Monday 7th December - Romeo and Juliet

Into the second week of Snogvent we go, and I'm hoping we are all staying healthy and safe.  It seems contradictory to be staying away from those we love just at the time of year when we need every reason for joy and togetherness as we head towards the shortest day and longest night of the year.  Mind you, sometimes the absence of those we love could be a cause of joy, so I best move on swiftly.  Actually, on the subject of parting from those we love, here's today's picture...

Romeo and Juliet (1884) Frank Dicksee

Parting is such sweet sorrow, especially when there is a hot chap in tights leaping off your balcony (not a euphemism).  As you can well imagine, I was spoiled for choice when it came to Romeo and Juliet snogging images...

Romeo and Juliet (1867) Ford Madox Brown

Mind your giblets on the ironwork!

Romeo and Juliet (1867) Alfred Elmore (attrib)

Juliet seems to have come down to the garden for this one so there is none of that balcony malarkey, which is preferable, health and safety-wise...

Romeo and Juliet (1879) Wilhelm Trubner

 It hadn't occurred to me that Romeo had to do all that sneaking and climbing about in tights.  He must have spent half his time darning his ladders, if my life is anything to go by.  Also it has to be applauded how much bosom Juliet often has on display.  That's the spirit! If only they had continued the sneaking about and balcony snogging and less suicide-y end bit then the play would have been a far more cheery affair all round. I've always felt that it would have been much improved by the ending the amateur dramatics group give it in the movie Hot Fuzz. Anyway, back to our Dicksee...

Our kissing couple are bidding farewell at day-break, with the powdery shimmer of dawn creeping over Verona through the window.  Juliet is still in her nightie, but Romeo has had to get decent in order to make a get away.  The purse on his belt is interesting.  If you excuse the undeniably phallic dagger, then the purse looks like a heart with an arrow going through it, but the heart is black, revealing tragedy and death.

There are also passion flowers growing up the pillars, which hints at suffering and more death, which is all very jolly.  Interestingly, the leaves of some varieties can be dried and used as a sedative.  The Victorians loved passiflora because who doesn't love a religious flower? Also the temporary nature of the flower, which only lasts a day, adds to the fleeting happiness of our happy couple.  One day you are getting your leg over on a balcony, the next you are poisoning yourself in a sulky teenage strop. Kids, eh? Altogether now - 'Love me, love me, say that you love me...'

On that romantic/tragic note, I shall catch up with you tomorrow...

 

Sunday 6th December - The May Irwin Kiss

 I'm attempting to have a day of rest but as it is my daughter's 15th birthday and the house needs sprucing up in a festive manner, I have been belting about doing stuff.  I am now sitting down, exhausted, but today's image is rather heartwarming and restorative...

The May Irwin Kiss (1896)

This is also an unusual one because it's a short film, from which the above is a still.  The film which is known as The Kiss, The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss or The Widow Jones is an 18 second film and one of the first shown commercially.  May Irwin starred as the Widow Jones being kissed by Billie Bikes (ablely portrayed by John Rice)...

The couple were re-enacting the kiss they shared in the Broadway play The Widow Jones.  The play was seen by Thomas Edison, who asked the couple to star in the mini-movie of that one scene at his movie studio.  It was advertised as revealing the mysteries of kissing to an eager and curious audience.  There was somewhat of a scandal, not least because it was felt that the couple were not attractive and so the sight of them smooching was not one to relish, but the public disagreed.  The short film became the most popular of the year it was shown and May, a buxom, charming woman, became a beloved star.

I like their normalness, their ease and giggly silliness.  Although it is obviously contrived, it somehow appears spontaneous and real.  It was so popular it was followed by imitators such as The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899). Brace yourself, it gets rather shocking...

Good heavens! Shocking!

May Irwin was quite a character.  Not only half of cinema's first kiss, she was a famous actress for her stage work as well.  Born in 1862, she and her sister Flo debuted in New York in 1874 as a singing act known as 'the Irwin Sisters'. In 1883, 21 year old May went solo, and turned to acting, known for her comedy skills on both sides of the Atlantic.  Her second movie outing in 1914, Mrs Black is Back was filmed at her luxurious New York home, and she was so careful with her money that when she retired she was a millionaire. And she had her own cook book...

What a woman!  Anyway, I hope the lovely May entertains you today and that we shall all be having cheeky and scandalous kisses in the not too distant future. What a cheery thought...

