Tag: thatartblog

A Window in Bucks

This week’s post all started with a book token that I found being used as a bookmark. It was of the John Nash painting ‘A Window in Bucks’. 

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 John Nash – A Book Token featuring A Window in Bucks

The painting was a view from John Nash’s house ‘Lane’s End’ in Meadle, Buckinghamshire. John Nash and his wife Christie moved to the village in 1922 and stayed until 1939. During his time there many friends visited including Eric Ravilious, Barnett Freedman and his brother Paul Nash.

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 Eric Ravilious, Barnett Freedman and John Nash photographed by Christie Nash in April 1940. †

Meadle is a hamlet in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located to the north of the village of Monks Risborough and near Little Kimble. Today the population of Meadle is about 75. A village of barn conversions and very few new housing, most of the properties are farmhouses and labourers’ cottages build in traditional red clay brick with thatched roofs. A small stream rises in the village and ultimately joins the Thames.

The view of the book token is taken from the window at Meadle, The same view can be seen from the painting below.

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 John Nash – Winter Landscape

 

The field line of this painted study line up to the bookplate above, the shape of the hedges and the three colours in the fields too. 

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 John Nash – Window in Bucks, auto-lithograph, 1928.

In this lithograph the view out of the window is to the left-side, but still lines up with hedgerows today. What some have called ‘willow style fencing’ is actually a traditional hedgerow of what is most likely Hawthorn. 

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 John Nash’s home ‘Lane’s End’, Meadle, Buckinghamshire.

One of the upstairs windows at the front of the house would have been where the paintings where made as the hedgerows in the painting line up to the hedges and field layouts today.

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 Paul Nash – Lupins and Cactus, 1928

The painting  Lupins and Cactus is believed to have been painted by Paul Nash while staying at Meadle in 1928. The windows fit the style painted in the house and the flowers are likely to have been grown by John in the garden.

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 John Nash – The Garden under Snow

The Garden under Snow is believed to be a view from the back of the house and the garden of Lane’s End

† Ravilious: The Watercolours By James Russell

Bartlow, Cambridgeshire

Bartlow is one of two churches in Cambridgeshire with a round tower, the village is on the edge of a county border with Essex, so these boundaries have fluctuated over the past hundred years between Cambridgeshire and Essex. It’s listed in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments book of Essex, 1911 and in the 2014 Pevsner guide as Cambridgeshire.

Churches with round towers are almost exclusive to East Anglia, especially Norfolk and Suffolk. The other church in Cambridgeshire with a round tower is Snailwell and that is on the border of Suffolk and likely was once part of Suffolk too. Why these churches where built with round towers is a mystery; there was once the suggestion it was to be a defence against Viking raiders, but many of the churches where built long after the age of the Vikings.

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Below are two strange pieces of graveyard furniture. One is a Greek omphalos decorated in a Georgian style, and below it a rather beautiful, tall, grave marker cast in metal.

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The In spite of the belief that Bartlow church was built by King Cnut near the site of the battle of Ashingdon (Assandun) in the early 11th century, no documentary references to the church have been found earlier than the 13th century, and the building dates from the late 11th or early 12th. †

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Inside the church, the stained glass windows seam to have a jumbled amount of completion.The tops of the windows however are almost all complete and feature these Lions.

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The Lions faces to me are comic and fun. I am unsure whom they are depicting. They are designed like a burning sun, but the representation is likely to be God even though it could be more abstract than that, it could be Richard I, or the reigning monarch or the country’s spirit. They are usually represented either side of a Saint or Jesus portrait.

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Above is the shadow of George and the Dragon, though only the base paint of the dragon remain with a few details of flowers and crosses. With the wave of puritanical iconoclasm during the sixteenth century, all the beautiful paintings and details of churches where whitewashed over. Today with luck and careful restoration these are being uncovered. Below on the opposite wall of the church is a better preserved wall painting.

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 Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child

Saint Christopher was a man of great size and strength who devoted himself to Jesus by helping travellers cross a dangerous river. One day a child asked to ride on Christopher’s shoulders across the river, but the infant seemed to grow heavier and heavier with every step. When they arrived on the opposite shore, the child identified himself as Christ, telling the holy man that he had just carried the weight of the world. Saint Christopher became one of the most popular patron saints for travellers in the Middle Ages.

