Curious and true
Here’s a sad little story for you. Going to Bateman’s put me in mind of it.
Edward Julius and Charles Maurice Detmold were twin brothers born in Surrey in 1883. Their father was chronically ill, so they grew up in the house of an uncle who, among other things, collected Japanese woodcuts. The brothers became fascinated with drawing in the Japanese style.
It would be fair to call them prodigies: they both had exhibited in watercolor at the Royal Academy by the time they were 13. Mostly animal pictures. Before they were 20, they had several very successful picture books to their credit. Their fortunes really took off that year when they were asked to illustrate Kipling’s Jungle Book.
There’s a little room in Bateman’s that has some — maybe all — of these illustrations and a few more. I assume they’re the originals. Beautiful stuff.
The success of these pictures allowed them to divide their time between London and Ditchling, Sussex — not far from here. Half a year at each. In 1908, when they were 25, they were preparing to go down to Ditchling. Here’s where it gets weird.
Their local doctor gave them some chloroform to kill the housecat. Which Maurice did. Then he took the remainder of the chloroform and killed himself.
That’s it. That’s all the detail I’ve ever been able to glean from any source, and I have so many questions. Was the cat ill? Did people routinely kill their cats rather than bring them on holiday? I know people were shitty to cats back then, but that seems a bit much. Was Maurice depressed? Could it have been an accident? Or did he — this is my favorite theory — kill the cat and then feel so awful about it aferward that he offed himself?
Edward had a long and successful career after, though many reckon his brother had the more talent. In his seventies, Edward’s eyesight began to fail. He killed himself with a shot to the chest in 1957.
Well worth looking up their work. Here is the full image from the header. It’s a lovely thing. Not sure which Detmold did it, perhaps both. Looking at it, I think they used a combination of watered-down and full strength ink. Or perhaps it’s an etching — they did a lot of printmaking.
I know what your monkeybrain is telling you. It’s telling you if you were super careful and made a zillion little descriptive lines, you could maybe do something that looked like that. I’m here to inform you, sadly, from a lifetime of experience, monkeybrain lies.
September 27, 2017 — 8:42 pm
Comments: 13
I saw the Flit!
We went to Bateman’s today, home of Rudyard Kipling and the setting for my favorite Kipling book, Puck of Pook’s Hill (a collection of short stories about Sussex, and I loved it long before I lived here).
We’ve been to Bateman’s many times, you may remember, but this time there promised to be an exhibition of Arthur Rackham‘s illustrations for Puck of Pook’s Hill. Rackham is one of my all time favorite illustrators, this one one of my all time favorite books — perfect, yes?
Meh. They only had three original paintings and a few framed prints. The room was small and dark and the pictures were framed under shiny glass. Hard to see and underwhelming. They didn’t even have any Rackham books or cards in the gift shop.
I did get to see the original of this picture, though. It’s called the Dymchurch Flit, Dymchurch being a coastal town and “the flit” was the fairies leaving England forever. Chapter 22 of the book.
The story goes that the fairies got sick of our shit in the 1530s, during the nastiness of the Reformation. They turned up on Romney Marsh with their bags packed — Romney Marsh being a stick-out bit of coastline that is the furthest southeast you can go on the island without getting your feet wet. There they begged the Widow Whitgift to let her sons sail them away in a boat, and she did.
They came back after three days, but one son was blind and the other mute, so they never told anyone what they saw. You can read the chapter here, with some footnotes and explanation here.
Not my favorite Rackham painting and not viewed under the best conditions, but it’s always a thrill to see the original of a work that you know well from reproduction.
September 26, 2017 — 7:36 pm
Comments: 13
The glowing sheep of old Sussex
I got nothin’ tonight. I’ve been doing housework(!) all evening, so please enjoy this picture Uncle B took earlier this Summer. (Yes, of course you can have it large and in color).
Now is probably the time to give the old mustelid a shout-out. I’ve taken almost none of the photos I’ve posted during this year’s fete season, he has. Uncle B is an enthusiastic photographer with a much better eye than mine.
This pisses me off. I went to art school, you know.
On the other hand, I’m also incredibly lazy and opportunistic, so having his visual record of our adventures has been most helpful.
September 25, 2017 — 8:52 pm
Comments: 7
A farewell to Sissinghurst
We went to Sissinghurst today – one of our favorite National Trust properties. We go three or four times every Summer, though this might be the last time for a while. We’ve decided not to renew our National Trust membership when it’s up in Spring.
See, the NT has gone gay. Like very, very gay. Like intrusively, irritatingly gay.
