My Inspiration for September 2019

This September seemed to have lasted a century, and not thirty days… I love this time of the year, these late summer and now early autumn days; days of changes, days of last sunny afternoon and last roses, days when I feel the transience and fragility of everything, when I sense the beauty around me the most with a certain calmness and more quiet joy, and most of all, I see these autumnal days as time to let go of negative things and embrace the new, a time of gratitude and a time to gather strength from the richness and ripeness of nature, the chestnuts, the yellow and red leaves, the apples, and prepare slowly for the silent sombre days which are upon us. Because I feel this way, Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and letters are a source of inspiration for me, they are a comfort, they bring me wisdom and clarity, and some verses are so devastatingly beautiful and melancholy that I tremble as I hold the book in my hand. And it’s a wonderful feeling that something can touch you so much! And every tear of poignancy that falls down my cheek serves only to water the future flowers of my imagination.

O to be dead at last and know them eternally,
all the stars: for how, how, how to forget them!
See, I was calling my lover. But not only she
would come……Girls would come from delicate graves
and gather…..for, how could I limit
the call, once called? The buried always
still seek the Earth.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, The Seventh Elegy)

Dreamy sky, pic found here.

Picture by Laura Makabresku.

by z a r i a n k a on Flickr.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Whoever is alone now will remain alone

Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Autumn Day”, from his poetry collection “The Book of Images” has been in my thoughts every autumn ever since I discovered it a few years ago, and the last stanza is particularly beautiful to me. I love how Rilke combines the richness of autumn “command the last fruits to ripen (…) and chase the last sweetness into the strong wine”, with the introspection in the last verses, for, after all, autumn days are the best for writing letters and enjoying the long walks and the music of fluttering leaves. In these early autumn days, everything seems so fragile and ephemeral; the last rose, the last warm day, the last rose-gold sunset, or so it seems. It’s only after I realise that the richness, warmth and vibrancy of summer is soon to be gone, that I cherish it the most. Rilke is a perfect poet for these days of changes.

Armand Charnay, Park of Sansac (Indre-et-Loire), 1885

Autumn Day

Mister! It’s time. Summer was awesome.
But now you’ve got to cast your shadow on the old clock.
So, let the wind blow in the fields.

Command the last fruits to ripen.
Grant them two more southern days.
Press them to perfection.
And chase the last sweetness into the strong wine.

Because whoever has no house now will build no more.
Whoever is alone now will remain long alone
to wake, read, write long letters,
and wander in the alleys, back and forth,
restless, as the leaves flutter.

James Tissot, The Letter, 1876-78

Stanhope Alexander Forbes – The Orchard

“In her eyes shone the sweetness of melancholy.”

(Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out)

Stanhope Alexander Forbes (1857—1947), The Orchard (Breton Children in an Orchard – Quimperlé), 1882

Autumn is coming slowly to this orchard in the little village of Quimperlé in Brittany. One by one, the large brown leaves that now appear here and there will very soon cover the green grass where dew used to shine in the first light of summer dawn. The wind of change is dancing among the apple trees, whispering secrets of things yet to come and barring their once exuberant tree tops, stealing their little leaves and carrying them softly somewhere else. The treetops are still a harmony of greens and yellow, but the branches which are already bare are revealing the contours of buildings behind the orchard. Melodies of summer tunes still linger in the orchard’s quaint hours, dancing between the trees, competing with the rustle of falling leaves. The children in the orchard sense the change, but cannot put the name on it. Their idle chatter is interrupted by the first soft drops of autumn rain. But the girl in the front knows much more than other children do, just look at her face, how sweetly it shines with melancholy glow. She is dressed in a traditional attire, with a white headdress and a pair of clogs on her feet, and she is looking somewhere in the distance. Her large round eyes seem sad and her thoughts are somewhere else.

