August 2021 – my daily art display

Jenny Eugenia Nyström

Britain over the years have had many talented children’s book illustrators. There are the likes of Beatrix Potter with her illustrative work seen in books of Peter Rabbit and his Friends. There was Ernest Howard Shepard, an English artist and book illustrator, known especially for illustrations of the animal and soft toy characters in The Wind in the Willows and Winnie-the-Pooh. Let us not forget Quinton Blake for his illustrations in the Roald Dahl books. There is Roger Hargreaves for his illustrations for his Mr Men and Little Miss books and Raymond Briggs for his unforgettable illustrations for his wordless picture book, The Snowman.

The book cover is an illustration of a sail boat coming into a forested shore. On the shore, sleeping against a tree, is a giant furry monster with bare human feet and the head of a bull. Above the illustration, written in uneven block capital letters against a white background, is the title of the book "Where the Wild Things Are" and below the illustration, "Story and pictures by Maurice Sendak".

America has its share of great children’s book illustrators such as Maurice Sendak, an American illustrator and writer of children’s books. He became widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963. Sendak also wrote works such as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and illustrated many works by other authors including the Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik. One of course calls to mind Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. His books and illustrations are loved by children and adults from all around the world, his books are quirky treasures that leave a lasting impression. He wrote his first children’s book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, in 1937, and the book that catapulted him into success, The Cat in the Hat, in 1957.

Image of Tomte

A Tomte

In today’s blog I am looking at the life and work of one of Sweden’s great illustrators, Jenny Eugenia Nyström, who was the first woman in Sweden to be awarded a royal medal for her historically themed painting. Her legacy was established by the popularity of her depictions of tomte, a mythological creature often associated with Christmas. Jenny Nyström’s artwork was modern as well as humorous. It was not unusual to see a “tomte” captaining an airplane, driving a car, a truck, a motorcycle or even a train. She was not afraid to use exotic animals like elephants and giraffes as “tomte” assistants for delivering Christmas presents across Sweden. The images also contained several elements of traditional folk Christmas imagery such as Christmas goats, Christmas trees, sleighs, toboggans and more.

Christmas card with jultomte by Jenny Nyström, (circa 1899)

Jenny Nyström was born in the Kalmar County district of Malmen, Sweden on June 13^th 1854. She was the daughter of Daniel Isacsson Nyström, the cantor of the Kalmar Castle church, a local schoolteacher and an accomplished piano player who gave piano lessons. Jenny’s mother was Anette Eleonora Bergendahl. Jenny Nyström had three brothers, Emil, Leonard and Axel and one sister Augusta. She was the third of the five children, and reportedly was an energetic and imaginative youngster who later spoke about her happy and idyllic upbringing in Kalmar, a town in the southeast of Sweden. She had a happy home life living with her parents, siblings as well as her maternal grandparents, two maternal aunts and her maternal great grandmother. Her father attended to her education whilst her mother was remembered by her daughter for her storytelling.

Bear Reading Going Upstairs Godt Nytt Ar by Jenny Nyström (c.1910)

In November 1863, when Jenny was nine years old the family left Kalmar and moved to the Gothenburg suburb of Majorna where her father had a teaching post. Jenny was devastated to leave her Kalmar friends and wrote about her new home:

“…In the beginning, I found my stay in Gothenburg very boring, when I had no playmates, and when I got them, they just made life miserable for me, as they imitated my Kalmar dialect. I couldn’t speak clean. I often longed to go back to Kalmar and to my little playmates there and then to these nice windmills, in whose wings we hung, when it didn’t blow too hard, and after the outbuilding roof where we used to sit and sunbathe, and after grandpa’s old garden with the frog pond…”

Along with the family came the Nyström’s maid, Karin Johansdotter who would be part of Jenny’s “family” for many years. Up until this time Jenny had been home-schooled by her father but once in Gothenburg, she attended Mrs Natt och Dag’s local primary school and after graduating from there she attended the Kjellbergska flickskolan (Kjellberg Girls’ School), a school founded by a fund granted in the will of the wealthy merchant Jonas Kjellberg. The all-girls elementary school was to provide education to make it possible for females to support themselves professionally.

Tomte by Frederik Wohlfart

In 1869, aged fifteen Jenny received her first art education at the Göteborgs Musei-, Rit- och Målarskola, today known as Konsthögskolan Valand, where one of her tutors was Fredrik Wohlfart, a Swedish genre painter and caricaturist from the Düsseldorf School. Wohlfahrt was best known for a series of paintings depicting popular figures of elves and it was he who inspired Jenny to depict images of tomte, one of the most popular Scandinavian mythological characters. Christmas in Sweden is celebrated in a very unique and different manner, owing to the differences in its culture and traditions. Christmas celebrations there begin on St. Lucia Day, which is on December 13. Tomte comes into picture after the Christmas dinner, when someone from the family dresses up like him. Tomte, believed to live in the forests or in a farm, is known for looking after the livestock of the farmers after the Christmas dinner. Tomte was converted to the Swedish Santa Claus over a period of time and soon began to deliver gifts as well.

