Painting the Armada at the House of Lords

by Kathryn Hadley,

A press reception was organised this morning at the House of Lords to mark the completion of a project begun in January 2008 to recreate six paintings of the Armada tapestries, which were destroyed in the fire at the Palace of Westminster almost 200 years ago. The tapestries were originally commissioned to record one of the greatest episodes of British history; but the story of the tapestries themselves is equally great, and fascinating.

It begins 418 years ago, in 1592, when Lord Howard of Effingham, who had served as Lord High Admiral at the time of the Spanish Armada, commissioned the Dutch naval artist and first seascape painter, Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (1566-1640) to create a series of ten tapestries to commemorate the British victory. The tapestries were woven in Brussels by Francis Spieringx. They cost £1,582, the equivalent of 87 years wages for a workman in 1590. They are believed to have measured 14 feet in height and between 17 and 28 feet in width and were interwoven with gold and silver thread. When they were completed, in 1595, they initially hung in Lord Howard’s Chelsea manor. They were then moved, in 1616, to his new London residence, Arundel House, before being sold to King James I for £1,628.

In the early 1650s, the tapestries were transferred to the Royal Palace of Westminster, where they hung in the then House of Lords Chamber, known as the Parliament Chamber. In 1801, when the Peers moved to the Court of Requests, a larger chamber which suited the need for increased seating after the Act of Union with Ireland, the tapestries followed suit. They hung in the Court of Requests until the fire on October 16th, 1834, in which all ten tapestries perished.

The significance and influence of the tapestries had been considerable. They were mentioned in debate on several occasions and were used as propaganda. In 1798, for example, when concern over a possible French invasion was being debated, they were used to arouse patriotic popular support against the French forces. The artist James Gillray was commissioned to produce images that ‘might rouse all the People to an active Union against that invasion’. In a series of satirical prints entitled Consequences of a successful French Invasion, he depicted a French Admiral ordering his men to destroy the tapestries in the Lords Debating Chamber.

House of Lords Researcher, Julian Dee, whose research formed the basis of the proposal for the recreation of the tapestries, underlined the changing historical significance of the tapestries:

‘These recreated images will tell us something about every generation that has
risen since Elizabethan times. James I displayed them in the Banqueting
Hall to receive the Spanish Ambassador. It has been suggested that in so doing
perhaps he could pursue dialogue with Spain without the appearance of
weakness. By contrast, his son Charles I folded these martial images away
for much of his reign. Cromwell's men had "The Story of '88" displayed in
Parliament so that generations of peers - most notably the Earl of Chatham -
would evoke the memory of the heroes commemorated in the tapestry
borders. When it was said that Napoleon wanted to put the Bayeux Tapestries
on a pre-invasion tour of France, it was suggested the same be done in Britain
for the Armada ones.’

Seven years after the fire, in 1841, during the construction of the New Palace of Westminster, a Fine Arts Commission chaired by Prince Albert was established in order to oversee the production of artwork for the interior of the palace. It was decided that the Prince’s Chamber would be illustrated with subjects from Tudor history and a space was designed to hang six paintings of the original Armada tapestries. The paintings were to be based on a series of engravings of the tapestries created in the 1730s by the artist John Pine. Pine’s engravings were the only surviving record of the tapestries.

However, when Prince Albert died, in 1861, only one of the paintings had been completed. It was not until 1907, that it was proposed, once again, to recreate the Armada tapestries. But once again, the Armada Tapestry proposal failed to be realised. One hundred years later, in 2007, it was proposed, for the third time, that a generous donation by Mark Pigott OBE should be used to recreate in painted format the 16th-century Armada tapestries. Anthony Oakshett, the lead artist on the project, began his work to recreate the tapestries the following year, using Pine’s 18th-century engravings and the only completed painting in the series The English Fleet pursuing the Spanish Fleet against Fowey as his key historical sources.

The result is spectacular. On Monday, June 21st, members of the public will be able to see the paintings on a tour of parliament for the first time. In the autumn, they will be permanently moved to the Prince’s Chamber where they were originally designed to be hung. Try to spot Anthony Oakshett’s depiction of Mark Pigott as a 16th-century nobleman on horseback in the right-hand corner of the last painting in the series!

Images (Palace of Westminster Collection):

- Richard Burchett, The English fleet pursuing the Spanish fleet against Fowey

- James Gillray, Consequences of a successful French Invasion

- Anthony Oakshett, Drake takes De Valdes's galleon; the Lord Admiral pursues the enemy

First Impressions: Rude Britannia

Charlotte Crow and Sheila Corr, deputy and picture editors at History Today, give their first impressions of Tate Britain's latest exhibition.

Charlotte Crow:

Is there such thing as a British sense of humour? The TV show Britain’s Got Talent has addressed that question in more ways than one. If you have giggled at the contradiction between that programme’s title and anything you might have seen of its content, you will be both amused and impressed by 'Rude Britannia'. Tate Britain’s dynamic celebration of British comic art spans the 17th-century to the present and explores the serious interface between humour and issues of identity (and much else besides) with a fitting lightness of touch.

An inspired move is the involvement of guest curators Gerald Scarfe, Harry Hill, Steve Bell and Viz Magazine who bring celebrity to proceedings (in a good way), as well as their own distinct artistic contributions. For example, in a room devoted to social satire, dominated by an enormous three-dimensional Viz Magazine, that comic’s love-to-hate character Roger Mellie ‘The Man on the Telly’ appears in a parallel storyboard offering facetious commentary to each scene in Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress. To enter a Sitting Room, where visitors can sit comfortably to peruse cartoon and comic books at close quarters, you must go through the bandy legs of a giant William Pitt, Gerald Scarfe’s take on James Gillray’s The Giant Factotum Amusing Himself (1797).

What this exhibition achieves most successfully, in galleries which explore themes ranging from politics, to social satire, the grotesque, the bawdy and the absurd, is the juxtaposition of historic works with contemporary material so that both can be viewed in fresh ways. Hopefully this imaginative presentation will awaken a new generation to the roots of one of Britain’s genuine talents: the art of irreverence.

Sheila Corr:

Vibrant, witty, colourful and often, as it claims, extraordinarily rude, this exhibition celebrates the role of humour in British visual culture from the 17th century to the present day. What a joy to see a major gallery devote space to this subject which allows for the use of plenty of three-dimensional objects and other large pieces such as Cruikshank’s Worship of Bacchus.

Tate curators have been ably assisted by guest contributors who offer their own unique insights into the exhibits. While this is undoubtedly a refreshing view, explanatory captions could provide some helpful historical background, especially in the 'Politics' section where a person’s ‘tab of identity’ (as Low apparently called it) has to carry the whole story behind some of Gillray’s most vitriolic outbursts.

