Wednesday 11th December - Dying Birds

Things ended on a rather positive note yesterday, which was nice.  Shall we crack on with today...?

Dying Birds (1874) Eloise Harriet Stannard

For goodness sake.  Where to start?  Well, if you were looking for a painting that contains not just one dead bird but five, then this is surely the image for you.  Also, it's a corking selection of expiring avians - there's a lovely starling, a recently deceased blue tit (my daughter just found out there were birds called tits and doesn't know what to do with herself), a red one, a yellow one and the one in the corner - sorry, we seem to have reached the end of my bird knowledge, which was admittedly quite near the beginning.  Anyway, there is also some nice foliage and a nest full of eggs, presumably all dead too.  Blimey, it's like the end of Reservoir Dogs only with garden birds.  That would actually have much improved the movie.

The best thing about this image is that it is subtitled 'For a poem'.  Crikey, are there may poems about a load of dead birds?  I mean, I know Emily Dickinson wrote 'Hope is a thing with feathers' but that really doesn't seem appropriate here.

Tennyson likes birds in his poems and has one called 'The Dying Swan', which is a bit more like it, but his poems tend to have nature, even in death as a positive thing, a renewal, that sort of thing.  Maybe our pile of birds in the painting is secretly a very hopeful image and Emily Dickinson wasn't far off the mark.  If you fancy reading The Birds of Tennyson, it's available here...

Christmas Still Life (1886) Eloise Harriet Stannard

Eloise Harriet Stannard came from a family of artists in Norwich, and she is one of the notable female members of the Norwich school.  She specialized in still life, including the very seasonable one above.  Still life isn't really my thing but that is a pretty decent orange.  It is far preferable to the dead bird picture, from the unspecified poem.  Look, this is ridiculous, I'll write a poem for it...

The Dying Birds by Kirsty Stonell Walker (aged 46 and three quarters)

All the birdies went and died

Upon this sobbing Christmastide

So farewell blue tit, finch and starling,

But such is birdie life, my darling.

See you tomorrow...

Tuesday 10th December - Home from the Sea

After all the sadness of lost loves and bladder stones yesterday, I thought I'd move the scene outdoors today...

Home from Sea (1857) Arthur Hughes

This is probably one of the better known paintings in Sobvent, which depicts a brother and sister in the graveyard, presumably at a grave of one of their parents.  Or maybe both.  Why do things by half?  She's been at home, sorting out burials and the suchlike while he's been off at sea in a wide straw hat and very fetching sailor suit.  He's returned, with his hankie on a stick (which I thought only existed in Tom and Jerry cartoons when Tom got kicked out of the house for not catching Jerry).  All he said was 'I'm looking forward to seeing Mum and Dad', and this is where his sister took him.  I bet she didn't know how to break it to him otherwise.  'You won't exactly be seeing them, but you will be within six foot of them...'

When this was exhibited in 1857 it was entitled The Mother's Grave but I like to think that they are now both penniless orphans and the sister will be reduced to playing Whitesnake hits on her accordion in the high street to save from starving.  If you fancy re-enacting the scene, Hughes used the churchyard in Chingford as the background, so you could get your hankie on a stick and throw yourself down dramatically under a tree, for fun.  Everyone needs a hobby.

He added the figure of the sister in 1862 when he changed the title to Home from Sea.  The girl is his wife, the lovely Tryphena Foord, who featured in last year's Blogvent.  She looks every inch the spaniel-haired Victorian girl, who is just a heap of black fabric with a tiny lace collar.  There is no fun in her future, just a lot of heavy, black mourning clothes and an afternoon trying to get grass-stains out of white trousers.  The orange of her brother's belongings bundle are a jolly, jarring note of colour which tonally makes reference to the roof of the church.  There are tiny flowers in the grass and in the bushes, just as the girl in her deep mourning has a tiny white collar.  I think it means that even while sorrow and grief are fresh and raw, there is hope and things will move on and get better again.

Oh dear, that's an awfully optimistic note to end on.  I'll do better tomorrow...

Monday 9th December - Recalling the Past

A new week and yet more misery to be uncovered!  Such a jolly prospect, certainly enough to keep us going as we write our Christmas cards.  Who is this card from? Oh no, I had forgotten incident at last year's Christmas party!  Too much mulled wine, mistletoe and dancing...

