On my walk yesterday, I talked with a friend—outdoors at six feet apart—who is planning to celebrate Christmas next July when her family can gather safely. Then this morning while I was mulling blog topics, I happened across Miss Jasper's Garden illustrated by one of my artists, N. M. Bodecker. Perfect. In this time of pandemic, why not a momentary break to July at Christmas?
Picturing a World
Shepherds dance (and dog)
December 20, 2020
Peasants dancing are an appealing late-medieval, early-Renaissance extension of the Annunciation to the Shepherds motif in manuscript illustrations. (For the full page, click here. For another example, click here). The sung French carol Allons, gay, gay, gay, bergères by Guilaume Costeley comes out of this development (for an excellent performance, click here). In the 20th C, the medieval danced carole in the form of the farandole was incorporated into folk-art santon sets in Provence, which add dozens of Provençal peasants and townspeople to the canonical Holy Family, shepherds, and Magi of other Nativity sets. What I've never seen before, however, is such a realistic depiction of someone trying to induce his puzzled dog to join the dance. Dogs at the Annunciation, yes, but now I'm on the lookout for another one dancing!
Play in a 16th C hal
December 10, 2020
Blog post alert: I had a subplot about a theatrical company in the novella I'm working on now. A reader of an early partial draft said, "I like your actors, but I don't see where you are going with this." Neither did I really, so I removed most of it. Am ever I tempted to reinstate it, though, after seeing this image in the British Library's post, The Show Must Go On!
Sphere 1951
December 7, 2020
As a follow-up to yesterday's post, what fun! Father Christmas calling down the reindeer in a more natural version of his ice palace. This is obviously not the North Pole; but, after all, why not imagine his workshop somewhere in the North Woods? Or take the picture literally and see it as the backdrop for a theatrical production. I'm devouring it like a bon-bon, but if we play this year's story-generating game, there are already three possibilities: a story about Santa Claus, a story about a staged show, a story about a 1951 magazine.
Baynes and biscuits
December 6, 2020
Pauline Baynes's illustrations for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, sank almost as deep into my imagination as C. S. Lewis's story did—and that's saying a lot! Yet somehow, I never quite liked her Father Christmas with the beavers. So what about this illustration to advertise Huntley & Palmer biscuits? Oh, my yes! How I wish I had a biscuit tin with it on top! NB: I don't think it suggests a story, only a delicious side of commercial Christmas. What do you say? In any case, Happy St. Nicholas Day!
Raindrops on windshield
December 4, 2020
Blog post alert: I can't think of an equivalent exercise for writers, but I was fascinated by James Gurney's video demonstrating Painting Raindrops on a Windshield. If you like to watch a pro work magic, check it out!
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And The Ocean Was Our Sky
November 23, 2020
"Call me Bathsheba." Thus opens Patrick Ness's novel, The Ocean Was Our Sky. (I giggled, remembering the opening to James Thurber's The Wonderful O: "Call me Littlejack,' he roared. And the taverners called him Littlejack.") An obsessed captain hunting a villainous Toby Wick? Surely this must be a joke, a parody of Moby Dick. It works by inversion: ocean for sky, whales who hunt whalers. A female narrator, Bathsheba, against Melville's Ishmael. But the book isn't funny: it's heartbreaking and weird, and Rovina Cai's illustrations are as important as the text.
Celebrate!
November 7, 2020
The election results are in. And by chance, they were celebrating this day 407 years ago. Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah! (Image from a 17th C French manuscript, « Le discours de l'entrée (7 nov. 1613) de Messeigneurs le duc d'Espernon et marquis de La Vallette en la ville de Metz, avec les pourtraits des arcs triomphaux », par « D. Jacquet » (1614).)
Inga Moore’s Secret Garden
November 3, 2020
An edition of Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden illustrated by Inga Moore has been my bedtime reading for the last few days of the presidential campaign and should get me through to tomorrow's aftermath. It's lovely. I'm not sure when I last read the novel—maybe as much as thirty years ago when Ruth Sanderson's beautiful edition was published. When I opened this book, I knew I would have adored it as a child and was going to enjoy it now. In my conceit as a garden historian, though, I thought its illustrations of the Misselthwaite grounds were a bit over the top—much too complicated and big to be maintained by the one gardener I remembered from the story. Well, I was wrong.
Merovingian village
October 27, 2020
I love artists' imaginative renditions of archeological sites. A set of post holes, some jewelry, and a collection of animal bones may say a lot to a specialist but not so much to the rest of us until the artist gets to work. Then voilà, a picture of an early medieval stock-raising village in Pontarlier, France. Here I can actually imagine myself viewing the town from a hillside—and then walking down into it. It really helps that the surrounding topography is provided as well. I've never tried to sketch a scene for one of my stories, but I do make rough maps and diagrams of house interiors. Whatever works to stimulate and amplify the imagination—and at the moment give brief respite from climate change, pandemic, and election anxieties!
Via Merovingian-era settlement excavated in France at The History Blog