Dante Gabriel Rossetti – St George and Princess Sabra

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, St George and Princess Sabra, 1862, watercolour

The tale of the knight St George slaying the dragon and saving the princess was a popular artistic motif for the painters in the Medieval and Renaissance times. In the nineteenth century the Pre-Raphaelites such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones revived the motif. It is easy to see why the motif would appeal to the Pre-Raphaelites; it is a tale of chivalry, of a victory of good over evil, tale that ends in love. The awakening of love can be seen in Rossetti’s 1862 watercolour “St George and Princess Sabra”.

The painting shows a celebration after the quest is done and the dragon slayed, but Rossetti placed the focus not on the town’s celebration, seen in the upper left corner through a window, but on the figures of St George and Princess Sabra. The Princess had brought his helmet, turned upside down, filled with water so he can wash his bloodied hands in it but really she is using the kind gesture as an opportunity to be closer to the handsome knight. Her long red hair is cascading down her back like flames and her lips are pressed against his hands. She is grateful to be saved from the dragon, but is it just the appropriate gratefulness, or something more in her big love-starved eyes? But the sturdy, strong, bearded George is looking out at the window; is he feeling uneasy with the lady’s display of affection, or is he thinking more about his wordly duties, his place in society, his spiritual purpose, which are all perhaps more important to him than love. Both the chamber and their garments are painted in rich jewel colours of amber, garnet and emerald, as if the entire scene is bathed in the golden rays of sun falling through the opulent stained glass windows.

Interestingly, the model for the Princess was Rossetti’s own wife Elizabeth Siddal. There is Siddal’s recognisable long, flowing coppery-red hair and the facial features that we find often in Rossetti’s art. But more disturbingly, only days after posing for this painting Elizabeth was found dead, overdosing on laudanum, on the 11th February 1862. There is definitely a richness and a sensuality in Rossetti’s watercolour which we don’t find in the Medieval depictions of the same motif, and not even in Burne-Jones’ paintings of the motif. In a well-known example by Paolo Uccello, the Princess is portrayed as a lean, pale, iron-deficient damsel who is completely calmly watching St George as he is slaying the dragon. She appears so calm that her heart probably didn’t skip a beat. In comparison, the heart of the Princess in Rossetti’s watercolour is skipping a beat many many times when she is kneeling down so close to St George who, I must add, also appears more strong and masculine than the one depited in Uccello’s painting.

Paolo Uccello, St George and the Dragon, c 1460

Aubrey Beardsley – How Sir Tristram Drank of the Love Drink

“Then they laughed and made good cheer, and either drank to other freely, and they thought never drink that ever they drank to other was so sweet nor so good. “

Aubrey Beardsley, How Sir Tristram Drank of the Love Drink, 1893

Aubrey Beardsley’s drawing “How Sir Tristram Drank of the Love Drink” from 1893 shows a scene from Sir Thomas Malory’s prose work “Le Morte d’Arthur” in which Sir Tristram and beautiful Isoud accidentally drink the love potion thinking it was wine. In the chapter, before the love potion incident happens, we find out that Sir Tristram had come to ask for Isoud’s hand for his uncle the King Mark. His request was accepted and Isoud’s mother had prepared a love drink that the King Mark and Isoud should drink together and then they would love one another until the end of their life. By accident, Sir Tristram and Isoud drink to each other that love drink and they both feel they have never taste anything so good and sweet and that is how their romance begins. Their long-lasting love with a tragic end is a (un)fortunate result of a love potion, and they are bound to love each other for the rest of their lives but only because of a potion.

Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Mort d’Arthur” was all the rage for the Victorian artists, especially the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates, because it offered a vision of a by-gone world of beauty, chivalry and romance and it served as a much needed source of escapism in a world that was becoming more industrialised, more fast-paced and modern each day. Still, Beardsley’s black and white ink drawings are a far cry from the vibrant, detailed and splendid canvases of the Pre-Raphaelites. There is something claustrophobic in Beardsley’s black and white world, as if all the colours and with them all the aliveness were sucked out in some perverse way. Beardsley, as a fin-de-siecle decadent, offers a rather different portrayal of the Arthurian legends. Instead of romance and chivalry, he emphasises the doomed, sensuous and nihilistic aspects of it. Typical for Beardsley, the lovers are portrayed as androgynous and in a stylised manner. His lines are sharp and harsh. Also, Beardsley’s Sir Tristram, unfortunately, looks nothing like James Franco, but alright. In the bottom part of the drawing there is an inscription “How Tristram Drank of the Love Drink” which tells us what the scene is about. The eroticised flowers that grace the drawing as well as its frame, and the serpentine lines all hint at the lovers’ fatal passion. There is also an interesting vertical spatial divide between the lovers which may symbolise the distance between the lovers’ that exists without the magic potion, for the potion is, after all, the only thing that binds them. Here is what Sir Thomas Malory writes about the event:

“Then the queen, Isoud’s mother, gave to her and Dame Bragwaine, her daughter’s gentlewoman, and unto Gouvernail, a drink, and charged them that what day King Mark should wed, that same day they should give him that drink, so that King Mark should drink to La Beale Isoud, and then, said the queen, I undertake either shall love other the days of their life. So this drink was given unto Dame Bragwaine, and unto Gouvernail. And then anon Sir Tristram took the sea, and La Beale Isoud; and when they were in their cabin, it happed so that they were thirsty, and they saw a little flasket of gold stand by them, and it seemed by the colour and the taste that it was noble wine.