Recalling the Past (1888) Carlton Alfred Smith

Okay, so I think this lady is depressed about more than popping out of her corset top in front of Bob from Accounts during some high-spirited dancing to Step into Christmas.  We've all been there.  She has found some letters which she has tried to throw away but ended up reading.  The misery they have inspired has been enough to knock the pillow off her chair.  Is that a pillow? It nicely matches her collar, whatever it is.

Okay, do we have to guess what has occurred by the clues in the picture?  We have a sobbing girl in pink, some letters, some beads in a basket and some horns.  So, is she thinking about a lost love?  The pink of her dress draws me to think it is a youthful love - I think if they had been married, she would have still been wearing black as is traditional in paintings of grieving widows, especially young ones.  So, a youthful dalliance that went wrong? The quality of the image is a bit fuzzy but I don't think she is wearing a wedding ring.  I wonder if she is therefore a spinster daughter, living at home having let her chance of love escape.  All she has to look forward to is becoming as dried up as those grasses in the vase on the mantelpiece. Charming.

Those coral beads in the basket give me pause too - coral has the meaning of modesty and happiness, but also in mythology coral came from Medusa's blood, which turned seaweed into coral.  Maybe our girl was too modest or had the unfortunate habit of turning her suitors into stone.  Coral also helps with bladder stones too.  None of that is going to get you a husband.

As for the horns, well what do we make of those? My Great Auntie Ev was given some horns when she left service in a big house.  I'm not entirely sure what the family thought she'd do with them.  They currently hang above my Dad's fireplace because you need somewhere to hang the tinsel at Christmas. 

The thing I am left fixating on is the poker.  While fairly innocuous, it seems to pull away from the stand.  At first I thought it was the stand's shadow but it is a slightly different shape and at a funny angle, so it is definitely a separate tool. I remember my grandma's fire tools all shiny and hanging in a neat line, whilst this is leaning towards the fire.  Does it want something destroyed?  Is that where all the letters will end up because the basket cannot hold the misery of her past failed love affair?  At times like this, wicker doesn't cut it.  Fire, and plenty of it will sort that out.

Have a good day recalling your traumatic love affairs and I will catch up with you tomorrow...

Sunday 8th December - Her First Place

I hope everyone has a nice quiet Sunday and can re-hydrate from all the sobbing we've been doing so far this week. Talking of which...

The First Place (1860) Arthur Elwood

Ah, bless her!  It was actually my daughter's 14th birthday a couple of days ago, at which point my father joyfully announced 'Oh, I started work at 14!'  Miss Walker was less than impressed by this, especially as I asked her what job she'd be starting on Monday.  As the roles of 'kitten tickler' and Chief Taster for Cadbury are currently unavailable, I suspect she'll not be quitting school quite yet.  Not like the good old days when she would have been straight into service as soon as she was able to hold a feather duster.  The poor little moppet in this picture is having a bit of a moment in her first job.  She's probably about the age of my daughter, sent away from home and now expected to do a pretty rigorous day's work for not much reward.  Granted, she will get a roof over her head and her meals, which is not to be sniffed at as before the welfare state, there was no protection for the poor, so compared to starving in a gutter, domestic service isn't that bad, I guess.

Arthur Erwood was a bit of a mystery.  Just known as 'A Erwood' in the records of this picture, a bit of digging revealed Arthur, born in 1840 in Newington, Surrey to John and Caroline Erwood.  He was the third child after Edward (1834-1894) and Rosalind (1835-c.1910), and both John and eldest son Edward were bank clerks.  Arthur had other ideas and in the 1861 census he is listed as 'artist painter'.  Impressively, at the 92nd exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1860, Arthur was responsible for seven pictures - Writing to Mother, The Rejected Picture, The First Place, Er Kommt Nicht, Das Brod Holen, Minding the House and The Signal.  As recorded in the 1862 Art Journal, Das Brod Holen was a picture selected by the prize holders of the current year from the Royal Academy.  So far, so very promising, but then that was it.  It might have been his father's death in 1864 that prompted a very sudden change in career, as Lord knows Jonathan did not leave Caroline any money.  When next we catch up with the Elwoods in 1871, Arthur is still living at home with his mum, but he is now a clerk in the Bank of England, like his father before him.  At the death of Caroline, in 1878, Arthur goes to live with his older brother, Edward.  Arthur finally moves to his own house after Edward's death in 1894 and lives quietly on his own in North Brixton with his housekeeper Alice Ward, until his death  in 1921.

