Tag Archives: Art

September 14, 2013

Eleven Lost Days

By daseger

When people in Salem, and any other British territory around the world, went to bed last night in 1752 it was September 2, but when they woke up this morning it was September 14: they “lost” eleven days as Great Britain and its colonies made the big switch from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar, at long last. The latter was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 in the midst of the religious conflict that followed in the wake of the Reformation; Queen Elizabeth had been excommunicated and declared a heretic by his predecessor: there was no way her Godly country would accept such a papal imposition. While other Protestant countries accepted the new calendar within decades, Britain held out for nearly two centuries.

Engraving of Pop Gregory XIII after Bartolomeo Passarotti, 1572, and print by Pieter van der Heyden of Queen Elizabeth as Diana, judging Pope Gregory as Calisto, c. 1584, British Museum, London.

Religious fervor had subsided considerably by the eighteenth century, if not before. The conduct of both international and Great British commerce made the “Old Style” calendar inconvenient, and so Parliament passed the Calendar Act of 1750, commencing two years of transition to the “New Style” calendar: the year 1751 commenced on 25 March, the Julian New Year, and ran until 31 December, while 1752 began on January I, but sliced off the eleven September days to align the British calendar with that of the Continent. Two short years, and then the British Empire was part of the uniform calendar world. Despite the placement of a “given us our eleven days” placard in Hogarth’s Election Entertainment (1755) there does not seem to have been much resistance in Britain, and even less over here as gazetteers carefully explained the big change. Nathaniel Ames, author of An Astronomical Diary; or Almanack for the Year of our Lord Christ, 1752 devoted his last few pages to explaining that the “striking off the Eleven Days between the 2d and 14th of September, A.D. 1752 was effected “to produce an Uniformity in the Computation of Time throughout the christian Part of the World…”, and the Boston Gazette, the Virginia Almanack, and Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack included explanations and references to the Act of Parliament that had, quite literally, cut their time short.

Virginia Almanack page for September 1752 and 1752 cover of Poor Richard’s Almanack, Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia; The modern calendar: Kate Greenaway’s almanac page for 1888–and 2013, New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

7 Comments | tags: Art, British Empire, Elizabeth I, England, ephemera, Seasons | posted in Culture, History, Salem

September 9, 2013

Tansy Time

By daseger

In my garden the tansy is “riding high”, to use the words of the nineteenth-century “peasant poet” John Clare. An old medicinal and culinary herb native to Eurasia, tanacetum is part of the large aster family and so looks right at home in the late summer garden. Its vulgar variety looks like a weed, but I have a variegated form that turns slightly silver in September. The low-maintenance leaves are a good foil for my other plants all summer long–but it does take over if you don’t watch it, and I’ve been too busy to watch it. It’s a wild tangle, ready to bloom.

Now I could cut off sprigs and make fly-repellent bouquets for the house, but I don’t really have that many flies. If I were really ambitious, I could let it bloom, and dry its little yellow button-like flowers to produce a dye for fabrics. In the medieval and early modern past, Tansy bordered on a “woman’s herb”: a really potent potion could apparently induce abortions/miscarriages, while a diluted distillation could aid conception along with other “women’s troubles”, including hysteria. At Easter, its tender fern-like leaves were put in an omelet to produce a “tansy”, and it was also used to make tea, flavor ale, and, according to some of the nineteenth-century American “dispensaries” I consulted, infuse rum. All the herbals up to the nineteenth century reference it as a curative for indigestion, fevers, and jaundice. So there are a lot of diverse claims for tansy, but I’ll probably let mine continue to flop around the garden until fall.

Its perceived utility guaranteed Tansy a place in all of the major pre-modern herbals, and even the florilegia (“flower books”) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the best examples of the latter, the Hortus Floridus compiled and engraved (with some family help) by Crispijn van de Passe junior (1589-1670) definitely focuses on bulbs in general and tulips in particular (during this time of “Tulipmania”) but also manages to include the humble Tansy.

Tansy (near right) in the Tractatus de herbis, BL MS. Egerton 747, Italy, c. 1300; Plates from Crispijn van de Passe, including Tansy (far right),1614—you can see the entire book here. Ernest Townsend, still life of tansy and agrimony in a vase, c.1915-23, Derby Museums and Art Gallery.

I did find a lovely blog which offers instructions for a tansy dyebath as well as examples of the finished project—this looks like something that even I could do! I really would like to find some use for this abundant plant, although I must admit that previous batches of dried herbs turned first into dust magnets and then into fuel for the winter fire.

Tansy-dyed wool (on the right) from Local Color.