I don’t know why, but this girl, and the scene alone with its melancholy and passing of seasons, reminded me of teenage Emma Bovary, in the orchard of the convent where she was educated. She was just like this girl; never content with being where she is, blind to the beauties of the orchard, her soul craved smells and sounds of the south, or some Gothic castle, or a wild sea, anywhere, anywhere, but not where she is. She kept herself to herself, indulged in daydreams and read romance novels in candlelight, and rarely played with other girls during recreation hours. Emma, like the girl in the painting, knows the boring aspects of countryside life all too well to romanticise it; “… she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.” (Madame Bovary, chapter 6)

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, The Convent (Quimperlé), 1882

Also, here is another passage which comes to mind as I gaze at the painting “The Orchard”:

“Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven….”

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, A Street in Brittany, 1881

This painting is a recent discovery for me, but its melancholy autumnal mood and the girl’s gentle wistful face captivate me immensely. Oh, I am there in that orchard! I hear their incoherent babble in French and I do not understand it, but the song of the leaves speak so much to me. Maybe the reason for her somewhat sad or awkward looking face is because she felt awkward posing, as natives in those little villages did. They felt weird and somewhat embarrassed just standing there for this painter, for all the village to see them. Stanhope Forbes was a British painter born in Dublin, but lured by the Impressionistic vibes from the Continent, her traveled to Paris in 1880 and studied in the atelier of Léon Bonnat until 1882, and then he traveled to Brittany with a desire to paint en plein air, just like many artists did before him. Brittany was a particularly interesting area for a painter at that time, even Paul Gauguin went there also in the 1880s, probably for the same reasons and Vincent van Gogh too painted the Breton women in 1888:

“In that most beautiful and interesting portion of France, there seemed to be found everything that an artist could desire. Inhabited by a race of a distinct and marked type, wearing still the beautiful national costumes which had been handed down from bygone ages, and retaining the old language of their forefathers, each village followed religiously the old traditions which ordered the fashion of their dress and the conduct of their lives. Here was a country dear to all who love that which is old and quaint, time-honoured, and reminiscent of past ages.” (Mrs Lionel Birch; “Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A., and Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes, A.R.W.S.”)

When Stanhope returned to England, he settled in a beautiful region of Cornwall, married a fellow painter Elizabeth Forbes and became a founder of Newlyn School which focused on portraying rural scene, people and landscapes, and the plein air technique which brought sincerity and freshness to their canvases.

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, Preparations for the Market, Quimperlé, 1882

I also decided to include some of his other painting painted in Brittany at the same time which are not as romantically wistful as “The Orchard” is, but the still show the Forbes’s aim to capture the living pulsating life of the village, its people and its mood. They are all dressed in traditional clothes and are seen doing day to day chores, girls on the street in the painting above are knitting and the older women in the last painting are on the market, and just look at the cute hens in the basket.

Souvenir of Velázquez: John Everett Millais, James Jebusa Shannon and Joaquín Sorolla

Today let’s take a look at three gorgeous portraits of little girls by John Everett Millais, James Jebusa Shannon and Joaquín Sorolla inspired by the paintings of Diego Velázquez’s, mainly the painting “Las Meninas” from 1656 but also some of his other portraits of Infanta Maria Teresa.

John Everett Millais, Souvenir of Velázquez, 1868

Just like Infanta Margaret Theresa from Velázquez’s painting “Las Meninas” (1656), the girl in Millais’ painting is a serious young lady. Two centuries divide the lives of these two moody girls, yet I am sure they would understand each other and could gleefully spend many idle hours giggling and chatting. Millais’ sweet, round faced girl has a pale skin and masses of strawberry blonde hair that are a stark contrast to the darkness of the background. Unlike Infanta Margaret Theresa, this girl is all alone on the canvas. Her face looks like many other from Millais’ canvases, yet her attire is noticeably different from that of any other Victorian girl. This was Millais’ homage to a very famous Baroque painting made by Diego Velázquez, the court painter of Philip IV, in 1656. But Millais used a Pre-Raphaelite colour palette and the brush strokes on the hair and details of the dress are particularly loose, unrestrained and confident. Millais was apparently so skillful a painter that he was able to paint a leaf in a few brushstrokes and achieve the liveliness and accuracy. I think these strokes are a proof of that.

