Modern Ophelia – Millais and Tom Hunter’s Life and Death in Hackney

“O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”

(William Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Tom Hunter, The Way Home, 2000

John Everett Millais’ painting “Ophelia” is a beautiful Pre-Raphaelite painting, perhaps even the most beautiful painting that Millais has painted, but it is also a haunting image that keeps inspiring artists even nowadays. It is a blueprint of sorts that allows for further interpretations and reworkings of a seemingly simple theme; a girl drowning. The scene of Millais’ Ophelia drowning slowly with her gown spread out wide amid the enchanting greenery is unbearably dreamy, but the intricate details of natural elements such as grass, flowers and trees betray the Pre-Raphaelites’ philosophy of portraying nature with honesty. Millais painted Ophelia along the banks of the Hogsmill River in Surrey, near Tolworth, Greater London. Nature surrounding Ophelia in Hunter’s photograph is similarly intricate and it allows the eye to observe and indulge in all the details, but the background is not an idyllic English countryside with flowers and butterflies but instead an abandoned urban area, a “dark slippery, industrial motorway of a bygone era”. Nature is claiming back what is rightfully hers. The model for Millais’ Ophelia was Elizabeth Siddal, a moody redhead, the muse and lover of a fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Hunter’s Ophelia is a nameless, pale and rosy-lipped party girl coming home after a night out. Whereas Miss Sidall was trippin’ on laudanum, Hunter’s Ophelia must be coming down from an ecstasy trip. Millais’ Ophelia is beautifully dressed in a soft, silvery tulle gown which looks as if it could have been made from silver dandelion seeds and moonlight. On the other hand, Hunter’s Ophelia is a modern gal and there is nothing romantic about her black shirt and baggy dark blue cargo trousers which are spreading out on the water surface in the similiar way in which the dress of Millais’ Ophelia is spreading out as she is drowning slowly.

The photographs is only a fragment of a series of photographs called “Life and Death in Hackney” taken by Tom Hunter from 1991 to 2001. All the photographs depict a scene from contemporary life but bear resemblance to one or another Pre-Raphaelite painting. Here is an explanation of the series from the artist’s page:

“Life and Death in Hackney’ paints a landscape, creating a melancholic beauty out of the post-industrial decay where the wild buddleia and sub-cultural inhabitants took root and bloomed. This maligned and somewhat abandoned area became the epicentre of the new warehouse rave scene of the early 90’s. During this time the old print factories, warehouses and workshops became the playground of a disenchanted generation, taking the DIY culture from the free festival scene and adapting it to the urban wastelands. This Venice of the East End, with its canals, rivers and waterways, made a labyrinth of pleasure gardens and pavilions in which thousands of explorers travelled through a heady mixture of music and drug induced trances.

All the images draw upon these influences combining the beauty and the degradation with everyday tales of abandonment and loss to music and hedonism. The reworking of John Millais’s ‘Ophelia’ shows a young girl whose journey home from one such rave was curtailed by falling into the canal and losing herself to the dark slippery, industrial motorway of a bygone era.”

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851

J.J. Grandville: Flowers Personified (Les fleurs animées)

Grandville, Les Fleurs Animées, 1847, Rose

Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard, known under the pseudonym of Grandville, was an extremely imaginative and somewhat underrated French Romantic artist, illustrator and caricaturist who was active in the first half of the nineteenth century. Grandville made a series of fifty engravings and two wood engravings called “Les fleurs animées”, translated as “Animated Flowers” or “Flowers Personified”, which served to accompany the texts written by Taxile Delord, 2 wood engravings, 50 engravings, Gabriel de Gonet, Paris 1846. The series of whimsical, playful and dreamy illustrations was completed in 1846 and published posthumously in 1847; Grandville died in March 1847 at the age of forty-three. What a beautiful last gift to the world from such a genius mind.

