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Little is known of Antinoös’s life, although it is known that he was born in Claudiopolis (present day Bolu, Turkey), in the Roman province of Bithynia et Pontus. He was probably introduced to Hadrian in 123, before being taken to Italy for a higher education. He had become the favourite of Hadrian by 128, when he was taken on a tour of the Roman Empire as part of Hadrian’s personal retinue. Antinoös accompanied Hadrian during his attendance of the annual Eleusinian Mysteries in Athens, and was with him when he killed the Marousian lion in Libya. In October 130, as they were part of a flotilla going along the Nile, Antinoös died amid mysterious circumstances. Various suggestions have been put forward for how he died, ranging from an accidental drowning to suicide.

Hadrian was devastated by the death of Antinoös, and possibly also experiencing remorse. In Egypt, the local priesthood immediately deified Antinoös by identifying him with Osiris due to the manner of his death. In keeping with Egyptian custom, Antinoös’s body was probably embalmed and mummified by priests, a lengthy process which might explain why Hadrian remained in Egypt until spring 131. While there, in October 130 Hadrian proclaimed Antinoös to be a deity and announced that a city should be built on the site of his death in commemoration of him, to be called Antinoöpolis. Hadrian’s decision to declare Antinoös a god and create a formal cult devoted to him was highly unusual, and he did so without the permission of the Senate. Hadrian also identified a star in the sky between the Eagle and the Zodiac to be Antinoös, and came to associate the rosy lotus that grew on the banks of the Nile as being the flower of Antinoös.

Following his death, Hadrian deified Antinoös and founded an organised cult devoted to his worship that spread throughout the Empire. Hadrian founded the city of Antinoöpolis close to Antinoös’s place of death, which became a cultic centre for the worship of Osiris-Antinoös. Hadrian also founded games in commemoration of Antinoös to take place in both Antinoöpolis and Athens, with Antinoös becoming a symbol of Hadrian’s dreams of pan-Hellenism. The worship of Antinoös proved to be one of the most enduring and popular of cults of deified humans in the Roman empire, and events continued to be founded in his honor long after Hadrian’s death.

During the Roman Empire, the city of Antinoöpolis was erected in AD 130 by the emperor Hadrian on the site of Hir-we as the cult centre of the deified Antinoüs. All previous buildings, including a necropolis, were razed and replaced, with the exception of the Temple of Ramses II.

Hadrian also had political motives for the creation of Antinoöpolis, which was to be the first Hellenic city in the Middle Nile region, thus serving as a bastion of Greek culture within the Egyptian area. To encourage Egyptians to integrate with this imported Greek culture, he permitted Greeks and Egyptians in the city to marry and allowed the main deity of Hir-we, Bes, to continue to be worshipped in Antinoöpolis alongside the new primary deity, Osiris-Antinoüs.

In what must have been one of the last poster schemes to use fine artists, the London Electricity Board commissioned a series of paintings. Many of the artists rather than looking at the technical production of power, chose to show subjects of how London is illuminated. Sam Rabinovitch using his poster to show a boxing match. But it is a curious collection

Chapbooks were produced cheaply on just one sheet of paper, sold for a ha’penny each by travelling salesmen (‘Chapmen’) and would often be the only books a child would own. Back in the 1800s, these books would be filled with poems, fairy tales and puzzles, and were a child’s first indoctrination into the world of literature.

I find printed ephemera fascinating and chapbooks are fine examples of beautifully printed items. As the quote above suggests, originally the Chapbooks where printed on a large sheet and folded up and more like pamphlets. Starting with crude arrangements of woodcuts and children’s songs or poems, they changed to stories of the day and moral tales of heroism or devotion. As the movement of social pamphlets took off, they became booklets of political theories and reports on social conditions.

The publisher of the book I have is William Davison (1781–1858). Born in Alnwick, he was an pharmacist, then spotting a change in new technology, he became a printer, engraver/etcher, and a bookseller of his works as he became a publisher who also sold the typefaces he used.