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, detail

Velázquez’s position as a court painter clearly placed him in a subservient position to the members of the royal family. In his time, he was just a painter and they were the grand and powerful Habsburgs and yet, looking back in time, it is Velázquez who is famous and praised now for his art and little Infanta is just one in a row of royal princesses who would scarcely be remembered today if she wasn’t captured on canvas so many times and in such beautiful and memorable paintings. It is a good thing that Velázquez painted so many beautiful portraits of her as a child because those were her glory days in a way; she married at the age of fifteen to Leopold I, and she was both his niece and his first cousin, and died at the age of twenty-one, after giving birth to four children and being pregnant with the fifth. So, if it wasn’t for these glorious portraits and especially the very much loved and enigmatic “Las Meninas” where she is the central figure, she would have been forgotten in history, she would have been just another pale sickly girl who died very young from this illness or another, childbirth or smallpox, nothing special. But because of art, she is eternal. Even now, four centuries later, she is the blue eyed girl looking back at us, with her hair combed on the side and adorned with a bow, in her wide dress, so large for her small fragile body.

Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Infanta Margarita Teresa in silver dress, 1656

James Jebusa Shannon, Portrait of a Little Girl Holding a Toy (Kitty in a fancy dress), 1895

Next example is James Jebusa Shannon’s lovely portrait of his daughter Katherine Marjorie known as Kitty who was eight years old at the time this was painted. The portrait is beautifully cropped and focuses on the little girl in the moment of childlike playfulness; she is holding a doll in each hand. Still in the world of dreams and make-beliefs, her dolls are her friends. Loose brushstrokes and a colour palette of subtle colours such as white and grey, with touches of pink and red perfectly fit the at once playful and dreamy mood of the painting. Maybe Kitty is lost in the dreamland playing with her dolls and she can scarcely notice that her father is painting her once again, for she was his dear model, but her cheeks are rosy and she is smiling and we can tell she is a happier girl than Velázquez’s Infanta Margaret Theresa was in her constricted dress and constricting environment of the Spanish court. The dress Kitty is wearing resembles the one Velázquez painted, but it is only a fancy dress and life is still a game for Kitty as well.

Joaquín Sorolla, María Figuero dressed as a menina, 1901

And the last example I will be talking about in this post is an unfinished work by a Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla which shows a girl dressed in an attire of the Infanta Margaret Theresa and the kind of dress that would be worn by other noble girls at the court. Just like Kitty in the previous picture, María was eight years old when this was painted and she was not just any child; she was the daughter of Sorolla’s friend Rodrigo de Figueroa y Torres, Marquis of Gauna and later a Duke of Tovar also. Inspiration for this painting was not Velázquez himself, but his pupil Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo’s portrait of Infanta Margaret Theresa in a pink dress from 1660. Just like in the portrait of Infanta, María Figuero is wearing a very wide dress which fills the canvas horizontally, the sleeves are equally puffy and there is a pink decoration on the bodice. Her hair also resembles the hairstyle Infanta Margarita wore in some of her other portraits, for example the portrait in blue by Velázquez painted in 1659.

Juan Bautista del Mazo, Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Pink Dress, 1660

Beauty of Journaling

“The diary is my kief, my hashish, and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice. Instead of writing a novel, I lie back with this book and a pen, and dream, and indulge in refractions and defractions… I must relieve my life in the dream. The dream is my only life. I see in the echoes and reverberations, the transfigurations which alone keep wonder pure. Otherwise all magic is lost. Otherwise life shows its deformities and the homeliness becomes rust…. All matter must be fused this way through the lens of my vice or the rust of living world would slow down my rhythm to a sob.” (Anais Nin)

Picture by Svetlana Zdrnja, found here.

