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

Louise Glück: Spring comes quickly, overnight the plum tree blossoms (Primavera)

“Primavera”; a poem celebrating spring from Louise Gluck 2006 poetry collection “A Village Life”. The motifs such as plum tree blossoming and birds singing are something dear and near to me at the moment because spring is indeed here and with it comes joy and lightness of life. I especially love the second to last line which describes the blossoms as the emblems of the resiliance of life. Trees, and the rest of nature, have their time to bloom and flourish just as they have their time to shed their leaves and let their branches be bare. They don’t resist it and they always have hope. Our lives too are made of seasons and even if we feel that our lives are in a spiritual state of winter – spring of the soul will inevitably follow.

Renoir, Young Woman with a Japanese Umbrella, 1876

Primavera

Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with bird calls.
In the plowed dirt, someone has drawn a picture of the sun
with rays coming out all around
but because the background is dirt, the sun is black.
There is no signature.
Alas, very soon everything will disappear:
the bird calls, the delicate blossoms. In the end,
even the earth itself will follow the artist’s name into oblivion.
Nevertheless, the artist intends
a mood of celebration.
How beautiful the blossoms are—emblems of the resilience of life.
The birds approach eagerly.

Mikhail Nesterov – Lonely Woman: I wandered for ever about these lovely solitudes, gathering flower after flower

“I wandered for ever about these lovely solitudes, gathering flower after flower, singing as I might the wild melodies of the country, or occupied by pleasant day dreams. My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven brought their delights with them. When rocked by the waves of the lake my spirits rose in triumph as a horseman feels with pride the motions of his high fed steed. But my pleasures arose from the contemplation of nature alone, I had no companion: my warm affections finding no return from any other human heart were forced to run waste on inanimate objects.”

(Mary Shelley, Mathilda)

Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942, Russian), Lonely Woman, 1922

I have been wanting to write about the Russian painter Mikhail Nesterov for many years now but I simply never got round to it, never felt particularly inspired about any particular painting because they are all so interesting. These days his painting “Lonely Woman” from 1922 is particularly interesting to me, mostly because of the mood but also the autumnal landscape is fitting for this time of the year. The painting shows a woman dressed in black and standing somewhere in the meadow. There is stillness in the air and certainly so in the woman’s pose as well, her shoulders seem slouched and her head seems bowed down a bit. We can sense that there is a lot of introspection going on and that the reason she came out in nature is to contemplate. The figures in Nesterov’s paintings are often dressed in traditional clothes and that makes them seem as if they are not only out of time and place, but also belonging completely to some other world. The white clouds are hanging low above the treetops and the oranges and browns are slowly taking over the verdant landscapes. Time is passing and there is no way to stop it. The woman’s mind must be flooded by memories and troubled by indecisions. Her lonely figure and the apparent sadness reminded me of Mary Shelley’s character Mathilda from the novel of the same name. Mathilda is, in her own words, a “maiden in love with death” and one of her favourite past-times is to wander out and about on the meadows and moors, seeking landscapes that suit her emotions and finding solace in the natural world.

The world captured in Nesterov’s paintings and the world portrayed here in this painting are the worlds of gone by days, places of stilness, tradition and repose while in reality the years in which some of these paintings, this one in 1922 for example, were particularly turbulent in a political and social sense in Russian. These paintings were, perhaps, for Nesterov as well as for us a means of escaping the reality with its changes and the fast-paced life, and retreating into a world which is a mix of old times and a fairy tale.

Zinaida Serebriakova’s Autumn Scenes: Sunflowers, Versailles Park, Lonely Fields

“A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives–all bear secret relations to our destinies.”