Harvest Joy by Jenny Nyström

One day, in 1871, seventeen-year-old Jenny Nyström was visiting the Gothenburg Art Museum and was sitting and drawing. Another visitor to the museum that day was regional governor Albert Ehrensvärd who noticed her sketching and admired her work, so much so, he invited her to Stockholm to visit art galleries and to go to the city’s National Art Museum. She accepted the offer and whilst in Stockholm she was introduced to Christoffer Boklund, professor at the Stockholm Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Jenny Nyström illustrated Viktor Rydberg’s poem “Tomten” in Ny Illustrerad Tidning in 1881.

In August 1873, two years after her first visit to Stockholm she returned to the city and enrolled at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and there she enjoyed life as an art student for the next eight years. Although Nyström had been brought up in a happy household it was not a rich upbringing and when she was at the Academy, she had to fund herself. To earn money, she would go out and sell subscriptions for the magazine, Ny Illustrerad Tidning, a publication for which she also provided illustrations. More importantly Jenny slowly built up a number of patrons from Gothenburg who bought her work, one of which was the regional governor Albert Ehrensvärd who guaranteed her the sum of 100 kroner a month.

See the source image

Gustav Vasa inför king Hans (Gustav Vasa as Child in front of King Hans) by Jenny Nyström (1881)

Another of her patrons was James Dickson, a Scottish-Swedish merchant, industrialist, banker and philanthropist who was based in Gothenburg. She also received an annual stipend from the Academy from 1877 onwards. Nyström fared well at the Academy and in 1881, she received the highest commendation available: the royal gold medal for her historically themed painting Gustav Vasa inför king Hans (Gustav Vasa as Child in front of King Hans). The royal medal provided opportunities for scholarships abroad and success for the students. The motifs that were ranked highest were the biblical, mythological and historical last came folk life depictions, landscape painting and still lifes.

*From my Atelier in Paris by Jenny Nyström (1884)*

In July 1882, she was awarded one thousand Swedish Krona from the Academy’s special support fund and with this money she was able to travel to Paris. Paris being looked upon as the centre of the art world was very popular with foreign artists and many Swedish artists lived in Paris such as Carl Larsson, his wife Karin and Anders Zorn. Unable to gain entrance to the French Academy of Fine Arts due to its male-only policy, Jenny enrolled at the Académie Colarossi in November and then the Académie Julian. While in Paris, she painted diligently so as to have her work accepted by the Salon. In 1884 her painting From my Atelier in Paris was exhibited at that year’s Salon.

The Convalescent by Jenny Nyström via DailyArt app, your daily dose of art getdailyart.com — *The Convalescent by Jenny Nyström (1884)*

In 1884 she also completed 0ne of my favourite of her works, The Convalescent. Around the turn of the 20th century, convalescing women and girls were a popular theme in visual art. In her painting The Convalescent, Jenny Nyström has chosen to depict the subject from the narrative perspective of the classicist tradition. We see before us an idealised young female figure at centre of the work, hovering between life and death. In stark contrast, next to her, we see the shamelessly healthy-looking and pretty girl standing by her side. The invalid looks upwards, probably praying for good health and trusting her fate in God’s hands. The picture is full of overt symbols, like the dead potted plant set against the bouquet of living flowers. The compositional pattern, which is centred on the histrionic body language and facial expressions of the figures, has its roots in an older anecdotal tradition. In early 19th-century genre painting, we often see figures posing as they do here, as if being in a stage spotlight, creating a sense of distance. The image of a convalescing female became a symbol of subordination, of the fragility of “womanliness”, and hence proof of women’s inability to participate in public life. These pictures can be seen as a reaction to the emancipation of women at that time and an attempt to return them to the home and the private sphere.

In 1880, whilst still a student at the Academy she attended a student concert at Katarina Church in Stockholm. where she met her future husband, Daniel Stoopendaal. He was a medical student. In the Autumn of 1884, the couple got engaged. Jenny Nyström moved back to Stockholm at the start of the year in 1886 and worked as an illustrator for several different publishers. On May 24^th 1887 she married Daniel Stoopendaal in the Adolf Fredrik church, and that autumn they moved into a large city apartment on Tegnérgatan. In 1889, a few years after her mother had died, Jenny Nyström’s father moved in with her and her husband. Their first child Curt was born on June 25^th 1893. Sadly, Daniel was ill for most of his life with tuberculosis. He never completed his medical studies and Jenny was the breadwinner of the family supporting them through the sale of her paintings. It was a hard struggle for her to sell her work. In the end she had to sell her work to different publishers and other employers.