Each of the fifty illustrations is devoted to a single flower and the flower is presented in the shape of a woman; a splendidly dressed woman. Those who are well versed in the history of the nineteenth century female fashions will recognise that the silhouettes of the dresses that the flower-ladies are wearing, as well as their hairstyles are based in the real fashions of Grandville’s times, that is, in the 1840s fashion. The flowers are seen wearing the typical 1840s narrow bodice with a bell-shaped skirt and the flower which they are representing is usually decorating their dress and their hair. Often time these flowery beauties are accompanied by none other than their majesty the bugs and Grandville’s portrayal of beetles might just be the cutest one I’ve seen of these, usually, not so cute creatures. At the moment, I feel that the “Rose” is my favourite out of his flower illustrations. She is seated on the throne, like the Queen that she is, wearing a rosebud crown on her head and the rosebuds also decorate her bosom while the rose leaves serve as a trimming on her long flowing skirt. She looks dreamy and humble and sweet as she sits there with her sceptre while the green beetles are gazing at her. In the illustration for “Poppy”, the poppy flower is seen showering the beetles with a rain of poppy seeds and I wonder was Grandville actually trying to make a point there. The “Camellia” has a huge camellia blossom on her chest, like a large red pulsating heart. “Dahlia” and the “Briar Rose”, on the other hand, are sporting a vast dahlia and briar rose flowers as their hair decor. The “Lily” is presented as a shy, wistful bride with a long veil, her dress being held by a beetle. The little Violets are shy girls, hiding under their leaves with their purple heads. “Lilac” has a very interesting lilac bonnet as she is seen conversing with the beetle, probably discussing the deep philosophical questions such as; what is the meaning of life etc. “Tulip” looks a tad oriental with her turban-clad head. As hard as it was to chose my favourites from all of Grandville’s flower illustrations, I have chosen them for this post. Enjoy!

Camellia

Dahlia

Poppy

Briar Rose

Lily

Violet

Orange Blossom

Lilac

Marguerite

Tulip

Nick Cave – Are You the One That I’ve Been Waiting For? – Carl Krenek – The Lovers

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’s single “(Are You) The One I’ve Been Waiting For?” was released on the 19th May 1997. It was the first out of two singles from their album “The Boatman’s Call” which Nick Cave personally had expressed a dislike for, claiming the album was too personal and that music shouldn’t be that personal. The other single from the album is the song “Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere” which is sad but very beautiful as well. For some reason this painting of lovers in the month of May by the Austrian painter Carl Krenek seemed very fitting to accompany the song’s lyrics. I do love the tenderness between the lovers and the way the entire natural space is filled with flowers and leaves.

Carl Krenek, May – The Lovers (Mai – Die Liebenden), 1905, tempera

Are You The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?

I’ve felt you coming, girl, as you drew near
I knew you’d find me, cause I longed you here
Are you my destiny?
Is this how you’ll appear?
Wrapped in a coat with tears in your eyes?
Well take that coat, babe, and throw it on the floor
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?

As you’ve been moving surely toward me
My soul has comforted and assured me
That in time my heart it will reward me
And that all will be revealed
So I’ve sat and I’ve watched an ice-age thaw
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?

Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
Out of longing great wonders have been willed
They’re only little tears, darling, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Outside my window the world has gone to war
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?

O we will know, won’t we?
The stars will explode in the sky
O but they don’t, do they?
Stars have their moment and then they die

There’s a man who spoke wonders
Though I’ve never met him
He said, ‘He who seeks finds
And who knocks will be let in’
I think of you in motion
And just how close you are getting
And how every little thing anticipates you
All down my veins my heart-strings call
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?

Claude Monet – Irises – Japonisme

“When I am happy I paint the iris, when I am angry the bamboo.”

(Monk Jue Yin)

Claude Monet, Irises, 1914-17

Despite the popularity that Monet’s paintings of water lilies seem to enjoy, the irises were also one of his favourites flowers and they lined the pathways in his garden. During the time of the first world war Monet kept returning to the motif of irises and painted around thirty paintings, or portraits I should say, of them. Each of these paintings is very simple in terms of compositional but instead captures the vibrancy of the irises in various different moods and shades of purple and blue. This portrait of the irises above is perhaps my favourite, or at least it is my favourite at the moment, because of its intense blueness. I just cannot separate my eyes from it! The vibrancy and the depth of that blue! Oh to be a little butterfly and fly into that nocturnal blueness and linger there on and on, listening to its sweet music and inhaling the fragrance of the spring night. There are only five irises in the painting, painted in warm purple and yellow, and yet the entire painting is screaming with the colour of the iris. It is as if the blueness of the petals had spillt itself, like a bottle of ink, all over the garden. There is no boundary anymore between the flowers and the garden, the colours of the petals are spilling everywhere and posessing everything. This deep shade of blue gives the painting a mystical, almost dream-like mood, and the irises, tall and independant, each blossom growing on its own sturdy stem, are laughing and shining in that blueness like the stars. Each long thin leaf is painted in a single brushstroke which, although intensely green in colour, is fading against the dark background.