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I would guess the organ is a restoration project as it is highly decorated all over, from the ornamental pipes at the front to the boxing holding the mechanism.

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An angel blows the wind at the base of a wall plaque.

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To the rear of the church is the rest of the graveyard and the way to the roman hill burials. Below is a picture of the wall sundial and the carving and wall painting from it.

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† A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 6.

Post War Furniture

The 1939 war has been responsible for a remarkable social experiment in the furniture field. The extreme shortage of timber, much more marked than in the previous war, and the destruction of furniture by bombing led to an unprecedented situation. A rationing system was essential, and this entailed standard specifications and designs. The President of the Board of Trade appointed a Committee to advise him. 

“On diversifications for the prediction of utility furniture of good sound construction in simple buy agreeable designs for sale at reasonable prices, having regard to the necessity for the maximum economy of raw materials and labour.”

‘The Things We See #Number 3 Furniture’ By Gordon Russell Penguin Books — 1947.:

The interesting feature of the scheme is that there has been a definite and conscious effort to grade up both designs and specification. Through it the public has therefore become accustomed to a much better and simpler type of design than was common before the war. In fact it is true to say that such designs were only obtainable then in the more expensive shops.

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This applies not only to the woodwork but to the textiles, some of which reach a surprisingly high standard of design. In view of the immense scope of the scheme, which a range of standard school furniture, it is bound to have a lasting effect, not only on the public but on the trade.

‘The Things We See #Number 3 Furniture’ By Gordon Russell Penguin Books — 1947.:

Permanent government control of design in consumer trades is hardly likely to be beneficial, but it may well prove that war-time control, accompanied by a positive urge, at a very formative period, has enabled this whole trade to review its position more freely, since the anxiety of what to make for next autumn and next sprint has for the moment been removed.


From — The things we see. Number Three: Furniture.
By Gordon Russell. Penguin Books — 1947.

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Cecil Buller

Cecil Buller (1886–1973) was a Canadian artist most notable for her wood engravings.

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She was born in Montreal and travelled north America, and at 16 years old travelled Europe, mostly England and France. In 1910 She moved to New York where she attended the Art Students League in New York where her wood engravings started to get noticed. Then in 1912 she travels to Paris again where she would have been exposed to Cubists movment that had gained momentum at that time, this inspired the form of her woodcuts in the 1920’s.
She moved to London in 1916 to focus on graphic arts where she was educated under Noel Rooke, at the Central School of Art and Design. It was there that she met John Murphy, they married in 1917 and as an American he was able to move his new wife with him to Greenwich Village, New York in 1918.

Cecil Buller:

She gained success in the 20’s and 30’s for her wood engravings and were exhibited. In 1924 her only son was born, in 1930 an essay on her work was published in The Print Collector’s Quarterly. In 1937 she separates from her husband. From then on she travelled widely to Egypt, Iran, Greese, Afghanistan, and back and forth to London and Paris. In 1973 she died of a stroke.

She was awarded the Pennel Prize, Library of Congress, D.C. (1945), the Audubon Society Award (1947 and 1953) and the National Academy of Design Graphic Art Award (1949).

The Unwelcome Guest: Hans Christian Andersen & Charles Dickens.

In June 1847, Andersen met Dickens at a party hosted by the Countess of Blessington. Both authors respected each others works and Andersen was a fan of Dickens, they both walked on the veranda of Gore House at the party. After this brief meeting they both exchanged letters for many years and planned to meet again.

Gad’s Hill

Ten years passed and Andersen visited Dickens on a trip to his house at Gad’s Hill, Kent. The trip was meant to be a short visit but much to the annoyance of the Dickens household, Andersen stayed for five weeks! Tensions where high in the Dickens house before Andersens visit as Dickens, 45, has started a relationship with Ellen Ternan, 18. A year later Dickens wife, Catherine, would leave him, taking one child and leaving the other nine children to the care of her sister Georgina.

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“He was a bony bore, and stayed on and on” was the daughter comment on Andersen’s long visit. To all accounts Andersen was a difficult guest, a selfish, aggressive and alternated between bouts of depression and suicide, while speaking in very poor English. They would go to London together to balls, plays and parties as well as spend the days together at Gad’s Hill.
Dickens stopped all correspondence between them after the disastrous stay, much to the great disappointment and confusion of Andersen, who had quite enjoyed the visit from accounts in letters to his friends, and never understood why his letters to Dickens went unanswered.