Grantchester Artists Show: I bought art!

On Friday, I went to the Grantchester Artists Show in the Grantchester Village Hall.  And I bought two paintings!

There was live music (a good-mood-spreading electric jazz'n'rock guitarist), champagne and art.  And lots and lots of people.

Detail from Katherine Firth's Garlic & Onions, oil on board

Tess Recordon's painting Winter  (oil) and
Penelope Hayes' 2gether (ceramic)

Most exciting of all, I found two paintings that I loved and I bought them!

Alan Coulson, From Chanctonbury Ring

This is Alan Coulson's acrylic painting From Chanctonbury Ring.  That red dot is mine!  This is a very small and very atmospheric, totally lovely and mysterious sun-and-shade-drenched landscape.

Vera Rosenberry, Osprey and Chair

This is Vera Rosenberry's watercolour painting Osprey and Chair.  The red dot is also mine!  There is a quirky predator bird, an enigmatic shadow, magical perspective, a chair painted in loving detail, a circular moon that draws the shadows rather than casts them, and an overall wonderful dream-making atmosphere. 

My paintings in situ!  You can see their respective sizes. :-)

I am so excited about my two purchases.  I pick them up later today.  There is nothing quite like the rush from art buying, an economic transaction like no other as it also involves the soul and the heart.

Detail from Vera Rosenberry's Chough and Chair
(a chough, pronounced 'chuff', is a bird from the crow family)
Don't you love this chough's expression?

I loved this local show because it enabled me to buy art I could afford from artists who were actually there.  I had a lovely chat with Vera Rosenberry who studied art in Boston and lives in Cambridge; she is also an illustrator and member of the Cambridge Drawing Society:  Vera Rosenberry.  I just missed Alan Coulson but found out that he is a retired molecular biologist who loves painting (not to be confused with the London-based portrait artist Alan Coulson):  Alan Coulson, the scientist.

Unfortunately, I'm posting this a little late for my readers to rush out and visit but I absolutely recommend a visit to the next Grantchester Artists Show.

Shall I post pictures of what these paintings look like on my walls?

Surprise! A mosaic in a hospital.

There's a mosaic in Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.  

Yes, in a hospital.  You can find art in a hospital.  In fact, there is lots of art Addenbrooke's, and I think it's such a lovely idea to enhance the environment for patients, visitors and workers.

Also, it's a really nice mosaic.

It's all about people reading.  And disporting themselves in nature.

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I do like the way shadows look in a mosaic.

How the tiles follow the shape of the objects:  a 'knit' shape for the socks; a 'stripey' shape for the towel; a 'columnar' shape for neck and arms.  And higgledy-piggledy colour riot for the meadow.

 I love the way the black-and-white geometry of the newspaper contrasts with the floral blue-and-white tiles of the other reader's frock.

 

Hello, watering can, with the not-grey shadow effects.

A sweet touch, this black-and-white "poster" in a 1950s skinny-line curlicue style.

The artist is Jim Anderson.  He's made a number of museums and has helpfully included his website on his signature tile.  I warn you, though: the site's really out-of-date.

Let that be a warning to all artists who think it might be a good idea to include online info within their work...

Read more about art at Addenbrooke's (it's a charitable trust).

Madingley Hall 3: The Turret

Remember my visit to Madingley Hall?  And my subsequent wanderings about the Gardens?  This is the third and final part of my mini-series on Madingley Hall, and it's about:

The Hunting Murals in the Turret

Above, you see the east façade of Madingley Hall.  See the turret in the left corner?  That's where the murals are, right at the top, up an old winding staircase.



The murals were painted in the late 16th / early 17th century, by a local Cambridge artist.  This one shows a Bear Baiting.

Yes, there were bears.  In Cambridge.

The owners of Madingley Hall kept bears in their grounds for sport.



This black bear is being attacked by three dogs.  The huntsman to the left does not look too happy.  You've got to love his nifty hat.



"Help!  Bear attack!"  (Not words you hear much these days in Cambridgeshire...)



Another mural shows a wild boar.  It seems to be mauling some sort of creature (can you tell what that is?).  Just look at that fierce expression.

This is a great bit of art to look at with children!



A less violent scene:  huntsmen, horses, hounds -- and are those two birds falcons?



This bird reminds me of the bird I saw inside the Hall, on the 17th-century tapestry.






Good-bye, Madingley Hall and Gardens!  I'll be back again for sure!



Have you been to Madingley?  What did you think?  Perhaps some of you have done courses for, with the University of Cambridge's Institute for Continuing Education?

Let me know in comments!

Part 1:  Madingley House (and its paintings)
Part 2:  Madingley Gardens (and its sculptures)



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Audubon's Birds of America in the Cambridge University Library

Twenty of us gathered round five tables pushed together at the University Library.  On the tables:  two volumes of John James Audubon's Birds of America, published between 1827 and 1838.

These books are extremely rare (only 200 or so copies exist), extremely fragile (ordinary readers cannot usually ask to see them), and extremely huge.  It takes two assistants to turn the pages, and each time they do so, the paper crackles.  The size is called 'double elephant folio' -- a very unusual and very expensive format.

Ed Potten, Head of Rare Books at the Cambridge University Library, gave a brilliant talk on the books.  Here's what I learned:

The Birds of America contains 435 plates in total.  Each plate is based on a watercolour painting by Audubon.  The watercolours were initially engraved onto copper plates by the renowned Edinborough firm of W.H. Lizars.  But most of the watercolours were transferred to print by the London printers R. Havell & Son who used the newly rediscovered aquatint process.  The 13-year-old John Mason painted 50 of the background scenes.

Ed Potton reads out information about Audubon.  The volume is opened to the turkey page:  the bird is life size!

At bottom right, it reads 'Engraved by W.H. Lizars Edin'

Each plate is hand-coloured with watercolour.  This means that all the copies differ slightly from each other.

Ed Potten opened an earlier book for us to show us how Audubon revolutionised wildlife illustration.  This Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (1771) shows static birds:

From the 1771 Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (Natural History of Birds)

By contrast, Audubon's illustrations are action-packed.  Here a rattlesnake attacks a mockingbirds' nest.  He has turned 'scientific' imagery into an exciting story.

Critics complained that such scenes were not realistic.  How would a rattlesnake manage to climb up so high?

But it's a bit like the dinosaur art at the Sedgwick Museum:  ultimately, we don't care that it's not realistic.  We want drama and beauty in our art.

It's odd that Audubon's plates are so dynamic -- considering that he did them from dead birds.  Audubon collected his specimens by going out and shooting them.  It wasn't unusual for him to come home with 50 dead birds in a day.

He then dissected and stuffed the birds.  His studio was crammed full of these stuffed birds.  One visitor noted that Audubon's house smelled of "dead meat".

Audubon's watercolours still exist:  the New York Historical Society owns them.  The copper plates, though, were destroyed in a fire.  The Birds of America was a publishing sensation, and the smaller version of it a bestseller.

What a privilege to have seen these lavish, rare (and completely insane) objects of material beauty.  Thank you, Cambridge Festival of Science!

More information:
The Birds of America page at Wikipedia
The Birds of America page at the National History Museum (London)


More at this blog:
Arty events at the Science Festival 


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