Hymn by Hirst

Damien Hirst's "Hymn" outside the Tate Modern as part of the Hirst retrospective exhibition.

Controversial as always the critics have plenty to say about his wealth, some calling him the biggest conman of our times.
The toy manufacturer Humbrol sued Hirst over this sculpture. They claimed it is a scaled up version of a model they sell to teach anatomy to children.
An out of court settlement was agreed with Hirst paying an undisclosed sum to charity.

Inner visions of a twilight world

As already noted here, the exhibition Watercolour at Tate Britain (until 21 August 2011) has a section on Watercolour and War, in which a spectacularly gruesome painting by Charles Bell (1815) from the RAMC Muniments Collection is the earliest exhibit, on loan from the Wellcome Library.

After that, anyone in search of less violent subjects can find them in the next room, devoted to Inner vision. Here the works exhibited show how visionary artists, who seek to capture the fleeting figures which haunt their own imagination, have turned to watercolour for its speed of execution and variety of effects. William Blake, Simeon Solomon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones (with the largest watercolour in the exhibition), Frederick Cayley Robinson, and the Welsh poet David Jones are among the artists whose unearthly, hallucinatory paintings inhabit this gallery. Quieter and more contemplative, but no less intense.

Gouache by Robert Bateman. Wellcome Library no. 44691i.

Among them is another work on loan from the Wellcome Library: a gouache painting of witches plucking mandrakes by Robert Bateman (1842-1922). Botanist, landscape gardener and Italian scholar, Bateman was the leader of a group of British Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic painters who appeared in the 1860s under the auspices of the Dudley Gallery in London. His taste for exotic flora was inherited from his father James Bateman (1812–1897), the orchid-maniac who founded the gardens of Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire, now open to the public in the care of the National Trust. It contains gardens in ancient Egyptian, Himalayan and Chinese styles.

The strange atmosphere of Biddulph Grange finds an echo in Robert Bateman's depiction of the mandrakes. The mandrake is associated with many legends. Mandrake was said to grow beneath gallows, in a spot where the urine or sperm of a hanged man has fallen to the ground. When uprooted, it utters a shriek so powerful that it can kill people standing too near. There are male and female mandrakes, and infertile women can become fertile by consuming a male-shaped mandrake. A chapter of Sir Thomas's Browne's Pseudodoxia epidemica, 1646, was devoted to these folk-stories (book II, chapter VI).

Bateman's painting shows witches standing at a distance to pull up a mandrake growing near the foot of the gallows. It illustrates Walter Cranes's characterization of the Dudley Gallery school as "a magic world of romance and pictured poetry ... a twilight world of dark mysterious woodlands ... veiled in a dim and mystic light". Crane described Bateman's work as "weird and powerful" (weird meaning supernatural).

The transition from Medicine and War to Inner Vision at Tate Britain reprises an earlier exhibition in which Bateman's gouache was exhibited: the 1913 exhibition of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum and Library at Wigmore Street, London, initially for visitors to the International Medical Congress (June-October 1913) and subsequently to the public. This exhibition, whose centenary will arrive in two years' time, was the occasion on which the private collection started by Henry S. Wellcome in 1880 became a permanent institution opened to outsiders, and was the precursor to today's operations of the Wellcome Library. At Wigmore Street in 1913 the cautious visitor had to step through a gallery lined with watercolours not of war but of epidemic diseases: deadly mosquitoes depicted by Amedeo Terzi lined one wall, engravings of bubonic plague the neighbouring wall -- all still in the Wellcome Library today. If visitors traversed the length of this gallery and had the courage to carry on, they would have had to step between two African witch doctors and go through a door above which were what the catalogue describes as a "trophy of animal and human weapons of offence and defence": the skin of a tiger on one side and a leopard on the other, the horns of a buffalo or similar, the skull of a big cat, the sword of a swordfish, and other edifying naturalia. (Click on image above to see the details.)

