Oxford: city of aquatint

I have recently been reading Evelyn Waugh's book 'Brideshead Revisted' following seeing again the 1981 TV series. In the opening chapters, Oxford is referred to by the narrator Charles Ryder (who is an artist) as still being a 'city of aquatint'. I realised I had no idea what an aquatint is: in fact it is a particular kind of print, produced by a process I have not fully understood. But I see more clearly now why the book makes this reference. Below are two aquatints of Oxford, both admittedly of a time rather earlier than the 1920s when the book is set:


In both of these but particularly the second, we see Oxford as it were through a damp gauze, softening the image and making it more redolent of a time before Oxford became mostly a park-and-ride place still crammed with traffic.

Pictures of an earlier time

These images are paintings by the artist Margaret Dovaston. Ignored by the art establishment, they have graced countless waiting rooms and living rooms, although their popularity is now quite diminished. I once bought a print of the second picture at a car boot sale but I somehow lost it at work. They are redolent of an earlier age; most take place in a country inn, or some in a squire's house. The sort of scenes which they show would have been familiar to that famous diarist Parson Woodforde; scenes of a natural life unsullied by many aspects of today. But dentistry was bad; and life could be short for the unfortunate.
A website on Margaret Dovaston can be found at http://sueburton.co.uk/dovaston/margaret/moremargaret.htm

A man and a woman

'Marriage of Convenience' by Orchardson

'Garden of Eden' by Riviere

These two paintings show a great deal about relationships. In the first, a beautiful young wife sits listless at the dinner table, bored with her much older husband in a wealthy Victorian household. In the second, painted around 1900 and much more 'modern' in style, a young couple walk in a London park. Her face is eager and she is plainly in love with the young man, who is probably in a modest white-collar job - perhaps a solicitor's clerk? Where can happiness really be found?

One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic

So said the Soviet leader Josef Stalin, in an oft-misunderstood quotation. His own death came in March 1953 and here his acolytes carry his coffin. The two front figures are (left) Malenkov, and (right) Beria, the notorious head of the secret police, who only a few months later was despatched by his colleagues. Other figures in the picture are the veteran foreign minister Molotov (black hat, behind soldier), and the Jewish Lazar Kaganovich (with moustache, two behind Molotov). Both, like Malenkov, managed to die in their beds. A few year's before Stalin died, his own suspicious nature and the rivalry between his associates had led to the murder of two promising younger men, Kuznetsov and Voznesensky, in the 'Leningrad Case'. Only three years after this photograph was taken, Stalin was denounced by Khruschev, who was himself implicated in many of the regime's less savoury activities in the 1930s. Being a comrade is hard, tovarisch!

Are things as we see them?

This is Galaxy M104, sometimes know as the Sombrero Galaxy. It is approximately 29 million light years from Earth (just under 290 million million million kilometres), so what we see today was the galaxy as it was 29 million years ago. No doubt a lot has happened there since then; it certainly has here. What's it like there now?

This picture of somewhere almost unthinkably remote from our own lives (but still quite close in galactic terms) reminds me of Elizabeth Jennings' beautiful short poem 'Delay':

The radiance of that star that leans on me

Was shining years ago. The light that now

Glitters up there my eye may never see,

And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until

Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse

Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful

And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

The moral of which may be summarised as: someone may be trying to tell you something......

God and War

This painting by the Italian war illustrator Matania depicts 'A' Company of the 2nd Battlion Royal Munster Fusiliers, stopped en route to Aubers Ridge in Belgium on 8 May 1915. The central figure is Father Francis Gleeson, a Roman Catholic priest, who is pronouncing a general absolution on the soldiers before they go into battle. The next day, 19 out of 22 officers and 320 'other ranks' out of 520 died. World War I is notorious still for the high rate of attrition amongst troops, and the apparent pointlessness of the conflict - although it appeared otherwise at the time. If men weren't in charge, would this sort of thing happen?

An unknown woman

I saw this striking picture for the first time in the recent BBC-TV programme 'The Victorians', fronted by Jeremy Paxman. But nothing was said to identify the painting; and even more frustratingly it did not appear in the 'book of the series'. Other enquiries led to nothing. Finding out on the internet what a particular image is remains hard, despite the introduction of Google's 'similar pictures' feature this week: you still need to know what the first image is to find it. But after much searching on the internet, I finally tracked it down in the Bridgeman Art Library, a very useful resource which can be found at http://www.bridgemanart.com/ . It is a portrait of the French singer Rose Caron, by a rather obscure artist called Auguste Toulmouche, active in France until his death in 1890. He was perhaps not in the first rank of artists; the rendering of the dress, for instance, is lifeless compared with the paintings being done by John Singer Sargent at this period. Ms Caron herself had an interesting career - unhappily married young and then divorced in 1886, she appeared in many new French operas, and became the intimate friend of the politician Georges Clemenceau. She was the mistress of the Foreign Minister Delcasse and had two children, both predeceasing her. She is buried in the small town of Monnerville, south of Paris. Researching this also led me to the wonderful websites of Alice Guy Jr, whose site on Rose Caron is at http://rose-caron.blogspot.com/ . There are links on that to her many other sites. The site includes another picture of Rose Caron:

in one of her roles. Not many people know about Rose Caron today, but she is not forgotten.

A message from 1897

This postcard, which I bought a few years ago, was sent in 1897 by Muriel Hill, ending her singing lessons. Miss Hill can be tracked down even now, in the 1901 census records; at that time she was in her mid-twenties, living at home with her family still, in the prosperous suburb of Harrow . The postcard has survived because of the stamp it carries, although that is ordinary enough. But one wonders what lay behind the terse message. Had she grown weary of learning sentimental Victorian songs? Had Mr Cummings made unwelcome advances to his young pupil? Had Muriel decided to take up another interest - such as the then very fashionable occupation, for ladies, of cycling ? We shall never know. The inanimate object, the card, survives her and it both conveys and conceals something of one ordinary life. What will people know of us in 112 years' time?

nb: the card was written, posted, received and acknowledged all on the same day: 19 March. These were the days when men would send a postcard to their wives telling them which train they would be catching back from work, knowing the card would be delivered that afternoon. How things have improved in the postal service.........

Doing a simple task well

Today I sat in Bristol Cathedral for an hour before an appointment. This was a rare opportunity to do nothing but think and watch, without interruption. I watched an Italian-looking girl genuflecting twice before the altar, a Catholic practice in an Anglican cathedral. And I saw two of the cathedral workers tidying the huge paschal candle, which is lit for Easter. These candles are very substantial, like the example pictured here. This one was about three feet long and very heavy. One man removed it from its stand and took it away. Another brought a dustbin and removed the flower arrangement of white, gold and green from the candle holder, and replaced it with another arrangement. Then the candle, duly trimmed of molten wax at the top, was brought back over the first man's shoulder - they will break if carried in two hands - and the whole thing, stand and candle, was moved back into the quire, to stand near the altar. When I had first seen it, it had been by the temporary altar placed in the nave for the morning service. Then one of the men swept up the mess of dead flowers etc from the floor. This was a simple job for them, but one but done with care and commitment, a routine but not routine task in the life of a building dedicated to prayer. For an atheist, prayer is a difficult subject; but many atheists feel strangely at home in churches. In future posts, I hope to say more about other churches which I have been in and have felt - something.