I love reading diaries, or journals, how ever you wanna call them. Journal of Anais Nin in particular because it’s so full of feelings, sincerity and imagination, and because there is so many volumes of it. Franz Kafka’s diary entries are fascinating as well. Journals, letters, memoirs, I am getting more and more interested in this intimate, introspective, raw side of writing. And… I also enjoy journaling!

I have been writing in my diary regularly since the beginning of 2015 and it was one of the best decisions in my life. It started by accident; I had gotten a diary from a family member with one page for one day, and it occurred to me to perhaps start writing in it every day, but I hesitated because, being an introvert and a dreamer that I am and being a person who spends most time in her bedroom like young Morrissey, I didn’t want to be confronted by seeing how boring my life actually is. I don’t hang out with people, I don’t go places, I don’t travel… what is there worthy of writing? That is how my thoughts went on, but I started writing it nonetheless; I consciously wrote it in a way that would eliminate feelings because feelings are passing, changeable and may be embarrassing to read later on. I chose instead to focus on things which are beautiful! I wrote down quotes from books I read, or quotes which I found inspiring, I wrote about flowers that I’ve seen or picked for my vase, my daydream or a real dream, sometimes I would sketch something simple, like a cloud, cottage, an apple pie my mum made, or Ophelia floating down the river, I recorded the films I saw and the stories or paintings I was working on, which 1960s style icon fascinated me that day, what was the sunset like, what scents were in the air that April morning, something that made me laugh. 2019 is the fifth year that I have been keeping this kind of journal and it has changed my life in the best possible way!

First of all, writing in the journal made me aware of the beauty of everyday life which surrounds me; beauty of simple things, walks by the river, birds, flowers, beauty of changes and passing of seasons. Also, reading Rilke’s letters further inspired me to seek Beauty all around me, here is something he wrote in “Letters to the Young Poet”: ”If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.” And then, after being aware of all the beauties around oneself, a wave of joy and gratitude overwhelms you. Even if I feel sad or melancholy, I still rejoice in the fact that I am capable of feeling it, that I am alive to experience it. Writing in my journal also showed me how special my life actually is, how rich and filled with art, beauty, joy, new discoveries and creativity. And through that, I ceased to be envious of other people’s lives, imagining they are better. Well, I still do that from time to time, but keeping a journal made me put more effort into living my life because if my day is boring and empty, I won’t have something to write about. So, I started making everything special, turning a boring afternoon in my room into a glamorous occasion. I made it special, no one else did, it didn’t come from outside and therefore it cannot be taken away from me. It was in me all along; the power to transform my seemingly boring reality into a magical one. In my writing, I created a world for myself, where I could live and breath, the way Anais Nin says, and I stopped expecting something to happen from the outside world.

It’s your life, your only life and you’ve gotta to make it special, you’ve gotta fill it with beauty, for no one else will do it for you. It’s on you to put on rose-tinted glasses and see the world in a rosier shade. I am not promoting shallow artificial happiness but rather a more sensitive awareness to both beauty and transience of our lives; no matter how much we weep, we cannot save a flower from withering, but we can enjoy its beauty with a smile, and enjoy it with the same rapture every time. I encourage you all to take a notebook and filled it with beauty! It’s a moment of contemplation every day, just five minutes is enough, but as pages fill and fill, you will see how rich your life actually is. When I flip through my old journals from time to time, I see how I turned my past into a fairytale by finding beauty in each day. Of course, there are empty pages, where the skies were grey or my heart felt gray, but that is life too.

Theophile Gautier: To your parted lips I would go and there would I die

Here’s a beautiful and devastatingly romantic poem “Butterflies” by Theophile Gautier!

Odilon Redon, Five Butterflies, c. 1912

Butterflies

Butterflies, the colour of snow,
In clouds to the sea now fare;
White butterfly beauties, when can I follow
Your path through the blue of the air?