8 Comments | tags: Art, books, Crafts, Garden, horticulture | posted in Home, Nature

August 30, 2013

Work and the WPA

By daseger

The artwork produced by the artists of the Federal Arts Project, the major visual initiative of the New Deal Works Progress Administration, is always accessible and often compelling. I think this because of the complete lack of abstraction in the works, but also because of their timeliness. During the period that the Project was operational (1935-43), the artists it employed produced over 200,000 works of art, including the iconic poster that informed the public, their employer, how and on what they were working.

Where the federally-employed workers worked in 1936: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

I like how the FAP artists visualized work, both their own and that of other contemporary sectors. In advance of Labor Day, I was looking through their occupational posters, and thinking about work in the past, work in the present, and work in the future. For me, the Labor Day Weekend and Labor Day itself has always been less about the end of summer and more about heading back to work/school, whether as a student or a professor. This year, I’m going back as chair of my department, so I’m thinking about work in a different way altogether: rather than my own work, I’m thinking about how I can support and evaluate the work of my colleagues and facilitate the path of our students towards gainful and satisfying employment. As chair, I will also have to answer that dreaded question that always comes from students and their parents: what can you do with a History major? There’s a long-winded answer (basically anything and everything), and I wish I had one of the FAP’s occupational posters to help me animate it! I just might have to commission one.

FAP/WPA Posters from the collection of the Library of Congress.

5 Comments | tags: Art, design, holidays, Labor Day, Teaching | posted in Culture, History, Paper

August 28, 2013

Intricate Insects

By daseger

There are beetles in my garden and some West Nile-carrying mosquitoes in Salem: I’ve got bugs on the brain. On a more pleasurable note, the Getty Museum has expanded access to thousands of its digitized images through its new Open Content Initiative. Another treasure trove to explore (and eat up time)! One of the most precious manuscripts in the world is in the Getty collection, the Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta, or Model Book of Calligraphy, the collaboration of two late Renaissance artists who never met! In this first age of printing, when it was feared that the skill and beauty of writing would soon be lost, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I commissioned his court scribe, George Bocskay, to produce the Model Book; 30 years later, his grandson Rudolf II instructed his court artist, Joris Hoefnagel, to illustrate it. And thus the beautiful little (6+ inches by 4+ inches) was created, over the period from about 1561 to 1591.

Hoefnagel (1542-1601) worked in every medium and all over Europe: though generally classified as a Netherlandish artist he also spent time in England and really flourished in central Europe at the courts of two major royal patron-collectors, Albert V, the Duke of Bavaria, and Rudolph II, who was in the process of assembling the largest Kunst- and Wunderkammer (“Cabinets” or collections of art and natural wonders) of the era. While in Munich, he completed his three encyclopedic collections of zoological and botanical miniatures, Animalia Aqvatilia et Cochiliate (Aqva), Animalia Volatilia et Amphibia (Aier), and Animalia Rationalia et Insecta, between 1575 and 1580. These images are amazing blends of art and science, and while the animals are compelling (especially the hairy people–more in a later post), the insects almost jump off their pages!

Joris Hoefnagel’s insect miniatures, watercolor and gouache on vellum, 1575-1580, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Is Hoefnagel’s inspiration primarily artistic or scientific? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, really. He is a transitional artist in so many ways–transitioning between the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, between manuscript culture and print culture, between the medieval miniature and the early modern still life with his precise eye for detail. But at the same time he is merging all these things rather than evolving from one to another. At about the same time that he was engaged in his “collaboration” with Bockskay, Hoefnagel was part of another artistic partnership, this time with his son, the teenaged Jacob Hofsnaegel, whose collection of printed botanical and entomological engravings, Archetypa Studiaque Patris (1592) was inspired by his father’s early allegorical drawings and accompanying verse. You can see more of the younger Hoefnagel’s images here and here, as well as at the British Museum.

Joris Hoefnagel, Allegory of Winter, c. 1589 (The Louvre, Paris); and Insects and the Head of the Wind God, c. 1590-1600 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Jacob Hoefnagel, frontspiece and plates from Archetypa Studiaque Patris Georgi (Joris) Holfnaegeli, 1592 (British Museum, London).