Like asking their tens of thousands of loyal blue-haired volunteers to fill out a questionnaire on their own sexuality. Or insisting that staff wear gay pride buttons during the six weeks of their Prejudice and Pride Campaign, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the partial legalization of buggery. They had to climb down over that one, but meanwhile:
As part of an event to publicise the project, the charity has commissioned a film narrated by Stephen Fry revealing that Felbrigg’s former owner, Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, was gay. But his godsons, who left the hall to the Trust on his death in 1969, have objected to him being ‘outed’ to market the hall. The bachelor, who was a magistrate and former High Sheriff of Norfolk, never publicly revealed his sexuality.
Oh, they outted some dead rich guy against his family’s wishes. Nice.
Sadly, we’re a little too far away from Kingston Lacy in Dorset to go see the fifty-one ropes hanging to commemorate the fifty one men who were hanged for sodomy, mostly between 1810 and 1835. They’ve got a recording reading their names over and over and everything!
But not to worry! We got to see Speak Its Name! – an exhibit of pictures from the National Portrait Gallery featuring a bunch of famous old dykes and poofters. A little more justification for this one, as Harold and Vita (Sissinghurst’s most famous owners) were committed and enthusiastic homosexuals (though strangely devoted to each other throughout their marriage).
As you might imagine, LGBTQRST is not the only progressive issue the current lot at the Trust are pursuing aggressively. It’s getting on for £100 a year for the two of us, we’ve been members for 7 years and, frankly, we’ve seen our local properties dozens of times. It’s time.
Oh, we had a lovely day today! The weather was perfect and the holiday crowds have died down. Nice memories. Have a good weekend, fags!
September 22, 2017 — 8:54 pm
Comments: 17
Hmmm…
That’s the remains of the bomb that went off in the tube station this morning. It was a dud, though a number of people were superficially hurt. It could have been lethal.
There’s something very effing weird about this one. Initially, they didn’t raise the terror threat level at all. Then suddenly May comes out and cranks it up to the highest. I heard she sounded shook up. Who knows? We’re safe as anywhere, down here in our rural corner of Old Blighty. Nobody bombs sheep.
By the way, that’s a bucket in a ‘forever bag’. Do you have these things? Supermarkets are forbidden to give us free bags now; they’re required to charge 5p (which they pass on to charity, I think). Or, for 10p, most sell a much sturdier ‘forever bag’ that they will replace when it wears out.
This boneheaded move put at least one bag manufacturer out of business, adds a definite level of pain-in-the-assery to our weekly shop as we are forever collecting bags and moving them around, and means we have to buy bags for our small kitchen rubbish bin instead of re-using shopping bags. It’s just so emblematic of what’s wrong with our nannying classes.
A bomb on the tube in a forever bag. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Britain 2017.
Have a good weekend!
September 15, 2017 — 9:01 pm
Comments: 22
Boo!
Here’s a bit o’ fun that came across my FB today: an interactive map of spooky London stuff. Hauntings, disasters, unsolved murders. It’s worth clicking around – some of the short items have links to longer articles. Very interesting, if you like that sort of thing.
Where we used to live, near Crystal Palace, is off the map. That is, the map isn’t there, but there are still markers in the general area. Looks like we’re all clear. Nobody’s dug up the bodies in the back garden yet.
They’ve gotten the data from a variety of sources, many of them worth checking in their own right. Like the Paranormal Database and Mysterious Britain (which appears to be down for maintenance at the moment).
I love a good ghost story. Not sure why; I’m not a believer. I’m as psychic as a potato. I guess maybe in the back of my mind, if one inexplicable thing is possible, they all are.
September 14, 2017 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 9
What’s this? What’s this?
One of the particular pleasures of this show (the one we went to over the weekend) are the old tools. Several long rows of vendors selling old carpentry tools, car parts, gas cans, garden seats. Bunch of rusty junk, but often cheap and lots of fun.
The farm tools, like the ones above, are particularly interesting. They tend to be regional, locally manufactured (perhaps even by a village blacksmith) and intended for a very particular job. Like…I dunno…prying ant nests out of fields whole (that is a real tool I saw once, though I don’t see an example there).
Problem is, with many of these tools, nobody has the slightest idea what they were intended to do. The old boys have died out. We often ask, we sometimes get an answer, but more often not.
See if you can figure any of these out. Don’t try it from the little version: here’s a color pic (about a meg). The handles often provide the best clue.
There won’t be a quiz later, though. Just to break the suspense, I only know what a couple of these things were for.
September 13, 2017 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 21
I’m a steamroller, baby
Not just one steamroller. I bet there were ten, at least. Great big things.