See the source image — vi två (The two of us) by Jenny Nyström (1895)

From the time her son Curt was born he often made an appearance in her paintings wearing a red skull-cap and dressed in a “kolt” (traditional outfit). She also painted a portrait of herself with two-year-old Curt in 1895, which she called Mor och son. Today it is known as Vi två (The Two of Us).

*Brita and Bertil by Jenny Nyström (1911)*

It was around this time that she began to concentrate on illustrating a large number of children’s books and historical novels. She also painted cover images for newspapers and journals. She had a breakthrough in 1911 when she signed a contract to make greeting cards for Axel Eliasson’s publishing house, but this meant that she needed to produce a certain number of watercolours each month as a background illustration for the cards. These illustrations gained great exposure due to the appealing nature of her drawings. The Swedish publication series Barnbiblioteket Saga, which was initiated by schoolteachers in the late 19th century was one of the most ambitious and extensive reading promotion projects ever undertaken in Sweden. It looked into the world of children’s books In Barnbiblioteket’s Saga, 1910, a biographical entry on Jenny Nyström reveals why she chose to illustrate children’s stories

“…The reason I mainly illustrate children’s books is probably because I have always loved children and have always wanted to show children something of the fair sunny land east of the sun and west of the moon, beauty which has remained in my memory from my childhood in Kalmar. Maybe now you can also understand why I prefer to draw beautiful images…”

Jenny Nyström carried on with her painting and illustrative work until the end. She died in her home in Stockholm on 17 January 1946 aged 91. Of her last minutes on this earth her long-time housekeeper described her passing as:

“…It was like blowing out a candle…”

Larger memorial image loading... — *Jenny Nyström’s last resting place*

Jenny Nyström was buried at Norra cemetery beside her husband Daniel Stoopendaal and her father Daniel Nyström. Seventy five years after her death her illustrated cards are still being printed and her academic artwork and her watercolours fetch high prices at the larger auction houses.

Manchester Art Gallery. Part 3.

My third and final look at some of the artwork on view at the Manchester Art Gallery is a collection of many painting genres all of which appealed to me.

undefined — *The Desert by Edwin Landseer (1849)*

Sir Edwin Landseer was the favourite artist of Queen Victoria and much loved by the British public for his sentimental, though closely observed, animal paintings. He is probably best known for his 1851 painting Monarch of the Glen which is now part of the Scottish National Gallery collection and the four bronze lions that stand guard at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London. However, in the Manchester Gallery there is another full-sized animal painting by the artist, entitled The Desert which he completed in 1849. It is a painting of a dead lion, and the work is often referred to as The Fallen Monarch. The lion has always been regarded as the national symbol of the British people, epitomising bravery, fortitude and royalty.

The painting is thought to have provided the inspiration for the logo of Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which first appeared in 1885. In the case of the syrup tin the logo depicts a story from the Old Testament, in which Samson kills a lion and later finds that a swarm of bees has formed a honeycomb in its carcass. It is accompanied by the biblical quote ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness‘.

*Water of the Nile by Frederick Goodall (1893)*

Edward Wadie Said was a Palestinian American a professor of literature at Columbia University. In his 1978 book entitled Orientalism, which was hailed as his best-known work and one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century, he defined the term Orientalism as:

“… the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on…”

The orientalists were not only fascinated by historical Egypt, but they were also amazed by the beauty of its environment and the 1893 painting by the English artist, Frederick Goodall, entitled Water of the Nile is a classic example of Orientalism in art. In the foreground, on the riverbank, we see Egyptian women wearing traditional clothes, filling their water jars from the Nile River. To the right of the women is a young boy remonstrating with his animals who he has brought down to the water’s edge. To the left we see a man riding his camel as he heads towards the pyramids, seen in the background.

*Cattle fording a Stream by Henry Moore (1862)*

Henry Moore (not the famous sculptor), the English marine and landscape artist, was born in March 1831 in York. In the Manchester Gallery there is a fine example of his rural landscape prowess with his 1862 painting, Cattle Fording a Stream. It is a beautiful autumnal moorland landscape which is made melodramatic by the colourful sunset sky. In the foreground we see depicted a herd of large horned russet-coloured cattle being driven across the ford by two men on horseback. It is a leisurely cattle drive. Some of the cattle halt their progress to take a drink. One of the men herding the beasts sits up and looks back at the following animals which are being marshalled along by a second rider. To the left, a dog keeps one of the herd from moving out of line. Beyond, in the upper left of the painting, we see stacked sheaves of hay in a field. To the right, behind a tree-covered mound, is a cottage with smoke coming from the chimney. It is without doubt that the dominating aspect of this painting is the sky with its streaked cloud formations giving a great sense of depth through the use of brilliant pink and orange hues.

