Monday 20th December - Isabella

 Well, we really are on the downhill slope now and tomorrow is the shortest day!  It's all sunny days after that, all the way to summer.  Okay, I'm being a little optimistic but as it is dark as the underside of the crow outside at the moment I'm looking for the positives right now. In that spirit, I have two of the nicest dogs in art for you today...

Isabella (1848-49) John Everett Millais

We're back with Millais again as he does do a  decent dog. Before I get on to the dogs, can we take a moment to appreciate how good the hawk is? 

I mean, sure, he seems to be using a dove's feather to tickle his own feet but I'm sure that came from his friend, Dovey, who gave it to him as a present.  He certainly hasn't eaten a dove, and is using a quill to pick the bits of dove out of his beak.  Moving on...

The dogs have always been the aspect of this picture that I love the most. There are two and one often gets over looked but in a painting that drips in tension, I find the peril of both to be compelling and far more expressive of the danger the lovers are in than the humans. Let's start with the one being kicked...

The expression on the dog's face shows that she is taking things far more seriously than anyone else. Is she looking at us? She's leaning so hard against Isabella's skirt, away from the kicking foot, that she is almost falling over. She's got what is known as 'wall eye' which actually not the correct term as 'wall eye' refers to a disease that affects the eye, but people used it when I was growing up to refer to when you can see the whites of an animal's eyes, indicating that they are afraid to turn their heads but can't not look at something that frightens them. Blossom has seizures and when she is in the midst and can't turn her head she swivels her eyes round like that, it's very odd to see as normally you don't see much white, if any...

Dog face!

Anyway, back to the dog being kicked, and I find the smoothness of her coat absolutely echoes the smooth white leg kicking at her. The brother who is being Freudian with the nutcrackers is like a snarling dog, yet neither of the dogs in the picture are vicious, in fact quite the opposite.  The dogs seem to represent our lovers, docile and unwary, unprotected against the violence coming their way. The chair dog especially puts me on edge...

I can't cope with how this dog is about to get a chair stamped on him and he doesn't know yet. Somehow the cracking of the nuts and the imminent cracking of the dogs legs are audibly linked in my mind when I look at that.  It's such a visual tension that's unbearable. The claw-feet are so menacing against his little greyhound legs which look so spindle-y. He's all tucked up and asleep, it's horrifying.

 Looking at the preparatory sketches, this particularly striking element was never in Millais' plan...

The chair dog is barely in this version, just roughly sketched behind the kicking brother.  The main action is the brother kicking the leaning dog, this time in boots.  His apparent lack of footwear in the oil painting does disturb me, but then it doesn't look like anyone is wearing shoes in the oil.  I find that very strange.  In the drawing you can see that the brother is absolutely fixated on tormenting the dog, not really paying attention to Isabella or Lorenzo.  In the oil, his face is so screwed up and dark, it's hard to see exactly what he is looking at, but it is assumed his nut-cracking fury is aimed at his sister. 

In this drawing, the chair dog is present but the chair is not leaning and so the sleeping hound (who is a bit of a chonker, as my daughter would say) is not threatened in any way.  Again, it's all about the brother and the leaning dog. Is it meant to express that the brother is taking out his anger with his sister on her dog? In the finished oil painting, there is no doubt that the coiled-spring brother is aiming his anger at his sister, the dog is just collateral damage, getting in the way.  In the drawings, it really does seem to be about the brother and the dog. I suppose it is meant to express his cruelty which will lead to him killing Lorenzo, but it's all a bit odd. Takes all sorts I guess...

Catch you tomorrow for the shortest day...