Do you know, oh beauty of beauties,
My sacred dancer with jet black eyes,
If they could lend me their wings,
Do you know where my journey would lie?

Without taking one kiss to the roses,
Across valleys and forests I’d fly,
To your parted lips I would go,
And there, flower of my soul, would I die.

John Everett Millais: Early Years of Married Life and Pre-Raphaelite Gems

I have written a lot about the Pre-Raphaelites on this blog over the years and I don’t wish to be repetitive but at the same time there there is always something new to learn and focus your attention on. So, in this post we’ll take a look at John Everett Millais’ early years of married life and the art he created at that time, with a special focus on three beautiful painting “The Blind Girl”, “Autumn Leaves” and “Peace Concluded”, all painted in 1856.

John Everett Millais, The Blind Girl, 1856

On 3rd July 1855, twenty-six year old Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais finally married Effie Gray. They were overjoyed about the prospect of finally being together, but also emotionally exhausted after years of dealing with the struggles; for Effie the struggle was her previous unhappy marriage with the Victorian art critic John Ruskin, and for Millais it was the anguish at having to suppress his love for Effie during the time she was still married or just recently divorced. The irony is that it was through John Ruskin that the couple got acquainted in the first place. They did meet once before, on a ball, but it wasn’t a memorable event for either of them. Ruskin was a huge supporter of the Pre-Raphaelites and one of the first critics who praised their style. In 1853, Ruskin proposed that John Millais and his brother William join him and Effie on a holiday in the emerald green wilderness of Scotland.

John Everett Millais, Waterfall or Effie at Glenfinlas, 1853, 11.5″ (29.2 cm) x 15.4″ (39.1 cm) 

While there, Millais worked on his painting “The Order of Release” and Effie posed for the female figure. They grew fond of each other’s company and Effie soon started opening up about her life; about her loving parents, childhood spent in Scotland, her siblings, but also about the sad truth of her marriage with Ruskin. Naturally, this was a delicate topic and she must have had great trust in him to share such a thing. Millais as absolutely shocked that Ruskin could be so cold and disinterest in his young beautiful wife, and he was also overwhelmed with a feeling of futility and empathy. He wanted to help Effie but didn’t know quite how, and his own feelings of affection towards her added an even greater torment. In his letters home during that trip he writes of Effie “She is the most delightful unselfish kind-hearted creature I ever knew, it is impossible to help liking her…” And also he started giving her drawing lessons and she proved to be a very dutiful pupil, Millais writes “She has drawn and painted some flowers in oil (the first time she has ever touched a brush) almost as well as I could do them myself.” Millais also painted this charming and very detailed little painting of Effie on the rocks by a waterfall.

John Everett Millais, A portrait of Effie Gray, 1853

Let’s skip the part about the sad and bitter marriage annulment between Effie and Ruskin and focus on the young newlyweds in the summer of 1855. After the wedding ceremony, they sat in a train and were on their way to spend a five week honeymoon in the west coast of Scotland. Millais was very nervous but Effie cheered him up and they had marvelous time together. Since Effie had horrible experiences with the London life, the couple decided to live in Scotland, near to her parents’ house. The letters both wrote to their families show the joy they experienced, Effie wrote to her mother saying “I am so happy with him. You can imagine how much I appreciate his natural character. (…) he is so kind and nice and easy to be with.” She also wrote to her brother George “He diverts me beyond everything. I don’t think I have laughed so much since I was Alice’s age.” (Alice was ten years old at the time.) As they settled into their home, Effie tried to do everything in her power to make their life revolve around his art. She was very practical and nurturing, and offered both her help and compassion when his painting drove him crazy; she would urge him to take a rest when he was working to hard and was very successful in finding local young girls to pose for him. And if he needed a historical costume for his painting, she would do the research and sew it for him.