(François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe)

Zinaida Serebriakova, Autumn, 1910

Russian painter Zinaida Serebriakova was such a prolific, creative and inspired artist who painted a wide array of different motifs, from portraits and self-portraits, scenes from everyday life, particularly paintings of her children, to nudes, landscapes and cityscapes. I have been admiring her work for many years now but I have never written about it before. For this post I have selected four of her paintings that are autumnal. My favourite at the moment is her painting above, titled simply “Autumn” and painted in 1910. The painting shows a quiant countryside scene tinged with melancholy of the passing summer. Only the sunflower fields, little peasants houses and clouds. The motif of sunflowers, whether painted by Vincent van Gogh or Schiele or written about in the poetry of Georg Trakl, have always fascinated me because they can be interpreted in so many ways. Sunflowers can be bright and ecstatic, or they can be doomed flowers with heavy heads bowed down to the ground. Sunflowers in Serebriakova’s painting are nought but messengers of the passing of summer. The sunflowers have taken in the last rays of the summer suns and are now feeling the autumn wind on the their soft cheeks.

Zinaida Serebriakova, Versailles Park in Autumn, 1926

Painting “Versailles Park in Autumn” makes me think of the loneliness of autumn. The summer, with its abundance of warmth, flowers, colours, and scents gives us an illusion of belonging, but when the days start getting colder and darker, when the tree branches start being bare, when the crickets stop singing in the grass and the rains start falling incessantly, then we start feeling the loneliness again. The autumnal ambience contributes to the lonely, sad mood of the park, but it isn’t only the season that gives the scene its melancholy. It is also the fact that the Versailles park had seen better days. In 1926 Versailles Park wasn’t what it was in 1726 for example; the sweet glory days of Watteau and Fragonard, of stolen kisses and rustle of dresses are long since passed, but the trees and sculptures rememeber everything. Serebriakova uses an interesting viewpoint in this painting; we are almost in the same position as the sculpture and we are given the same overview of the lonesome park that the sculpture has. The sky is overcast and there are no people, only the conical evergreen shrubs are sharply pointing their heads proudly upwards. The colours are muted and dark and matching the mood of autumn.

“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.”

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Autumn Day)

Zinaida Serebriakova, Green Autumn Landscape, 1908

The next landscape, “Green Autumn Landscape”, shows an early autumn scene. Nearly the entire canvas shows a vast field stretching on and on in long, neverending vertical lines. Three windmills break up the space for the moment but then the fields spread on more and more in the distance. The sky is light grey and quiet. No crows are restlessly, nervously flying low above the fields, but still there is a sense of foreboding because we know that the fogs will soon descent and hover above the fields, that the green that is so pleasant to the eyes will turn to brown soil. To me, this painting represents autumn’s sense of desolation, painted in a very simple but beautiful way. It also brings to mind many landscapes by Vincent van Gogh

Zinaida Serebriakova, Autumn Landscape, 1914

The last painting for this post, though certainly not the last of Zinaida Serebrikova on this blog, is called “Autumn Landscape” and it is rather simple in composition. The painting shows a closely cropped view of autumn trees painted in a range of shades, but the most eye-catching one is the vibrant orange. This painting, to me, represents the vibrancy of autumn. I love the details of blue on the tree trunks and some of the higher tree tops.

The Swing: Fragonard and Indian Miniature Painting

Lady on a Swing in the Monsoon, India, Punjab Hills, 1750-75, opaque watercolour and gold on paper

I have recently discovered these two lovely Indian miniature paintings; “Lady on a Swing in the Monsoon” from 1750-75 and “The Swing” from 1790. The motif of a woman on a swing instantly reminded me of Fragonard’s famous painting “The Swing”. It is exciting to see how this fun, frivolous and playful motif is portrayed in the art of the same century but very different cultures and styles. Both of these Indian miniatures show a beautiful nayika or heroine on a swing accompanied by her maids. The ladies’ pale faces exude calmness which stands in contrast to the dark and rolling clouds up there in the sky. The monsoon is approaching the air is coloured with excitement and anticipation. The clouds are heavy with rain and the sky is on the edge from all that accumulated energy. When the thunder roars and the clouds release the heavy rain, all will be calm again. The weather here can also serve as a sort of an erotic insinuations. Though the Punjab miniature above is, at first sight, perhaps more similar to Fragonard’s painting as in both paintings the ladies are dressed in pink gowns and are facing the same direction, the Kangra watercolour bellow is dearer to me for some reason. Just how pleasing is the idealised female form to the eye, and how lovely the contrast between her off-white dress and her coy, downward gaze in contrast to the dark sky in the background. She is exuding sweetness, playful innocence and delicacy, while the sky is potent and bursting with energy and eager to show its power. The swing brings to mind the fun and playful moments of childhood, but it can also have erotic connotations. If Radha was on the swing and Krishna was sitting in the grass bellow, we can imagine that his eyes would be feasting on her loveliness. Though, more likely, he would be sitting on the swing with her and that would, and is in many paintings, a romantic scene indeed.