Then Sir Tristram took the flasket in his hand, and said, Madam Isoud, here is the best drink that ever ye drank, that Dame Bragwaine, your maiden, and Gouvernail, my servant, have kept for themselves. Then they laughed and made good cheer, and either drank to other freely, and they thought never drink that ever they drank to other was so sweet nor so good. But by that their drink was in their bodies, they loved either other so well that never their love departed for weal neither for woe. And thus it happed the love first betwixt Sir Tristram and La Beale Isoud, the which love never departed the days of their life.” (Book IX, Chapter XXIV)

Carl Krenek – Sleeping Beauty: I’d Sleep Another Hundred Years, O love, for Such Another kiss!

“I’d sleep another hundred years,
O love, for such another kiss;”
“O wake forever, love,” she hears,
“O love, ’t was such as this and this.”

…..

“O eyes long laid in happy sleep!”
“O happy sleep that lightly fled!”
“O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!”
“O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!”

(Lord Tennyson, The Day-Dream)

Carl Krenek (1880-1948), A Fairy Tale Scene – Sleeping Beauty, n.d.

“In the topmost bedchamber of the house he found her. He had stepped over sleeping chambermaids and valets, and, breathing the dust and damp of the place, he finally stood in the door of her sanctuary. Her flaxen hair lay long and straight over the deep green velvet of her bed, and her dress in loose folds revealed the rounded breasts and limbs of a young woman. He opened the shuttered windows. The sunlight flooded down on her. And approaching her, he gave a soft gasp as he touched her cheek, and her teeth through her parted lips, and then her tender rounded eyelids. Her face was perfect to him…”
(Anne Rice, Sleeping Beauty)

French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé said that “To define is to kill. To suggest is to create”, and even before him, the seventeenth century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho wrote that “a poem that suggests 70-80 percent of its subject may be good, but a poem that only suggests 50-60 percent of the subject will always retain its intrigue”. This way of looking at things stuck with me and, suddenly, while looking at this painting by Carl Krenek and wondering why is it that I love it so much, it dawned on me… The reason for my immense appreciation of Carl Krenek’s painting “A Fairy Tale Scene – Sleeping Beauty” is because of its deliberate vagueness.

I have seen many nineteenth and early twentieth century illustrations of this famous fairy tale, but this one strikes me as the most original and perhaps also the most vibrant and flowery one as well. Instead of boring us with architectural details of the chamber where the Sleeping Beauty is sleeping in her bed, and painting all her entourage and all the sleeping courtiers and what not, Krenek focuses on the bare essentials; the slumbering princess and the roses that have grown over her bed, which are the two main motives of the fairy tale and the most recognisable to our eyes. This instantly brings freshness and our eye is excited. This is not to say that Krenek wasn’t detailed in his approach, far from it. The scene is very detailed, but in areas where it matters. Just look at the meticulous way he had painted all the flowers and thorns and branches, how they fill the space beautifully and naturally.

Krenek certainly wasn’t vague when it came to depicting the roses; here is one roses, now you, my dear viewers, imagine the others. No, it seems he really put his heart into all these flowers and they look ever so cheerful and vibrant, from the delicate pink ones above the princess and the more richly coloured red, orange and yellow ones that are growing around her bed. There is little to be seen of the actual Sleeping Beauty; only her pale face with the peacefully closed eyes and her white dress. It seems the roses are more of a main character than she is. Otherwise, I may have preferred to see the princess painted in more details, her beauty more enchanced, but in this painting I find the whole vagueness just delightful and I don’t regret there not being more of a focus on the princess. In fact, our eye may be even more drawn to the princess precisely because we cannot see her clearly. They mystery is alluring.

Sleeping Beauty is perhaps my favourite fairy tale and there are so many ways to look at this story on a symbolic level. Is she really just a princess who fell asleep because of the evil witch, waiting for a kiss to awake her? The theme of awakening can be interpreted in many ways; these days the nature, kissed by spring, is waking up from a long slumber of winter, but also, it can symbolise the girl’s awakening and ripening into womanhood, after that fateful kiss, just as the main character Faustine in the French 1972 film “Faustine and the Beautiful Summer” says, after being kissed by a man for the first time, “With this kiss my life begins!”. Is it the kiss of the Prince which awakens the Sleeping Beauty’s dormant soul, or is a love arrow shot by Cupid from above?

And now, to end the post, here are some beautiful verses from Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Day-Dream”:

“And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold;
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old.
Across the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day,
The happy princess followed him.
“I’d sleep another hundred years,
O love, for such another kiss!”