*The Norman Archipelago (Channel Islands) by John Brett* *(1885)*

When I think of John Brett my mind always goes to his work, The Stonebreakers, which is in the Walker Art Gallery collection in Liverpool but his painting hanging in the Manchester Gallery could not be more different. Brett was an English painter, whose main works featured coastal scenes and landscapes. He was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and the writings of John Ruskin. He had taken part in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s group exhibition in London in 1857 and during the 1870s he had become well known for his large seascapes, which featured accurate geological detail and meteorological conditions, which can be likened to an almost hyper-realistic representations. His seascape painting at the Manchester Gallery is entitled The Norman Archipelago and is a panoramic view of the Channel Islands, from Sark, looking across a calm sea towards Guernsey, Herm and Jethou. To the left, in the middle-ground, we see a small sailing vessel, which is navigating its way close to a current which has been created as the ebbing tide empties out through a narrow channel between rocks seen in the centre of the depiction. In the background, on the horizon, we see low pink clouds against a bright blue sky, below which are a number of other white-sailed boats plying their way across calm waters.

Frederick Smallfield was an English oil and watercolour artist, whose work was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite artists of the time. He had trained at the Royal Academy Schools in the late 1840s, at the same time as various members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, although there is nothing to show that he was a close acquaintance of theirs.

The painting by Smallfield on display at the Manchester Gallery is entitled Early Lovers. It is a depiction of two young lovers set against a rural landscape scene. It is thought to illustrates the 1827 poem, entitled Ballad, by Thomas Hood

Twas twilight, and I bade you go,

But still you held me fast;

It was the Time of Roses, –

We pluck’d them as we pass’d. –

What else could peer thy glowing cheek,

That tears began to stud?

And when I ask’d the like of Love,

You snatched a damask bud;

The setting is a gently undulating verdant landscape of rich farmland imbued with trees and hedgerows. The scene is illuminated by a low light, suggestive of evening or early morning. In the depiction we see a young girl sitting on a stile. She has shoulder-length fair hair and wears a mauve dress over a white petticoat. A straw hat is slung casually around her neck on a pink ribbon. She is not alone, as we also see an older youth wearing a dark jacket, sporting a red neckerchief. He is probably a local farm worker. The young man is perched besides her, straddling the stile. Balanced on his head is a flat cap which cannot contain the unruly red locks of his hair. The young couple clasp hands as they gaze lovingly at each other. To the right of the stile, entwined in the hedgerow, are a Dog Rose in bloom as well as Honeysuckle.

Evelyn Mary Dunbar was a British artist, illustrator and teacher who was born in Reading in 1906. In April 1940 she was appointed by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, (WAAC), as an official war artist. Her remit was to record civilian contributions to the war effort on the home front. At the beginning she concentrated on the work of the Women’s Voluntary Service, (WVS), and later in the war, she depicted members of the Women’s Land Army, which was set up to encourage women to work on farms to help the war effort. When the war ended Dunbar had completed and had accepted by the WAAC some forty paintings. The Manchester Art Gallery has in its collection one of her later works entitled A 1944 Pastoral: Land Girls Pruning at East Malling. Evelyn spent some time at the Kent village in the winter of 1944/5, when one of the principal activities was pruning of fruit trees, particularly of apple trees. Until more disease-resistant rootstocks were introduced from the United States and latterly from Poland, the influence of East Malling Research Station on the British commercial apple industry was vast. The painting depicts a rural setting in winter with a view along a long avenue of trees of an orchard. Hills are visible in the distance beneath a cloudy sky. We see groups of women from the Women’s Land Army pruning the trees and carrying away the dead wood. Standing in the foreground are three women pruning the nearest trees, two of whom are standing on white ladders. Another woman in the left foreground can be seen bringing another ladder into the orchard. The scene is surrounded by a brown painted frame containing different motifs, including gloved hands each holding a pair of secateurs, a bowl of apples, a plate of apples, a gloved hand holding a small saw, and a gloved hand holding a serrated knife. The site of this orchard is close to East Malling Research Station in Kent which was established in 1913 as a government owned establishment and was the leading fruit research centre in the UK.

'In Manus Tuas, Domine' — *In Manus Tuas, Domine’ by Briton Riviere*

My final selection of the paintings I saw when I went to the Manchester Art Gallery is one by the nineteenth century British artist Briton Riviere, who was famous for his animal depictions. He once wrote about how he became proficient in this genre:

“…The only way to paint wild animals is to gradually accumulate a large number of studies and a great knowledge of the animal itself, before you can paint its picture … I paint from dead animals as well as from live ones. I have had the body of a fine lioness in my studio … I have done a great deal of work in the dissecting rooms at the Zoological Gardens from time to time…”