The Swing, Pahari, Kangra, in opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Kangra, ca. 1790

Painting “The Swing“ is Fragonard’s most well-known work, and the epitome of Rococo; it’s a fun, frivolous, hedonistic painting imbued with erotic insinuations and painted in rich colour palette full of lightness and vivacity. “The Swing“ shows a young woman sitting on a swing and two male figures lazing around in a pastoral setting. The woman takes a central place in the canvas and she is a true eye-candy; dressed in a silk peachy-pink gown and a straw hat. Rosy cheeked and laughing, she’s dangling her legs in white stockings and playfully throwing one of her pink shoes in the air. The man in the background, a layman, is pulling her swing, while the one on the left, resting amidst delicate pink roses, gets to have all the fun, gazing mischievously at the legs of this gorgeous girl, and not just legs – women of Rococo didn’t wear knickers. Fantasies, flirting, and debauchery are all intermingled in this voyeuristic scene placed in an idealised setting of lush nature, marble statues and roses, all painted in soft fluttering brushstrokes and bathed with luminosity and lightness. The scene is painted so beautifully that one can feel the mood of that carefree afternoon, smell the flowery sweetness that lingers in the air on this late spring or early summer day, you can heard their laughter and a peaceful birdsong.

Sensuality of this erotic reverie is emphasised by the vibrant, lavishing glistening pastel shades, from her pink dress to the gorgeous hazy background painted in the most exquisite shades of green; notice the gradation from the gentle light green where the rays of sun fall to darker greens which exceed into a mystical turquoise mist on the right part of the painting. And then the soft, dreamy blue sky with delicate clouds: the perfect background for us to notice the little pink shoe flying in the air. Sculptures of Cupids, Venuses and angels are popping up everywhere in Rococo art, and this painting is no exception. There’s a sculpture of Cupid on the far left; his finger is pressed on his lips, suggesting secrecy and conspiracy of this naughty game. But will the roses keep their little dirty secrets safe, or will they maliciously whisper them to the moon when the night falls?

Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing (The Happy Accidents of the Swing), 1767

Wined and dined, oh it seemed just like a dream (Henri Le Sidaner)

“Wined and dined
Oh it seemed just like a dream
Girl was so kind
Kind of love I’d never seen

Only last summer, it’s not so long ago
Just last summer, now musk winds blow…“

(Syd Barrett, Wined and Dined)

Henri Le Sidaner, Table with Lanterns in Gerberoy, 1924

These late summer days when the air is tinged with a sense of transience, and I am haunted by the memories, the paintings of Henri La Sidaner have been on my mind a lot. Their quiet, slightly mysterious and intimate mood is strangely comforting when I am feeling the way I am feeling these days. It almost seems to represent an image from my memory, or not even memory alone, for nothing is as beautiful in real life, but an embellished memory, a made up memory of a life that never was but a memory that feeds me and helps me live through the days. One motif that repeats itself all throughout Le Sidaner’s painting is that of an empty space and I think that this, amongst other things, is something that gives his paintings that mysterious, slightly ethereal quality. Quiet interiors and quiant street scenes were his favourites motifs to paint but these are always empty spaces and this absence of people, or anything living really, is what draws me to these paintings. Let’s take a look at the painting “Table with Lanterns in Gerberoy” painted in 1924, which seems to be my favourite for a long time now. A simple scene but beautifully atmospheric. A table laid out for people; wine bottles, glasses, fruits, a jug, and a vase with roses. In the background a house with windows overgrown with roses. Colourful paper lanterns. Some clothes laid out over the chairs as if someone had just left the scene. I can still hear the music in the air, melancholy violins and the sounds of crickets, and perhaps a distant sound of a woman’s laughter. But… where are the people? Who knows. Are the roses still echoing with the words from the party guests’ conversations, or are they yet to see the guests? Is the wine in the glasses half-drunk or has it only been half-poured? There is always a hint of someone’s presence in Le Sidaner’s art but never a face painted directly, and I think it better that way because this allows for the mystery and the dreaminess which is the ultimate charm of this painting and many other of his.