Sleeping Beauty by the Brothers Grimm, illustrated by Heinrich Lefler. Part of a fairy tale calender published by Berger & Wirth, Leipzig, 1905

Aubrey Beardsley – How Queen Guenever Rode on Maying

“SO it befell in the month of May, Queen Guenever called unto her knights of the Table Round; and she gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride a-Maying into woods and fields beside Westminster. “

Aubrey Beardsley, How Queen Guenever Rode on Maying, 1893-4

Aubrey Beardsley’s pen and ink drawing “How Queen Guenever Rode on Maying” shows the Queen Guinevere and her two companions on horseback. The drawing is just one of many illustrations that Beardsley had made in 1893-94 for Sir Thomas Malory’s prose work “Le Mort d’Arthur” which revolves around the world of Arthurian legends. This particular illustration, of the Queen riding in the meadows around the castle, refers to this scene from the Book 19 chapter 1 of “Le Mort d’Arthur” and Malory writes: “SO it befell in the month of May, Queen Guenever called unto her knights of the Table Round; and she gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride a-Maying into woods and fields beside Westminster. And I warn you that there be none of you but that he be well horsed, and that ye all be clothed in green, outher in silk outher in cloth; and I shall bring with me ten ladies, and every knight shall have a lady behind him, and everyknight shall have a squire and two yeomen; and I will that ye all be well horsed. So they made them ready in the freshest manner. … And so upon the morn they took their horses with the queen, and rode a-Maying in woods and meadows as it pleased them, in great joy and delights; for the queen had cast to have been again with King Arthur at the furthest by ten of the clock, and so was that time her purpose.” Still, the idyllic mood of the sunny May day horseriding turns sour when Sir Meliagrance, who was lusting after the Queen, took it as an opportunity to kidnap her and have her for himself at last. But that is another story…

In this particular illustration by Beardsley, the Queen and her entourage are seen enjoying a sunny May day, out and about, birds are singing and the flowers are blooming. I am assuming all this, of course, because there is nothing sunny and blooming about Beardsley’s black and white illustration. As is typical for all of Beardsley’s illustrations for Arthurian legends, the scene is reduced to its main elements and the figures are stylised and attenuated, yet very delicate looking, and the knights are always depicted as effeminate, wistful and weak. The illustration is spread out on two pages, giving Beardsley more space to develop the scene. On the left side we have the Queen Guinevere and her companions, the number of which was reduced from ten in Malory’s description to only two in Beardsley, there just wouldn’t be space for more without the illustration looking cluttered and it is not even necessary as we can get the point. On the right side is the castle from which they have just departed into nature. Some parts are exceedinly detailed, such as the leaves on the trees in the foreground, and yet the meadow is just a black space. The nature seems dead and frozen in all of Beardsley’s illustrations.

Medieval themes and especially the tales from the Arthurian legends were all the rage for Victorian artists and especially for the Pre-Raphaelite, one of whom, Burne-Jones was, at first, a sort of a protege for the young and talented Beardsley, but he changed his opinion after seeing Beardsley’s illustrations for “Le Morte D’Arthur”. Their friendship gradually cooled down and he later even spoke with anger of the ungrateful manner in which Beardsley radically departed from his influence and from his precious Pre-Raphaelite ideals. For the Pre-Raphaelites such as William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones “Le Mort d’Arthur” was little short of a sacred book. But provocation was Beardsley’s oxygen, it seems, and it is certainly natural for a younger generation or artists to rebel against the older generation. Still, Beardsley’s depiction of the scenes from Arthurian legends with the emphasis being not on romance, chastity and chivalry, but rather on the more nihilistic, sensuous and doomed aspects of it, is less a reflection of Beardsley’s uniqueness and more a reflection of the decadence of the fin-de-siecle art in general; nothing was sacred and ideals were there only to be destroyed.

Lovers – Jugend Magazine Cover April 1899: Far worse to be Love’s lover than the lover that Love has scorned, I LET LOVE IN… (Nick Cave)

“Far worse to be Love’s lover than the lover that Love has scorned
I let love in…“
(Nick Cave, I Let Love In)

Angelo Jank, Cover of Jugend Magazine, 8 April 1899

I have been taking great aesthetical delight in this April 1899 cover of the German Jugend Magazine, painted by Angelo Jank, for months now but have patiently been waiting for April to write about it. And write about it I must because I feel it, in a way, encapsulates the romantic spirit of my blog. All the covers for the turn of the century editions of the Jugend Magazine are beautiful and innovative, but this one is by far my favourite. It is simple but stunning. Two lovers are shown kneeling on the grass, holding hands, their lips locked in a kiss. One doesn’t know where one lovers begins and where the other ends, why, even their knees are touching. Locked in a kiss forever, these painted-lovers, in a flowery meadow of a turn of the century magazine. Do they know they have been kissing for more than a hunred years? And has it been enough for them, and do their lips still taste ever so sweet? They seem out of time and place, and even their clothes have a historical flair, especially the man’s attire but the lady’s free-flowing dress as well brings to mind the fanciful princess from some bygone era.

