picturesinpowell

Dr. Brightman analyzes Russell Gwinett for Jenkins:

Brightman: “He is a small fragment detached from the extensive and cavernous grottoes of gothic America. He is part of an Old America — the oldest — yet has become in some respects the New America. I hardly know how to put it.”

Jenkins: “Halfway between Henry Adams and Charles Addams.”

Brightman: “Not bad. In fact alpha plus, insomuch as Henry Adams says that true eccentricity is in a tone …  [TK 53/48-49]

Edgar Allan Poe had writer’s block once
Charles Addams

“Occasionally”
Charles Addams
cartoon from Pinterest

Charles Addams was one of Powell’s favorite cartoonists, according to Powell’s wife Lady Violet. Addams was born in New Jersey in 1912; he began publishing cartoons in the New Yorker in 1935 and published over 1300 cartoons in his life time.

When he died, the New York Times obituary headline was “ Charles Addams Dead at 76; Found Humor in the Macabre.” Whether his personality was as strange as his sense of humor was a frequent subject of debate.

We show a couple Addams’ tributes to Edgar Allan Poe because Dr. Brightman says about Gwinett: “If there is a superfluity of Edgar Allan Poe brought up to date, there is also a touch of Edwin Arlington Robinson.” (We have so far not established the original publication sights or copyright status of these cartoons, so please click the thumbnails if you want to see more detail)

[This post is out of chronological order and will be placed in order on the Temporary Kings page.]

“The smell from my bonfire, its smoke perhaps fusing with one of the quarry’s metallic odours drifting down through the silvery fog, now brought back that of the workmen’s bucket of glowing coke, burning outside their shelter.” [HSH 251/271]  Powell’s magisterial and melancholy conclusion to Hearing Secret Harmonies, and the entire Dance, returns us to Powell’s beloved Nicolas Poussin, whose painting was evoked by the workmen’s bucket of glowing coke on the first page of A Question of Upbringing.

A Dance to the Music of Time
Nicolas Poussin, 1634-1636
oil on canvas, 33 x 42 in
The Wallace Collection, London
photo in public domain from Wikimedia Commons

The very structure of Dance has echoed Poussin’s vision of the endless round of men’s fortunes, and brings to Nick’s mind “one of Robert Burton’s torrential passages from The Anatomy of Melancholy.”  It is that litany of calamities that beset the lives of men, plus Powell’s reversion to the cadence of classicism, that encourage us to think of another of Poussin’s paintings as a valedictory image, even though it is not mentioned by Jenkins.  Much later in his life than  A Dance to the Music of Time, Poussin undertook a series of four canvases, now in the Louvre, to depict the seasons individually. Spring, Summer and even Autumn are filled with promises of plenty, but Winter (c.1660-4) is a vision of devastation and despair.

Winter (also called The Flood)
Nicolas Poussin, ~1660-1664
oil on canvas, 47 x 63 in
The Louvre
color adjusted photo public domain from the Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons

Though the decades of Nick’s witness are filled with comic moments, it is the spirit of Burton’s melancholy that remains: “The thudding sound from the quarry had declined now to no more than a gentle reverberation, infinitely remote. It ceased altogether at the long drawn wail of a hooter—the distant pounding of centaurs’ hoofs dying away, as the last note of their conch trumpeted out over hyperborean seas. Even the formal measure of the Seasons seemed suspended in the wintry silence.”

During their time together in France, Jenkins, still a school boy, learned more of Widmerpool’s drive and ambition and of his awkward relationship to art.  When Widmerpool was about to depart, his “last week at La Grenadière [was] blighted by another matter, in its way sufficiently provoking for him. This was the appearance on the wall of the cabinet be toilette of a crude, though not unaccomplished, representation of himself — somewhat in the style of the caves in the Dordogne — in this case scratched on plaster with a blunt instrument.” [QU 155/158]

Lascaux pictograph from The Shaft of the Deadman
photo from visual-arts-cork.com

There are hundreds of paleolithic paintings in the limestone caves in the Dordogne region of southwest France created over many generations, about 17,000 years ago. The scenes are usually of animals rather than of people; some were made by cutting lines in the rock with stone tools, others drawn with charcoal, others colored with pigments. The phallus on the fallen hunter shown above recalls Widmerpool’s complaint: “And although it is not exactly indecent, it is suggestive, which is worse.” [QU 155/158]

[The post above is out of chronological order; it can also be found in context on the Question of Upbringing page of picturesinpowell.]