Most of the historical threads are familiar to me, from broadsides of Cromwell through the work of Hogarth and Patch, and the technological advances in printing which took caricature from the popular Macaronis to the mass market in Punch and comic publications of today. But I was also delighted to discover unknown work such as John Collier’s painting The Hypocrite and the mid-19th-century publication The Penny Satirist.

Self evidently though, the loud and vulgar will draw in the greatest crowds and, while surprised yet again with the explicit nature of the earliest examples in 'The Bawdy' section, I was most amused by the time-warp caption labels for McGill’s saucy seaside postcards of the 1950s stating ‘Original postcard attached to Director of Public Prosecution’s index card’.

Images:

- James Gillray, The Giant Factotum Amusing Himself (1797)

- Shaun Doyle, and Mally Mallinson, Death to the Fascist Fruit Boys (2010)

- Anonymous, Napoleon chamber pot, early 19th century

First Impressions: Exposed

By Sheila Corr,

‘Snapshot’ started as a term used in firing a gun, which reminds us, together with other familiar photographic terms such as ‘capture’ and ‘taking a shot’, that not all subjects have offered themselves willingly to the camera. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera opens today, May 28th, at Tate Modern. The museum's fifth exhibition devoted to photography analyses and reflects on this hunt for prey, and explores the nature of intrusion throughout the history of photography, and the viewer’s complicity in the intrusion. Is it acceptable to invade someone’s privacy in this way and if so, when and why? If you look at the results of that invasion, are you too crossing the line?

Contemporary photography is at the centre of 'Exposed', but illuminated by earlier, and often more familiar work. The opening room sets the scene where Walker Evans’ surreptitious close-ups of passengers on the New York subway (taken with the simplest of cameras in the 1930s) are paired with Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Heads of unaware New Yorkers. The photographic technology of 2000 is certainly much more advanced, but the result is strikingly similar.

The exhibition is divided into five thematic sections: The Unseen Photographer, Celebrity & the Public Gaze, Voyeurism & Desire, Witnessing Violence, and Surveillance. The first of these includes pioneering work by Lewis Hine, which drew attention to the exploitation of child labour in American mines and factories, and Paul Martin’s Victorian London street scenes. They show ordinary people going about their daily life observed by an invisible but highly skilled photographer who often went to elaborate lengths to conceal himself and his camera, in order to catch what Cartier-Bresson (well represented here) called ‘the decisive moment’, the exact second when all the elements needed to create a perfect composition are in place.

The Countess of Castiglione was the first celebrity to manipulate her own image back in the 1860s when she enacted bizarre personal fantasies for the camera. These days, however, fame generally entails relentless pursuit by the paparazzi and even in 1889, the artist Degas was ‘caught’ leaving a pissoir. Less surprising in this section are shots of Garbo trying to shield herself from the public gaze, or Eliabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ‘papped’ by Marcello Geppetti embracing as they sunbathe. Alison Jackson’s ersatz representations of lookalikes posed as the rich and famous in compromising situations, such as Jack Nicholson in road rage, raise questions of the viewer’s role by highlighting the humour.

The later rooms, starting with ‘Voyeurism & Desire’, move into more uncomfortable territory. Brassai’s shots of a seedy thirties Paris are familiar scenes of low life, as are Helmut Newton’s take on the world of fashion, but more dominant here are the reflections of women photographers who turn their critical gaze back on the peeping toms watching strippers and visiting brothels. ‘Witnessing Violence’ takes this questioning further: ‘Does photography allow us to bear witness to a victim’s suffering, or does it anaesthetize us to the horror?’ The horror is dead bodies (Weegee’s New York features strongly), suicides, assassinations, executions and concentration camp atrocities, dating back to the earliest 19th century photographs of conflict by Alexander Gardner and Felice Beato. The answer is ambivalent as war photographers frequently testify.

The intimacy of the photographer’s relationship with his/her subject disappears in the exhibition’s last section ‘Surveillance’, which opens into a much wider, more open exhibition space thus emphasizing that distance. Some of these are random shots taken at a fixed spot by CCTV, intended to record and sometimes incriminate. They often involve no artistic ‘eye’, but are nevertheless an interesting development in the technology and purpose of photography.

Although I like the early aerial views and love Simon Norfolk’s web of wires on Ascension Island, I was less engaged by the detailed recording of the minutiae of time and place while recognising it as an unavoidable conclusion to an exhibition about surreptitious camerawork. These days cameras are turned on us from all sides pretty much wherever we go, leaving our right to privacy an arguable concept. Well and truly exposed.

Image:
Walker Evans, Street Scene, New York, 1928
Gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
©Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera
Until October 3rd
Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Telephone: 020 7887 8888
http://www.tate.org.uk/

First Impressions: The Real Van Gogh

by Kathryn Hadley

‘The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters’ opened this weekend at the Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition focuses on Van Gogh’s correspondence to provide an insight into his ideas about art, nature and literature and the way he defined himself as an artist and human being. It features over 35 original letters, on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and around 65 paintings and 30 drawings that express the principal themes found in the correspondence. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) wrote mostly to his younger brother Theo (1857-1891), who was an art-dealer and supported Vincent both emotionally and financially throughout his life and career. Other letters are addressed to his sister Willemien and to fellow artists, including the Dutch painter Anthon van Rappard and Paul Gauguin. Many are illustrated with small detailed sketches which Van Gogh used to show a work in progress. The first major Van Gogh exhibition in London for over 40 years, ‘The Real Van Gogh’ provides a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a misunderstood and misrepresented artist. The diversity and versatility of his works is striking; the breadth of his talent, which was only recognised after his death, is stunning.

Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert in the southern Netherlands in 1853. His father Theodorus van Gogh was a Protestant pastor of the Dutch reformed Church. Vincent began work, in 1869, for Goupie & Cie a firm of art-dealers in The Hague. He was thereafter transferred to London and then to Paris. His employment was, however, terminated in 1876 and the following year he travelled to Amsterdam to study theology. In 1879, he began working as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium. Van Gogh’s career as an artist did not begin until 1880, when he was 27. During his relatively short ten-year artistic career he produced, nonetheless, over 800 paintings and 1,200 drawings. In the last 70 days of his life, he completed more than 70 works. On July 27th, 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later.

Van Gogh is most famous for his colourful depictions of still lives and landscapes using rhythmic and swinging brush strokes; however, the majority of his paintings were in black and white. He only used colour during the last four years of his career after he moved to Paris in February 1886. The first section of the exhibition is devoted to Van Gogh’s Dutch landscapes, which he painted, at the beginning of his career, in black and white and shades of brown. For Van Gogh one of the key duties of an artist was to study and depict nature. He wrote in a letter to Theo in July 1882: ‘the duty of the painter is to study nature in depth and to use all his intelligence, to put his feelings into his work so that it becomes comprehensible to others’.