The background is made out of stylised roses and leaves, very simple but fitting. There is a simplicity to this scene, but also a beautiful flow, a rhythm of nature and a rhythm of love. The lovers’ pose with the touching points; the kiss, the hands and the knees, is very much in the Art Nouveau style, though it does bear a great resemblance to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s study for the cover of “The Early Italian Poets”, drawn in 1861. I feel that Angelo Jank’s drawing is more organic and flowing; both lovers are kneeling and seem to be in tune with one another and the nature around them. Even the shades of green on their clothing and in the background are the same. Still, it is interesting to see the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites seeping into the artworks even half a century later, almost, in a completely different artistic and geographical setting. Namely, the Jugend Magazine or simply “Jugend” which means “Youth” in German was an influential German art magazine that was being published from 1896 to 1940, although its peak was at the turn of the century. It was founded by Georg Hirth in Munich and he was the main editor of the magazine until he died in 1916. The legacy of the magazine, apart from the gorgeous and sometimes witty covers, is the promotion of the Jugendstil, which was the German version of the Art Nouveau style.

These past few days I have been listening to the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’s eighth studio album “Let Love In” very intensely and surprise, surprise, I discover that it was actually released on the 18th April 1994. Since the album, as most of Nick Cave’s music does anyway, revolves around the theme of love, in all its faces – the beautiful and the ugly, the angelic and the demonic, I thought it would be a perfect timing to publish a post about this magazine cover and, in some strange way, make it connected to Nick Cave’s album. To end a post, here are some lines from the last song on the album, the part two of the song “Do You Love Me”:

“Do you love me?
 I love you, handsome
But do you love me?
Yes, I love you,
 you are handsome…
Dreams that roam
 between truth and untruth
Memories that become monstrous lies
So onward! And Onward! And Onward I go!
Onward! And Upward! And I’m off to find love
With blue-black bracelets on my wrists and ankles
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle…”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Early Italian Poets (study for titlepage), 1861

Delmira Agustini: I lived in the leaning tower of Melancholy…

Delmira Agustini (1886-1914) was an Uruguayan poetess who published three poetry collections during her short life; The White Book (Fragile, 1907), Morning Songs (1910) and The Empty Chalices (1913), and the fourth one called “The Stars of the Abyss” was published post-humously in 1924. She was a passsionate woman with a love for all that is deep, raw and profound. The unashamedness, the vivid and powerful eroticism of her poetry and her turbulent personal love life were not well received in the Uruguayan society of the time. Hers is the poetry that I can easily get “drunk” on, in the Baudelaire-sense of drunkedness. No other poet describes the burning passions and sensations of love and desire as beautifully as Agustini does. Her verses and even the words she uses, like “fire, “rubies”, “hot”, all convey an image of something that is lush, ripe, sensual, hot, overflowing… Reading her poems is like eating honey, ripe figs and dates on a summer dusk, the sky is turning pink in the distance and the bats are dancing in the sky, and the ground is still hot from the sun, and the heavy scent of roses and lavender is making one drowsy and drunk, while the red and pink oleander is blooming near by, inhaling the deep scent of the dark night. There are no stars in Agustini’s night because they have all explored from too much intensity, as she herself did too, in a way. Her life was cut short when her jealous and possessive husband murdered her and then himself, under mysterious circumstances. Agustini lived and wrote with burning passion and intensity.

Today I decided to share a poem called “Oh You!” from her poetry collection “The Empty Chalices” because it really chimes with me these days. The imagery of a woman trapped in a “tower of melancholy”, the tower as a solitary and claustrophobic place and not only a physical place but also a mood of the spirit… A lonely woman, surrounded by dust, dried flowers and spiders, alive but not living, brings to mind many female literary female figures, from fairy tales and novels alive, from the Rapunzel and the Lady of Shalott who were both “awakened” by the man they saw from the tower, or from the mirror, to Miss Havisham. In connection, I really love this study by John William Waterhouse for this painting “The Lady of Shalott” which portrays the moment when Elaine, the Lady of Shalott, stands up from her embroidery to look out the window. It is Sir Lancelot; the man who caught her eye, the man who stirred something inside her heart. Seeing Elaine in this painting, with her white gown painted in such a sketchy, unfinished way that makes her seem as though she is ghostly, disappearing, makes me think of these lines from Mazzy Star’s song “Into Dust”: “I could possibly be fading/ Or have something more to gain/ I could feel myself growing colder/ I could feel myself under your fate…” As we know, this only brings doom to Elaine as the curse is upon her, but in case of Rapunzel as well as in case of Delmira Agustini, the man is the wind of change which blew in through the window of the tower and stirred something inside that, once awoken, will not fall to slumber again. For Agustini, the man “lifted the veil” and, perhaps most beautifully, “made a whole lake with swans” of her tears.

John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (from the poem by Tennyson), 1894

Oh You!

I lived in the leaning tower
Of melancholy …
The spiders of tedium, the grayest spiders,
Wove and wove in grayness and silence.

Oh! the dank tower,
Filled with the sinister
Presence of a great owl
Like a soul in torment;

So mute, that the silence in the tower is twofold;
So sad, that without seeing it, we are chilled by the immense
Shadow of its sorrow.

Eternally it incubates a great barren egg,
Its strange pupils fixed on the hereafter;
Or hunts the spiders of tedium, or devours bitter
Mushrooms of solitude.