We stood and watched them pass and the earth — I swear — dipped under a couple of them, like a fat man moved across a wood floor. This is solid ground that has been passed over by these things dozens of times, and they still left tracks.
This was the last country show of our season. Weather was predicted to be rainy, so some of the exhibitors ducked out at the last minute. That’s kind of worrying, to be honest. When these events decline, even for perfectly explicable reasons, sometimes it causes a chain reaction of decline. Several of our favorite events have vanished in the last few years, and several more have shrunk.
Expecting a big blow tonight. Not Irma-sized, obviously, but chilly and miserable. We’ve had fires at night for a week. September, huh! Glad everyone from Florida is still with us…!
September 12, 2017 — 8:38 pm
Comments: 12
One that got away
I’m going to propose a law — let’s call it Weasel’s Law — which states that the very first time you look for something on eBay, you will find a splendid example of that thing, better than any subsequent example you will see, even if you look and look. And the Corollary: it will go for reasonable money and, like an idiot, you won’t buy it.
When I was grinding up old watercolors over the weekend, I got to wondering how much mullers were going for on eBay, and I found this beautiful little object. It is a tiny Georgian hand blown blue glass muller, about three inches high. In the days of powdered wigs and beauty spots, it was used to prepare makeup at m’lady’s dressing table.
Here’s the description from the seller:
This little glass muller is two and three-eighths inches high and the base is just under two inches in diameter.
It was hand blown from Bristol Blue-Glass and dates from 1700s England. The dead-flat base is honed to create friction during the grinding, and the top where the pontil was is simple cut off and polished.
Some types of pan make-up were made in the household of the lady who wore it, and the ingredients (often containing white lead!) would be put onto a small glass or marble sheet. The muller would be placed on the ingredients and spread with downward pressure and circular movements until it formed a fine paste with the base medium, which was some type of fat. The make-up could then be applied immediately.
This would go nicely with the patch-stand already in your collection!
Yes, you may see it in color. Isn’t it a pip?
When I first spotted it, the price was hovering around £14. Later, though, someone must have put in a pretty high bid, because every time I upped mine his automagically topped it. In the end, I let it go for £27. I just couldn’t see paying so much for a tiny, precious object I’d be terrified to use. Even though it’s less than most brand new ones.
Okay, that’s enough art sperging for one week. Tomorrow, we have Dead Pool Round Whatever. Back here, 6 sharp, getcher favorite soon-to-be stiff!
I leave you with this picture of Cornellisen’s painting grinding room back in the day:
September 7, 2017 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 28
The grind…
My paintbox came with some old watercolor pans. I hadn’t intended to rehabilitate them — they were dusty, crusty old bricks — but I started totting up how much it would cost to replace them and I relented.
Some of the pans were nearly used up. There were paints from several different manufacturers spanning many years. In other words, whoever owned this box before me painted a lot. Like, a real lot. That makes me feel a bit funny. I wonder if this box will land back on eBay some day, anonymous again.
Watercolor, in theory, is infinitely re-wettable. Some people even believe the old materials are preferable. Not me; we’ve gotten better at manufacturing all sorts of things in our day, and I believe artificial pigments are among ’em. Particularly during and just after the War, there were some pretty shitty art materials on the market. But, hey, a half pan of cadmium red alone was going to cost £7, so let’s grind.
I sperged at length about making paint earlier this year. To rehabilitate watercolor, you really only need to smash it up with water but, since I decided for some reason not to bring my muller across the pond, that was easier said than done. All’s I had was a palette knife. I managed it in the end but it took some elbow grease and bent my favorite knife.
The recipe above is from L. Cornelissen and Son, a good old fashioned mid-Nineteenth C. London colorman. That’s what art shops were called back in the day, when you bought pigments and made your own. The paint tube (and therefore pre-manufactured paint) was invented about the time Cornelissen opened his shop and it took a while to catch on. (Incidentally, no paint tube, no Impressionism. Probably).
Well worth looking around their site. They still sell all the stuff! More paint recipes at the link, too.
Notice honey is one of the ingredients. It adds wettability and a certain slight gooiness. I had to add a bit to my grind, as these sad old paints were…whatever the total opposite of gooey is. Desiccated, I guess.
I suspect that Winsor and Newton, at least, still uses honey (or sugar syrup) in some of their colors, because I once had cockroaches attack a painting of mine back in my student apartment days. They neatly ate off the burnt sienna parts and left the rest. Weird.
p.s. That spooky bastard Carl has won another dick. That means a new Deadpool this Friday.
September 5, 2017 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 8