Van Gogh’s art was rooted in nature, and he returned to nature during the last years of his career, with his depictions of the seasons and landscapes of Provence that are most typically associated with him. From Dutch landscapes, however, he moved on to depict figures and the farm labourers and local weavers of the rural community of Nuenen, where he lived between 1883 and 1885. Once again, the majority of his works were in black and white and, following criticism of his multi-figure composition The Potato Eaters (1885), he worked almost exclusively on a series of black chalk drawings of labourers during the summer of 1885.

Van Gogh became a colourist when he moved to Paris in February 1886. Based on his studies of Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) and Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886), he developed a theory of contrasting complementary colours (red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet), which he perfected in a series of flower and fruit still lives. In the summer of 1887, he produced Two Cut Sunflowers, one of his earliest depictions of sunflowers. Van Gogh’s paintings became even more colourful when he moved to Arles in Provence two years later. He worked on a series of canvases based on complementary colours and increasingly came to view colour as a means to convey feeling and visual energy rather than reality.

A second secret and often underestimated facet of Van Gogh’s work is the influence of Japanese art. Van Gogh’s fascination with Japanese woodblock prints also developed following his move to Paris, where japonisme, the taste for all things Japanese, was very fashionable at the end of the 19th century. Vincent and his brother began a collection of Japanese woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige and he later informed Theo that ‘all my work is based to some extent on Japanese art’. This Japanese influence is striking in the series of paintings and drawings that Van Gogh completed in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on the Rhone delta, in particular Two Crabs (January 1889).

More could have been made of the artist’s letters upon which the exhibition is supposedly based; they are not translated and are often sidelined in small glass cases beside the paintings and drawings. Some aspects of Van Gogh’s career and correspondence also lack explanation: how, for example, did he meet the artists to whom he wrote so many letters? What response did his letters receive from both his brother and fellow artists? Although Van Gogh's gift for writing letters is somewhat obscured, the breadth of his talent as an artist shines nonetheless: he drew and he painted, in both colour and black and white, he painted landscapes, portraits and still lives, and was strongly influenced by Japanese art.


The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters
Until April 18th
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House, Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD
Telephone: 020 7300 8000
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/


Images:

- Vincent van Gogh, Pollard Willow, July 1882 (Christie's Images Limited)

- Vincent van Gogh, Reaper, July-August 1885 (Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands)

- Vincent van Gogh, Two Crabs, January 1889 (Private collection)

Blake's etchings rediscovered

by Kathryn Hadley

Tate Britain announced today, January 11th, its recent acquisition of eight hand-coloured etchings by William Blake (1757-1827) for Tate Collection. Following the artist's death in 1827, they were inherited by Blake’s widow Catherine, who later gave them to a gentleman named Frederick Tatham. Their ownership was then a mystery until they were discovered inside a railway timetable in a box of second-hand books purchased at a local book sale in the 1970s. The owner, who wished to remain anonymous, sold them for £441,000.

The works, which depict striking scenes of physical drama, are individual prints of some of the images that Blake reproduced from his series of illuminated books. Six of the etchings are from his major work The First Book of Urizen (1794), one is from the mythological poem The Book of Thel (1789), and one is from his revolutionary prose work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93).

The etchings are each finished in pen and ink and were hand-coloured by laying tempera on watercolour. They feature pencil inscriptions of numbers as well as stitch holes, which suggests that they were bound together at some point as a longer numbered series of prints. Twenty-three of these prints, reproduced from Blake’s illuminated books as separate plates, were notably brought together in a volume for the artist’s friend Ozias Humphrey, known today as Copy A of the Small Book of Designs, which is currently held at the British Museum. A further eleven prints were known to exist before the discovery of this set of eight images, one of which was already in Tate Collection.

The eight etchings are due to go on display at Tate Britain in July 2010.

Images:

- William Blake, The First Book of Urizen, Plate 11 Small Book of Designs, Copy B (1796/ c.1818)
- William Blake, The First Book of Urizen, Plate 7 Small Book of Designs, Copy B (1796/c.1818 )

Mozart’s Mysterious Death

by Kathryn Hadley

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on December 5th, 1791, in Vienna. Over 200 years later, the cause of his death still remains a mystery. It has been the subject of considerable speculation with theories ranging from poisoning to renal failure to trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by eating undercooked or raw pork. However, a Dutch study published on Tuesday August 18th in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported that the composer may have died of complications stemming from strep throat.

The research was carried out by Richard Zegers (University of Amsterdam), Andreas Weigl (University of Vienna) and Andrew Steptoe (University College London). According to his death certificate, Mozart died of hitziges Frieselfieber or ‘heated military fever’, a type of fever accompanied by a rash. Researchers argued, however, that previous studies of the composer’s death were based primarily on subsequent accounts written decades after his death by people who witnessed his final days.

Zegers, Weigl and Steptoe based their study instead on official Viennese death records from November 1791 to January 1792 from the time surrounding Mozart’s death , which they compared with the records for the corresponding periods in 1790 and 1791, and 1792 and 1793. Over these periods, the deaths of 5011 adults were recorded (3442 men and 1569 women). The mean ages of death were 45.5 years for men and 54.5 years for women. The records also revealed that tuberculosis and related conditions was the most common cause of deaths, followed by cachexia, a condition of wasting associated with chronic disease, and malnutrition. Edema, a condition characterised by an excess of fluid collecting in the cavities or tissues of the body, was the third most common cause of death.

According to eyewitness accounts, Mozart’s symptoms included ‘inflammatory fever’, severe swelling, malaise, back pain and a rash, closely resembling those associated with edema. Researchers believe that the composer developed complications which led to edema as a result of a streptococcal infection, an epidemic of which may have originated in Vienna’s military hospital. Mozart’s sister in law Sophie Haibel notably recalled thirty years after his death that the swelling was such that he was unable to turn in bed. The official death records for the weeks surrounding Mozart’s death reveal an increase in deaths from edema compared with the previous and following years.

Richard Zegers was quoted in an article published by Reuters:

‘Our findings suggest that Mozart fell victim to an epidemic of strep throat
infection that was contracted by many Viennese people in Mozart's month of
death, and that Mozart was one of several persons in that epidemic that
developed a deadly kidney complication.’

