Friday 6th December - Hydrangeas

Well, we have reached the end of the first week of Catvent and it is my daughter's birthday today, which is exciting.  If you have been with me a while, you will know her birthday always falls in Blogvent and you will be equally horrified to learn she is 19. I refuse to believe it.  She's only about 5 as far as I'm concerned. I feel old and my knees hurt. Let's move on...

Mr Tibbles would later use this photograph as his defence after 'the incident'...

Today's picture is a smashing opportunity for me to have a little look at my current project and a painting she appears in, which handily contains a cat...

Hydrangeas (1901) Philip Wilson Steer

Here we have a pretty young lady in a sun-dappled room, dangling what appear to be pearls in front of a black and white cat.  The sofa she sits on is so plush and huge, we can barely see over or around it, and everything is bright, comfortable and rich. In the left-hand corner are some hydrangeas, after which the painting is named.  The Sketch  reported it thus - 'Mr P Wilson-Steer's "Hydrangeas" at the New English Art Club, Dudley Gallery, is a sparkling arrangement in which violets and pearly greys predominate and harmonise with touches of white and green in the flowers. The subject, a girl playing with a black kitten, is attractive, though the girl's face is scarcely satisfactory and the whole scheme is deficient in focus.'

Starting with the white hydrangeas, in the language of flowers they symbolised purity, grace and abundance which is obviously fitting with the mood of the piece, even if it is unintentional. The girl's white dress is modest and frilly, very decorative indeed, even if she is slightly blending into the soft furnishings. The cat or kitten is dinky and decorative and both the cat and the girl are equally delighted by their game. If it is indeed pearls she is dangling, then I think there might be a hint of rich idleness, playing cat-games with extremely valuable jewellery, but I don't get any judgemental undertone is present. It is all just dolce far niente and verylovely indeed.

Portrait of Miss Ethel Warwick (1901)

The reason for my interest in this picture is the model, Miss Ethel Warwick.  I've talked about her before and I continue to find her of great interest. Ethel was an artist, a model, an actress, a manager and a film star. and she has one of those lives that links Neoclassicist Art and Dad's Army. Probably the most famous painting she appeared in was this one...

The Lament for Icarus (1898) Herbert Draper

...where she is one of the nudey ladies holding the hot chap with wings.  She also appeared in a goodly amount of J W Godward's art, Whistler's paintings and at least two by Steer.  She then made her way onto the stage where she had great success, married the son of the leading actor of his generation and then divorced him, managed her own theatre company and ended up in films.  The Dad's Army connection is that she appeared in a play written by Arnold Ridley, great-uncle to Daisy Ridley so technically I can link Ethel to Star Wars. And I will.

I obviously prefer the shiny smoothness of Draper and Godward (because, as I was once told, I'm the sort of person who buys their art from Woolworths), but I can appreciate the beautiful light in Hydrangeas and the sense of luxury that envelopes the room, girl and cat. By the time Ethel sat for Steer she was already making the transition from model to actress (as so many do) however she never stopped painting, according to the many newspaper articles about her. So here is my Christmas wish - if you know/have a painting by Ethel, please can you give me a shout?  So far I have found a couple that have been on auction sites, but I am having no luck tracking them, or any others, down.  It would make my year to be able to include Ethel's art in my research, so let me know at stonellwalker@googlemail.com if you have any leads for me!

Self portrait (c.1930s) Ethel Warwick

See you tomorrow.