“’I never pay my insurance policy, ‘ Moreland said, ‘without envisaging the documents going through the hands of Aubrey Beardsley and Kafka, before being laid on the desk of Wallace Stevens.’” [HSH 53 /54]

Lysisstrata
Aubrey Beardsley, 1896
plate I, 12 x 9 in
from ebooks.adelaide.edu.au

On June 24, 2015, Bonhams auctioneers sold a first edition of Lysistrata, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, from Anthony Powell’s library. They also auctioned an assorted set of other Beardsley pieces from Powell’s collection. Powell had inherited the Beardsley works from his father, who had “certain fin-de-siècle leanings. In one form, these were expressed by delight in the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, though this attraction for the Décadence was balanced by disapproval of much that it stood for. [TKBR 15]”  (For other items auctioned from Powell’s collection, see the Bonhams’ catalog, items 299-342.)

In his youth, Powell would study the drawings in his father’s books.  When he was 17, his own black and white drawing, Caesar Cannonbrains of the Black Hussars, appeared in the Eton Candle; In TKBR (p. 55, drawing on p.56), Powell says the drawing shows unconcealed influences of Beardsley and Lovat Fraser. Later, Powell wrote four essays about Beardsley, anthologized in Under Review: Further Writing on Writers, 1946-1990 [pp 44-52].

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-1898) began work as a clerk for the Guardian Life  and Fire Insurance Office at age 17. In 1891 he and his sister went to the studio of Edward Burne-Jones under the mistaken impression that it was open to visitors; Burne-Jones invited them in, some say because of Mabel Beardsley’s striking red hair, examined Beardsley sketches, and arranged for him to attend art classes at night, resulting in a few months at the Westminster School of Art, which were his only formal artistic training.  The Beardsleys left Burne-Jones’ studio with Oscar Wilde, beginning an association that linked Beardsey with Wilde in the forefront of Aestheticism.

The Dancer’s Reward
Aubrey Beardsley, 1894
plate from Oscar Wilde’s Salome
photo from The Victorian Web

Wilde and Beardsley had a fraught relationship. For example, Wilde invited Beardsley to illustrate the English edition of his Salome. (Powell owned a first edition (1894).)  Wilde, however, was unhappy with the illustrations, believing that they misrepresented and distracted from his writing.

Beardsley worked in black and white, using block prints. His sensual style, often highlighting the  erotic, influenced Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement.  Critics sometimes classed Beardsley as a Decadent; he dressed foppishly, enforcing this reputation, and delighted in the grotesque aspects of his image. Like a character from La Boheme (Puccini, 1896), he died young of tuberculosis.

We regret that our brief does not allow us to digress further to review the geniuses of Kafka and Stevens.

After many years in South America, Jean Duport reappears in London at the centenary exhibition of Mr. Deacon’s paintings.  As she enters the gallery, Henderson remarks of Jean, “She looks like one of those sad Goya duchesses.”  Later, Jenkins reflects, “Henderson was right about Jean.  The metamorphosis, begun when the late Colonel Flores had been his country’s military attaché in London at the end of the war, was complete.  She was now altogether transformed into a foreign lady of distinction.” [HSH 233/252]

This is to be Nick’s last glimpse of Jean Duport, whose austere beauty and sexual fascination have long haunted him.  We first spied Jean in Question of Upbringing, when her mystery combined the appeal of a virginal saint and mysterious temptress [QU /75].  In Buyers’ Market Jean’s looks were compared to those of Rubens’ first and second wives,  at once shy and alluring and confident and voluptuous [BM 226/216].  Then, in Acceptance World, the Romanticism of Delacroix’s hookah-smoking harem woman was invoked to add a note of exoticism to Jean’s allure [AW /58].  Later in Acceptance World Nick returns to the theme of medieval austerity to describe Jean’s beauty: “Her forehead, high and white, gave a withdrawn look, like a lady in a mediaeval triptych or carving … ”  [AW 141/].  Here we could not help but be reminded of the Rogier van der Weyden (Netherlandish 1399-1464) portrait of a lady in the National Gallery in Washington D.C.

Portrait of a Lady
Rogier van der Weyden, ~1460
oil on panel, 13 x 10 in
National Gallery of Art, Washington
photo in public domain from the Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons

For the carved version of the medieval lady, we propose the Mary Magdalene shown below, which may have originally stood in the Church of the Dominicans in Augsburg, Germany. Jenkins returns to Jean as a medieval image when he learns that she slept with Jimmy Brent during his own affair with her. “I thought of that grave gothic beauty that I had once loved so much, …. I thought her men are gothic too, being carved on the niches and corbels of a mediaeval cathedral….” [KO  183] We envision Mary Magdalene, dancing on a corbel above gargoyles who caricature the three unhappy lovers — Stripling, Jenkins, and Brent.