For further information on how Joseph II established German opera in Vienna in an effort to homogenise the Habsburg Empire, read our article The Politics of Culture: Joseph II's German Opera

Picture:
Mozart family grave, Sebastian Cemetery, Saltzburg

Tennyson at Farringford

by Kathryn Hadley

Yesterday, our editor Paul Lay wrote a piece listing some of the radio programmes commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892). Today, the Victorian Poet Laureate’s newly restored library opened at Farringford House on the Isle of Wight, bringing together Tennyson’s furniture, paintings and manuscripts for the first time since the poet’s lifetime. The library will be used to house a series of exhibitions celebrating the life of Tennyson at Farringford. ‘Tennyson at Farringford’, the first exhibition in the series, also opened today. Showcasing many important artefacts on loan from private collectors and institutions, the exhibition brings back to life the Tennyson household and provides an insight into the many important visitors which the poet attracted, including Benjamin Jowett, Charles Darwin, Bishop Wilberforce, William Holman Hunt and Lewis Carroll.

Highlights of the exhibition include Tennyson’s terrestrial and celestial globes, the throne that he had made from a Farringford ilex for the widowed Queen Emma of Hawaii when she came to stay in 1865 as well as portraits of the poet, his wife and sons by George Frederick Watts, and of General Guiseppe Garibaldi, who famously planted a wellingtonia at Farringford in 1864. Living at Dimbola Lodge at Freshwater Bay, the British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was one of Tennyson’s neighbours. Also on display in the exhibition is an album of the photographs she created to illustrate Tennyson’s Idylls of the King cycle of 12 narrative poems published between 1856 and 1885, which retell the legend of King Arthur.

Tennyson and his wife Emily Sellwood rented Farringford in 1853 with the right to purchase, which they eventually did in 1856 with the proceeds of the publication of Maud. Farringford remained their home for the next 40 years and Tennyson had his second study built in 1871.

Tennyson at Farringford
August 7th – September 9th
Farringford Hotel
Bedbury Lane, Freshwater Bay
Isle of Wight PO40 9PE
Telephone: 01983 752 500
http://www.farringford.co.uk/

Ten historically-themed bands

by Kathryn Parsons and Kathryn Hadley

History has inspired numerous artists and musicians. We have drawn up a selection of bands that have taken their names from famous historical events or personalities, from biblical times to the Cold War and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

U2
The band is named after the American Lockheed U-2 high altitude surveillance aircraft developed in the early 1950s to help monitor Soviet military capabilities and intentions. In May 1960, two weeks before the opening of a scheduled East-West summit in Paris, an American U-2 plane flown by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union. The Four Powers Paris Summit between Eisenhower, Khrushchev, Macmillan and de Gaulle eventually collapsed on May 16th when Khrushchev left the talks following Eisenhower’s refusal to apologise for the incident.
The rock band U2 was formed in Dublin in 1976. Band members are Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen. Many of U2’s songs refer to political or historical events. ‘Bloody Sunday’, for example, is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ addresses the struggle of mothers whose children disappeared during Videla’s military dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970s.

Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand was the Archduke of Austria, born on the 18th December 1863 at Graz in the Austrian Empire. He became Archduke in 1889 when his cousin, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide. Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Duchess of Hohenberg were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serb Nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, on June 28th 1914.
The Scottish rock band was formed in Glasgow in 2002. The band is composed of Alex Kapranos, Bob Hardy, Nick McCarthy and Paul Thomson.

Louis XIV
Louis XIV (1638-1715), known as the ‘Sun King’, ruled France from 1643 to 1715. His 72-year reign represents the high point of the Bourbon dynasty and of French power in Europe. Louis XIV involved France in many wars during his reign including the War of Devolution (1667-68), the third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-78), the War of the Grand Alliance (1688-97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14).
The rock band of the same name is from San Diego, California. Lead singer/guitarist Jason Hill, guitarist Brian Karscig, and drummer Mark Maigaard formed the group in April 2003 whilst living in Paris. They released their first album in November 2003.

For further information on the French king visit our French history focus page.

Jethro Tull
The band is named after the English agricultural pioneer who helped to bring about the British Agricultural Revolution. Jethro Tull was born in Basildon, Berkshire, on March 30th 1674. He is remembered as one of the early proponents of a scientific and empirical approach to agriculture. He invented the seed drill and advocated the use of horses instead of oxen. Jethro Tull died at Prosperous Farm at Hungerford on February 21st 1741.
The British rock group was formed in 1967. Current band members are Ian Anderson, the flute and voice behind the band and its leader since the band’s founding, Martin Barre, David Goodier, John O’Hara and Doane Perry. Similarly to U2, some of Jethro Tull’s songs refer to historic events. ‘Mountain Men’, for example, refers to the battle of El Alamein and to the Falklands War.

Joy Division
The English rock band, originally founded as ‘Warsaw’ in Salford in 1976, changed its name to Joy Division in late 1977. Joy Divisions were brothels in Nazi concentration camps to reward hard-working inmates. The band allegedly took their name from the Joy Division mentioned in the novella The House of Dolls by the Jewish writer Yehiel De-Nur, who spent two years as a prisoner in Auschwitz.
The band consisted of singer Ian Curtis, guitarist Bernard Summer, Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris. Ian Curtis committed suicide in May 1980. After his death the band reformed as ‘New Order’.

Robert Sommer has recently published a new book on forced sexual labour in Nazi concentration camps. I wrote an article on our blog on June 30th about his latest research.

Gang of Four
The Gang of Four was a leftist political group, which came to prominence during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and was composed of the four Chinese Communist party officials Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's last wife, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. They were put on trial in November 1980 and charged with a variety of abuses during the Cultural Revolution, including the deaths of some 34,000 people.
The English post-punk group from Leeds was formed by the singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and the drummer Hugo Burnham. They released a first series of albums from 1977 to 1984 and then re-emerged twice in the 1990s with King and Gill.

Maximo Park
Máximo Gómez was a Cuban revolutionary born on November 18th, 1836, in the Dominican Republic. As Major General in the Ten Years’ War (1868-78), the first of three liberation wars fought that Cuba fought against Spain, Gomez commanded Spanish reserve troops. He subsequently retired from the Spanish Army, however, and joined the rebel cause. He rose to the rank of Generalisimo in the Cuban Army and fought during the Cuban War of Independence from 1895 to 1898. Gomez died in Havana in 1905.
The British band Maximo Park formed by the guitarist Duncan Lloyd in 2000. The band’s four other members are Paul Smith, Archis Tiku, Lukas Wooler and Tom English.

Fotheringay
King Richard III (r.1483-85) was born in Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire in 1452. It was also where Mary, Queen of Scots, was tried, convicted of treason and executed in February 1587. The castle gradually fell into disrepair during the later Elizabethan period and was eventually demolished in 1627.
The British folk rock group was formed in 1970 by the singer Sandy Denny. She was previously a member of the band Fairport Convention, which released a song named after the castle. Fotheringay disbanded in January 1971.