The owl of illustrious ruins and souls
Tall and desolate!
Cast out from the light I drowned in shadows …
In the dank tower, leaning over myself,
Sometimes I trembled
From the horror of my abyss.

O you who tore me down from that mightiest tower!
Who gently lifted the shadow like a veil,
Who bore me roses in the snow of my soul,
Who bore me flames in the marble of my body,
Who made a whole lake with swans, of my tears …
You who in me are all powerful,
In me you must be God!
From your hands I even seek the good that harms …
I am the shining chalice that you will fill, Lord;
Fallen and stiff like a lily, I am at your feet,
I am more than your own, my God!
Forgive me, forgive me, if I should once sin, dreaming
Of your winged embrace, all mine, in the sun …

The Love Adventures of Radha and Krishna – Indian Miniature Painting

“O Krishna! Ever since she has seen you, she does not want anything else. She does not look at a lotus nor does she want to look at the beautiful moon. Even though by nature she is romantic, she does not want to listen to love stories. The beauty of three worlds do not touch her. If she does not see you, she will die. Please come and meet her!”

(From the Rasikapriya, as translated by Harsha V. Dehejia)

Radha and Krishna in the Grove, opaque watercolour on paper, Pahari, Kangra, ca. 1780

These past few weeks I have really been enjoying these watercolours of divine lovers Radha and Krishna. Their love and devotion are pure and strong, but still there is a certain playfulness and naughtiness in their love and these artworks beautifully illustrate these different moments of love, from sweet tenderness to jealousies, the yearning and the waiting, the love gazes and adoration, all in the beautiful, enchanting, verdant nature settings. All the watercolours in this post belong to the Pahari painting school; it is an umbrella term used for Indian paintings, mostly miniature, that were made in the Himalayan hill kingdoms of North India from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, notably Kangra, Guler, Garhwal and others. The theme of love is an all pervading theme in the world of arts, but in no other art movement, in no other time has the cult of love been cherished to such an extent. Love seems to have been a religion and the very air that everyone was breathing, and this certainly tells us something about the culture and about the times in which these paintings were created, and not only created but also cherished and enjoyed. Vibrant colour, delicacy, sensuality, female beauty, a perfect dose of tenderness and naughtiness; these paintings posses all these elements – in abundance.

Perhaps my favourite out of these artworks is the one above called “Radha and Krishna in the Grove”, painted around the same time that the French Rococo painter Jean-Honore Fragonard was painting his amorous couples, stolen kisses and secret park meetings. Lovers, flirtatios and natural setting; similar motifs in both examples. The presentation of nature in Fragonard’s paintings is beautiful and his vision of love alluring and playful, but nothing can compare to the Beauty of Nature and Beauty of Love in the Kangra paintings on love. In this watercolour Radha and Krishna are shown enjoying their time and one another by a flowing stream of water, sitting on a soft bed of plaintain leaves, hidden by the lush tree tops, delighting in the fragrance of all the flowers. The nature around them is vivacious and alive, as if reflecting the ardours of love between the lovers. Krishna is dressed in his traditional yellow attire while Radha is looking delighful in gold and red. There are pink lotus flowers blooming on the surface of the river, all eager to hear the sweet nothings whispered between the lovers. It is just such an idyllic painting. The nature in all these watercolours absolutely mesmerises me.

Krishna Uses A Ruse To Meet His Beloved, 1781

This is a dream-like moment, but things are not always so sweet and dreamy between Radha and Krishna. In “Krishna Uses a Ruse to Meet His Beloved”, Krishna is seen dressed in an attire of a gopi so that Radha will think he is a gopi and will confide in her about her love woes. I love the gold details in this watercolour, the trees again are stunning but I also I love the little details that help build a story such as the little boat, for example. It makes me imagine that Krishna used that boat to come. Will they leave together on the boat to some far-off shore like the one in the watercolour above, where they can enjoy private moments? The lotus flowers are all-pervading, noisy yet beautiful creatures. Never kiss in front of them – they will tell.

Radha imagines Krishna with other women, from Gita Govinda, attributed to Purkhu, 1820

Krishna flirting with the Gopis, to Radhas sorrow. Kangra Painting, c. 1760

I also really love the watercolours where Radha is telling her friend about Krishna suspected cheating; in the lower right portion of the painting there is Radha confiding in her friend, while in the other parts of the painting there are different, imagined scenes of Krishna seducing other alluring gopis and enjoying himself while Radha is alone. The following watercolour is a proof that these are not mere jealous imagining on Radha’s behalf; there is Krishna is his yellow-like-the-Sun attire seducing with his appearence alone, and then words, all the beautiful and smitten gopis. Yes, yes, Radha is his special one, his one and only, but tell it to her when such a flirtatious scene is going one! Woe is her. But we know that Krishna will come back soon to comfort her, seduce her and assure her of his love and devotion, and she will again be all loving and trusting and sweet. It is the eternal dance of love, played by the sound of Krishna’s flute and Radha’s heartbeats. This is the downfall of being in love with a charmer.

Krishna Spying on Bathing Radha; truly how naughty!?