Once past those, they were in a narrow gallery with an unusual collection of watercolours. The first painting in the bottom row will be recognized as Bateman's gouache of witches plucking mandrakes. The two paintings above it are apparently no longer in the Wellcome Library. The painting showing a man with his broken leg in a splint is described in the handbook [1] as "Kind enquiries by J. Hayllar": there was a family of painters called Hayllar based in Bloomsbury, of which James Hayllar (1829–1920) or his daughter Jessica Ellen Hayllar (1858–1940) may be the author of this painting. Where is it now? It fits Jessica's description of her father's work as "subjects to bring the poor and well-to-do together, kindly acts and interest shown in various ways" (Oxford dictionary of national biography). It would be ironic if it were a work of Jessica's, as from about 1900 she was confined to a wheelchair as a result of a traffic accident.

The painting above the Hayllar was catalogued as "The arrest of the alchemist [by] Pierre Deville, 1907", which has not been identified, nor has the painting in the tabernacle frame on the lower left, catalogued as "The magician by Professor Delbake" (possibly Charles Alexandre Debacq, 1804-1853). The painting above that one is catalogued as "The convalescent" without an attribution: it is however still in the Library, and is another fine exhibition-watercolour, signed by the Victorian artist R.H. Giles (right: Wellcome Library no. 18206i). Giles lived in Gravesend in Kent, and exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere for the fifty years 1826 to 1876. Thanks to the darkness of this corridor, it still preserves unfaded its original lustrous colours.

In the quiet of this narrow space, the visitor to the Wigmore Street gallery in 1913 could obtain a temporary respite from the more didactic or overbearing exhibits. There will be fewer quiet episodes in 2011 at Tate Britain, with its larger galleries and immense flow of visitors, but the splendid variety of paintings is more than enough compensation. To mention just two examples, Richard Dadd's bizarre watercolour entitled by him "The child's problem", is rarely on display, while among the earlier exhibits, Lucas Horenbout's portrait of King Henry VIII, on loan from the Louvre, provides a temporary remedy for the usual absence outside Great Britain of both this portrait and Holbein's portrait of the king (the latter being in the Thyssen collection in Madrid).

[1] Handbook of the Historical Medical Museum organised by Henry S. Wellcome, London 1913, p. 15

The Wonders of Watercolour: Sir Charles Bell painting on loan at Tate Britain

Watercolour. What is it good for? Absolutely everything! Or so it seems. The versatility of this medium is explored in the all-embracing Watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain until 21 August 2011.

Eight differently themed rooms demonstrate, for example, how watercolour has been used for precise depiction of the natural world, evocative scenes of travel and distant landscapes, and eccentric, charming or disturbing versions of ‘Inner Vision’. A room devoted to ‘Watercolour and War’ includes works ranging from the grotesque carnivalistic scenes of Edward Burra (1905-1976) to graphic depictions of horrific war wounds. In this latter category hangs one of the Battle of Waterloo casualties painted by Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842).

This particular image, selected from an extensive series of Bell watercolours (RAMC/95) held by the Wellcome Library on behalf of the Army Medical Services Museum, shows a soldier suffering the effects of a sabre wound to the stomach, Peltier, Belgian Hospital, 2 July 1815. Lying on his back, shirt pulled up to show what looks like parts of his innards, the soldier’s muted agony and despairing fear is also captured.

Bell’s talent for conveying emotion can be more closely examined in his works on the anatomy and physiology of expression, copies of which are held by the Wellcome Library, including Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting (1806) and Essays on the Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression (1824).

His prolific illustrations of the human body, the human hand, the brain, the arteries and surgical procedures of course also form part of the holdings of the Wellcome Library’s Rare Books Collection and the Paintings, Prints and Drawings Collection.

Exhibition-goers and students of the illustration of war wounds may also be interested in the images hanging next to the Bell watercolour at Tate Britain: First World War facial injuries and reconstructions, which have been loaned to the Tate by the Gillies Archive, Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup, Kent.

This is the second loan from the Bell waterclours at the moment (we described the other back in a post late last year). Catalogue descriptions of the entire series of Battle of Waterloo watercolours by Charles Bell held in the RAMC archive can be found by searching the Archives and Manuscripts online catalogue, entering RAMC/95 in the 'Reference' search box. Researchers should note that due to the fragile condition of the original watercolour paintings photographic reproductions only are normally provided for consultation in the Rare Materials Room. However, bonafide research requests to view the originals will be considered.