Genesis
Genesis or Bereshith is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the first of five books of the Jewish Torah. It begins with the narrative of the creation of the world and contains the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark and the Tower of Babel. The word ‘genesis’ is Greek for ‘birth’ or ‘origin’ and ‘bereshith’ is the Hebrew word for ‘in the beginning’, hence the first words of the Book of Genesis; ‘In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth…’
The popular English rock band was founded in 1967. Current band members are Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. As well as taking their name from the Biblical book, Genesis’ first album was entitled ‘From Genesis to Revelation’, as a reference to the last book of the New Testament.

The Communards
The Paris Commune was a rebel government formed in Paris in 1871 in opposition to Adolf Thier’s Government of National Defence. The Paris Commune notably opposed the humiliating peace terms accepted after the Franco-Prussian War. On March 18th 1871, Parisian workers rose in rebellion and the revolutionaries formed a government which introduced a number of short-lived reforms. By May 28th, however, Government troops had crushed the rebellion. It is estimated that 38,000 people were arrested and 20,000 were killed.
The band of the same name was formed in 1985 by Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles. They were later joined by Dave Renwick. The band spilt in 1988 and Somerville began a solo career.

For further information on the Paris Commune, read our articles

An Exercise in Terror: The Paris Commune, 1871

The Paris Commune

Here are a few another names of bands similarly inspired by historic figures and events, which could be added to the list. Any further suggestions are very welcome!

Engelbert Humperdinck, named after the German composer, best known for his opera Hansel and Gretel. The British-American singer Arnold George Dorsey adopted the stage name Engelbert Humperdinck following a suggestion by his former roommate, the songwriter and manager Gordon Mills. He is still selling albums today at the age of 73 and will notably be on tour in the UK and in Europe this September!
The Dead Kennedys, The B-52S, Levellers, Led Zeppelin, The Beau Brummels, Siouxsie and the Banshees and China Crisis...

Earliest Films Stole Storylines from the Theatre

by Kathryn Hadley

David Mayer, Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Manchester, has recently published the results of a 32-year project charting the contribution of theatre to the early film industry. His book, entitled Stagestruck filmmakers: DW Griffiths and the American Theatre, was published in February. Very little was previously known about how the film industry, in its early days, drew extensively on the theatre repertoire for the subject matter of their films. Mayer began his project in the 1970s whilst researching film archives at the Washington Library of Congress and has since recovered numerous early films inspired from the theatre.

Academy Award-winning American film director, David Llewelyn Wark Griffith (1875-1948), was one of the most influential early filmmakers. He used theatre to inspire the first ever feature film and his most famous work, The Birth of a Nation (1915). The Birth of a Nation was a silent film and was one of the first films to be over an hour long. The film is set during and after the American Civil War and is based on the novel and play The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, published in 1905.

Other examples include the first ever special effects film Rescued from an Eagles Nest produced by J. Searle Dawley (1877-1949) in 1908, the subject matter of which is identical to a play by Con T Murphy entitled The Ivy Leaf.

Professor Mayer described the origins if the film industry:

‘Early filmmakers often came from immigrant communities looking for work or were
inventors who used the genre of film to showcase their new technology. ‘They
weren’t particularly interested in original content so it’s not that surprising
they would pilfer ideas from the theatre – a much more respectable genre.
Indeed, when film making began, theatre looked down on the industry as inferior
and there was a lot of snobbery. People who went into film sometimes used a
false name - or were often not credited at all. But I feel it’s high time that
the roots of film was duly acknowledged: there is no such thing as
pre-cinema.’

The year after The Birth of a Nation, Griffith produced Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916), which is considered one of the great masterpieces of the silent era. From 1908 to the 1930s, D. W. Griffith appeared in, directed or wrote the screen plays for 570 silent films and talkies. He was allegedly later described by Charlie Chaplin as ‘The Teacher of us All’.

Professor Mayer also stressed Griffith’s contribution to the birth of the film industry:

‘Griffith’s contribution to film is remarkable: he invented the close up and
different types of camera technology and filming techniques. What is remarkable
about Griffith was that he too was inspired by the theatre. His film for example
The birth of a nation was based on Thomas Dickson’s The Clansman. Though
undeniably racist, the film is one of the most influential ever made. It’s roots
though, were in the theatre.’

To find out more about the mixture of social realism and political commentary that inspired filmmakers in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century, read our article The Unknown Hollywood
For further information about the birth of the British film industry in the East London suburb of Walthamstow, read our article 'Picture Shows': The Early British Film Industry in Walthamstow

Shakespeare Found

by Kathryn Hadley

'Shakespeare Found' opens today at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon. The exhibition features the Cobbe portrait, which was discovered just last month and is believed to be the only lifetime portrait of the playwright, allegedly painted in 1610, six years before Shakespeare’s death. Featuring other portraits that have rarely been on public display, the exhibition presents various arguments for the identification of the Cobbe portrait and explores Shakespeare’s posthumous reputation. The display notably includes one of the two only other portraits considered to be authentic representations of what the bard may have looked like: the brass engraving by Martin Droeshout published in the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623.
The opening of the exhibition also marks the beginning of four days of celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon to mark the 445th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. Celebratory events notably include theatre performances, lectures, processions, the Stratford Poetry Festival and Stratford Literary Festival.

For more information, visit http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/

For further information on the debates surrounding Shakespeare's true identity, read our articles Who Was Shakespeare? and Mystery Identities

Shakespeare Found
April 23rd – September 6th
Shakespeare’s Birthplace
Henley Street
Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6QW
Telephone: 01789 204016
http://www.shakespearefound.org.uk/

Handel: A Charming Brute?

by Derry Nairn

George Frideric Handel has many fans. No less than Beethoven called him 'the greatest musical composer who ever lived'. Jimi Hendrix once lived in his former dwelling in London where Ruth Rendell is the main benefactor of the Handel House museum. His bed, in which he died precisely 250 years ago, forms the centrepiece of 'Handel Reveal'd', a new exhibition opening there this week. The shortened bed (Handel slept sitting up) is a modern reconstruction but, like the rest of the museum, is authentic in its detail. The Handel expert Christopher Hogwood calls the setting for the museum 'a film-set house'.

This is in part thanks to a painstaking inventory of the composer's possessions which was carried out at 23 Brook Street upon his death. Back then, of course, Brook Street and the surrounding Mayfair area wasn't seen as upmarket. Handel was the first occupant of his home, built to attract aspiring middle class tenants. Although he nurtured and retained important connections at court, and died a rich man, both Handel's political and financial fortunes endured peaks and troughs.