There are playful moments such as those when Krishna is spying on Radha while she is bathing, or when Krishna is wearing Radha’s clothes and Radha is wearing Krishna’s clothes, as presented in the watercolour bellow, imagine just how entertaining that would have looked like in real life, even in painting it is amusing, and then there are tender moments where Krishna is combing Radha’s hair and she is taking quiet delight in it, smiling contently because she knows that while he may be gazing at other gopis, admiring their beauty or flirtatiously amusing himself with them, that in the end she is the one, the Queen of His Heart:

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don’t need no other lover
…

(The Beatles, Something)

I really must take a moment to appreciate the absolute beauty of nature in all these watercolours! I am drawn to it as the bumblebee is drawn to lavender. I love the attention to details when it comes to the depiction of the landscape. In painting after painting, it is just stunning – a true feast for the eyes, and the heart. Every tree is individualised. Every little leaf, every little pink or red flower is vibrant and alive, oozing its fragrance over the paper and over the centuries that have passed since it was painted. The various shades of green and blue, the layer upon layer of different plants, the little leaves and little blossoms, everything so palpably dreamy and delicate. Truly, the characters of these paintings are not just the figures of Krishna and Radha, but all the trees and flowers and lotuses and birds. One thing I know for sure, a piece of my heart belongs now to these painting, or rather, to the magical land that was depicted and created in them, and it is a land of Love and a “land of fragrance, quietness, and trees, and flowers”, to quote John Keats’s poem “Hyperion”. When I think of some famous western representations of love and lovers in art – how lifeless and bland they seem to my eyes now. Compared to the vibrancy and magic of these Kangra paintings, they seem grey in comparison. The real tenderness, the real passion, the real union of souls; I find it all in these paintings of Krishna and Radha.

Radha with Her Confidant, Pining for Krishna, Folio from the Second or Tehri Garhwal Gita Govinda (Song of the Cowherd), 1775-80

Radha and Krishna Dressed in Each Other’s Clothes India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, c 1800-1825, Opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Krishna Combs Radha’s Hair c. 1820

“Charm of my life! by whose sweet power
All cares are husht, all ills subdued–
My light in even the darkest hour,

My crowd in deepest solitude!”

(Tibullus, To Sulpicia)

Radha and Krishna shelter under a Parasol. Attributed to the Purkhu family workshop, Kangra Miniature, c. 1825

Krishna Charms Radha Forest Glade, An Illustration From ‘Lambagraon’ Gita Govinda Series. Circa 1820. Kangra.

Radha and Krishna take shelter in a tree, Garhwal, 1820-1830

Krishna Adorning Radha’s Hair ca. 1815-20, Unknown Artist (Indian), opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Marc Chagall: Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me”

Marc Chagall, Les Amoureux, 1928

These days I am not merely thinking about Marc Chagall’s artworks – I am living in them, and oh my, what a wonderful place to live in. In particular, I am enjoying gazing at his painting “The Lovers” from 1928. The painting, as suggested in the title, shows two lovers lost in an embrace, floating somehere in the sky, somewhere in the world of their own. The motif of lovers is something that pervades Chagall’s canvases. While the woman is gazing in the distance, the man’s head is leaned on her shoulder, as if seeking comfort. She is looking into the future and he is holding onto her. The crimson colour of the woman’s dress is echoed by the fuchsia coloured background and in the colour of the roses on the right side of the painting. A blue sky with a large full moon and a bird flying by is seen emerging from the bottom right side of the canvas.

Chagall’s lovers don’t live in the real, material, tangible world around us, no, they live in the realm of love, in the soft, feathery, fragrant and sweet clouds of love. Dancing in the sky in the rhythm of each other’s hearts, floating through the night sky like shooting stars. Even when the space around the lovers is real, with its little cottages, wooden fences, cows, goats, fiddlers and mud, this ugly banality is transformed and transcended, it is as if the lovers are completely untouched by it all. It’s like threading over the fresh snow and leaving no footprints. In Chagall’s art the “down to earth” and “dreamy” meet and collide in a perfect way. Chagall is the most tender-hearted man in the world of art and his innocent, imaginative and childlike vision of the world is obvious in his canvases. The figure that always haunts his art is the slender figure of a black haired woman; his beloved wife Bella Rosenfeld.

Marc Chagall, The Promenade, 1917-18

Their early days of love are captured in a series of paintings such as “Birthday”, “Promenade” and “Over the Town”. There is a playful innocence and a pure display of affections in these paintings that chimes with me so well. Chagall takes the phrase “floating in the air” quite literally because in these paintings the lovers are flying indeed; the power of their love is so strong that not even gravity can stop it.”The Promenade” shows Chagall and Bella having a picnic on a meadow outside town but then suddenly Bella is flying in the air like a pink ballon. Chagall is holding her hand but he too will quickly rise into the clouds following his darling. Painting “Over the Town” shows an embracing couple flying above the little houses of the little town which is now too small to contain the vastness of the love that they feel. The houses and the landscape under them both seem faded, as if seen in a dream or in a memory, painted in shades of grey. Only that one house is red, like a crimson red heart pulsating in the rhythm of love.