See you tomorrow.

Saturday 5th December - The Kiss

So, we have made it to the first weekend of December!  Well done us! Hopefully, your Christmas shopping and general preparations are proving stress-free and filled with joy... who am I kidding?  It's a hellscape out there, and frankly the only sensible response is to sit under a blanket, swigging sloe gin and seeing how many mince pies you can eat before you feel weird.  Sorry, I'll pull myself together and get on with Snogvent.  Pucker up, it's time to get musical...

The Kiss by Francesco Brunery

This rather gorgeous offering is from Francesco Brunery (1849-1926), an Italian academic painter with an eye for the romantic, apparently...

I Will (no date)

Oh, hello... I do hope that the thing the young lady in the picture above has said she will is marriage and not something unseemly.  Do not be swayed by a gentleman in velvet knee breeches! Learn by my mistakes! He'll make you do all the work, you mark my words.  Also, his shoes are ridiculous. Sorry, what was I saying?  Oh yes, Francesco Brunery...

The Minuet (no date)

It's all priests and romance with his art, but it is rather lovely and reminded me of Walter Dendy Sadler, which is romance and monks (normally not at the same time or that would get weird). Brunery came from Turin but moved to Paris to study with Jean-Leon Gerome and Leon Bonnat. He is a veritable master of what is known as 'anecdotal genre painting', humorous images of everyday life with characters like flirty young ladies, vain young men and frivolous priests getting up to all sorts of shenanigans for our amusement.  Seeing as he might have had to leave France due to the Franco-Prussian war, maybe he felt the need to keep things light in the face of so much wretched devastation.

The Recital (no date)

It's funny because the red priest has just started playing Smoke on the Water and the purple priest is remembering their roadtrip to see the Sabbath at Scunthorpe Baths in 1978. What larks. Humorous priests aside, let's turn back to our snogging couple...

I'm reminded of Cecile and Danceny in Dangerous Liaisons - why on earth do parents pay for music lessons then leave their daughters alone with handsome young music teachers?  It will all end badly, I can feel it coming.  They'll arrange a recital for her in a year's time to show off how talented she's become and all she'll be able to play is chopsticks and one hand of the Can-Can really slowly. The shame.  Mind you, that's a lovely piano...

Gosh, if I had a piano that pretty, it would be a joy to learn how to play it properly. I played the organ (no sniggering) as a child, by which I don't mean anything as magnificent as this...

Oooh, can you imagine belting out The Old Rugged Cross on that one?  Lovely!  No, ours was more like this...

I was never any good, even though I could do a short burst of The Can-Can, but due to my lack of handsome young tutor, I could use both hands and do foot pedals. My Nan could play Feed The Birds with her terrier howling along in accompaniment which is an act I believe you could take on the road.  Sorry, I digress...

Do you think it's telling that the young man has all the music? Is she playing along to his tune, if you know what I mean? I suppose the idea was that parents wanted their daughter to have all the feminine artistic talents in order to snag a rich husband but it obviously a bad idea to have her tutored by an impoverished young man, as there is very little money in fiddling, if you excuse the expression.  Blimey, there would have been a fortune in being a female music teacher in the eighteenth century - far less likely to get some rich man's daughter pregnant during a lesson on Pachebel's Canon.

On that note, I shall see you tomorrow...

Friday 4th December - The Kiss of the Siren

We all know it's a bit risky to have a bit of a snog with someone you don't know very well.  Even without the pandemic, smooching with a stranger can often lead to complications and cold sores.  Even worse, if you are a sailor, it can lead to a wrecked ship and drowning, all for the chance of a kiss from a lovely naked sea-lady. Mind you, I bet even as Bob the mariner here sinks to his watery grave, he'll be thinking Completely worth it...

The Kiss of the Siren (1882) Gustav Wertheimer

I don't know what is up with mermaids.  Are they just really radical, strident feminists? Are they are all psychotic? What's with all the drowning?

The Fisherman and the Syren (1856-58) Frederic Leighton

Done for, no doubt about it...

Mermaids' Rock (c.1894) Edward Matthew Hale

There's another boat gone...

The Depths of the Sea (1887) Edward Burne-Jones

And you should be ashamed of yourself, young lady.  Really, it is no way to carry on.  Although present in some form in most folklore, writers seem to agree that mermaids came from the idea of the Sirens of Greek myths, luring men to their deaths with their beautiful song, although Sirens tended to look like this...