I was intrigued by the pictures which had German titles, including Er Kommt Nicht (He is not coming?).  Possibly this is connected to Arthur's sister Rosalind married Johann Carl Julius Forster (1837-1916), fresh from Prussia, in 1861.  Rosalind and Johann (or the somewhat more Anglo-cized 'Charles Julius Forster' as he became) had a decent life.  He worked as a colonial magistrate and their children did very well for themselves.  After her death before the 1911 census, Johann went to live with their son in Haywards Heath, where he was the doctor in the local asylum.  

I love to end on an asylum, and so I will see you tomorrow...

Saturday 7th December - The Death of Albine

Well, we have staggered into the first weekend of Sobvent and that's one week done.  Hopefully no-one has sobbed up their spleen yet because we still have a couple of weeks of utter, distraught misery left to look forward to, so let's crack on with today's sombre offering...

The Death of Albine (1898) John Collier

As discussed yesterday, I think all of us fancy a bit of a sit down at this time of year, but this is ridiculous.  Here we have the lovely Albine on her extremely floral deathbed.  Her story comes from Emile Zola's The Sinful Priest (or The Sin of Father Mouret) (1875), where the titular wayward clergy has it away with the young and innocent Albine.  He then abandons her, so she gathers all the flowers from the garden where they consummated the affair in order to make her deathbed.  That's a tad dramatic, dear, why not just get some friends round and say rude things about him over a couple of bottles of Lambrini?  I gather from reading the synopsis of The Sinful Priest, our Father Mouret had been through a few things by the time he reaches the novel, which is the fifth book in Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series, and he suffers from amnesia (always handy).  He is nursed by the whimsical Albine - is 'whimsical' a euphemism for something?  It's one of those things if she was more homely then it would be more brutal - and the couple fall in love.  Okay, I'm going to say 'love' as it seems to have involved a fair amount of rolling around in the garden with your pants off.

Le Paradou (1883) Edouard Joseph Danton

Then it all goes wrong for the pair of lovers because, much like Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when the priest knows a bit of saucy happiness then he turns all religious (rather than a bitey vampire, obvs) and abandons the poor Albine and her pseudo Garden of Eden set-up. It's all very tragic.  So our Albine goes off and gathers the garden that has brought her so much floral joy (they are not called 'flower beds' for nothing) and sets about bedecking her room before reclining back and allowing the perfume to suffocate her.  How very Roses of Heliogabalus!  I thoroughly approve.  You might snuff it but my goodness, you smell incredible.

There are of course overtones of Ophelia in Albine's plight and fate, with her lover being so self-involved that she ends up as romantic collateral damage.  The retreat to nature in her parting moment speaks of both the innocence of nature, and a rehabilitation, for want of a better word, of all the sexy shenanigans that took place there.  For Albine, in her final moments, she sees the cupids in her flower-filled room as beautiful and innocent.  The very thing that had caused the naughty priest to be all fraught with angst is the very thing that gives Albine comfort as she is smothered by the perfume of roses.  Zola arguably infers that Albine and her natural beauty seduces the priest away from his true path and when he remembers who he is, he is ashamed, but also, conversely, that there is nothing wrong with who or what Albine is.  Maybe, what Zola is saying that you are either conscious, in the form of the priest with her learning and religion, or you are unconscious, like Albine with her flowers and spirit, but you cannot be happy with both.  Paradou, which sounds awfully like 'paradise', is denied the conscious, learned man but in the end encloses the girl and welcomes her back.  Only one of them ends up smelling of roses.

On that note, I'll see you tomorrow...

Friday 6th December - End of Her Journey

When I left the house yesterday morning to go to work it was -1 degrees.  This morning it was a fairly tropical 11 degrees which is absolutely ridiculous, and it's also pouring with rain so everything is muddy and miserable and not at all crispy and bright.  T'uh, let's soldier on, shall we?

End of Her Journey (1875) Alice Havers

Look, we've all been there, especially at this time of year.  Only last week, I was half way round the big Marks and Sparks in town and I just felt like collapsing in Gentlemen's Unmentionable Apparel and telling everyone else to carry on without me. It's all so exhausting and the shops are hot and crowded, and endless, endless Mariah Carey telling me that all she wants for Christmas is me.  That's a lot of pressure.  Also, we're still about three weeks away from Christmas, when you have to pack yourselves and all the presents you have wrestled free from town into a car and go to relatives houses which will again be hot and crowded and stressful, and there are still about a quarter ton of sprouts to be peeled and I haven't even bought my crackers yet.  Are we still allowed to buy crackers?  Are they terribly frowned upon now? If I endeavour to buy ones which are recyclable and don't contain plastic things, is that okay? 