Images:

- Sabre wound to abdomen, Peltier, Belgian Hospital, 2 July 1815. From Sir Charles Bell's watercolours of wounds sustained by soldiers at the Battle of Waterloo, 1815 (RAMC/95)

- A terrified man holding up his hands. From Charles Bell, 'Essays on the Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression' (1824)

Author: Amanda Engineer

The Long Path

A trek along the river.

Warmer Coat

I must get myself a warmer coat.

Girl with the White Balloons

Dressed in white holding a bunch of white lilies in one hand and white balloons in the other. A special day perhaps.

Sunday Bridges - Wibbly Wobbly

A view from beneath the millennium bridge. Looking at it from this angle reminds me of how it twisted in the Harry Potter movie.

The pedestrian bridge crossing the Thames between the Tate Modern and St Paul's was built for the millennium but closed almost immediately for modifications to its unstable movement. It was quickly nicknamed the wibbly wobbly bridge which has stuck and continues to be refereed to by locals.

Check out the other Sunday Bridges hosted by Louis Le Vache.

Singing Plants

A couple of weeks ago as part of the Tate 10 year celebrations they hosted no soul for sale, an exhibition of over 70 local and international artists.
The quirky and fun installation of house plants by Oregon Painting Society was one of my favourites. You hold two plants and pressure or stroking results in sounds. Talking to the plants is not just for Prince Charles.

Luke Fildes at the bedside

As last weekend was the centenary of the death of Edward VII, it seems an appropriate occasion to highlight this image (46801i) from our collections. It was drawn by Sir Luke Fildes (1844-1927), shows the King on his deathbed, and was published by The Graphic with the permission of Queen Alexandra.

By 1910 Fildes was a successful society portraitist - he had painted the coronation portraits of Edward and Alexandra - but he had come to prominence in the late 1860s as an illustrator with a social conscience depicting (often in The Graphic) the social problems of late Victorian Britain.

Fildes is perhaps best known today for another scene of a bedside, The Doctor. In what has become one of the most recognisable images in the history of medicine, a family doctor sits patiently, attending an ill child in a poor, rural household, with the parents in close - but powerless - attendance.


There's still a debate over the origins of The Doctor: one argument is that it was inspired by a bedside vigil spent whilst Fildes's own son was dying from tuberculosis in 1877 (Fildes being so impressed by the professionalism of the doctor treating his son, that he painted this work, in part, in his honour).

Or indeed, the painting may derive from a royal connection, with Edward VII's mother Queen Victoria, ordering it to commemorate the service of her own physician, Sir James Clark, when she sent him to care for the sick child of a servant on her Balmoral estate.

Either way, we do know that the painting was commissioned by Sir Henry Tate and completed in 1891 for the opening exhibition of the Tate Gallery. Still a part of the Tate's collections, The Doctor was an immensely popular painting in its day, with many engravings and prints made of it. Shown above is such a print in our collections, produced in 1893 (42577i).

The Doctor is a much discussed work. It has been seen as a comment on the professionalism and dedication of Victorian medical professionals but also an idealisation of doctors in a time where industrialisation meant such personal care for individual patients was declining. Another reading suggests it marks a stage before the age of antibiotics, where attendance and patience prove ineffectual against infectious disease. In a recent article for the British Journal of General Practice, Jane Moore even discussed the relevance of the painting to medical practice in the 21st century.

In The Doctor, the light reflecting through the cottage window perhaps suggests the worst of the child's illness is over and that they will recover. In Fildes's other bedside scene, the dying Edward VII is shown alone: his family - and doctor - absent.

Mist

Mist or fog, the stuff that makes you think of Jack the Ripper hangs over London.
I climbed over 500 steps at St Paul's Cathedral to bring you this picture.

October Theme Day - Contrast

Fire played a big part in this years Thames Festival. The amazing light in the window of the Tate was created by small pots of fire. This was the last picture I took that day as I headed home.

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Paparazzi

The Dagger Brothers singing Paparazzi during the four day long Tate festival over bank holiday weekend.
A bit of sun, a few days holiday and Londoners will show you how to have fun no matter how old or young. A sprinkling of madness definitely helps.