“Over the Town” is a painting which thematically and aesthetically goes hand in hand with Chagall’s painting “Birthday” painted in 1915; both paintings show lovers magically lifted from the ground by the power of love, the power against which all the mundane things in life suddently seem gray and irrelevant. When I gaze at this paintings, these lovers which all have faces like Chagall and Bella, the lyrics of the Beatles’ song “Something” come to mind;

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don’t need no other lover
Something in her style that shows me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

You’re asking me will my love grow
I don’t know, I don’t know
You stick around, now it may show
I don’t know, I don’t know…“

Marc Chagall, Birthday, 1915

I can imagine Chagall gazing at Bella and musing to himself “something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover, something in the way she woos me…” In the painting “Birthday” it is Chagall who is flying above Bella though she too is about to join him soon. Again we see the everyday transformed into the wonderful; a simple room, Bella in her everyday clothes, yet there is magic, the magic of love which transforms everything. Bella wrote about this feeling which Chagall so beautifully portrays in his paintings: “I suddenly felt as if we were taking off. You too were poised on one leg, as if the little room could no longer contain you. You soar up to the ceiling. Your head turned down to me, and turned mine up to you… We flew over fields of flowers, shuttered houses, roofs, yards, churches.” In most paintings Bella is portrayed as wearing the same clothes she would have been wearing everyday and on the photos which exists of her, and the town we see is their hometown of Vitebsk in Belorus. Both of these elements bring a domestic kind of familiarity which becomes magical and sweet when Chagall portrays it.

Marc Chagall, Over the Town, 1913

The love at first sight between Bella and Chagall started in 1909 when a beautiful daughter of a rich jeweller met the poor and aspiring painter who worked as an apprentice for Leon Bakst and it lasted for thirty five years until Bella, sadly, passed away three months shy of her forty-nineth birthday in 1944. In his autobiography “My Life”, Chagall writes of Bella: “Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me; as if she has always watched over me, somewhere next to me, though I saw her for the very first time. I knew this is she, my wife. Her pale colouring, her eyes. How big and round and black they are! They are my eyes, my soul.”

Bella, although seemingly a quiet, pale and withdrawn girl, was enthusiastic about Chagall as well, and later wrote about being mesmerised by his ethereal pale blue eyes: “When you did catch a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they’d fallen straight out of the sky. They were strange eyes … long, almond-shaped … and each seemed to sail along by itself, like a little boat.“ She also wrote of their first meeting: “I was surprised at his eyes, they were so blue as the sky … I’m lowering my eyes. Nobody is saying anything. We both feel our hearts beating.“

Marc Chagall and Bella in Paris, 1938

Marc Chagall and Bella, c 1920

Chagall’s paintings reflect his way of thinking, he said; “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” These are painting created from the heart, indeed. There is no logic, rationality or coldness about his art. Even when he paints in the Cubist manner, his squares and rectangles are not harsh but somehow still coated in the colour of dreams. Chagall had no interest in Cubism and Impressionist and was of an opinion that art is the “state of the soul.”

Marc Chagall, Lovers in Pink, 1916

Marc Chagall, Grey Lovers, 1917

When I am in love I live not in real world but in Chagall’s paintings. I am flying in the night sky and I am bathed in that gorgeous blueness. I am smiling at the stars and they are smiling back at me. Their golden dust is falling all over my white tulle dress. I am floating above the bridges, forests, meadows, flower fields, little houses with red roofs. I hear the violins, and flute, and the guitar, and I am carried away by that sweet music. I smell the violets, the roses, the lily of the valley; what sweet scents fill this warm summer night. Love is a warm summer night. My heart is overflowing with love and bursting into a thousand ruby red rose petals, and the petals fall and fall like a never-ending waterfall. I am melting into shapes, sounds and colours. I am the lilac, I am the crimson, I am the blue. I am the bird and the star. I am a rose petal carried by the wind, travelling far and far beyond. The coldness, dreariness and bleakness of winter Can.Not.Touch.Me. To live always in this way ahh that would be a life well lived. Is it possible? Is it really possible? Gazing at Chagall’s paintings makes me believe that it indeed is.

Tagore: Only lips know the language of lips, know how to sip each other’s hearts

Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss, 1907

The Kiss

Only lips know the language of lips,
Know how to sip each other’s hearts
The two lovers leave home for goals unknown,
Setting out eagerly on Holy Communion.
Like two waves that crest at love’s pull
Lips at last melt and meld in lovers’ lips,
Viewing each other with deep desire,
Both meet at the body’s frontier.
Love weaves music from such refrains
Love’s tale is told in quivering lips!
From fowers plucked from lips that roam
Garlands surely will be woven at home!
The sweet union of two desiring lips
Climaxes in a red bridal bed of smiles!

(“Chumban,” from Kori O Komal)
Translated by Fakrul Alam)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Paolo and Francesca da Rimini

“Love led us straight to sudden death together.”

