... of the seven deadly sins, the eighth and most horrid is emotional blackmail ... whilst for this blogger, the only sacred thing is life itself
Sunday, December 15, 2019
rembrandt, etching on a copper plate
Rembrandt, The Ship of Fortune, 1633
https://collections.artsmia.org/art/55335/the-ship-of-fortune-rembrandt-harmensz-van-rijn
Rembrandt, The Angel Appearing To The Shepherds, 1634
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/370641
https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/curatorial-departments/drawings-and-prints/materials-and-techniques/printmaking/etching
Saturday, December 14, 2019
vauxhall gardens
watercolour by thomas rowlandson ...
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17299/vauxhall-gardens-watercolour-thomas-rowlandson/
print after thomas rowlandson ...
aquatinte by francis jukes ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Jukes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_Gardens
other stuff ...
william hogarth's admission token
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17299/vauxhall-gardens-watercolour-thomas-rowlandson/
print after thomas rowlandson ...
aquatinte by francis jukes ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Jukes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_Gardens
other stuff ...
william hogarth's admission token
Friday, December 6, 2019
martin lewis ... mezzotint genius
https://www.graphicine.com/4183-2/
passing storm, 1919 ...
http://jcsm.auburn.edu/spotlight-martin-lewis/
subway steps, 1930
https://urgetocreate.tumblr.com/post/91547960260/transistoradio-martin-lewis-1881-1962-subway
about the mezzotint process ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzotint
Monday, December 2, 2019
Winnicott, Bowlby, Melanie Klein, Etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaZkvvB367I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ5DxjVhKhM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A02Ucd6monY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LM0nE81mIE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU3iSW6WTo8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Klein
Friday, November 29, 2019
buttons and bows
East is east and west is west
And the wrong one I have chose
Let's go where they keep on wearin'
Those frills and flowers and buttons and bows
Rings and things and buttons and bows.
And the wrong one I have chose
Let's go where they keep on wearin'
Those frills and flowers and buttons and bows
Rings and things and buttons and bows.
Don't bury me in this prairie
Take me where the cement grows
Let's move down to some big town
Where they love a gal by the cut o' her clothes
And you'll stand out, in buttons and bows.
Take me where the cement grows
Let's move down to some big town
Where they love a gal by the cut o' her clothes
And you'll stand out, in buttons and bows.
I'll love you in buckskin
Or skirts that you've homespun
But I'll love ya' longer, stronger
Where yer friends don't tote a gun
Or skirts that you've homespun
But I'll love ya' longer, stronger
Where yer friends don't tote a gun
My bones denounce the buckboard bounce
And the cactus hurts my toes
Let's vamoose where gals keep a-usin'
Those silks and satins and linen that shows
And I'm all yours in buttons and bows.
And the cactus hurts my toes
Let's vamoose where gals keep a-usin'
Those silks and satins and linen that shows
And I'm all yours in buttons and bows.
Gimme eastern trimmin' where women are women
In high silk hose and peek-a-boo clothes
And French perfume that rocks the room
And I'm all yours in buttons and bows.
In high silk hose and peek-a-boo clothes
And French perfume that rocks the room
And I'm all yours in buttons and bows.
Buttons and bows, buttons and bows
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jay Livingston / Ray Evans
Buttons And Bows lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Monday, November 25, 2019
pantheon of fine wimmin ... mary sidney herbert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5LZFhdLp8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sidney
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-sidney-herbert
https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/sidney/pembroke_biography.htm
Psalm 51
O Lord, whose grace no limits comprehend;
Sweet Lord, whose mercies stand from measure free;
To me that grace, to me that mercy send,
And wipe, O Lord, my sins from sinful me.
Oh, cleanse, oh, wash, my foul iniquity;
Cleanse still my spots, still wash away my stainings,
Till stains and spots in me leave no remainings.
For I, alas, acknowledging do know
My filthy fault, my faulty filthiness
To my soul’s eye incessantly doth show,
Which done to thee, to thee I do confess,
Just judge, true witness, that for righteousness
Thy doom may pass against my guilt awarded,
Thy evidence for truth may be regarded.
My mother, lo, when I began to be,
Conceiving me, with me did sin conceive:
And as with living heat she cherished me,
Corruption did like cherishing receive.
But, lo, thy love to purest good doth cleave,
And inward truth: which, hardly else discerned,
My truant soul in thy hid school hath learned.
Then as thyself to lepers hast assigned,
With hyssop, Lord, thy hyssop, purge me so:
And that shall cleanse the lepry of my mind.
Make over me thy mercy’s streams to flow,
So shall my whiteness scorn the whitest snow.
To ear and heart send sounds and thoughts of gladness,
That bruised bones may dance away their sadness.
Thy ill-pleased eye from my misdeeds avert:
Cancel the registers my sins contain:
Create in me a pure, clean, spotless heart;
Inspire a sprite where love of right may reign
Ah, cast me not from thee; take not again
Thy breathing grace; again thy comfort send me,
And let the guard of thy free sprite attend me.