Perhaps this isn't so surprising, however, when the tumult of the era is considered. Both Handel and his music played witness to great events at a time of massive flux in British society. The Jacobite Uprising and the South Sea Bubble occurred during his lifetime, as did an explosion in the open political dissent of the coffeehouses. His 1727 naturalisation as a British citizen - a personal request of King George I, himself a German 'import' - is indicative of the increasingly cosmopolitan make-up of the capital city. Handel's music is associated both with Italian opera, the X-Factor of its day, as well as with the new middle class playgrounds of the time, such as Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

An anonymous wit of the day described the relative importance of these issues thus:

"Are you High Church or Low?
Whig or Tory;
Are you for Court or Country?;
King George or the Pretender:
But are you for Faustino or Cuzzoni?
...There's the question" *

Handel adapted well to the changing times. He sold sheet music from a shop on the ground floor of 23 Brook Street, while composing and performing upstairs. His health was also tested. At various times Handel experienced obesity, binge eating, and paralysis. He died blind. As Hogwood says 'he would persist in the face of an apathetic public, an altered musical taste, and rumours of a decline in his powers'.

As one moves between rooms on creaky timber floors and specially-widened staircases (for musical instruments), little imagination is needed to picture the great Hanoverian bulk doing the same. A menu of Handel's likely daily diet hangs on one wall. On another are a collection of portraits spanning youth to old age. These include a death mask. A stunning reproduction of an 18th century harpsichord sits in the main music room. Its my firm conviction that musical instruments should never be kept behind glass cases, and, thankfully, Handel House's curators have chosen to let musicians come in and play regularly on this wonderful example.

Despite very few personal accounts or letters, and the distractions of caricatures and Victorian anecdotes, the life and (more interestingly) times of this intensely private man has been successfully reproduced. A visit to Handel Reveal'd is highly recommended. Mark April 14th in your diary - there is free entry and music performances all day at Handel House.

*Popular Italian castrati singers of the day.

Madness & Modernity

by Derry Nairn

A fantastic new exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection charts the sometimes blurred line between artistic genius and insanity. Madness & Modernity focuses on how the issue of mental illness was broached in fin de siécle Vienna. This was a period of artistic flux in Austria's imperial capital, with radical departures from tradition felt across the arts.

Prominent artists of the day crossed paths with mental illness. The first room opens, for example, with a trio of spookily deranged busts by the sculptor Messerschmidt. Next the viewer can observe the grandiose Steinhof sanatorium, 'the city on a hill', built by one of the most celebrated modernist architects of his day, Otto Wagner.

Portraitists such as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka broke from the norm by depicting their subjects in contorted, often spasmodic positions. Not least of these subjects was Schiele himself who, in a series of famous self-portraits, portrayed his own body in a range of painfully angular poses.

The curators of Madness & Modernity have chosen to display Schiele's work alongside photos of sanatoria inmates. These are taken from contemporary psychological journals which were widely circulating among Viennese artists as source material at the time. The hint is of a canny rather than an unhinged artist, choosing to portray himself in such a fashion, and in the process tapping into an general fascination with mental illness among his peers.

Other rooms boast a Kokoschka portrait, a set of spellbindingly colourful minature paintings by a sanatorium inmate, and studies by Freud - which contrast his mind-centred approach to the 'bodily whole' cures of the original electrotherapy equipment sitting nearby.

It was the penultimate room which captivated me the most, however. Here, two lesser heroes of Vienna's early 20th century artistic renaissance are remembered: Max Oppenheimer and Peter Altenberg. Oppenheimer's works are studies in the disturbed mind, in spite of their subjects' perfect sanity. The caricature of Peter Altenberg (see above), cap in hand with wild eyes and wringing hands, shows an artist who not only insisted on such depiction, but cultivated it. He had spells in sanatoria, slept through freezing winters with windows wide open, and maintained a permanent table at Vienna's famous Cafe Central, receiving both post and visitors there like a private office.

Madness, then, became a central tenet for this set of artists. This fascinating show at the Wellcome Collection suggests that mental faults of one type or another - addiction, obsessiveness, insomnia - continue to mascarade as self-identity. This has been the enduring contribution to contemporary culture of an extraordinary time and place.

Handel's Houses

Back in 2001, Daniel Snowman looked at two museums located in the composer's German and English residences. Here we reprint the article in full to mark the 250th anniversary of the death of London's adopted Hanoverian composer.

One of the first things people tell you in Halle, a small Saxon town in eastern Germany two hours south of Berlin, is that, in the decade since German reunification, many of its brighter young citizens have left to seek fame (or at least fortune) elsewhere. It is a story prefigured by Halle’s most famous son, the composer Handel, who was born there in 1685 but died in London at his home in Brook Street, just off Hanover Square, in 1759. The Halle birthplace has long contained an exhibition of Handel’s life and work; this month, London follows suit as the Handel House in Brook Street opens to the public.

Halle was in the heart of the German Democratic Republic and is only now emerging from forty-odd years of Communism and, before that, the iron grip of the Nazis. Today, as part of reunited Germany, Halle is in the Land of Saxony-Anhalt and is ruled from nearby Magdeburg – just as it was when the archbishops of Magdeburg wielded power in medieval times and when Luther emerged in the 1520s.

Dr Handel, the composer’s father, was sixty-two when his illustrious son was born. As a young man, he had trained as a barber-surgeon, a vocation given much scope by the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which marked the end of the war, declared that the archbishopric of Magdeburg was to become a secular duchy administered by the incumbent Duke Augustus of Saxony and that, on his death, it would pass to the electorate of Brandenburg. Dr Handel got on well with Duke Augustus, mending his arm in a successful operation and becoming his private surgeon. Wealth and kudos followed, and the doctor bought a substantial new residence for himself and his family in Halle.

The Duke finally died in 1680 – at which Halle (like Magdeburg itself) became part of the rapidly rising state of Brandenburg, to be ruled henceforth from Berlin. Poor Dr Handel lost much of the prestige and income to which he was accustomed. Two years later, his wife died. But he must have been resilient, for he picked up the threads of his career as a surgeon and remarried a woman nearly thirty years his junior. Their son, Georg Friedrich Handel, was born on February 23rd, 1685, a citizen of Brandenburg-Prussia and subject of its ruler, Frederick William ‘The Great Elector’.

Handel was baptised the next day in the Liebfrauenkirche, the late Gothic church that dominates the Halle marketplace. The baptismal font is still there, as is the Reichel organ on which the adolescent Handel would play a few years later. The great ‘Red Tower’ across the marketplace from the church can also still be seen today; so can the austere Calvinist cathedral a short walk away, where, aged seventeen, Handel became organist, and the Moritzburg and Giebichenstein castles. And Halle still contains the house where Handel was born and in which he lived until he left town for Hamburg in 1703.