The interest in the iris was newly awoken in the late nineteenth century, especially in the context of the Art Nouveau, through the influence of the Japanese art. Aemil Fendler wrote in 1897: “We have found the way to nature again, and it lies through Japan. No longer does the living art of our time take its nurture from past styles, no longer does it seek its models in the pattern books of the Renaissance or the Rococo… The wonderful art of Japan offers a rare combination of untarnished natural freshness with the most refined decorative taste and the highest stylistic assurance: let us be grateful to it for showing us the right path to follow and for opening the eyes of those that have eyes to see.” The manner in which the Japanese artists portrayed the irises brought a freshness and enthusiasm into western art; a new way of seeing the flower, for those who have eyes to see. The iris itself is just perfectly shaped for the aesthetical exploitation, it is a flower made to be immortalised in art, it is mysterious and slightly erotic, and perfect for all sorts of arabesque-like Art Nouveau stylisations. The iris seems to embody both the masculine and the feminine traits both at once; its flower petals being shaped in such an ambiguous manner, and the stems and the leaves being vertical, tall and strong. Indeed, the iris has gone a long way, from being seen as merely ornamental and painted as such to being the shining star of the canvases such as these by Monet.

Botticelli – Primavera: The Rose Is Full Blown, The Riches of Flora Are Lavishly Strown

“O come! (…) The rose is full blown,
The riches of Flora are lavishly strown…”

Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, tempera on panel, c.1482

These days I was really enjoying Botticelli’s painting “Primavera”; and I took great delight in gazing at all the details and especially gazing at the figures of Flora and the nymph Chloris caught in the wicked embrace of the God Zephyr. This painting needs no introduction because it is so famous in the Western world, but I still felt the need to share its beauty here and to show my appreciation, or rather, adoration. Sandro Botticelli was one of the Medici family’s favourite painters at the time and this painting was probably painted for the occassion of the marriage of Lorenzo Medici’s cousin which took place in 1482 and that is the date usually asigned to the painting. The painting’s themes of love and new beginnings, tied with the arrival of spring, as personified by the Roman Goddess Flora, are fitting for such a happy occassion indeed.

The court poet of the Medici family, Angelo Poliziano, described the garden of Venus as a place of eternal spring and peace, and his descriptions may have served as an inspiration to Botticellli for this painting. As the title “Primavera” suggests, the painting shows the arrival of spring and the celebrations surrounding the event. The arrival of spring is the most joyous time of the year for me! Who would not wish to celebrate it!? For long winter months I yearn to see the flowers blooming, the weeping willows coming alive with many little leaves, the birds singing… It is natural then, that the arrival of spring and the entire season of spring is also tied with the season of love. The central figure in Botticelli’s painting is Venus, the Goddess of Love, in the company of of her son Amor who is flying above her with his love arrows, and the Three Graces, dressed in flimsy white dresses that reveal more than they conceal. Venus is in the centre of the composition but, compared to the other figures, she is standing more in the background, as if she is allowing the spring to come before her. In the far right corner is the God Mercury who is holding off a rainy cloud with his stick; nothing is allowed to disturb the idyll of the beautiful garden where orange trees are ripe with fruit and a sweet fragranace of flowers colours the air. The Roman poet Lucretius’ poetic work “De Rerum Natura” may have also served as an inspiration to Botticelli and indeed in some of the verses we find similarities:

“Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus’ boy,
The winged harbinger, steps on before…
Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all
With colours and with odours excellent…”