Below: Art and nature, father and son, INSECTS: Allegory on Life and Death, Prague, 1598: Figure and landscape within oval drawn by Jacob Hoefnagel, surrounding flora, fauna and bugs, by Joris Hoefnagel, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

6 Comments | tags: Art, design, Flora and Fauna, museums, Nature, print culture, Renaissance | posted in Culture, History, Nature

August 26, 2013

The Eyes have It

By daseger

Thumbing through the New York Times Style Magazine yesterday, two features caught my eye: one on the beautiful botanical compositions of the French artist Carmen Almon, and another on eye motifs in current clothing and accessories collections. Everything comes around again in fashion, and there is certainly nothing new about the decorative use of the anatomical eye. I was immediately reminded of one of the most spectacular portraits of Elizabeth I, the “rainbow” portrait by Isaac Oliver, in which all-seeing and all-hearing eyes and ears adorn the seemingly-eternal Queen’s gilded gown.

Isaac Oliver, The “Rainbow Portrait” of Queen Elizabeth I, c. 1600, Hatfield House.

I was also reminded of the Georgian and Regency custom of wearing somewhat secretive “lover’s eyes”, miniature paintings of one of your beloved’s eyes, on a chain or as a brooch or ring, supposedly initiated in England by the Prince of Wales (later King George IV) as an expression of his devotion to his unmarriageable mistress, Maria Fitzherbert. Eye miniatures seem to have had an earlier, French, political purpose, and then of course the “all-seeing” eye of providence became an important Masonic symbol that somehow found its way onto our own dollar bill, but the hundreds of decorative objects that have survived seem to be predominately love tokens. Two early nineteenth-century brooches from the Victoria & Albert museum are below, and you can see many more examples here and here.

Two early nineteenth-century unsigned watercolor eye miniatures, Victorian & Albert Museum, London (Note the diamond tear in the lower one!)

The Times “This and That” item, Eyes Everywhere, features eye-embellished flats and a gorgeous organza dress from Christian Dior, as well as the amazing “blue-eyed” ring by Colette and a Kenzo sweatshirt, both below. To complete the ensemble, I scouted out an optical skirt and another blue-eyed accessory–this time a clutch. It would take a daring woman indeed to wear all these items together, transforming herself into a veritable eyeful.

Skirt by Illustrated People; Lulu Guiness clutch.

6 Comments | tags: Art, Decorative Arts, Elizabeth I, Fashion, Shopping | posted in Culture, Design, History

August 23, 2013

Poison Vessels

By daseger

News of the discovery of a late medieval poison ring in eastern Europe has intrigued me; I know that “poison rings” (alternatively called “pillbox rings” with built-in receptacles) were popular in the Renaissance and after, but very few of them actually served to contain or convey poison–more likely the held articles of remembrance. But this Bulgarian bronze ring, with its little channel, looks like the real thing! It instantly reminded me of one of my favorite (also late medieval) woodcut illustrations of a woman poisoning her husband–through a much larger pipeline–and set me off on a hunt for more man-made vessels for poison, besides the proverbial poison arrow.

Book of Wisdom of the Ancient Sages, 1481; The Illustrated Bartsch. Vol. 83, German Book Illustration before 1500: Anonymous Artists, 1481–1482.

Well of course the most obvious vessel is a cup: whether medieval depictions of Socrates drinking his hemlock or later prints of supposed royal assassinations, the poison is generally conveyed in a cup, or, more seriously, a chalice, as in Shakespeare’s This even–handed justice Commends th‘ ingredients of our poisoned chalice (Macbeth). Somehow a chalice is more reverent, and at the same time menacing, than a mere cup. John Foxe’s Protestant martyrology, Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church (1563) shows King John being poisoned by English monks offering his majesty a chalice of wassail, of all things. The chalice and the mortar and pestle become the two most “medieval” vessels associated with poison, as in the line from Danny Kaye’s Court Jester (1955): the pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!

National Library of the Netherlands MS RMMW, 10 A 11 (c. 1475), John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1563); NYPL Digital Gallery.

Another English monarch who was threatened with assassination by poison (and other means) was Elizabeth I: a Jesuit-inspired French plot involving a poisoned saddle is illustrated in George Carleton’s Thankful Remembrance (1627). This might or might not be the basis of the purely fictional poisoned dress scene in the 1998 film Elizabeth. In any case, it was foiled.

George Carleton, A Thankful Remembrance of God’s Mercy, 1627.

Things seem to get more straightforward in the modern age, when poison was contained in boldly labeled and brightly colored apothecary bottles, dispensed collectively in war and from planes, self-induced through various addictive substances, and trivialized by mid-century modern “name your poison” bar sets. But obviously the most effective poisons would have no vessel at all.