The house remained in the possession of the family until the 1770s. On the centenary of the composer’s death, in 1859, a statue was erected in the centre of the marketplace and there was talk of the house being acquired by the city. This finally happened in 1937. Two years later, war broke out and it was not until 1948 that the house, properly renovated, was opened to the public as a museum. In 1985, the tercentenary of Handel’s birth, the adjacent property was added. Today, the extensive upper rooms contain an excellent portrayal of Handel’s life and work, a soundtrack (in English if required) sensitively integrated with excerpts from his music, as well as a display of early musical instruments. Downstairs, musical performances can be given to audiences of a hundred or more. The first Handel Festival was held in Halle in 1952; this year’s (in June), in venues all over Halle and beyond, was the fiftieth.

Halle couldn’t hold Handel. His prodigious talent demanded a larger stage. In Hamburg, he played in the opera orchestra and composed several works which were performed there. He travelled to nearby Lübeck (like Bach a couple of years later) to meet the organist and composer Buxtehude. Buxtehude seems to have offered Handel a post as church organist which he turned down – supposedly because a condition of taking the job was marriage to Buxtehude’s unenticing daughter. In any case, Handel’s interests were rapidly turning from the liturgical to the dramatic. It was opera that interested him, and that meant going to Italy. For four years, Handel absorbed the musical culture of Florence, Venice, Rome and Naples, befriending not only influential composers such as Corelli and the Scarlattis, but also the aristocratic and ecclesiastical magnates who supported them. He returned to Germany in 1710, armed with recommendations to several of the most brilliant courts, notably that of Hanover. By the end of the year we find Handel – still only twenty-five – in the largest, liveliest city in the world, London, where his reputation was confirmed by the success of his new ‘Italian’ opera, Rinaldo.

Handel returned to Hanover where he was appointed Kapellmeister to the Elector. It was a quiet, civilised life, but Handel seems to have been aching to revisit London. The Elector agreed he could go, on condition that he return ‘within a reasonable time’. Once back in London, however, Handel’s obligations to Hanover seem to have slipped his mind as he built up a successful career, secured in 1714 by a pension for life granted by Queen Anne. Later that year, Anne died and the House of Stuart was succeeded by the House of Hanover. Handel’s former employer was now his king.
Did the new monarch, George I, resent his former employee’s truancy? Did Handel’s Water Music, accompanying the king’s barge ride up the Thames, reconcile monarch and musician? The story probably contains more legend than fact, though the two men renewed their friendship soon enough. Handel, almost as great a celebrity as the king, lived in a succession of grand homes, among them Burlington House and the Chandos estate at Cannons. In 1723, he took a lease on a newly-built house in Brook Street. This was to be his home until his death in 1759 and it was here that he wrote the great oratorios of his later years, including Messiah.

This month, the house opens as the Handel House Museum. The Director, Jacqueline Riding, has planned her display by theme. Thus, the first room introduces visitors to the vigorous social and cultural life of London in the 1720s, while another suggests something of Handel’s character and private life (including a full-tester bed dressed in crimson). The front room on the first floor, the largest in the house, is where Handel is believed to have held rehearsals and entertained. Here, images and artefacts evoke the musicians and others with whom Handel worked, while the centrepiece is a working harpsichord for use by professionals and students as well as for concerts and other public events. A fourth room is devoted to composition.

‘The idea,’ says Jacqueline Riding, ‘is that the visitor will wander through interiors closely resembling those Handel would have known, looking at images associated with Handel’s life and career, whilst hearing music as visitors during Handel’s lifetime would have heard it.’

The museum also comprises rooms in the adjacent property (built at the same time by the same developer, and restored with equal care) which will provide space for temporary exhibitions, education activities, an audio-visual room and a small shop.

The thematic approach of the Handel House Museum nicely complements the essentially chronological display of its sister museum in Halle. Handel, I like to think, would have approved of both. Was he German or English, people still ask? The answer is that he was both. Handel (like Holbein, Prince Albert or Nikolaus Pevsner) was one in a long line of distinguished immigrants to Britain who, by their artistry and entrepreneurship, enriched the cultural life of their adopted country and thereby the wider world.

Handel-Haus
Grosse Nikolaistrasse 5
D-06108 Halle, Germany
Tel: +49 345 500900
Fax: +49 345 50090411

Handel House Museum
25 Brook Street,
London W1K 4HB
Tel: 020 7495 1685
Fax: 020 7495 1759
Email: mail@handelhouse.org

The British Music Experience

by Kathryn Hadley

The links between music and history are undeniable. Music has been present throughout history and even dates back to prehistory, according to the latest research on music at the time of the Neanderthals! History has witnessed the rise and fall of various musical genres. The cultural and social impact of music has affected the course of history, and history and historical events have inspired numerous artists (see our selection of history-inspired pop songs). ‘The British Music Experience’ explores, for the first time, the history of British music and its cultural and social influence over the past 60 years…

‘The British Music Experience’ a new permanent exhibition, charting 60 years of British rock and pop music, opened today in the O2 bubble. The exhibition is divided into seven exhibition zones, representing seven different musical eras from 1945 to the present day, which provide an insight into how musical genres were formed and have influenced 20th-century British art, fashion and politics. It features over 100 artists, from the Beatles to Iron Maiden, Cilla Black to Elastica, and David Bowie to Motorhead, and explores a wide variety of musical genres, from Skiffle to Reggae, Rock ‘n’ Roll to Blues, and Punk to Grime. Each exhibition zone includes memorabilia loaned by artists such as The Rolling Stones and David Bowie and videos of the exhibits in action, as well as an interactive screen charting the era’s landmark events. The 1975-1985 zone notably contains David Bowie’s clown outfit worn in Ashes to Ashes; the 1993-2008 zone features Noel Gallagher’s Union Jack guitar.

In the words of Harvey Goldsmith, the exhibition’s chairman, that UK was lacking a venue that

‘reflects the rich history of fantastic talent that we have spawned continuously
that has conquered the world.’