So I to them a guiding hand will be,
Whose faulty feet have wandered from thy way,
And turned from sin will make return to thee,
Whom turned from thee sin erst had led astray.
O God, God of my health, oh, do away
My bloody crime: so shall my tongue be raised
To praise thy truth, enough cannot be praised.
Unlock my lips, shut up with sinful shame:
Then shall my mouth, O Lord, thy honor sing.
For bleeding fuel for thy altar’s flame,
To gain thy grace what boots it me to bring?
Burt-off’rings are to thee no pleasant thing.
The sacrifice that God will hold respected,
Is the heart-broken soul, the sprite dejected.
Lastly, O Lord, how so I stand or fall,
Leave not thy loved Zion to embrace;
But with thy favor build up Salem’s wall,
And still in peace, maintain that peaceful place.
Then shalt thou turn a well-accepting face
To sacred fires with offered gifts perfumed:
Till ev’n whole calves on altars be consumed.
her epitaph ...
Underneath this sable hearse,
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Fair and learned and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Monday, November 11, 2019
cecil harrison, an old soldier, remembered
https://davidforward.com/malmesbury-history/cecil-harrison/
there is an excellent memoir of cecil harrison on my brother david forward's blog
i'd like to add a few notes about my own memory of him
below you can see the war office records of his medals, earned as a soldier with the Worcesters in France and then as a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps in Egypt
cecil's name also appears on an old boys' list printed at the time ...
http://www.worldwar1schoolarchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Worcesterian_1917_07.pdf
and this list of those who served in the worcestershire regiment ...
http://www.hut-six.co.uk/GreatWar/WorcestershireRegiment_H.html?LMCL=vOIliS
my father, colin forward, was a labour party member, an artist, a very hard worker, and everyone's friend
people from all walks of life came to our shabby council house to enjoy conversation with my parents
as a small boy, easily dominated and very sensitive to peer pressure, i was aware that some neighbours were contemptuous of my father's non-conformity and his pacifist views ... and during the cold war i often heard him denounced as a communist ... which he never was ... he was overly class-conscious, too sensitive about his social status ( as were many ) but was without malice ... at that time i began to wish that my family had zero interest in politics
people who were new to the town often came to knock at the front door, not realizing that the back door was always open
one such was a man on an old bicycle who seemed prematurely aged and wore agricultural clothes, yet spoke with the utmost gentility of an officer and a gentleman
cecil had come to live in croome house in ingram street, having previously spent many years struggling to live off a small holding at sandridge, between melksham and bromham
i would hear Cecil and my father talking about politics, which only interested me in a superficial way, and i took very little notice until this happened ...
the neo-nazi National Front were hitting the headlines ... in the middle of england, they were trying to form a para-military force ...their leader was a man called Colin Jordan who was living in Coventry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Jordan
cecil harrison, then an emaciated "old" man in his late sixties disapproved of fascists
he cycled from Malmesbury to Coventry overnight and found his way to Colin Jordan's doorstep in time to knock on the door before the lights came on
there was a discussion of views, there was no disturbance of the peace, and Lieutenant Harrison left and cycled back to malmesbury, having spoken his piece
over a period of a couple of years it became clear, even to a child, that cecil had been traumatised by his war experiences and by his decades-long social isolation
yet i was incapable of sympathy, only seeing him as an embarrassment
on remembrance sunday in malmesbury, maybe 1963 or 1964, dressed in his old clothes, he stood up on the steps of the war memorial in the triangle after the ceremony and asked the departing old soldiers to tarry and listen whilst he briefly and cogently warned them of the dangers of social conflict and militarism ... i don't think anyone there acknowledged his presence, let alone stood to listen properly ... surprisingly, he didn't once mention his own military service or his rank ... i only found out today, Armistice Day 2019, when I went online and payed £3.50p to check the record
i am sad and ashamed that i never showed an interest in his history or his plight until i was as old as he was when he hanged himself
Friday, November 8, 2019
rubens and velasquez met in madrid in 1628
rubens stayed for eight or nine months, 22 years older than velasquez, they became well acquainted and looked at titian's paintings together
rubens painted this whilst in madrid ... and much more ...
velasquez was working on this picture at that time ...
they must have seen titian's worship of venus together ...
rubens copied it ... brilliantly ...
and re-interpreted the theme more than ten years after ...
both painters were commissioned to provide numerous works for this project ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_de_la_Parada
https://www.museodelprado.es/aprende/enciclopedia/voz/torre-de-la-parada/78f1c689-b905-4189-a80b-a9c97a32303e
e.g. ...
Rubens' The Rape of Prosperine
and ...
Velasquez' El Bufon Don Diego de Acedo
the ruins of la torre de la parada are located to the north-west of madrid
rubens painted this whilst in madrid ... and much more ...
velasquez was working on this picture at that time ...
they must have seen titian's worship of venus together ...
rubens copied it ... brilliantly ...
and re-interpreted the theme more than ten years after ...
both painters were commissioned to provide numerous works for this project ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_de_la_Parada
https://www.museodelprado.es/aprende/enciclopedia/voz/torre-de-la-parada/78f1c689-b905-4189-a80b-a9c97a32303e
e.g. ...