I'm guessing that is what killed the woman in today's picture.  All of that.  In fact, I think she was on the way to her relatives house for Christmas and she just thought 'Nope, can't face it' and that was it.  All the relatives rushed up from the village and bewailed that fact that Auntie Maureen has gone and died on the verge, conveniently keeping the road free, isn't that just like Auntie Maureen, always thinking of others?  Yes, all very sad, and with her dying breath Auntie Maureen will murmur 'Just go on without me...' and the family will sadly trail off to their homes to have a slightly more subdued but still hot and stressful Christmas without her.  When the coast is clear, Maureen will get up, go back to her own home, fix herself a sandwich and get stuck into all those books she stress-bought in the run up to Christmas.  And she'll have a jolly nice time too.  'Mariah Carey can have someone else for Christmas,' Maureen thinks, 'I'm busy...'

Trouble (The Sick Child) (1882) Alice Havers

Alice Havers was an artist and illustrator, born in 1850.  She spent a good portion of her childhood in the Faulkland Islands, and there is a useful biographical page about her here.  In some other places on line, there is an amount of sneering at her images of children, but to be honest they are no more saccharine than others from the same period and my Nan would have loved them.  I am impressed by the gloomy images she made, including today's image and The Sick Child which is both a bit grim and a tad Biblical, always a jolly combination.  She died suddenly at 40, shortly after getting her divorce from fellow artist Frederick Morgan.  The marriage was an appalling one filled with numerous instances of adultery on his part, one involving him catching an unfortunate disease and bringing that home, also including with the housemaid, which is not going to get the dusting done.  Also, there was quite a bit of violence, allegedly on both sides.  I wondered if she had been ill, or if the stress of the divorce had affected her health, but I note that in the Faulkland's page biography, they state that she took her own life.  Blimey, that's grim, even for Sobvent...

See you tomorrow.

Thursday 5th December - His First Grief

Well, fourteen years ago I was not having a very good time because I had been in labour for 18 hours by this point and would have about another 14 to go (but luckily I didn't know that second bit at the time).  My beloved daughter appeared during the 6th December but took her sweet time doing it and so I always remember with rather grim relish the day I spent in absolute agony (until the epidural man arrived 22 hours in) which is my daughter's birthday eve.  Anyway, on with the Sobvent post for today!

His First Grief (1910) Charles Spencelayh

Good heavens, but I do love Spencelayh.  I will endeavour to do a proper post on him in the new year but I adore his colours and clarity and his inability to let Victorianism go.  The Victorians loved a good dead pet picture. My God, I have seen any number of little poppets grizzling over birds such as this one...

The Dead Bird (1886) Paul Constant Soyer

...but the Spencelayh has a radiance about it in the red and greens of the solemn little chap and his dead canary.  I love that the little boy is so full of colour, with his red hair and flushed cheeks; he could not be more filled with life and vigour.  The washed out little bird in the palm of his hand looks pale and fragile in contrast, its white tail echoing the white of his collar.  It's part of the genre of children coping with child versions of  adult emotions - today's it's a canary but tomorrow you are burying most of your family who have been wiped out by diseases of the poor, or died in childbirth, or were lost at sea or something.  By experiencing the death of Whistles, Fat Bob or Gregory Peck (just some of my Grandmother's canaries), it can been shown as the end of innocence and the realisation that actually growing up can be a bit crap on the whole. What a swizz.

Fingerprints (1953) Charles Spencelayh

As I mentioned, I love Spencelayh, not least because in an awful lot of his 'interiors' you can spot very familiar paintings, such as Bubbles by J E Millais in this canvas from the 1950s.  It's Spencelayh's eminent Victorian-ness, that quality that Agatha Christie's Miss Marple announced was so hopelessly vieux jeu. I find the relationship of Victorians to the mid-twentieth century to be fascinating, as modern life moved upon us so quickly and people were not short of prejudice against what it meant to be 'Victorian'.  More of that to come in the new year, but as a parting thought, Spencelayh's little chap does rather remind me of visiting the baby animal handling bit of a local farm.  My favourite bit was always when they gave the children a chick to hold, because Lily always made me hold the chick while she stroked it.  We'd invariably be sat next to some little boy whose enthusiasm for the chick knew no bounds and squeezing was always the result.  I remember one particularly chilling moment when the mum next to us exclaimed delighted, 'Ah, look, it's fallen asleep in little Tommy's warm hand...' I'm sure the chick was absolutely fine but we didn't hang around to find out.

See you tomorrow...