Henri le Sidaner, The Table in the Gerberoy Garden at Dusk, 1900s

Henri Le Sidaner, La Table, 1901

Henri Le Sidaner, La petite table, 1920

Henri Le Sidaner, Small Table in Evening Dusk, 1921

Henri Le Sidaner, La Gloriette, Gerberoy, 1929

This painting, and some of Le Sidaner’s similar dinner table in the garden scenes, always bring to mind a song from one of Syd Barrett’s solo albums, one of my personal favourites as well, “Wined and Dined” from the album “Barrett” (1970). The song, just like Le Sidaner’s painting, has that melancholy feeling of a beauty that simply cannot be preserved, the height of such beauty, the most raw; summer that is ending soon, a flower that is wilting, something beautiful is passing and there is nothing one can do to prevent it and it aches the heart like nothing else. In this sense, I am also reminded of Watteau’s paintings, the fragile and delicate worlds of beauty, where beautifully clad ladies and cheerful harlequins engage eternally in a game of love and joy, but still there is a whisper of sadness in the trees. An idyllic garden party on a summer eve is an example of such beauty; a moment in time when one can wine and dine freely and the autumn is not yet there to brush one’s cheek with its cold breath, the leaves are the strongest and greenest, and one cannot imagine that they will ever fall down, the music of the crickets is there and it soothes the ear, and everything seems possible and everlasting. To encapsulate such a moment and live in it would be a dream.

Memories and Nostalgia: Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait On the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States

Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait Along the Boarder Line Between Mexico and the United States, 1932

In 1932 Mexican painter Diego Rivera was working on a series of twenty-seven frescoes in the courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts in Midtown Detroit, Michigan. His wife Frida Kahlo accompanied him on this trip to the States, but she shared none of his enthusiasm for the modernity and industrialised landscape of this city, preferring the ancient ruins over factory chimneys, nature over industry. And she expressed her feelings beautifully in the painting “Self-Portrait Along the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States”. She expressed her disdain for the Americans and their lifestyle: “Although I am very interested in all the industrial and mechanical development of the United States, I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They live as if in an enormous chicken coop that is dirty and uncomfortable. The houses look like bread ovens and all the comfort that they talk about is a myth.” But, as a painter, she expressed herself better visually then verbally and this painting is a direct a comment on the differences between the perceived idyll of her beloved Mexico and the coldness of the modern urban landscape.

The painting can almost be read as a story because it is filled with details and each detail has a something to tell. In the middle of the painting is the twenty-five year old Frida dressed in a pretty pink gown and white mittens. A cigarette in one hand and a Mexican flag in the other. On the left is an idealised landscape of Mexico, conjured from her memory and imagination, from her loyalty to her country and the nostalgia that she must have felt, especially in the contrast with the ugliness she felt all around her. On the left is a world led by the forces of nature, the power of sun, rain and soil. The fertile soil which gives birth to vibrant flowers and cactuses, their roots are deep and hard to pull out, just as Frida’s art was deeply rooted in the traditions of her homeland. Ruins of a temple and statues of ancient Gods represent the pre-Columbian Mexico. The sun and the moon represent the ancient gods of Mexico; Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.