The painting that I saw in the gallery was entitled In Manus Tuas, Domine which is part of a Latin phrase which translates as Into thy hands O Lord, I commend my spirit. It is a phrase recited by many who are facing death. The depiction is of a fearless young fair-haired knight astride a white horse, escorted by his three bloodhounds. They are at the mouth of a dark cave and both rider, horse and dogs seem fearful of what they may find inside. The animals cower and seem to be digging their heels into the ground to stop any forward motion. The young rider is wearing a soft black cap and dressed in a full suit of shining silver-coloured armour, complete with star-shaped spurs. His helmet, which is trimmed with pink and black ostrich plumes, is tied to his saddle. The knight, unlike his animals, is putting a brave face on, despite his fear and no doubt the phrase in the title of the painting is passing his lips. He looks directly ahead into the darkness as he raises the cross-hilt of his sword before him. The sword forms a cross, symbolising the victory of man’s faith and may be apt as he leaves the daylight to enter the dark chasm. To defend himself he also carries behind him a black shield painted with a narrow blue cross, and a lance. To add to the terror, a red-eyed bat flies out of the dark tangle of branches towards the knight and what might be the tail of a snake, can be seen disappearing into a hole.

I hope that my three blogs will tempt you to visit the Manchester Art Gallery. It is well worth a visit.

Manchester Art Gallery. Part 2. The Pre-Raphaelites.

The setting for the Lantern Maker’s Courtship by William Holman Hunt is a street somewhere in the Middle East. We are outside a lantern maker’s shop. A variety of lantern hang from hooks in the wall behind the young lantern-maker and his equipment lies on the bench next to him. Beneath the bench, a dog lies curled up asleep. In the background we see a busy, narrow, with a man in a top hat and a blue jacket, riding a donkey away from us. A servant quickly follows the man and donkey. The man astride the donkey raises a whip at an oncoming local, who is leading a camel laden with goods, and the horrified local raises his arm to shield himself against the onslaught. The main characters of this painting are the young lantern-maker dressed in a long red coat and green turban, perched on a bench outside his workshop. Next to him stands a young girl dressed in a long blue gown and golden Turkish slippers. The lower part of her face is hidden by a black face mask. It is a happy coming together of the young couple. We see the smiling lantern maker reaching out to the girl. One of his hands gently touches her wrist whilst the other is outstretched feeling her face beneath the black mask. It is as if he is blind and wants to use his sense of touch to give him the vision of her face. Her face will be hidden from him until and if they become man and wife. Their happiness at the meeting is plain to see. He smiles broadly and her left foot curls up inside her slipper in a sign of ecstasy. Despite the painting’s informality, Holman Hunt’s devotion to detail can be seen in his portrayal of the drape and puff of the fabric, the careful depiction of the eastern-style shoes and dress, as well as the minutiae of the lantern maker’s tools and the finished and half-finished lanterns hanging nearby. The painting is awash with bright colours and the rich blue and vibrant red that leap from the canvas are characteristic of Holman Hunt’s artwork. By having this explosion of colour the street scene is magically brought to life.

Another painting by William Holman Hunt on display at the gallery is his allegorical work entitled The Light of the World. It is thought that he started the work in 1850 but did not complete it until three years later. The painting depicts a Biblical scene, based on a passage from St John’s Gospel:

“…I am the Light of the World; he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life”.

Look at the way Hunt has depicted the door. It is very old and overgrown by ivy and brambles and there is no handle to use to open it. It was Hunt’s way of likening it to the problems of a closed mind. There are many ideas put forward as to where he painted the work. Some believe he painted it after dark in a hut on a Surrey farm; while others claim that his location was the Oxford University Press garden. Hunt’s original painting, which he completed in 1853, resides in Keble College Oxford. The one which can be seen at the Manchester Art Gallery is a smaller version of the original, which he worked on between 1851 and 1856. There is a third version which Holman Hunt completed around 1904, when he was eighty-three years of age. That version is to be found at St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

There is much symbolism within the painting which need considering and the St Paul’s Cathedral website offers their interpretation:

“…There are two lights shown in the picture. The lantern is the light of conscience and the light around the head of Christ is the light of salvation. The door represents the human soul, which cannot be opened from the outside. There is no handle on the door, and the rusty nails and hinges overgrown with ivy denote that the door has never been opened and that the figure of Christ is asking permission to enter. The morning star appears near Christ, the dawn of a new day, and the autumn weeds and fallen fruit represent the autumn of life. The writing beneath the picture, is taken from Revelation 3 .

“…Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me…”

The orchard of apple trees evokes several biblical references. The tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden was, according to legend, an apple tree and in some Christian traditions the wood of that tree was miraculously saved to construct the cross on which Christ was crucified. The fallen apples could symbolise the fall of man, original sin, and sometimes in Italian art can refer to redemption…”

As you look at Ford Madox Brown’s painting, Byron’s Dream, you try and work out what is happening and this fascinates me and it is why narrative paintings are high on my list of favourite painting genres. So let us just consider what we see. There is a young man and woman sitting on a hillside looking out over green fields and trees. The woman is dressed in a low cut, white blouse with lacy trim around the neck and cuffs and along with the blouse she wears a full length, red skirt. In her right hand she holds the pink ribbon of her wide-brimmed hat. The man is dressed in breeches, with a white shirt finished with ruffles under a black jacket. The woman stares out at a distant rider in the distance. The man, who is seated slightly behind her and hesitantly holding her hand, is not interested in what she is searching for but instead gazes lovingly at the woman’s face. Accompanying them on the hillside is a black and white dog which wears a wide gold collar. If we look at the midground we can just make out the subject of her gaze – a man on horseback below them, riding along the path towards them.

