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Anthony Powell — The Artist as a Young Man
Powell is known as a novelist and book critic, but he probably began drawing before he knew how to write. In his autobiography, he relates that by the time he was six, his drawings, including a Mephistopheles, were shown to a visitor to his family. The term Post Impressionism (then recently introduced by Roger Fry) was bantered as the pictures were critiqued. He began at Eton in 1919 and took Extra Drawing from the drawing master Sidney Evans, who first told him of Picasso and Matisse. At Eton he drew for an art magazine, The Eton Candle (1922) , and at Oxford, which he attended from 1923 to 1026, his drawings appeared in another magazine, The Cherwell. His drawing Colonel Caesar Cannonbrains of the Black Hussars (1922) is reproduced in To Keep the Ball Rolling (p56).
Monthly Archives: June 2015
Rainy Day at Marrakesh
In At Lady Molly’s Nick was introduced by Chips Lovell to the the bohemian home of Molly and Ted Jeavons. There, amid priceless art works by Wilson and Greuze hung pastels by an unknown artist of Moroccan subjects. Now, during … Continue reading
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder
On a tiresome train ride to London, Nick takes up conversation with an un-characteristically cultured fellow officer called David Pennistone, destined to become his long-time friend. “‘Talking of Vienna,’ he said, ‘did you ever have the extraordinary experience of … Continue reading
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An Ironside in a Victorian Illustration
Jenkins describes Company-Sergeant Major Cadwallader as “cleanshaven, with the severely puritanical countenance of an Ironside in a Victorian illustration to a Cavalier-and-Roundhead romance.” [VB 10/6]. The English Civil Wars (1642-1651) pitted the Cavaliers (followers of King Charles I and King Charles … Continue reading
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Meissonier-like Imagery
Jenkins meets Captain Rowland Gwatkin, the commander of his company, early in VB, and Gwatkin is a central character of this volume. Jenkins reflects on Gwatkin: “There was an air of resolve about him, the consciousness of playing a part … Continue reading
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Officers in Wonderland
We have already seen Powell’s propensity to compare his characters to those from Lewis Carroll, as envisioned by Sir JohnTenniel (The Mad Hatter, The Frog Footman, The Red Queen.) He does this again as Jenkins describes his fellow officers: “Almost all the … Continue reading
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Daumier world
Jenkins, entering the church that served as the company’s billet, “followed Kedward through the forbidding portals of Sardis — one of the Seven Churches of Asia, I recollected — immediately entering a kind of a cave, darker than the streets, … Continue reading
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