I really like this example of colour printing

Though not a typical post for me I think it is good to investigate an artist and a muse. The X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS book by signer Madonna and photographer Steven Klein is a curious meeting of minds.

The images use the typical surroundings of the traditional muse, a bed, a chez lounge and the stage of a performer, all without any frills and stripped back. The clothes are by a range of designers but the impressive red dress is by Christian Lacroix

This last video was a photo animation. It was 8 x 26 feet.

Norman Parkinson was a celebrated British fashion and portrait photographer. Credited for inspiring important shifts in the trends of fashion photography, Parkinson left the more posed studio setting to take outdoor shots that were more dynamic and carefree than his contemporaries, adding inventive humorous elements in to his work.

Parkinson’s work regularly appeared in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, earning a reputation for finely produced images that combined elegance with British charm. “I like to make people look as good as they’d like to look, and with luck, a shade better,” he once quipped.

Born on April 21, 1913 in London, England, he began his photography career as an apprentice to Speaight and Sons court photographers in 1931. He would later take over as official court photography to the British monarchy following the death of predecessor, Cecil Beaton, in 1975. Parkinson would create many indelible portraits of the royal family, and was the recipient of the title Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He died on February 15, 1990 while on assignment in Singapore.

Norman Parkinson – Régine Debrise wearing a Balenciaga ball gown, 1950

Norman Parkinson – Wenda Parkinson (née Rogerson), 1947

Norman Parkinson – The daughters of William Bramwell Booth (Olive Emma Booth; Dora Booth; Catherine Bramwell-Booth), 1981

Norman Parkinson – Anne Chambers (Owena Anne Chambers (née Newton), 1949

Norman Parkinson – Margot Fonteyn; Sir Robert Murray Helpmann, 1951

Norman Parkinson – Kathleen Ferrier, 1952

Norman Parkinson – Edward Bawden with Walter Hoyle to his left and Sheila Robinson to his right, 1951

Norman Parkinson – (John) Christopher Heal, 1953

Norman Parkinson – Joan Cox with thirty-five school children, 1955

Norman Parkinson – Wenda Parkinson (née Rogerson), 1951

Norman Parkinson – Carmen Dell’Orefice, 1980

Norman Parkinson – Dame Barbara Hamilton Cartland, 1977

Norman Parkinson – Dame Margaret Rutherford as the Duchess; Paul Scofield as Prince Albert; Mary Ure as Amanda in ‘Time Remembered’, 1955

Norman Parkinson – The Young Look in the Theatre, 1953

Norman Parkinson – Charles Alexander Vaughan Paget, Earl of Uxbridge; Lady Henrietta Charlotte Eiluned Megarry (née Paget), 1953

Norman Parkinson – Virginia Ironside with three children

History is full of artists that made amazing works and were forgotten, often in the case of women artists they studied, worked and then ceased painting when they got married. I don’t know if this happened to Peggy Rutherford or not, but she is mentioned in various reports and papers in clippings and periodicals in the 1930s, most notably from Apollo Magazine in 1931 she was mentioned as deserving ‘special praise’ for her painting ‘The Purple Magnolia’. Rutherford had a studio flat in Fitzroy Street in London. From an artistic family her aunt was Maud Rutherford who married George Hall-Neale, both portrait painters.

Rutherford studied at the Grosvenor School Of Modern Art under Iain Macnab and alongside Rachel Reckitt and Suzanne Cooper. It is clear that she favoured flower paintings and many of the works here from the 30s have a strong Bloomsbury influence as well. The Grosvenor School was a private British art school and gave the country some of the best inter-war avant garde artists; they nurtured the talents of the some of the most talented women students, Suzanne Cooper, Rachel Reckitt, Alison Mckenzie, Sybil Andrews, Lill Tschudi, Ethel Spowers, Eveline Syme and Dorrit Black to name a few. Some like Rutherford have been less documented than others.

Peggy Rutherford exhibited at the Society of Women Artists, National Society of Painters, Sculptors & Printmakers, (1936) at the Royal Academy with a watercolour called ‘Flower-piece’ (1936). She is in the correspondence of John Piper, and lived at New Malden and Chelmsford.