The painting is not just a depiction of any man and any woman but as the painting’s title, Byron’s Dream, indicates, it is a depiction of Lord Byron and his girlfriend. Not in reality but in Byron’s dream. Ford Madox Brown had been a great lover of Byron’s poetry, especially his 1816 poem entitled The Dream. The poem is described as conveying romantic beliefs about dreams. It also describes the view from the Misk Hills, close to Byron’s ancestral home in Newstead, Nottinghamshire, which we see in the painting.

Mary Chaworth, who was born at Annesley, not far from Mansfield, on the borders of Sherwood Forest, was a niece of Lord Byron. She was also the first woman Byron fell in love with, when he met her during a vacation at Southwell in 1803. They spent much time in one another’s company. The problem was he was yet a boy at fifteen, and she a woman at seventeen: The infatuation flowed entirely in one direction !!! He wrote many poems for her, but Mary didn’t care for the “lame, bashful, boy lord” and instead married John “Jack” Musters in August, 1805. The couple went on to have seven children. Mary separated from her husband on 10 April 1814 due to his infidelities and started writing to Byron. However, by that time, he was famous and was no longer interested in her. Mary is the “Maid” of the poem and it is she who is seen sitting with Byron in the painting.

William Holman Hunt 001.jpg — *The Hireling Shepherd by William Holman Hunt (1851)*

The setting for William Holman Hunt’s painting, The Hireling Shepherd was in the Surrey countryside in Spring. Hunt and fellow artist and good friend, John Everett Millais, had travelled to Ewell in Surrey where they searched together for locations for painting. Eventually they discovered the ideal setting close to the River Hogswell. Millais worked on his painting Ophelia whilst Hunt selected the meadows near the fields of Ewell Court Farm to paint The Hireling Shepherd.

At first glance this is simply a depiction of a rural idyll and innocent young love but there is more to this painting than meets the eye. If we take Holman Hunt’s painting at face value, we see a ruddy-faced young shepherd kneeling on the ground. His small barrel of ale or cider is strapped to his belt. He reaches out wrapping his arm around the shoulders of a pretty young girl, dressed in peasant costume. On her lap is a small lamb and some half-eten apples. Although it is not known who the male was who modelled for Hunt, we do know that the red-headed girl was Emma Watkins, a local country girl who later travelled to London to model for Hunt so that he could complete the painting. Her later efforts to become an independent model in the capital city failed and she had to return home.

Now look more closely at the depiction to find some of the things you may have missed at first glance. In Hunt’s depiction, preferring to gain the attention of the young girl by showing her a death’s head hawkmoth he has captured, the shepherd has paid little attention to his flock of sheep who have crossed over a ditch and are now ensconced in a field next to an orchard. The sheep have been eating some of the fallen sour apples and are now becoming ill.

When the painting was first displayed in the Royal Academy, it was accompanied by a quotation from King Lear:

Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?

Thy sheep be in the corn;

And for one blast of thy minikin mouth,

Thy sheep shall take no harm.

And yet there is still more to this painting. It is a work of symbolism. Holman Hunt explained it in a letter around the time the Manchester gallery had acquired it. Hunt wrote that he intended the couple to symbolise the pointless theological debates which occupied Christian churchmen while their “flock” went astray due to a lack of proper moral guidance.

The painting received mixed reviews. One anonymous reviewer wrote:

“…Like [Jonathan] Swift, [Hunt] revels in the repulsive. These rustics are of the coarsest breed, — ill favoured, ill fed, ill washed. Not to dwell on cutaneous and other minutiae, — they are literal transcripts of stout, sunburnt, out-of-door labourers. Their faces, bursting with a plethora of health, and a trifle too flushed and rubicund, suggest their over-attention to the beer or cyder (sic) keg on the boor’s back….Downright literal truth is followed out in every accessory; each sedge, moss, and weed – each sheep – each tree, pollard or pruned – each crop, beans or corn – is faithfully imitated. Summer heat pervades the atmosphere, — the grain is ripe, — the swifts skim about, — and the purple clouds cast purple shadows…”

And in the edition of the Illustrated London News the art critic objected to the “fiery red skin” and “wiry hair” of Hunt’s peasants. On the other hand, his supporters insisted that the painting was an unembellished and faithful image of society.

Notwithstanding what has been written about the work, I like it.