5 Comments | tags: Archeology, Art, Etsy, films, print culture, Renaissance, Shakespeare, Shopping | posted in Culture, History

August 21, 2013

Witches Three

By daseger

Because I’m not going to make it to Scotland this summer (or Fall, probably) I have been perusing the various sites and reviews devoted to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s current exhibition, Witches and Wicked Bodies, to see if I can find witchcraft images that I haven’t seen before. The depiction of witchcraft from the Renaissance on is a compelling visual and cultural topic: I can’t believe there hasn’t been an exhibition before this. I have a whole portfolio of images that I use in my various courses, and rely heavily on the analysis in Charles Zika’s great book: The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-century Europe (for the best analysis of the really provocative prints of early sixteenth-century artist Hans Baldung Grien) as well as the sources and images available at another ongoing Scottish(digital) exhibition: The Damned Art: Witchcraft and Demonology. Witchcraft has been serious business in Scotland, from the days of King James VI’s Daemonologie (1597) to the present.

Looking through the images from these various sources, I am struck by the rule of three: how very often witches are depicted in a group of three, as in Henry Fuseli’s 1785 iconic image of the Three Weird Sisters from Macbeth on the exhibition poster above. Fuseli’s image is easily explainable: it is based on Shakespeare’s three prophetic sisters which is in turn based on those of Holinshed’s Chronicle, which is in turn based on the traditional threefold warnings of doom. But even before Shakespeare’s time, witches are often found in parties of three, perhaps to depict a closed and empowered circle, the smallest coven or conspiracy, or a demonic inversion of the Holy Trinity. The Scotland show features several witchcraft themes, Macbeth and magic circles (as well as witches in flight and devilish rituals) which highlight the power of three. But then what about good things come in threes or third time’s a charm?

Three Witches depicted in: Ulrich Molitor’s lamiis et phitonicis mulieribus (1489) and The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip Flower (1619), Ferguson Collection, University of Glasgow; John Runciman, Three Satyrs’ Heads, 18th century, National Galleries of Scotland; Daniel Gardner, The Three Witches from Macbeth (Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne; Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; Anne Seymour Damer, 1775) National Portrait Gallery, London; William Blake, The Triple Hectate, 1795, National Galleries of Scotland; Arthur Rackham’s Three Witches/Gossips, 1911, from The Ingoldsby Legends of Myth & Marvels; the Weird Sisters in last year’s production of Macbeth at the Lyric Threatre in Belfast, Northern Ireland. No Goya—too scary!

7 Comments | tags: Art, Culture, Exhibitions, museums, Shakespeare, Witchcraft | posted in Culture, History

August 13, 2013

Essex County Seats

By daseger

Salem is the county seat of Essex County, which extends from north of Boston to the New Hampshire border, encompassing a great marsh, a rocky coastline, the Merrimack River,and what used to be fertile farmland in between. Now much,but not all, of it is residential, but because of its early development (just after Plymouth, to the south of Boston), the marsh, and some early conservation and preservation efforts there remains a seemingly-eternal landscape that is both natural and man-made. The county is full of long-established towns with clearly-defined centers and commons, even though progressive sprawl has blurred the lines of distinction among them. There are seventeenth-century, “First Period” houses in several Essex County towns (with Ipswich claiming the most) and eighteenth-century houses everywhere. When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, Essex County was just a place to drive through, between Boston and my hometown in southern Maine, but then I began turning off route 95 and exploring a little: first the old seaports, Salem, Gloucester, Newburyport, then the smaller coastal and inland towns between the ports and the highway, and then the Merrimack Valley, still bearing the structures of its early industrial revolution. Now that I live here, I still go exploring, and find new (old) houses, roads, and landmarks every time.

Over a century ago, Boston lithographer and publisher George H. Walker encouraged the exploration of Essex (and other) counties by issuing a series of “driving maps”, birds’ eye views, and lithographs of the notable structures of the region: “stately” homes, factories, educational establishments, public buildings. A large collection of his Essex County lithographs was donated to the Archives of Salem State University earlier this summer, and they are now online, with great descriptions written by a former student of mine. Published in 1884, in the midst of an age of dynamic growth and industrialization, these images seem to harken back to an earlier Arcadian age. They are beautiful in a very idealized way: prancing horses dance about and even the factories are pristine. But as you can see below (in just a sampling of the entire collection), where I’ve managed to contrast a Walker lithograph with a standing structure, the architectural details are quite delineated.

Walker’s Salem Lithographs: the Kernwood Estate in North Salem (now radically reconstructed as the clubhouse of the Kernwood Country Club), the Kimball House (built by Nathaniel Silsbee and now the Knights of Columbus) & the George Peabody House (now the John Bertram House, a senior living community).

Two long-lost houses in nearby Peabody: the very eclectic Appleton estate, and Samuel McIntire’s “Oak Hill” shown in Victorian guise–now the site of the Northshore Shopping Center!