On the right is the industrial landscape; skyscrapers and tall factory chimneys; their smoke is slightly obscuring the flag of the United States and there are no clouds on the sky, the dirty chimney smoke has concealed them all. The word Ford is written on the four factory chimneys. There is an obvious contrast between the natural and artificial in the manner in which the buildings were made, ancient temples, although made by humans, were made from natural material, and are therefore still connected to the earth and nature. The colour scheme also conveys this contrast; the left side of the painting is painted in earthy tones, a bit of orange and green, and the right is greyish-blue representing coldness and sterility. American skyscrapers and ugly factories are the complete opposite of nature, they rise towards the sky as if they want to be as far away as possible from the earth. Precisionist painters such as Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth have portrayed the same industrial landscape in the same years with great fascination and admiration, but Frida doesn’t share their enthusiasm because she sees beyond the glossy facade of the industrial progress and she sees how disconnected from nature people can become.

Tired and weary, surrounded by people who don’t understand her and culture she doesn’t belong in, she is eager to return home. In 1933, Diego and Frida have indeed returned to Mexico, but not because of Frida’s yearning alone, but because by the irony of the faith, Rivera’s contract was cancelled after he incorporated an image of Lenin in one of the murals. Frida got what she wanted in the end, though probably not in a way she had imagined it to be. There is a page from her diary, a watercolour I assume, with the words “ruinas” inscribed bellow which shows a ruin of a temple which made me think of this painting so I included it in the end of the post. In a way, Frida’s love for nature and Mexico’s pagan past is a sentiment shared by many artists before her who have fantasised about an escape from the clutches of the civilisation; escape from everything artificial, cold and conventional; Delacroix’s travels to the vibrant and sunny Morrocco, Charles Baudelaire’s reveries of distant exotic lands and the “langorous island, where Nature abounds/ With exotic trees and luscious fruit” (from his poem “Exotic Perfume”), not to mention Paul Gauguin and his paintings painted during his stay in Tahiti.

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Frederick Carl Frieseke – On the River

Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874-1939), On the River, 1908

Frederick Carl Frieseke’s painting “On the River” completely encapsulated my mood these days; the warm summer days spent lazing by the river and drowning in the drowsiness of these fleeting summer dreams. The summer is not yet at its height, in fact it’s only begun, and it feels one is flying above the clouds, above the trees, restless and wild and a-thirst for distant things. Frieske was an American ex-patriate artist and his painting style is described as “decorative Impressionism” because he tended to devote all his attention on colours, patterns, shapes, filling his paintings top to bottom with flowers, blades of grass, dots and dashes, not wanting an inch to remain empty or unadorned, in a similar way to Klimt’s countryside scenes. Explossions of colours, vibrancy, rhythm of patterns; I love to immerse myself in Frieseke’s paintings in these lovely summer days, for his art is one of eternal summer, where a woman and a flower are one and the same. Still, for me, his painting “On the River” may be decorative, at first glance, but it is also extremely vivid and realistic because that is how magical the river indeed looks and feels these days.

The painting shows a woman in a little boat in the river with trees leaning low above the waters in the background. The lady is holding a parasol to protect herself from the few golden rays of sun that will manage to make their way through the tree tops. The parasol and the lady’s kimono-like attired are both yellow, yellow like the sun of June, and are a delightful visual contrast with the otherwise dreamy green colour palette. Truly, everything in this painting is painted in one or another shade of green, even the boat, which we might expect to be brown, has taken on the magical greenness of the river. I am just waiting to hear the Faun’s flute and the giggle of the nymphs, to see the dragonflies and fairies. The river seduces me in a way no other thing in nature can, it feels so serene to sit by it and gaze at the passing waters, to see the distant line where the emerald green treetops and the heavy tree branches touch the waters, to hear the fish jumping up here and there, to see the birds flying low above the water, so free and so wild… Another beautiful detail in this painting is the reflection of the lady and her yellow-as-the-sun parasol. Friesieke may be seen as merely ‘decorative’, which is sometimes used in a pejorative sense, but he truly does capture the mood of beautiful summer days and makes the nature come alive, whether in these types of river scenes, and there’s another similar painting bellow, or in his many wonderful garden scenes with hollyhocks and foxgloves and all the flowers one can imagine.