It is as if Botticelli is describing these verses because most of the characters from the painting are here in the poem; the Venus and her ‘boy’, Zephyr and Flora. My favourite part of the painting is the right corner where we have an interesting motif of metamorphosis presented all in one painting, although it doesn’t happen at the same time. Zephyr, the God of Wind, is seen forcefully embracing the beautiful yet frightened nymph Chloris who then transforms into the Goddess Flora who is represented by the woman dressed in a long white gown decorated with little flowers, for she is the Goddess of spring. A woman touched by love becomes all flowery and spring-like; what a beautiful analogy! Here are more verses from Lucretius’s “De Rerum Natura”:

“For thee waters of the unvexed deep
Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky
Glow with diffused radiance for thee!
For soon as comes the springtime face of day,
And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,
First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,
Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,
And leap the wild herds round the happy fields
Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,
Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee
Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,
And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,
Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,
Kindling the lure of love in every breast,
Thou bringest the eternal generations forth…”

This “transformation by love” that has happened between Zephyir and Flora is the most beautiful element of the painting for me. Also, I am really enjoying Flora’s fashion choice; the long white gown and flowers. Flora as imagined by Botticelli made me think of a few fashion pictures from the sixties and seventies, and also of the costume worn by the sweet Jane Birkin.

Jane Birkin in “Wonderwall” (dir. Joe Massot – 1968)

Detail

ELLE Magazine – July 7th 1975 Yves Saint Laurent and Liberty of London Photographed by Barry Lategan

Toni Frissell – Vogue (June 1967)

Monet’s Water Lilies and Auggie’s Pictures from Smoke (1995): They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one

“They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your ;people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.”

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1922

In 1883 Monet had left the bustle of Paris and moved to the village of Giverny where he spent decades, all until his death in 1926, creating, planting, growing and portraying his wonderful garden. As an Impressionist Monet was concerned with painting that what is changeable; the different effects of weather, the dawn and the dusk, the seasons, the wind, the sunshine, the snow and the rain, painting the same motif and exloring it under all these various circumstances. Monet had studies many motifs under different influences and has creates many series of paintings, stacks of hay, poplars, the cathedral, to name a few, but my favourite of his series and perhaps the most fitting for these spring days is his series of water lilies that were blooming in a pond in his estate in Giverny. Monet painted about two-hundred and fifty paintings of water lilies alone. Now that is a dedication indeed. And I really see how that may be possible, I mean, just gaze at these painting and see how beautiful and seductive the water lilies are. The blues and greens of these paintings are soothing for the soul. All of these water lily paintings are very similar, all painted in blues and greens with white or pink for the lotus flower, but at the same time they are all different one from another, all unique and special. Interestingly, the pond with the water lilies takes up the entire space of the canvas, there is no space left for the sky or the clouds. And when are also immersed in this water lily world by gazing at them.

Claude Monet, Nympheas, 1915

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916

In the eighth episode of the first season of the show “Disenchantment”, which I love, a hermit called Malfus who lives in cave and who took an immortality potion says: “When life is endless, so is everything else! The monotony! The repetition! The monotony! The repetition! The monotony!…” Point taken. As hillarious as his moaning and complaning about immortality is, there is some wisdom to his claims. Without a sense of impermanance to our lives, from whence would a sense of magic arise? The clock of our lives is always ticking off our minutes and we don’t know when it will stop thicking. When you look at life from this perspective everything becomes more precious and you realise that indeed “every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.”

In the film “Smoke” (1995) the life of multiple characters revolve around the same tobacco shop, ran by Auggie Wren (played by Harvey Keitel), which they all frequent, not for the cigarettes alone but also for Auggie’s wisdom and advice. The life of Auggie Wren, who just runs a Brooklyn tobacco shop, may seem totally mundane and uneventful at first glance, but even in this banality of the day to day life, this ‘monotony and repetition’ of days suceeding one another, being all the ‘same’, Auggie manages to find some strange urban beauty. And here you can see a clip from the film where he is showing his photo album to one of his customers, a writer called Benjamin. At first Benjamin is flipping through it uninterested, not understanding the concept, but Auggie tells him: “You’ll never get it unless you slow down, my friend”, urging him to be patient in order to grasp the rhythm and meaning of the pictures, which all show the same view from the street corner of Auggie’s shop, and are all taken at 8 am every morning.

Auggie’s pictures of the street corner, and the last picture is of Auggie himself, all clips from the film.

