Thursday, December 01, 2016

Painting Memories for Paint Monthly

Childhood Memories

I was thinking the other day about paintings (or rather prints or copies of them) that I remember from my childhood and early years.


One of my earliest memories is of a copy of The Laughing Cavalier by Franz Hals which used to hang over a fireplace in one of the classrooms at the village school I attended.  There were three classrooms in the school.  Baby class was where we had our nature table and did dance and mime from children's radio programmes, there was also a sandpit and Wendy house in this room. Middle class was the largest and was in the main hall of the school, warmed by a huge boiler, it had the alphabet and times tables around the walls under the large windows, the dining tables were in here too and the stage was always fixed at one end of the hall for plays and concerts and also where we learned to play music on tambourines, bells, cymbals and castanets.  The top class was in a room on the back of the school near the kitchens.  This was where we used nib pens and inkwells, learned what we called 'real writing' and studied for the 11 plus.  I was 10 and three quarters when I took the eleven plus, passed and went to Grammar School, I was like a fish out of water there as I was a lot younger than the other pupils, that is another story but my abiding memory is of The Laughing Cavalier looking down on us as we struggled with inky fingers to write in a cursive, joined up writing, whatever the teacher had written on the board.

The original of this painting can be seen in The Wallace Collection


When I was six years old we moved from the large Midlands city of Leicester where I was born, to a small village in North East Derbyshire.  I remember a painting which used to be on the wall at the top of the stairs in our new home.  After my father died my Mum had married again (an old teenage sweetheart) and we moved to his home.   The painting, well copy or print of a painting, was The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais.  Over the years it faded but I remember it always there when I went up to bed on cold winter nights, reluctant to leave the roaring coal fire downstairs, clutching a hot water bottle.  The arm in the painting almost pointing the way to my little bedroom where it took ages to get warm and where sometimes, in the depths of winter,  I woke to frost on the inside of the windows.

The original of this painting can be seen in the Tate Gallery.

  

A few years later my mother wanted new carpet and a new sofa for what we called the front room.  This was a room we rarely used until we put a television in there.  There was a piano in this room and I was sent with my friend Wendy for piano lessons given by a music teacher who lived down in the centre of the village opposite the parish church.  When Mum got her new carpet and sofa the room had been decorated too and she bought a print of a painting she'd always liked for the back wall behind the sofa, it was The Haywain by John Constable.  This was another painting which became so familiar to me.  Many years later I did an 'A' level evening class in Art History at the Art College in the nearby town where I worked.  One of the questions in the exam just happened to be about Constable's paintings of The Haywain and Flatford Mill.

The original of this painting can be seen in the National Gallery


Of course non of the above paintings would be chosen as my favourite paintings but I do have an affection for them as they hold so many memories.   Joining in with Barbara at Coastal Ripples for Paint Monthly


19 comments:

  1. Oh what a lovely post Rosie. The Laughing Cavalier makes me think of my childhood too. We used to have a set of table mats and he was on one of them. I'm sure if I think hard there would be several more paintings like that from my childhood. Thanks for linking this month. B xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You've just reminded me that we used to have placemats with a Canaletto Venice scene on them:)

      Delete
  2. A really lovely and original post Rosie. It never ceases to amaze me how the sight of something like a painting, or the sight of a flower or a whiff of a scent can bring back childhood memories. Whenever I smell fresh tomatoes on a plant I remember my grandfather's greenhouse and the food he grew in there :) A print of that first painting adorned one of the corridors in my old grammar school and glad to see someone else remembers frost on the inside of the bedroom windows - I loved the "flowers" they formed! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When I see Hollyhocks I always think of my grandma's house and remember staying with her and sleeping tucked up on a mattrass in a corner on the floor of her bedroom where she had a washstand with a flowery patterned jug and baisin. The patterns in the frosty windows were wonderful weren't they? Just like the leaf patterns you get in coal fossils:)

      Delete
  3. Good three, I've always liked Frans Hal and the Laughing Cavaleir is a particular favorite. Mac painted a copy of him for our daughter a few years ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He is a jolly character isn't he? I've no idea why he should have been in our little school though, perhpas left behind by a former teacher?:)

      Delete
  4. Wonderful to look at the paintings and read your thoughts on them. A very interesting perspective for this post!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Amy, glad you enjoyed the post:)

      Delete
  5. What wonderful memories, I can see why you would be attached to these paintings.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, funny how certain images can invoke so many memories:)

      Delete
  6. What a great post. I really liked the way you've linked the paintings to your special memories, great idea. x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Karen I'm glad you liked the post, I was wondering what to do for Paint Monthy when it all fell into place:)

      Delete
  7. Isn't it funny how paintings evoke different memories! When I was a child, at the top of our landing was a huge beach painting that my dad did of a Spanish holiday resort. Do you remember the print of the crying boy that people used to have that was said to be unlucky? I really enjoyed this post Rosie. It has taken me back to remembering paintings that have been a part of my life. x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you enjoyed the post, Simone. I don't remember The Crying Boy print, I do remember an oriental lady who used to be on so many people's walls in the 60s and 70s also Holly Hobby. I remember the Bubbles boy by John Everett Millais used for Pears Soap ads and I'm sure we had him on a biscuit tin at some point:)

      Delete
  8. I'd be hard pushed to remember any paintings from my childhood except for those ones of the children with the big eyes and the green lady of course. And there was one by Mabel Lucy Atwell in the bathroom with a rhyme which went 'Please remember, don't forget, never leave the bathroom wet'- fancy me remembering that after so many years :) Hardly great art is it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, yes I remember the green lady, I'd forgotten her skin seemed green, I remember her as Chinese or Japanese perhaps, on so many walls of homes we used to visit then. My Mum had a Holly Hobby plate and print on the wall of the hallway near the back door also one of those big eyed moppet prints. I do remember Helen Allingham's rural scenes of cottages on biscuit tins:)

      Delete
    2. I have one of those Helen allingham scenes on a toffee tin of my grandma's which I now use as a sewing box.

      Delete
  9. What nice memories - the first reminded me of my school days, when we also had a wendy house in our classroom. The only surviving photo of that time is one of me playing in the wendy house with a friend called Susan. I don't remember what pictures hung on the walls though. Marie x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think I remember the Laughing Cavalier on the wall because our desks were in rows opposite the fireplace over which he hung, next to the blackboard and teachers desk so we used to sit looking at it most of the day, we should have been looking at the blackboard I suppose:)

      Delete