(Dante, Inferno, Canto V)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, 1855, watercolour

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an English poet, painter, illustrator, translator and most importantly the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was born on this day in 1828 in London so let us use the opportunity and remember the fascinating and charismatic artist on his birthday. Rossetti had artistic aspirations from an early age and his siblings shared those aspirations as well. His maternal uncle was John William Polidori; the friend of Lord Byron and the author of the short story “The Vampyre” (1819). He died seven years before Rossetti was born, but it shows what kind of family ancestry Rossetti had and why it was perfectly natural for him to aspire to become a poet and an artist. Half-Italian and half-mad, Rossetti idealised and glorified the Italian past, especially the Medieval era and the writings of Dante Alighieri; a hero whom he worshipped. In 1848 he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood along with William Holman Hunt whose painting “The Eve of St. Agnes” Rossetti had seen on an exhibition and loved, and the young prodigy John Everett Millais. Their aim was to paint again like the old masters did; with honesty and convinction, using vibrant colours and abundance of details, and most of all; to paint from the heart.

In 1850, two very important things happened in Rossetti’s life; he met Elizabeth Siddal; a moody and melancholy redhaired damsel who was to become the main object of his adoration in decade to come, his pupil, his lover and muse; and, he focused on painting watercolours. In the 1850s Rossetti’s head wasn’t all in the clouds of love, no half of it was in the rose-tinted clouds of the past, his main artistic inspirations being the Arthurian legends and Dante.

His watercolour “Paolo and Francesca da Rimini” from 1855 is a synthesis of these two inspirations; his love Lizzy Siddal and Dante. The watercolour is a tryptich (read from left to right) in intense, rich colours portraying the tale of doomed lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini who was the wife of his brother. Paolo and Francesca were real-life historical figures, but Rossetti’s inspirations stems from Dante’s Inferno, specifically from the Canto V where Dante and Virgil, portraid in the central panel of the tryptich, enter the part of Hell where the souls of passionate and sinful lovers remain for eternity. The first tryptich shows Paolo and Francesca in a kiss. A secret, guilty, and forbidden kiss and yet Rossetti’s scene only shows a tender and passionate moment between lovers, their hands clasped together, Paolo pulling her closer. Francesca’s long red hair and face resemble the hair and face of Elizabeth Siddal, and the figure of Paolo was based on Rossetti himself. It is as if he knew that his love would be as doomed, though in a different way, just like that of Paolo and Francesca.

The interior is simple and allows the focus to be on the couple and their secret kiss. A plucked rose on the floor, an opened book with glistening illuminations is on Francesca’s lap shows the activity that bonded the pair and made the kiss inevitable, from Dante’s Inferno, Canto V:

Dante asks Francesca:

“But tell me, in that time of your sweet sighing

how, and by what signs, did love allow you

to recognize your dubious desires?”

And she responds:

And she to me: “There is no greater pain

than to remember, in our present grief,

past happiness (as well your teacher knows)!

But if your great desire is to learn

the very root of such a love as ours,

I shall tell you, but in words of flowing tears.

One day we read, to pass the time away,

of Lancelot, how he had fa llen in love;

we were alone, innocent of suspicion.

Time and again our eyes were brought together

by the book we read; our fa ces flushed and paled.

To the moment of one line alone we yielded:

it was when we read about those longed-for lips

now being kissed by such a famous lover,

that this one (who shall never leave my side)

then kissed my mouth, and trembled as he did.“

When I gaze at this left panel of the tryptich, a lyric from Bruce Springsteen’s song “The River” comes more and more to my mind, I wonder does the memory of the kiss come back to haunt Paolo and Francesca in hell:

“Pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse
That sends me down to the river
Though I know the river is dry…”

“When finally I spoke, I sighed, “Alas,

what sweet thoughts, and oh, how much desiring

brought these two down into this agony.”

(Dante, Inferno, Canto V)

The central part of the tryptich, as I’ve said, shows Dante and Virgil. The third or the right wing of the tryptich shows the afterlife of the doomed lovers in Hell. Just like the sould of other unfortunate and lustful lovers, Paolo and Francesca are shown being carried by the wind of passion that swept them away in their living life on earth too, in each other’s arms for eternity. Are they being mercilessly carried by the wind, or have they overpowerd it and are riding it blissfully? All around them flames of hell dance like shooting stars. Quite romantic actually, I don’t see where the punishment part comes myself. Still, there is a message and the tale of doomed lovers in hell shows how a single moment and a single step is enough to commit a sin; the kiss was the act of weakness and passion. That single moment of weakness endangered forever their possibility of eternal glory.

Unlike other artists before him who have portrayed the story of Paolo and Francesca, Rossetti convinently avoids portraying the bloody and gruesome moment when the lovers are caught by Paolo’s brother Gianciotto who is also Francesca’s husband and murders them both. I really like that Rossetti painted a tryptich whose theme isn’t religious but profane, though some, like John Keats – another Rossetti’s hero – argue that love is sacred. After all, a tryptich is just an artwork divided into three panels, telling a story, kind of like a modern comic book so there is really no need for it to be restricted to religious topics. We can view this watercolour then as a Tryptich of the Religion of Love. And to end, here is a quote from Keats’ letter to Fanny Brawne, from 13 October 1819:

“I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you.”