Saint Mary Magdalene
Gregor Erhart, 1515-1520
lime tree wood, polychrome, 71 x 18 x 17 in
Louvre Museum
© Musée de Louvre, 2011, Thierry Ollivier

Devils drag a sinner off to hell. Corbel at Notre Dame cathedral,Noyon, France
photo from London Stone Carving
on Twitter
@londoncarving

This is also our final recourse to Francisco Goya (Spanish 1746-1828), whose multi-faceted career we have considered twice earlier in Dance: in Buyers’s Market as a painter of a scandalous nude, and in Cassanova’s Chinese Restaurant as a Romantic chonicler of the life of the peasantry.  There is also the Goya of the Spanish royal court, official painter of its noble family, the Goya who became a scathing political and social satirist, and finally a misanthrope of overwhelming visual rage.  But long before the tragic final act of Goya’s career, he maintained a thriving practice as a portraitist to an aristocratic clientele that valued his special gifts in that genre.  Those gifts included a delightful delicacy of touch and facility with likeness, but the flattery of his portraits consisted not so much in the prettifying of his subjects as in his ability to suggest a sympathy for their simple humanity, regardless of their wealth and station.

The Duchess of Alba
Francisco Goya, 1797
oil on canvas, 83 x 59 in
Hispanic Society of America
photo in public domain from Wikimedia Commons

We show Goya’s 1797 portrait of the Duchess of Alba dressed in black, often called The Black Duchess, as an example of one of his “sad duchesses.”  Powell’s allusion to Goya here is especially appropriate to Nick’s regard for Jean, as, historically, rumors have circulated that Goya’s regard for the duchess was romantic, even if research suggests an unrequited love, at most.  Though still in the prime of her maturity, the duchess mourns the loss of her husband, just as Jean Duport has lost her Colonel Flores.  Still, Goya’s duchess betrays less sadness than a kind of bewildered isolation, and an indignant refusal to accept her condition.  As from the start, Nick’s fascination with Jean Duport lies not in any conventional beauty but in something else that she is for him, now described as “a foreign lady of distinction.”

A television program celebrating the life of St. John Clarke starts and ends with “St. John Clarke’s portrait (butterfly collar, floppy bow tie) painted by his old friend, Horace Isbister, R.A.” [HSH 39/40 ].

Isbister, whom Powell introduced in QU, has a number of appearances in Dance [The Walpole-Wilson Portraits (BM), Isbister, The British Frans Hals (AW), At the Isbister Memorial Exhibition (AW), Isbister According to St. John Clarke (CCR), and  Outside the Army Council Room (MP)] prior to HSH. Later in HSH, Jenkins mentions a final Isbister portrait, that of Sir Horrocks Rusby in wig and gown, presumably similar to the portrait of Lord Aberavon [HSH 62-3/65]

John Galsworthy
Rudolf Helmut Sauter, 1923
oil on canvas
University of Birmingham;
© the copyright holder. Photo credit: University of Birmingham
from ArtUK.org

John Galsworthy is often mentioned as a model for Clarke, so we offer a portrait of Galsworthy, collar, bowtie , and all. Rudolf Sauter’s (1895-1977) biography does not match Isbister’s:  Sauter showed at the Royal Academy but was never elected to membership; he was Galsworthy’s nephew and illustrated the definitive edition of his works.  The portrait is worthy of Isbister, competently flattering the sitter, but leaving the viewer minimally informed and unexcited. Other portraits of Galsworthy  with collar and bowtie, including those by William Strang  R.A. (1859-1921) (lithograph), the caricaturist Sir David Low (1891-1963) (pencil), and various photographers shown at the National Portrait Gallery, do not provide other clues to models for Isbister.

After Jenkins and his friends watched the program, “Members then let off a mild bombshell. He suggested that the friendship with Isbister had been a homosexual one. The contention of Members was that the central figure in an early genre pictures of Isbister’s — Clergyman eating an Apple — was not at all unlike Clarke as a young man, Members advancing the theory that Isbister could have possessed a fetishist taste for male lovers dressed in ecclesiastical costume.” [HSH 40/]

Even with this new clue, we have not been able to find a facsimile of the Clergyman.   Like Jenkins and his friends, we will leave Horace Isbister, R.A.  still a subject for amused speculation.

Walking near Westminster bridge, Jenkins pauses by the statue of Boadicea to watch the passing vintage cars:

The chariot horses recalled what a squalid part the philosopher Seneca, with his shady horse-dealing, had played in that affair. Below was inscribed the pay-off for the Romans.