Ulysses and the Sirens (1891) John William Waterhouse

As my Grandma always said, it doesn't matter if you are not the prettiest girl, as long as you have a nice singing voice.  Obviously, at some point in legend, the girls stopped being mostly bird and started being half fish, but still as homicidally naughty.  I read with interest that the Assyrian goddess Atargatis transformed into a mermaid after flinging herself into a lake in shame after accidentally killing her human lover.  Mermaid on the whole seem to have taken the wrong lesson away from that and merrily bump off any handsome chap they come into contact with for funsies. By and large, despite the rather fatal inconvenience, the men involved don't really seem to mind at all.  

If you go swimming in armour, mermaids are the least of your problems...

I have quite a nice singing voice, well I'm really loud and that's half the battle, so I suspect I have missed a career in the mermaid business.  Mermaids always look quite happy in their work, there is no sitting-at-a-desk business, so I wouldn't have the lower back issues I suffer from and swimming is very good for you. Do you think they have drowning quotas? Do you get bonuses for the most sailors perished in a quarter?  

It definitely is something to think about, so I'll see you tomorrow...

Thursday 3rd December - Cupid and Pysche

 Hello again!  It's grey and miserable here today and the rain is lashing down. The last thing on my mind is swanning around with my boobs out but I suppose would be a different story if I had a boyfriend with a massive pair of wings that could double as an umbrella...

Cupid and Psyche (1891) Annie Swynnerton

 So, here we have a couple of nudes, a massive pair of wings and a bit of cheek-kissing action.  I was sticking to proper kissing but this is such a lovely image that I couldn't resist. I wrote a post on Swynnerton back in 2015, when we were all so young and care-free. She's also in Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang.  Swynnerton exhibited this particular beauty at the Walker Gallery in 1891 where it was much admired. The pair in the painting are slightly awkward, but I remember seeing the painting in Manchester and admiring the really realistic (and somewhat knobbly) feet. I'm not being weird but I rather like it when the figures in the painting have ungainly, lumpy, even ugly hands and feet.  It reminds me that there is a real person there, and also makes me feel better about my syndactyly toes.

L'Amour et Psyche (1899) William-Adolphe Bouguereau

 The story of Cupid and Psyche is one of love, beauty and the perils of firearms - Psyche was one of the most beautiful women in the world, so much so that it made Venus very angry indeed as the people began to worship and give offerings to Psyche rather than to her. Venus asked Cupid to shoot Psyche with an arrow so that she would fall in love with something hideous but instead Cupid scratched himself with his arrow and fell in love with Psyche.  I bet that made his mum happy...

In the above images, you might notice that although the love-lorn Cupid is very much concentrating on Psyche, she is looking away and in Swynnerton's image, she has her eyes closed.  This is a visual clue to their odd courtship, where Cupid visited Psyche as her 'unseen lover', a mystical figure in the dark who would show up for a bit of how's-your-father and then vanish.  Venus, being the mother in law from Hell, seems to have then spent an awful lot of time and effort in making Psyche's life a misery until the unlucky lovers finally ascend to an immortal marriage (which apparently makes you grow butterfly wings).

Annie Swynnerton at her easel

 I love Swynnerton's painting as it has a real sweetness and innocence.  Although at first sight, Psyche seems to have stretched out her arms in defence, she could be feeling Cupid's feathers and brushing his skin with her fingers.  It's a visual image of another sense, we are seeing a person experience the world through touch.  He is besotted but she is deep in thought.  Psyche falls in love with Cupid, not through magic but because he is made of magic and feathers and she's a woman who appreciates a massive pair of wings.

See you tomorrow...

Wednesday 2nd December - Idyll

 On the second day of Snogvent my true love gave to me this little beauty...

Idyll (1908-1911) Laurence Koe

It feels a bit cold and grey today, so this rosy gem rather appealed to me this morning as I huddle under a blanket with my chunky fleece on.  The lass here seems to be perfectly comfy on her tree stump in a floaty frock, while her beau is really not wearing very much at all.  It only seems five minutes since we were all steaming during our lockdown summer when this sort of shenanigan would have been fine - they are socialising in a group of less than six, and as long as they are from the same household I think snogging is allowed. Let's assume they are from the same household so we don't have to report them.  Anyway, I love how they seem to be part of the landscape - her feet and his hand seems to be like tree roots, thrusting into the earth.  Her dress floats into a haze with the surrounding flora and also billows in an echo of the clouds above them.  It does indeed look idyllic and they seem extremely happy with the peaceful solitude they have.  Good for them, and it makes me miss the sunshine almost as much as I miss seeing all of you lot.  Never mind, all being well, we'll be frolicking in the fields in the sunshine next year, although I'm bringing a blanket to put down because in my experience tree stumps tend to be damp and no-one needs that.

