Paint Monthly

Sydney Parkinson (1745 -1771) was a botanical artist and draughtsman who was employed by Joseph Banks to accompany him on the first voyage of Captain James Cook to Australia and South Seas on HMS Endeavour.

Sydney Parkinson, self portrait

He was born in Edinburgh in 1745 to a Quaker family and was originally a woollen draper.  He studied drawing especially the drawing of plants and flowers.  On moving to London he was discovered by a young Joseph Banks and employed by him to draw plants at Kew botanical gardens.

Bread Fruit Plant and Fruit.  Watercolour by Sydney Parkinson 1769

In 1768 he was hired by Joseph Banks to accompany him and topographical draughtsman Alexander Buchan, who died in Tahiti during the voyage.  Parkinson took on some of his work painting plant specimens on board ship often in the most difficult and trying conditions.  

Barringtonia Calyptrata by Sydney Parkinson, completed by F C Nodder

Poor Sydney never made it home from this voyage as he contracted dysentery and died at Cape Town on the return journey on 26th January 1771.  He was buried at sea.

Illustrations for Banks's Florilegium of Banksia serrata the one on the left is a watercolour based on Sydney Parkinson's sketch and completed by J F Miller under Banks's instructions.

 I've written about Sydney Parkinson because I found the catalogue above on the book shelves (whilst looking for something else, as you do) and then I remembered visiting the exhibition at the Natural History Museum in 1988 where I bought the book and several postcards.  I'd gone with a colleague from a Museum where I used to work when we were researching for an exhibition we were putting together about local adventurer and seaman Matthew Flinders.

Joining in with Barbara at Coastal Ripples for Paint Monthly follow the - link - to see other bloggers who are participating this month.

Paint Monthly - Mary Ellen Best

I was looking through my postcard album recently for something else but came across two postcards I bought from an exhibition I visited in York with a couple of work colleagues.  It must have been more than twenty five years ago now and I don't remember exactly when but it was an exhibition at the York Art Gallery of the works of Mary Ellen Best.

Mary Ellen Best was born in York in 1809, the daughter of a doctor her family lived on Little Blake Street which is close to York Minster.  The family later moved to France but returned to York after her father's death in 1817.  She attended boarding school where she was tutored in art by George Haugh.  Most middle class women of the time were tutored in painting and drawing but Mary achieved success as an artist both in her home town and further afield.

Her most prolific painting was done between the years of 1830 to 1839.  She exhibited in York, London, Leeds and Newcastle and was awarded a silver medal from the London Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacture commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts) for the best original painting in oil or watercolour

by persons under the age of twenty one.

She mostly painted interiors and domestic scenes in her own home and the houses of others. The painting above shows  Mary Ellen herself at her work desk in her home in Castlegate, York.  She was also much in demand, mostly by women, for portraits.  It is thought that she painted around 1,500 paintings in total. In 1840 she married Johann Anton Philip Sarg and moved to Germany.  Her painting career seemed to end in about 1851 when Mary inherited quite a lot of money but it is not really known why she did give up painting.

I remember being fascinated with the detail in the paintings.  The way furniture was laid out, the colours, the fabrics and wall coverings. 

Mary Ellen Best died in Darmstadt in Germany in 1891.

Here is a - link - to more of her paintings.

Linking with Barbara at Coastal Ripples for Paint Monthly

follow the link to find more posts.

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

Paint Monthly - Gwen John An Interior Life

Today I'm joining in with Barbara at Coastal Ripples for her - Paint Monthly - link up.

I think I've written posts before about my favourite artist and my favourite painting which used to reside, and I think still does,  in the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield.  I often used to pop in and look at it when we lived closer.  

 

The painting is entitled A Corner of the Artist's Room in Paris and is one of several painted between 1907 and 1909.  It was painted by one of my favourite artists Gwen John (1876 - 1939).  

Above a self portrait of 1900 which is in the National Portrait Gallery.

Gwen John was a Welsh artist born in Haverfordwest and her family later lived in Tenby.  She studied at the Slade School of Art and lived in Bloomsbury and then for most of the rest of her life in France where she became a bit of a recluse after her ten year liaison with the sculptor August Rodin. She was the complete opposite in temperament to her rather more flamboyant and gregarious brother the artist Augustus John. 

  I was lucky to be able to visit an exhibition of most of her work, entitled An Interior Life, at the Barbican in London in 1985 and I still have the catalogue I bought as a souvenir on my book shelves and several post cards of her work too from various galleries.  Below are some more of Gwen John's other paintings  that are particular favourites

The Cat c. 1905. Of course, I love all her drawings and paintings of cats.

The Japanese Doll 1920s

The Teapot 1915

Dorelia in Black Dress 1903/4  

Girl with Cat 1910 to 1920

A Nun and two girls in church 1920s

 Petit Profil 1920s

All photos taken from the catalogue except the self portrait which I have as a postcard.
  I have read one or two biographies of both Gwen and her brother Augustus and find them both fascinating.

Here is more about - Gwen John.

A Brief Flowering

For the first time I'm joining in with Barbara at Coastal Ripples for her Paint Monthly  link up.

On a recent short break in Wales we visited one of our favourite places Llanbedrog which is on the Llyn Peninsular near Pwllheli.  We never tire of visiting this place and walking along the beach past the brightly coloured beach huts and I know I've taken you there in many posts over the last few years.  

Another highlight of any visit to Llanbedrog is to visit the wonderful Oriel Plas Glyn y Weddw and we've seen some wonderful exhibitions there over the years. 

 It is a beautiful place which also has an open air theatre over looking the sea and gently inclining walks up to the cliff tops and coastal walks from the grounds of the art gallery.

This year we were lucky to see three of the gallery's Spring exhibitions and I enjoyed all three but one, 'A Brief Flowering,' stood out for me and there is a rather interesting story about the artist, John Cyrlas Williams, to go with it.

Of course I couldn't take photographs so I've put in some links to other sites where you can see some of Williams's paintings most of which were on display at the gallery.

 John Cyrlas Williams was described by his patron Winifred Coombe-Tennant as 'the real thing' and he was thought of as being amongst the most talented of the Welsh painters of his generation but until recently he and his work were almost forgotten.

 John Cyrlas Williams was born in the USA, the son of a Welsh miner who had joined a Welsh mining community there.  The family moved back to Wales just before WWI and set up home in Porthcawl.  He studied at the Newlyn School under Stanhope Forbes and then the Colarossi Atelier in Paris as well as working at Port Aven in Brittany and Martigues in the south of France.  He was at the height of his powers in the 1920s but only a few years later his painting career was over deeply affected by his depressive nature and alcoholism.  He spent the rest of his life as a civil service clerk and died aged 63 in 1965.

In 2009 a collection of about a hundred of his paintings were found in the attic of the old family home and if they hadn't been spotted by a curious auctioneer they would have ended up on a bonfire when the house was cleared.  A friend of the curator of the exhibition alerted him to the sale of the paintings which have been brought together for this wonderful exhibition.

The paintings in this exhibition which I found most fascinating were two works which depicted the art classes and studios at the Newlyn School.

Here are some links to more about the artist.

Plas Glyn y Weddw page

BBC Wales page

 Welsh Country Magazine