Regions Caesar never knew

Thy posterity shall sway. [TK 281/277]

Statue of Boadicea
Thomas Thornycroft, executed 1853-1885 , erected 1902
bronze
NW end of Westminster Bridge, London
photo by Carole Radatto, available in Wikimedia Commons by Creative Commons license

The statue of Boadicea was commisioned by Prince Albert as a tribute to Queen Victoria. The sculptor, Thomas Thornycroft (1815-1885), was known for monuments, including an equestrian statute of Queen Victoria shown at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, and memorials to Prince Albert, including the Commerce group on the Albert Memorial.

Boadicea was queen of the Iceni tribe of Britons. Her name means victory, but she failed in her rebellion against the Romans. (For more history, including the role of Seneca in the story, see www.historynet.com.) The inscription at the base, extolling the British empire, is from Boadicea. An Ode. by Thomas Cowper (1731-1800).

Jenkins visits Moreland, now terminally ill, in his hospital bed. Moreland recalls a time when Sir Magnus had been erroneously told that he had a year to live. Moreland said, “I now find myself in a stronger position than in those days for vividly imagining what it felt like to be the man in the van Gogh picture, so to speak Donners-on-the-brink-of-Eternity.” [TK 275/271]

Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate)
Vincent Van Gogh, 1890
oil on canvas, 32 x 26 in
Kroller-Muller Museum
photo in public domain from Wikimedia Commns

Van Gogh painted At Eternity’s Gate in May, 1890, just as he was recovering from a two month illness, caused by or at least accompanied by severe depression, and two months before his apparent suicide.

Worn Out
Vincent Van Gogh, 1882
pencil on watercolor paper, 20 x 12 in
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
photo in public domain from Wikimedia Commons

Old Man with His Head in His Hands
Vincent Van Gogh, 1882
transfer lithography, printed in black ink, crayon, brush and autographic ink, 22 x 15 in
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (and elsewhere)
photo in public domain from Wikimedia Commons

Moreland, nearing death, was looking back to others’ response to our universal mortality and thinking how the approach of death changed the view. Van Gogh was also looking back, referencing his own earlier works, which started as a pencil drawing of a resident of an almshouse and evolved to a lithograph. At the lower left of the lithograph, reportedly in Van Gogh’s own hand, is the inscription “At Eternity’s Gate.”

Jenkins describes Mrs. Erdleigh in her old age: “Lighter than air, disembodied from a material  world, the swirl of capes, hoods, stoles, scarves, veils, as usual encompassed her from head to foot, all seeming of so light a texture that, far from bringing an impression of accretion, their blurring of hard outlines produced a positively spectral effect, a Whistlerian nocturne in portraiture, sage greens, somber blues, almost frivolous greys, sprinkled with gold.” (TK 246/241)

Nocturne in Pink and Gray. (Portrait of Lady Meux.)
James McNeill Whistler, 1881
oil on canvas, 76 x 37 in
The Frick Collection, New York
photo in public domain from the Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons

The harmonious colors of Whistler’s portraits could be wonderful. We have seen the Portrait of Lady Meux, (shown left) alternatively titled as a Harmony or as a Nocturne. It is only one of many of Whistler’s sumptuous portraits of Victorian women that evoke Mrs. Erdleigh’s other- worldly elegance and, as far as we know, the only one sometimes called a Nocturne.

Mrs. Erdleigh always has dimensions beyond the mere corporeal; in this description of a disembodied Mrs. Erdleigh nearing the end of her life, Jenkins is also recalling the almost abstract quality of Whistler’s nightscapes. About 1871,  he began to paint scenes of the Thames, which he called Nocturnes, works with veiled light and carefully blended muted colors, set at dusk or in the night; see Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea 1871, now in the Tate.  (American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts Vol. 3).  Whistler took the name  from the music of Chopin, according to a note he wrote in 1872 to Frederick Leyland, a Chopin devotee:

“I say I can’t thank you too much for the name ‘Nocturne’ as a title for my moonlights! You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics and consequent pleasure to me—besides it is really so charming and does so poetically say all that I want to say and no more than I wish.”

The chief among those critics was Ruskin, who wrote that with Nocturne in Black and  Gold (shown below) Whistler was “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”   Whistler sued Ruskin for libel and won the suit but was awarded a trivial damage payment, much less than his share of the court costs. Later Whistler got more substantial satisfaction, selling the picture for 800 guineas.

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
James McNeill Whistler, 1875
oil on panel
The Detroit Institute of Art
photo in public domain from Wikimedia Commons

In addition to Nocturne, Whistler often used other musical terms, like Symphony or Harmony, to title his paintings. We recall Jenkin’s description of Pamela Fitton’s crimson and peacock blue blouse  contrasting with Tiepolo’s colors with “dissonance as much as harmony” [TK 88] and wonder if Powell was thinking of Whistler when he wrote this description. Of course, harmony has shades of meaning, which Powell explores in the last volumes of Dance.