in the kitchen at Marseilles in bare feet on the red-tiled floor, with pots of geraniums on the window ledges and the mistral blowing outside."
If you saw this post from last year about the (Colin Firth-less) Girl with a Pearl Earring and Other Treasures of the Mauritshuis, you may be interested to know that the film is to be shown on ITV tonight at 11.10 as part of the Great Art series.
At the National Gallery of Scotland on Friday I went to a talk by Dr. Andrew Paterson, "Two Flower Paintings of the 18th. Century", looking at Flower Still Life with Bird's Nest, c.1718 by Jan van Huysum, and A Vase of Flowers, early 1760s, by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin. The juxtaposition was illuminating, showing two alternative conceptions of what the medium can achieve, the first picture being "a tour de force of theatrical illusion, almost microscopic in its detail", the second being much more "painterly" and natural. I've tried to capture the main points here.
The van Huysum, above, includes 20 different species of flower and would have been impossible to create in real life - given the flowers' blooming seasons - so the artist would have either relied on his own image bank of studies, or assembled the picture in a piecemeal manner over the course of a year. In addition to the flowers there are flies, ants, butterflies (including a Grizzled Skipper), while the nest is that of a mistle thrush. Luminous colours rely on layers of translucent glazes, and the copper on which they are painted allows for great fluidity and precision. In terms of meaning, flowers are the prime signifiers of the transience of earthly beauty, while the insects and eggs suggest decay, death, and also renewal of life. The picture is marked by the skill of its composition, the control of chromatic relationships, and by its tonal balance.
The Chardin, in contrast, is a very simple composition, "virtually artless". A Delft vase contains carnations, tuberoses, and sweet peas (it is thought), all realised in an almost impressionistic manner with the feel of an oil sketch. Known for the quality of his observation and the freshness of his vision, Chardin's brushmarks are here unblended creating a painterly texture, while empty space plays an important compositional role and creates a harmonious atmosphere. Only five pigments were used, the background likely being a mixture of all of them, and although limited, "the subtleties of the tonal range are the equal of van Huysum's". Chardin was "alchemical" in his handling of oil paint, apparently, and did not share his secrets with anyone.
While the earlier picture is the apogee of a tradition*, the later one is very forward-looking and modern, showing an individual sensibility and that there is more to painting than a mastery of technique. As Chardin said, "One uses colours but one paints with feeling."
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*For more on Dutch flower painting, touching on the development of the art, below is a talk which accompanied last year's National Gallery Dutch Flowers exhibit:
This is The Angler (c.1912) by William Orpen. Tate Britain has it, allegedly, but along with almost all the Sargents I went to see there on Sunday, it's frustratingly 'not on display'. I wish I had the keys to the cupboard they keep them in.
The above is an illustration by Angela Barrett for Eleanor Farjeon's story Young Kate.
(For more on the collection in which that story appears - though not the book from which the picture comes - have a look here, and for a postscript to that post, click here.)
- Bake a blackberry galette - some eating apples (straight off the tree if possible), chopped and fried in butter with a little cinnamon, are a good addition.
"My mother in her garden. Trowel in hand planting Darwin tulips by the hundred. Secateurs in hand snipping at roses. Crouched down, weeding, weeding, weeding. Pouring jugs of hot water over the ants. Exhorting Tasker to ever greater efforts. Teaching me the names of the flowers - lovely names like salpiglossis and spiraea Anthony Waterer, difficult names like eschscholtzia which were fun to spell. But mostly I remember her just quietly, happily, brooding over it all, alone in the half dark."
Christopher Milne, The Enchanted Places; there's another snippet here.
Sidebar book cover thumbnail pictures are affiliate links to Amazon, and the storefront links to Blackwell's and The Book Depository are also affiliated; should you purchase a book directly through those links, I will receive a small commission. Older posts may also contain affiliate links to one of those bookshops. I am not paid to produce content and all opinions are my own.