This is how their dialogue goes:

Benjamin: They’re all the same.

Auggie: That’s right. More than four thousand pictures of the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue at eight o’clock in the morning, four thousand straight days in all kinds of weather. That’s why I can never take a vacation.  I got to be in my spot every morning at the same time … every morning in the same spot at the same time.

Benjamin: I’ve never seen anything like this.

Auggie: It’s my project. What you’d call: my life’s work.

Benjamin: Amazing. I’m not sure I get it though… What was it that gave you the idea to do this… project?

Auggie: I don’t know. It just came to me. It’s my corner after all. I mean, it’s just one little part of the world but things take place there too just like everywhere else. It’s a record of my little spot.

Benjamin: It’s kinda overwhelming.

Auggie: You’ll never get it unless you slow down, my friend.

Benjamin: What do you mean?

Auggie: I mean, you’re going too fast, you’re hardly even looking at the pictures.

Benjamin: They’re all the same.

Auggie: They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your; people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.

Benjamin: Slow down, huh?

Auggie: That’s what I recommend. You know how it is. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Time creeps in its petty pace.

Claude Monet, Water lilies, 1915

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916-19

What better way to show your love and appreciation for something than to give it focus, give it time? Auggie Wren loved the city he lived in and in particular his neighbourhood of Brooklyn, and likewise Monet loved his gardens and especially his delicate and dazzling water lilies. Is it monotony to painting something beautiful for the two-hundredth time, to capture the mundane for the five-hunredth time?

Claude Monet, Water-Lilies, Reflection of a Weeping Willow, 1916-1919

Eugene Grasset – Young Girl in the Garden

“Let it pass; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.”

(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sensible Thing)

Eugene Grasset, Young Girl in the Garden, date unknown, watercolour

I recently stumbled upon this gorgeous watercolour by a Swiss turn of the century decorative artist Eugene Grasset (1845-1917) and I was instantly captivated by its lyrical beauty and the ever so slight tinge of melancholy seen in the girl’s downward gaze and the setting sun in the distance, a sense of finality and regrets.

A young brunette in a garden of orange and green tones is casting her gaze down to the pond. She is deep in her thoughts. Spring is passing and the sunset song of the birds speaks of warm summer days which are soon to come; heavy with heat and rich scents of awakened flowers. The lush, elegant garden with its marble staircases and statues brings to mind John Singer Sargent’s vibrant watercolours of the gardens of the Italian villas painted around the same time as Grasset’s watercolour or a little later. The figure of the girl, and the scenery around her and behind her, work in a beautiful harmony; our eye is not distracted by the natural setting of a garden, but the scenery isn’t too simplistic either. Just notice and admire the details on the trees in the background; how lively and wild their branches that stretch towards the heavy orange sunset clouds! With its cascade of statues and flower bushes the scene of a garden acquires a depth which makes the scene more realistic. The girl’s appearance seems to belong to two different ages; at first glance she is the turn of the century young lady, with her dress with slightly puff sleeves and her flowing hair, but also her attire makes her look like a princess from some distant time, from some far-away, enchanted land… Time has stopped; the garish orange sun is captured in its flight, but the tender breeze caressing the trees whispers of changes that are to come. The rosebud of spring is blooming into a summer rose and in this painful transience some things must be left behind. What could I have done differently, or, how fast have the spring days gone by, the young girl seems to be asking herself, in the sunset of a beautiful warm day.

Motives of girls and flowers are common in the art of the La Belle Epoque and indeed, Grasset’s own oeuvre is littered with illustrations that feature a figure of a beautiful girl in a natural setting. Usually, in those kinds of illustrations, everything is so decorative and flowery that it might be hard to tell which is the flower and which – the woman. Visually, this watercolour fits into the same type of paintings, but its mood is more lyrical and it conveys more emotions. It is not emotionally flat and merely decorative, and that is what kept luring me to this watercolour. It speaks to my soul, for sure.