The British Music Experience
The O2
Peninsula Square
LondonSE10 0DX
Telephone: 020 8463 2000
http://www.britishmusicexperience.com/

For further information on the origins of the music industry, read our article Changing the Tune - Popular Music in the 1890s
For further information on the American Rock ‘n’ Roll revolution in the late 1950s and the profound cultural changes which it entailed, read our article Rock 'n' Roll and Social Change

Gallery saves important Victorian portrait

The National Portrait Gallery has retained a 19th-century portrait of a famous black nurse thanks to £96,200 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The only known painting of Mary Seacole, a nurse in the Crimean War and contemporary of Florence Nightingale, shows her wearing medals awarded for service. The oil picture, by Albert Challen in 1869, has been on loan to the Gallery in London since 2004 after being discoverd by historian Helen Rappaport. It was uncovered at a car boot sale in Oxfordshire in 2003 and will now be on permanent display at the Gallery after being purchased for £130,000.

Wesley Kerr, Chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund Committee for London, said: 'This is a moving and powerful painting that brings to life the courage, compassion and determination of an important figure in British history. As a woman and as a West Indian of mixed race she broke many barriers to make a huge contribution to Victorian society.'

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, stated: 'Mary Seacole is an inspiring figure and I am delighted that this painted portrait can now join the National Portrait Gallery Collection.'

See the History Today articles The Invitation That Never Came: Mary Seacole After the Crimea and Blacks in Britain: Mary Seacole.

Rare coloured pictures of the Holy Land unearthed in Yorkshire

by Kathryn Hadley

Nineteenth century books containing the first detailed coloured images of the Holy Land ever to be published in the West, in 1842, have recently been found in the Yorkshire Museum Library. The books were found by volunteers whilst they were cataloguing the museum’s library. They consist of a complete version of The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia by David Roberts. The volume contains hand-coloured lithographs of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem, which he took during his visit to the Holy Land in 1938-39.

Roberts (1796-1864) was born in Edinburgh and was the first person to travel to the Holy Land with the specific intention to paint Christian sites, such as the Church of nativity in Bethlehem and the ancient city of Jerusalem, with a view to thereafter selling them in Britain.

The book was first published in 1842 and Roberts’s works were reproduced on a large scale and in colour. They were considerably expensive to produce and only 400 copies of the first edition were made. His project was, nevertheless, very successful and there was considerable demand for his books. Both Queen Victoria and the Tsar of Russia notably purchased copies. It was edited a second time in New York in 1855.

In Andrew Morrison’s words, Curator of Archaeology at the Museum:
‘David Roberts was one of the first “photo journalists” and his incredibly detailed paintings of the Middle East gave British society a fabulous insight into the everyday life of people in a world completely different from theirs […] Complete copies of the first edition of this books are extremely rare because so few were published and also because many were often taken apart, so that the prints could be sold separately.’

The museum is now working to trace the provenance of the books.

Evidence of Early Contact with Islam

by Derry Nairn

Antiquity, an Archaeology quarterly, reports in its December issue on the often under-reported historical incidences of contact between Britain & Ireland and Islamic cultures. In a fascinating article, Andrew Petersen documents the different types of archaeological finds which suggest interaction through the centuries.

Pottery, glass and ceramics originating in the Middle East, Moorish Spain, or merely bearing the influence of Islamic art have been found in sites throughout both Ireland and Britain. These can date from as early as the ninth century. Arab dinars are among the coins that have been found in Scandanavia, a relic of Viking raids on these shores.

However, perhaps the most surprising element of the brief review to the non-specialist reader is the indirect but strong influences which Islam held over early modern British and European architecture as a whole. The author traces a line from seventh-century Palestine (the Gothic arch) and ninth-century Iraq (the Tudor four-centre pointed arch) through to prominent Mughal-influenced British buildings such as Brighton's Royal Pavillion.

Petersen quotes no less an authority than Christopher Wren as saying:

'what we now vulgarly call the Gothick, ought properly and truly be named Saracenick Architecture refined by the Christians'

(Wren, C. 1750. Parentalia: or memoirs of the family of Wrens, taken from Sweetman, J. 1991. The Oriental obsession: Islamic inspiration in British and American art and architecture, 1500-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press)

The content of the article is all the more interesting given the prevailing interests expressed in the media on relations between resident Islamic communities and European society as a whole. Also of note, next year, 2009, marks the 120th anniversary of Britain's first purpose-built mosque: the Shah Jahan mosque in Woking, Surrey.

Read these free articles from our archive :


Friends or Foes? The Islamic East and the West
Christopher J. Walker asks whether the two religions that frequently appear locked in an inevitable clash of civilizations in fact share more than has often been thought.


Veiled Politics
Zephie Begolo discusses the symbolic power of the veil in Iranian politics, and its consequences for women, before and during the Islamic Revolution.

Recreation of medieval tapestry unveiled at Stirling Castle

by Kathryn Hadley

The tapestry entitled The Unicorn is Found was unveiled in Stirling Castle on Friday November 21st. It is the largest of a series of seven tapestries, which are being hand woven as part of project undertaken by Historic Scotland to recreate one of the world’s finest set of medieval tapestries.
Inventories from 1539 have revealed that the Scottish Royal Collection in the sixteenth century included a set of tapestries entitled ‘the historie of the unicorne’. The tapestries are being copied from a similar set from the Lower Countries which date from 1495 to 1505 on display in the Cloisters Museum at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The total of seven tapestries in the series entitled The Hunt of the Unicorn depict the hunt, killing and return to life of a unicorn to in order to obtain its horn which allegedly had magical powers of purification. The Unicorn is Found depicts the crucial moment when the hunters discovered their prey.

The tapestries each measure 3.3m by up to 3.8m and take between two and a half to four and a half years to make. The first tapestry was begun in 2001 and it is expected that the last will be completed in 2013. The series will thereafter be displayed on the walls of the Queens’ Inner Hall in Stirling Castle where Marie de Guise, the second wife of James V of Scotland and mother of Mary Queen of Scots, held court.

Black Death treasures of a Jewish community go on show

by Derry Nairn

The Wallace Collection is to put on show the first British exhibition of jewellery hidden by German Jews before 17th century pogroms. The collection, to go on show in February, includes the first two examples of Jewish wedding rings.

Here's an extract from the press release

As the Black Death laid waste to vast swathes of Europe, wiping out a third of the population, terrified local people, unable to find a cause for the suffering, searched for a scapegoat. Suspicion and fear immediately fell upon the Jewish population, who were accused of poisoning the wells. Many Jews buried their most precious belongings, hoping to return later, but as a result of ensuing large-scale pogroms throughout Europe, never returned to reclaim them. 1000 people were killed on a single day in Erfurt - 2 March 1349.

As well as shedding new light on another dark chapter in Europe’s history, the objects illuminate both the lives of the Jewish communities who buried them and the wider picture of medieval fashion and craftsmanship. Many pieces are very intimate and extremely personal. As well as the wedding rings, the exhibition will include ‘double cups’ used in the wedding ceremony and betrothal gifts. These add an even more poignant and tragic perspective to the story.