John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1856

In 1856 Millais had three remarkable paintings to show; “The Blind Girl” where he portrayed two child beggars one of whom is blind, resting after a rainstorm before they continue their journey to another town. The sad fate of the blind girl and their destitute situation is in contrast with the vibrant and warm colours; that overwhelming warm green-yellow of the endless field behind them, the orange of her dress, the coppery orange-red of her cloak and her hair, and even the blue sky in the upper part of the painting seems so warm. It’s very detailed; just look at the grass and the ground in the lower left corner, and all the birds and the animals, the glistening magical rainbow, and the town in the distance. All this beauty of nature around her, but the poor blind girl cannot see it. But she is able to enjoy other sensations; smell of fresh grass and summer’s day, and song of birds.

Another memorable masterpiece is “Autumn Leaves”. I don’t even know how to do justice to the painting’s beauty with my words. I adore the mood and the colours so much, it’s full of feelings and at the same time beautiful and tinged with melancholy and transience, and it so vividly captures the moment, the twilight of the autumn day. The warmth of the colours, the details of the leaves, the faces of young girls, the sensitivity to capturing the atmosphere so well, it’s just stunning and it’s easy to see what all these paintings where a huge success in London in 1856. Despite the bitter feeling of betrayal, Ruskin still managed to be objective when analysing Millais’ art and he praised this picture saying that it is “by much the most poetical work the painter has yet conceived; and also, so far as I know, the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight. It is easy, as it is common, to give obscurity to twilight, but to give the glow withing its darkness is another matter; and though Giorgione might have come nearer glow, he never gave the valley mist. Note also the subtle difference between the purple of the long nearer range of hills and the blue of the distant peak.”

John Everett Millais, Peace Concluded, 1856

The Last picture of the 1856 trio is “Peace Concluded”, also known as “The Return from Crimea” which shows a wounded officer who had recently returned from the war and is now resting in his family nest, surrounded by his loving wife and rose-cheeked children. The foliage behind them looks as if it came from Millais’ painting “Ophelia” while the garish carpet looks like it belongs to the interior from William Holman Hunt’s painting “Awakening Conscience”. A dog curled on the sofa overlooks the scene. Effie Millais posed for the central figure of the wife, and the husband and wife are presented as very close to each other; her arms are wrapped around him comfortingly and this could be related to Millais’ personal life and his joy and closeness with Effie because the date of the picture matched the date of their first year marriage anniversary.

I felt it was important to discuss this short period in Millais’ life because his style changed a lot after he got married; being the man and the bread-winner for an ever growing family (he and Effie ended up having eight children) he was strained by responsibilities and chose to paint with less emphasis on details and focusing on themes that he knew the audience would love and approve, and people would want to buy. Some, like William Morris for example, have commented that he had sold out and that he didn’t stay true to the original aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brootherhood; he certainly didn’t spent as much time studying nature attentively or painting in a very detailed style like he did early in his career, and he didn’t stay true to the original aim of originality. Still, that’s not to say all his later work is bad, not at all, there are many interesting paintings in his oeuvre but I feel that these paintings from mid 1850s are some of his last Pre-Raphaelite gems.

John Everett Millais, Sophie Gray, 1857

John Everett Millais, The Vale of Rest, 1858-59

John Everett Millais, The Martyr of the Solway, 1871

John Everett Millais, Portrait of Alice Gray, 1858

John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms), 1859

This is how Millais defended himself in a letter to William Holman Hunt: “You argue that if I paint for the passing fashion of the day my reputation some centuries hence will not be what my powers would secure me if I did more ambitious work. I don’t agree. A painter must work for the taste of his own day. How does he know what people will like two or three hundred years hence? I maintain that a man should hold up the mirror to his own times. I want proof that the people of my day enjoy my work, and how can I get this better than by finding people willing to give me money for my productions, and that I win honours from contemporaries. What good would recognition of my labours hundreds of years hence do me? I should be dead, buried, and crumbled into dust.”

I think it’s fascinating to actually hear an artist make such a statement, and show that he does care about getting praise and approval from his time and people of his time.