Rubens' The Rape of Prosperine
and ...
Velasquez' El Bufon Don Diego de Acedo
the ruins of la torre de la parada are located to the north-west of madrid
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
paleography ... how people wrote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligraphy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penmanship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_hand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive
am currently plodding through the excellent shane mccausland's massive book about the chinese calligrapher and artist and top civil servant zhao mengfu
it all started when i was watching rain falling on the roof of a japanese temple and wondered if chinese artists had been good at depicting falling rain
the short answer is NOPE, but whilst searching for images, i found zhao mengfu's portrait of a windswept mongol ?warrior? and his horse
when i did some superficial research about the artist, it soon became evident that he is a key figure in the history of chinese "culture"
as a talented administrator he was obliged to serve the conquering mongolian rulers
they appreciated the sophistication of southern chinese culture and valued his services
one of his main interests was calligraphy ... please remember that chinese was written with a brush rather than a pen
in chinese culture, good calligraphy is thought to be inextricably co-dependant on the personal and public virtues of the man who holds the brush
zhao mengfu was greatly skilled, but he was also the most respected expert on the history and the aesthetics of classical brushwork
much of the brushwork he admired was already ancient ... it is hard to summarize his views but as far as i've got then it seems he liked artists who combined expressive gestural brush strokes with clear design and legibility and with techniques that could be modified according to the context and gravity of the task
mccausland's book is a long one, i'll let you know how it turns out but in the meantime i need a wider knowledge base of the history of writing so i'm starting a little scrapbook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Mengfu
cuneiform ...
cuneiform was written by highly trained scribes who impressed lines in to clay using an edged stick or stylus cut from the stem of a large reed
https://cuneiform.neocities.org/CWT/howtowritecuneiform.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform
chisels and stone ...
digitised lettering has left many people no longer needing a pen to write ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan_(typeface)
when were pens first used ?
reed pens ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_pen
most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with reed pens on parchment ...
feathers ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill
a thousand years later, the Domesday Books were written with feather quills on parchment ...
feather quills were still in use when jefferson drafted the US declaration of independence in 1776 ...
a hands-on revolutionary of german origins, jacob shallus, "engrossed the United States' first constitution ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Shallus
this was written on parchment with a goose quill
jane austen used goose quill nibs ...
https://www.themorgan.org/blog/jane-austens-writing-technical-perspective
http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large126754.html
steel pens came in to popular use about 1830 ......
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nib_(pen)
http://vintagenibs.blogspot.com/2015/11/radio-pen-914-why-is-it-so-special.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penmanship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_hand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive
am currently plodding through the excellent shane mccausland's massive book about the chinese calligrapher and artist and top civil servant zhao mengfu
it all started when i was watching rain falling on the roof of a japanese temple and wondered if chinese artists had been good at depicting falling rain
the short answer is NOPE, but whilst searching for images, i found zhao mengfu's portrait of a windswept mongol ?warrior? and his horse
when i did some superficial research about the artist, it soon became evident that he is a key figure in the history of chinese "culture"
as a talented administrator he was obliged to serve the conquering mongolian rulers
they appreciated the sophistication of southern chinese culture and valued his services
one of his main interests was calligraphy ... please remember that chinese was written with a brush rather than a pen
in chinese culture, good calligraphy is thought to be inextricably co-dependant on the personal and public virtues of the man who holds the brush
zhao mengfu was greatly skilled, but he was also the most respected expert on the history and the aesthetics of classical brushwork
much of the brushwork he admired was already ancient ... it is hard to summarize his views but as far as i've got then it seems he liked artists who combined expressive gestural brush strokes with clear design and legibility and with techniques that could be modified according to the context and gravity of the task
mccausland's book is a long one, i'll let you know how it turns out but in the meantime i need a wider knowledge base of the history of writing so i'm starting a little scrapbook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Mengfu
cuneiform ...
cuneiform was written by highly trained scribes who impressed lines in to clay using an edged stick or stylus cut from the stem of a large reed
https://cuneiform.neocities.org/CWT/howtowritecuneiform.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform
chisels and stone ...
digitised lettering has left many people no longer needing a pen to write ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan_(typeface)
when were pens first used ?
reed pens ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_pen
most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with reed pens on parchment ...
feathers ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill
a thousand years later, the Domesday Books were written with feather quills on parchment ...
feather quills were still in use when jefferson drafted the US declaration of independence in 1776 ...
a hands-on revolutionary of german origins, jacob shallus, "engrossed the United States' first constitution ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Shallus
this was written on parchment with a goose quill
jane austen used goose quill nibs ...
https://www.themorgan.org/blog/jane-austens-writing-technical-perspective
http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large126754.html
steel pens came in to popular use about 1830 ......
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nib_(pen)
http://vintagenibs.blogspot.com/2015/11/radio-pen-914-why-is-it-so-special.html
Friday, October 25, 2019
adam elsheimer's 1606 painting of tobias and the angel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Elsheimer
engraved by goudt c.1608
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrick_Goudt
engraved by hollar, c.1645
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