Sappho (1898)

Stephenson Edward Laurence Koe (1869-1913) is an artist I'm not overly familiar with but there are a couple of his paintings which I did recognise immediately because they were so lovely.  Born in London, he moved with his family to Brighton where he worked, producing paintings like Sappho and his most famous work Venus and Tannhauser (c.1896)...

Venus and Tannhauser (c.1896)

Now, come on Tannhauser, that is not in the spirit of Snogvent! Venus is quite obviously up for a bit of passion but Tannhauser is resisting her in a knightly manner.  Venus is merrily rolling around on a bed of roses (hopefully thornless) and must smell lovely.  Tannhauser looks like he's hanging onto his sword for dear life, if you excuse the expression.  It reminds me of this one...

The Temptation of Sir Percival (1894) Arthur Hacker

Yet again, a knight does not seem to do sharing! What is going on with them? I adore the Hacker painting because of his really over-the-top armour and I look a bit like the barefoot hussy.  Percival looks like he's managing to resist the hussy's ample charms perfectly well whilst Tannhauser is looking a tad desperate.  He's definitely done for and will be seen later, looking a bit dazed, limping and smelling of roses.

Have a tempting afternoon and I will catch up with you tomorrow...

Tuesday 1st December - Night (no.2)

 Oh good heavens!  Is it that time of year again? Mind you, 2020 has made time lose all meaning, so it might well still be March as far as I'm concerned.  However, as is traditional here at The Kissed Mouth, it is Blogvent!  This year I felt I should do something extra special and really delve into thorny art historical questions, bring themes of metaphysical discourse into a strong thesis on the real meaning of art in the twenty first century...  

Me, being a serious writing lady...

 But then I realised that sort of business does not keep a girl in stockings and fans, I am, by and large, stuffed with utter nonsense, and after all it's been a rather rum year  so I bring you twenty-four days of something that has been in rather short supply this year - kissing!  Welcome to Snogvent!

That's right, in the comfort of your own home, take your mask off and live vicariously through lust-addled Victorians and their many images of embracing in a un-socially-distant manner. 

First up (if you excuse the expression) is this one...

Night (no.2) (1907) William Orpen

This is an odd one for me to start with in a way, as it is far darker and less polished than my normal taste in art (I do love my High Victorian sharpness). However, there is a soft gorgeousness to it that is utterly romantic.  While looking for images for this month, I found that an awful lot of images of kissing didn't actually show people, well, kissing.  There was a lot of meaningful looks and stuff but no actual lip action.  While not being weird about this, I need lips touching, I don't care how awkward that is to paint! Sorry, that is being a bit weird about it, it's been a long year.  Anyway, Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen (1878-1931) was an Irish painter who had his studios in London.  One such 'studio' was his house, as shown here, 13 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea.  He was rather partial to this view (minus the snogging) as he used it in other paintings, the same chair and window normally standing for isolation within a city...

Solitude or The Window: Night (1906)

 

Night (c.1907)

The long, drape-y curtains are the same, sometimes with the picture, sometimes with his round mirror (seen to such effect in The Mirror (1900)).  While the women alone seem pensive, and in Solitude, despairing, the woman in Night (no.2) is not alone.  The woman is in fact Orpen's wife, Grace Knewstub (relation of Rossetti's studio assistant Walter Knewstub) and the man who embraces her is a self portrait, showing all the warmth and love of the couple's marriage, but that was not to last.  A year after this loving image was created, Orpen had started an affair with Evelyn Saint-George, a married American  millionaire, with whom he had a child.

Well, ruined marriages aside, it's a lovely painting and a cosy way to start Snogvent, so I shall see you tomorrow for more kissing. 

  

Before you go, the lovely people at Unicorn have a lovely offer for you - up until Christmas, if you would like to buy a copy of either Light and Love or Girl Gang, you can do so for £10 each and receive a signed copy if you use the code KIRSTY at the checkout.