Although Frieseke was an American artist, in 1898, at the age of twenty-four he moved to France and studied art at Academie Julian. He regularly spent his summers at Giverny and in 1906 he moved into a house there, previously owned by another American painter Theodore Robinson, and found himself being a neighbour of none other but the Father of Impressionism: Claude Monet. Despite this lucky coincidence, Frieseke and Monet didn’t develop a friendship. Frieseke found Renoir to be his inspiration instead, inspired by Renoir’s voluptuous women, vibrant colours and a sense of joie de vivre and sensuality lingering through his canvases. Perhaps these two paintings were painted in Giverny.

Frederick Carl Frieseke, Grey Day on the River (Two Ladies in a Boat), c 1908

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

Arhur Hughes – Fair Rosamund

“‘My Rosamonde, my only Rose,
That pleasest best mine eye,
The fairest flower in all the worlde
To feed my fantasye…”

Arhur Hughes, Fair Rosamund, 1854

Arthur Hughes’ painting “Fair Rosamund” may be vibrant and beautiful visually, but the story behind this artwork is sinster and cruel. A beautiful, fair, long-haired and rosy cheeked young woman in the garden, what can be a more innocent motif to paint? But things are not as flowery and fragrant as they seem…

According to the legend, Fair Rosamund was the mistress of Henry II of England and he had created a garden specially for her at his royal residence in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, which was accesible only by a maze so that no one else could find their way in. How lovely to think of Fair Rosamund, safe there in her garden, a flower amongst the flowers. Unfortunately, one day, in 1176, Henry’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine found her way into the garden, found Fair Rosamund there and poisoned her. Poisoning as a method of murder has been historically linked to women, perhaps because it’s less direct and more passive-agressive, an art that women have mastered. In the Victorian era poisoning was also a common choice of murder so perhaps the motif resonated with the Victorian artists. The tale of Fair Rosamund was a popular motif for the nineteenth century artists, in particular the Pre-Raphaelites and those associated with the movement.

Now, this is really one of those paintings where every single detail tells a story and where you eye can just wander all over the canvas and take in all the details, delight in the colours, and let it all come alive. Despite the beautiful, lush and fragrant garden setting, Hughes chose to depict a dramatic moment when the Queen has entered the garden. Drama is lurking from the background. In the foreground there is Fair Rosamund with her beautiful, long wavy coppery hair and her sweet round face. I must say, I do love the way Arthur Hughes paints female faces, they are just so lovely. Her medieval-style dress, in green and purple, seems to echo the colour of the irises that are growing beneath her feet. She looks like a nymph almost, with her coopery locks all loose and untied, a flower-child, a hippie gal. Her hand gesture, her slightly parted lips and a look of worry in her eyes suggest that something is not quite right. Something has disturbed her and it is evident. In the background we see the Queen Eleanor who has just entered the garden. The path that leads from the garden gates where the Queen is standing to the Fair Rosamund is lined with blue foxgloves; a flower known for its poisonous properties. The painting may be silent, but the flowers in it speak volumes. The irises before Rosamund are not perhaps solely here for the aesthetic, as beautiful as they are. The Greek goddess Iris, amongst other things, had also the task of chaperoning the souls of the dead females to the Elysian fields. In a way, this hints to Fair Rosamund’s fate; from her flower garden she will depart into the Elysian fields.

Arthur Hughes was not a member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, but he was closely associated with the movement, he exhibited his paintings alongside the Pre-Raphaelites and he focused on portraying medieval themes. As I said, I really love the vibrant colour and the attention to details in this painting. I just cannot get enough of this painting. Just look the play of the sunlight and shadows on the garden path and the fallen leaves, how alive it seems. The dense ivy, the white roses, all the different shades of green. It is just stunning!