Another Peabody (family, not town) house: the summer residence at Light House Point in Beverly, where President Taft summered, and the Spring residence in Danvers, now the administrative building of St. John’s Preparatory School.

The very charming Elm Vale Cottage in North Andover (I don’t know if this is still standing; I’ll have to go exploring), and the long-gone Moulton Castle in Newburyport, situated on the Castle Hill that is now part of Maudslay State Park.

3 Comments | tags: Architecture, Archives, Art, ephemera, Essex County, Massachusetts, print culture, Salem State University | posted in History, Houses, Salem

August 9, 2013

Ginger Men

By daseger

Back to Salem and the material world. August is the traditional Americana month in the world of Antiques auctions and shows, and one particular lot from this weekend’s upcoming Skinner Americana auction has me transfixed: Ammi Phillips’ Portrait of a Ginger–haired Young Man, which has an estimate of $15,000-$25,000. What a portrait! Riveting blue eyes, patrician profile, the 19th century hand-in-waistcoat pose, and very notable ginger hair.

Ginger is the preferred term for red hair in the nineteenth century, and before. The relative rarity of this hair color created a folkloric characterization (shiftless, hot-tempered) that endured for centuries. The weakness of William the Conqueror’s heir, William Rufus, was attributed to his hair color, as was the voracious personality of Henry VIII. Much later, the prejudices subsided, but the titles of nineteenth-century portraits of redheaded men, women and children always reference hair color, still the conspicuous characteristic of the sitter.

The assassination of William Rufus, British Library MS Royal 20 A II; the ginger-haired Henry VIII, anonymous artist after Hans Holbein, c. 1600, New College, Oxford University; Portrait miniature of an unknown ginger-haired man (previously thought to be Sr. Francis Drake), bu Isaac Oliver, c. 1590, Victoria & Albert Museum; Two nineteenth-century miniature portraits of ginger-haird men, Skinner Auction Archives; Irish Author J.P. Donleavy’s 1955 picaresque novel The Ginger Man, which (apparently) JOHNNY DEPP is considering bringing to the screen.

5 Comments | tags: Art, Auctions, folklore, Literature, Royalty | posted in Culture, History

August 7, 2013

Sunrise, Sunset

By daseger

Before the park and the rusticators, there were the painters, most notably those identified as belonging to the Hudson River School who seem to have been similarly inspired by Mount Desert Island. I’m leafing through this lovely book by John Wilmerding, The Artist’s Mount Desert. American Painters on the Maine Coast (1995), and am particularly drawn to the paintings of Frederic Edwin Church, who came to the island in the 1850s after Alvan Fisher and Thomas Cole “discovered” it for the artistic community in the 1830s and 1840s. Church captures the drama and the contrast of the island’s terrain, and its weather. On Mount Desert, it’s not “wait a minute” for the weather to change as in the rest of New England, but “wait a second” for the fog to roll in (on little cat feet).

Frederic Edwin Church, Fog off Mount Desert (Collection of John Wilmerding), 1850, and Coast Scene,Mount Desert (Sunrise off the Maine Coast) Wadsworth Athenaeum, 1863.

We had great weather during our trip but it was foggy most mornings and evenings. One day I traveled from a very sunny, almost hot Southwest Harbor to a very foggy (northeast) Bar Harbor in the space of a half-hour. The fog does amazing things to the island’s mountains, coast, and offshore islands, which you can see by the sequence of photographs below, particularly those taken from the deck of the Margaret Todd, a replica cargo schooner moored in Bar Harbor, on which we took a sunset cruise. There’s also a few buildings below, but not many; I’ve got to go back to Mount Desert for houses and gardens without (most of) my camping companions. I would not presume to characterize the (remaining) architectural landscape of Bar Harbor, for three reasons: 1) there was a devastating fire in 1947 which leveled much of downtown (67 summer cottages, five hotels, 170 year-round homes); 2) I didn’t really have enough time for an assessment, due to the demands of camping; and 3) this is the territory of the Downeast Dilettante. However, I will say that it’s a little sad to walk along the Shore Path and see only one Gilded Era “cottage”, the Breakwater or Atlantique estate of John Innes Kane, great-grandson of John Jacob Astor. I grew up along a similar path far to the south but still in Maine, lined with many similar contemporary cottages.

Breakwater from the Shore Path and the deck of the Margaret Todd, a Seal Harbor chapel and cottage, houses and bridge in Somesville:

And now for the fog: rolling into various Mount Desert harbors, and engulfing one of the Porcupine (I think it’s Bald Porcupine) islands in Bar Harbor in a matter of moments. And then it dissipated just as quickly.