Alfred Sisley – Fog, Voisins

“Every day the fog gets thicker and thicker around the house. It has now covered the trees whose branches brush against the edge of the terrace. Last night I dreamed that, through the cracks of the doors and windows, the fog was slowly leaking into my room, diminishing the color of the walls and the furniture, filtering into my hair, and sticking to my body, as it dissipates everything, absolutely everything…”

(María Luisa Bombal, The Final Mist)

Alfred Sisley, Fog, Voisins, 1874

What a drab month January is! These lonesome and cold winter days I find myself captivated by Alfred Sisley’s dreamy and atmospheric painting called “Fog, Voisins”, painted in 1874.

In 1871, Sisley settled in the little village of Voisins which is situated near Louveciennes which, interestingly, is the place where Anain Nin had lived with her husband at the time she met Henry Miller in 1932. “Fog, Voisins” has none of the love and drama that is found in Anais Nin’s life and diary, for Sisley wasn’t the painter of intense emotions and dramatic scenes. Instead, he devoted his life to portraying landscapes in all their changing beauty. This dreamy landscape shows a garden in fog; trees, bushes and flowers all arising from the veil of mist that covers everything. The contours of objects conceal more than they reveal, they are merely hints of what is there, ghostly and ephemereal. The colours Sisley uses here are a harmony of greys and blues, with only the pink and yellow flowers in the bushes in the foreground being the only exception. The tree on the right is painted in dark grey tones but the trees on the left are painted in even paler shades of grey, fading away even more, escaping our sight, vanishing into the fog… The figure of a woman working in the garden probably wasn’t something that Sisley saw directly that day in the garden. It’s more likely that the figure was taken from his other sketches of peasants working in nature.

Fog transforms even somehing as mundane as a garden into something poetic and profound. Even in real life, walking through the fog and seeing the distant treetops or a road disappearing, adds a mystical elements to otherwise boring scenery. Bellow you can see some details from the painting. I am continually amazed how just a few careful brushstrokes can create a figure or a tree; a few simple strokes and instantly something very recognisable. Sisley here presents us a typical Impressionist motif; nature, garden, trees, but the real protagonist of this painting aren’t the trees of the peasant woman but the fog itself which envelops the garden with its silvery-blue gauzy veil, hides and distorts, coats the everyday into the magic of dreams. Alfred Sisley, the somewhat neglected Impressionist, stayed true to the spirit of the Impressionism and didn’t stray away like other Impressionists (I’m looking at you, Renoir). This painting is a wonderful exercise in capturing the atmosphere and Sisley did a great job at capturing something as vague as fog. I’m sure it’s hard to paint the effect of fog but Sisley makes it look effortless. Sisley painted many wintery snow scenes, as did other Impressionists, but paintings of fog are perhaps more rare.

Rubén Darío: The Princess is sad… (Sonatina)

Today I wanted to share this wonderful poem by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío called “Sonatina” published in 1896 in his poetry collection “Prosas Profanas”. I love all the vibrant visual imagery, all the details that the poet so vividly describes instantly transport me to a summer garden where the pale and sad princess resides, surrounded by fragrant dahlias and lilies, and peacocks and swans. How can anyone be sad in such a heavenly place!? I love the way her features are described; she has “mouth of roses”, and “strawberry lips”. And I especially love the stanza where the princess imagines how beautiful it would be to fly like a butterfly or a swallow.

James Abbott Mcneill Whistler, Le Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, 1863-65

Sonatina

The princess is sad . . . from the princess slips
such sighs in her words from the strawberry lips.
Gone from them laughter and the warm light of day.
Pallid she is sat in her golden chair;
unsounded the keys of the harpsichord there,
and a flower, from a vase, has swooned away.

The peacocks in the garden parade their tails.
The duenna’s chatter is incessant and stales.
The pirouetting jester is tricked out in red,
yet nothing she cares for and she does not smile
but follows a dragonfly that flits the while
as vague in the east as is her dream-lost head.

Does a prince from China or Golconda approach,
does she think of one stepping from his silver coach,
bedazzled by her beauty in the sky’s soft blues,
to court her with islands of fragrant roses,
shower bright diamonds as a sovereign disposes,
or proud owners of pearls do, out of Ormuz?

Ah, the poor princess, with that mouth of roses,
thinks of butterfly and swallow, but supposes
how easily with wings she would soar up under
the bright ladders brought down from the sunlit day.
With lillies she would meet the fresh songs of May,
and be one with the wind in the ocean’s thunder.