My final look at the works of the Pre-Raphaelites at the Manchester Art Gallery is one by Sir John Everett Millais, a work entitled Wandering Thoughts which he completed around 1855.

The woman is sitting back in a red upholstered chair with both of her hands resting on the carved wood of the padded arms of the chair. The background is dark and lacks detail and it contrasts with her pale skin. She is wearing a long black dress with lace-trimmed short sleeves which exposes her bare shoulders. A small posy of red flowers is fixed to the bodice. Her dark hair is neatly parted down the centre and secured away from the face. In her lap, we see a letter which must have fallen from her hand.

Her expression is one of contemplation. Her head is tilted forward and she looks down to the left. It is a blank expression, an unseeing countenance. The abandoned letter could well be the cause of her dour facial expression. What has she just read? Did the missive contain news which shocked her into dropping the letter? Is she now lost in thought as to what she has just read?

Questions, questions and more questions. I will leave you to come up with the answers.

In the next blog I will showcase some more of my favourite paintings on display at the gallery

…………………….to be concluded.

Manchester Art Gallery. Part 1. The Females.

Manchester Art Gallery

If you happen to visit Manchester, England, you will find two main art galleries, the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Gallery. Last weekend I was in the city for a weekend break and decided to revisit the main Manchester Art Gallery.

The main part of the collection is derived from the Royal Manchester Institution which demonstrated a partiality for purchasing contemporary art and that predilection continued when it eventually became the City Art Gallery in 1883. The retired Bradford-based textile businessman and philanthropist with a passionate love of art, Charles Rutherston, although not an artist himself, was both an art collector and a generous friend and patron to artists. He had amassed a large collection of paintings which he bequeathed to the Gallery in 1925. Between the two World Wars, the Gallery accumulated a large number of contemporary artworks. Today the Manchester Art Gallery has an extensive collection of work by nineteenth-century British artists, particularly the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1979, the European Old Masters collection was transformed by the Assheton Bennett bequest of almost a hundred paintings, mainly by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists. Today the collection includes over 2,000 oil paintings, plus related studies and archival material, and there is a renewed focus on collecting contemporary art. In the next three blogs I will be looking at some of my favourites which were on view.

Study of Jane Morris

Chalk drawing of Jane Morris by Rossetti (1875)

In the Gallery, there are a number of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite artists but the one I find the most haunting is Rossetti’s late work entitled Astarte Syriaca. The story behind this work started back in 1875 with a chalk drawing Rossetti had made of Jane Morris, his lover. Rossetti’s friend, Theodore Watts–Dunton, told Rossetti that the drawing could form the basis of a full-length Venus portrait. After one of Rossetti’s patrons, Clarence Fry saw some of the preliminary sketches in August 1875, he commissioned Rossetti to complete the Venus painting.

Rossetti started working on the painting, Astarte Syriaca, sometimes known as Venus Astarte, in the Autumn of 1875 but abandoned it, unfinished in March 1876, saying that he was dissatisfied with it and he began work on the “second” Astarte. Finally it was completed in December 1876 and framed at the end of January 1877 ready for his patron. Jane Morris was the model for Venus (and May Morris, her sister, the attendant figure on the left)

Astarte Syriaca Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Astarte Syriacs by Dante Rossetti (1876)

The depiction is a full-length figure of a woman dressed in sea-green robes, gazing towards us, the viewer. Astarte Syriaca has long, thick. and wavy flowing hair that flows on her back. She is pictured holding an ornate floral metal strap with her left hand under her chest. Her left hand seems to be holding a similar strap that rests around the hips area. This is known as a traditional pudica pose.

Both her hands, the limbs, and her breast are large, and her lips seem to be full and pink. Astarte Syriaca portrait is one of Gabriel Rossetti’s iconic paintings that romantically evokes the marvellous power of women in the context of the European Symbolist Movement, the nascent pan. In the same breath, it signifies as a covert admonition of the patriarchal Victorian Christianity. It can as well be interpreted in various other ways. The woman has one of her legs placed forward to look as if she is striding towards us. Also in the painting we see two male figures placed symmetrically in the background. Rossetti wrote a sonnet which was first published in 1877 and which accompanied the painting.

ASTARTE SYRIACA

Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon

Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen

⁠Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen

Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon

Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:

⁠And from her neck’s inclining flower-stem lean

Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean

The pulse of hearts to the spheres’ dominant tune.

Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel

⁠All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea

⁠The witnesses of Beauty’s face to be:

That face, of Love’s all-penetrative spell

Amulet, talisman, and oracle,—

⁠Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.