Listless in the palace spins the spinning wheel;
in the magical falcon and jester no appeal.
The swans are as one in the lake’s azure swoon.
From west come the dahlias for the first in court,
from east the sad jasmines, south roses of thought,
from north the waterlillies, weeping from noon.

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, They toil not, neither do they spin, 1903

Her blue eyes see nothing but sad misrule:
into gold she is set and beset by tulle.
Days are poured out as from a heavy flagon,
haughtily they watch now over palace floors;
silent with the halberds are a hundred Moors,
sleepless the greyhound, and a colossal dragon.

Oh, to find freshness of the butterfly’s veil:
(The princess is sad. The princess is pale.)
Be silent as ivory, rose-coloured and gold!
Where will he fly to, the prince she had!
The princess is pale. The princess is sad,
more brilliant than the dawn is, a hundred fold.

Be patient, my princess: the horse has wings,
for you he is coming, the fairy godmother sings.
With a sword in the belt he has a hawk above,
and a kiss to ignite you, to vanquish death:
never has he seen you, but joyous the breath
from the prince who awakes you: you will be his love.

John Singer Sargent: Watercolours of the Gardens of Villa di Marlia in Tuscany

“It was not so much that Italy was more beautiful than America, but that it was older, a property not generally considered to enhance seductiveness. But age, when coupled with cultivation, can be enticing. Italy was, in fact, so replete with the wisdom of the ages that it was removed from time.“

John Singer Sargent, Villa di Marlia, Lucca – A Fountain, 1910

American painter John Singer Sargent was one of the many American and British artists who was seduced by the spirit of Italy. The Romantics such as Lord Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley, and John Keats, and Victorian era writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and Robert Browning all marvelled in the charms of Italy. Still, Sargent, having been born in Florence, had a special connection to Italy; the romance of Ancient ruins, the beauty of Renaissance palaces, the majestic paintings by Titian and Tintoretto, the lush splendour of gardens and parks, the warm sunlight and golden air woven with dreams and nostalgia, were things that Sargent was familiar with but that also excited him and inspired him.

It was the mixture of age and cultivated Beauty which made the landscape of Italy so enchanting and alluring: “The artists’ love affair with Italy had this need for an understanding not possible in the raw New World Story had found prosaic. It was not so much that Italy was more beautiful than America, but that it was older, a property not generally considered to enhance seductiveness. But age, when coupled with cultivation, can be enticing. Italy was, in fact, so replete with the wisdom of the ages that it was removed from time. Time, in Italy, must have seemed universal and mythic. After a sufficient number of histories, after Etruria, ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque, time underwent a curious compression which was also an infinite extension.” (Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture – American Landscape and Painting 1825-1875) Even though Sargent is mostly known for his glorious oil on canvas portraits, he was also immensely prolific in watercolours, having painted more than two thousand of them. The watercolours capture a wide range of motives, from the alligators of Florida, gondolas of Venice, to the beautiful gardens of Italian villas.

Watercolour “Villa di Marlia Lucca – Fountain” is one such work which beautifully captures the fragment of a carefully cultivated garden of the Renaissance villa di Marlia in Lucca in Tuscany where Sargent stayed at the time these watercolours were created. Sargent chose to portray the old parts of the garden which were not renovated but rather showed the true spirit of the times in which they were created. In this watercolour you can almost hear and feel the water of the fountain refreshing the garden, the scent of lemons and thyme colouring the air, the patches of muted yellow on the balustrade are the moss that speaks of the longevity and tradition of the garden; it wouldn’t be there if it was freshly built. The two sculptures in the fountain are the river gods representing the rivers Arno and Serchio. Sargent beautifully captures the play of lights on the water and the lush scenery in the background. The scene is also skillfully cropped, almost like a photographs; the horizontal line of the balustrade in the foreground beautifully frames the painting. Another lyrical watercolour that pays tribute to the past shows the statue of Daphne in the garden of the Villa Varramista. With her hands reaching towards the sky, Daphne looks vivid and almost alive.

John Singer Sargent’s Villa di Marlia, Lucca – The Balustrade, 1910

John Singer Sargent – Villa di Marlia, Lucca, 1910

John Singer Sargent, Daphne, 1910