Cinderella by Valentine Prinsep (1899)

The next painting featuring a female is simply entitled Cinderella. The artist is Valentine Cameron Prinsep who was born in India on St Valentine’s Day 1838. His father was a civil servant based in the country but who would return to England with his family when Valentine was five years old. Valentine’s mother was a great art lover and would often hold parties at their Kensington home with artists and writers, including poets Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning and artists John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. Although his parents assumed their son would follow his father into the Indian Civil Service but having been stirred by the artistic company he kept, Valentine decided his future life should be as an artist too. Prinsep never reached the status of a great artist although he had his successes. He was influenced by Rossetti, Millais and Burne-Jones, and he painted initially in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts for the first time in 1862, after travelling with Burne-Jones in Italy.

The painting, Cinderella, was completed in 1899 and is a work of great sentimentality. The young girl rests against the stone wall of the kitchen. It is a depiction of poverty. The girl is barefooted and is wearing a dress which is ragged at the hem. She raises the hem of the skirt to allow the warmth from the fire to caress her body. Look at her posture and facial expression. Is it a happy looking expression awaiting for the arrival of somebody she looks forward to seeing or is it one of trepidation at the thought of the impending arrival? We all know the story of Cinderella so probably we also know the answer to the question.

Girl with Beret — *Girl with a Beret by Lucian Freud* (1951)

Girl with a Beret, the 1959 painting by Lucian Freud is a beautifully painted, close-up head and shoulders portrait of a young woman wearing a plain blue-grey jumper and beret. The girl has pale skin and shiny blue eyes, which stare off to the left in a self-absorbed manner. Her hair is parted to one side and she wears a small gold hoop earring in her left ear. The background colour is muted. Freud liked his portraits to be of people he knew well and as such were people Lucien had a close personal relationship with and because of this, these portraits could be looked upon as being pictorial autobiographies. The sitter for this portrait is the Irish actress, Helena Hughes who was twenty-three at the time. Helena had been introduced to Freud by his lover Anne Dunn during one of his frequent visits to Dublin in the 1950s. In 1950, Helena Hughes had invited Freud to Paris where she was working on a stage production with Orson Welles. The portrait took more than one hundred and fifty sittings to complete and for this protracted length of time artist and model were together which led to an intensity of their relationship and in a way, this could be detected within the painting.

The painting entitled Sapho was completed in 1877 by Charles-August Mengin, a French Academic painter and sculptor. He was a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel and exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1876 to 1927. Sappho was a Greek lyric poet born around 600 BC. Her poems considered love, desire and contemplation. Many of her works were devoted to her female pupils who studied with her on the island of Lesbos. Legend had it that she threw herself into the sea from the cliff of Leucadia because Phaon, a young man from Mitylene, did not return her love. In the painting we see Sapho depicted standing on the cliff edge in dark, in translucent robes, with her breasts exposed. Her left arm rests lightly at shoulder height, on a huge rock whilst her right hand holds her lyre down by her right side. Her face is partly put in the shade by her dark wavy hair, gauzy veil. Her dark eyes, which have shadows beneath them, stare down into the middle distance. Her feet are bare. She wears gold hoop earrings, a gold bangle, and there is a gold tie or belt around her waist. The dark sky in the background, which is only broken by a sliver of light on the horizon adds to the feeling of impending doom. Two grey birds fly in the sky behind.

And now for something different. Gone is the exotic beauty of Sapho and Artiste Syriaca. Gone is the everyday prettiness of the girl wearing her Beret. It is now about the reality of mortality.

Mamma Mia Poveretta — *Mama Mia Poveretta by Walter Sickert (c.1904)*

Walter Sickert, a German-born English painter, made a series of visits to Venice, initially focusing on the city’s topography but it was during his last painting trip from the autumn of 1903 to the summer of 1904 that, due to inclement weather, he was forced indoors to his small studio at 940 Calle dei Frati, close to the Rialto, to paint and it was during that time he developed a distinctive approach to portraiture. The models for many of the Venetian paintings are believed to have been prostitutes, whom Sickert might have known through being a client. One of his models which he nicknamed La Giuseppina was his favourite and one day she arrived at the studio with her mother, the old lady who became known as mamma mia poveretta (my poor mother)

*La Giuseppina by Walter Sickert* *(1904). Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund*

In the first decade of the twentieth century in Britain which was also the end of the reign of Queen Victoria, artists and designers began to try new things. Artists were starting to create a new art for a modern era. Traditional ways of completing portraits, landscapes and interiors would be undertaken in new ways. Gone was the romantic view of life and an acceptance that urban life was often a matter of hectic rushing around and there was definitely an air of brutality to it. Life was becoming a challenge. Walter Sickert’s 1904 painting entitled Mama Mia Poveretta is realist depiction of life. It is a half-length frontal portrait of this gaunt, almost emaciated elderly Venetian woman who is nearing the end of a hard life. She is wrapped in a dark shawl and wears a headscarf. She has turned her head slightly to the right, and her face is illuminated from the left and highlights the darkness around her eyes.

In my next blog I will look at work by some of the Pre-Raphaeliete artists which are on display at the Manchester Art Gallery.

………………………………..to be continued