D. PREPARATORY DRAWING BY PHOEBE TRAQUAIR for ALL SAINTS, THORNEY HILL
PROLOGUE - THE STORY
In 2006 Dr. Lauder Brunton walked into the Lyghtesome Art Gallery in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada with a Phoebe Traquair drawing that he wanted cleaned and framed. The Lyghtesome owners, Elizabeth and Jeffrey Parker, had been to Scotland and had seen Phoebe Traquair's embroideries in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, so when they saw her name written on this drawing, they were intrigued and told me about it. My husband and I were teaching in London at the time. I knew that Phoebe Traquair (1852-1936) had worked in Edinburgh and in England, but why had one of her drawings ended up in Canada, and was it a drawing made for its own sake or was it related to one of her projects?
When I searched through her painted figures for three that matched the heads on the drawing, I found a large mural of many figures that she painted in a family chapel in England between 1920-22. My husband drove us the 3-hour trip through the New Forest to that family chapel, the church of All Saints in Thorney Hill. There on the apse wall were the exact same figures whose heads appeared in the drawing! The mural entitled
Te Deum Laudamus in that church had three saints whose heads matched identically those in the drawing, and in the painting they were placed in the same relationship with one another as they were in the drawing. While visiting All Saints, the beauty of its architecture and sculpture became apparent, and I could see that Phoebe Traquair's painting was part of a larger art work with specific family patronage. What I discovered later through research was that this drawing of three heads was one of the
very few extant preparatory drawings that Phoebe Traquair (1852-1936)
had ever made. My excitement about those discoveries has led to 7 blog entries about the painting, about the church, and about the artist. It is time to publish one more about the drawing itself. This blog is the first time the drawing has been published anywhere. Any subsequent use of the material should acknowledge this blog address: www.e-arthistory5.blogspot.com.
THE ARTICLE
NEWLY DISCOVERED PHOEBE TRAQUAIR DRAWING FOR ALL SAINTS, THORNEY HILL, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936)
painted the apse of the Manners’ family church of All Saints (fig.2)
Fig. 1 –Phoebe Traquair, Te Deum Laudamus, apse
mural,1920-22, All Saints’ Church, Thorney Hill, Hants., England, (author’s
photo, 2006). (Grey sections are conservation paper).
Fig. 2 – Detmar Blow, All Saints, 1906,
Thorney Hill, Bransgore, Hampshire, England (author’s photo, 2006; apse chapel
to left in exterior photo).
in
Thorney Hill, England between 1920 and 1922[1].
The subject of her painting is the Te
Deum Laudamus from the Book of Common Prayer. For the visual illustration
of the prayer Traquair divides the apse wall into three sections: heaven, earth, and a decorative base. In the
earth section
she organizes the composition as a sacra conversazione, a group of figures
sharing space with the Holy Family. That group includes portraits of the
Manners as well as artists, scientists, and friends.[2]
The All Saints mural comes at the end of Traquair’s illustrious career.
Her reputation had been well established in Edinburgh with three major church
murals in the 1880-90’s, and she
received admission to the Scottish Royal Academy in 1920, the same year
in which the Thorney Hill work was begun. Her fame stayed largely in Scotland
until 1993 when Dr. Elizabeth Cumming mounted an exhibition in Edinburgh of her
oeuvre and published three subsequent
books about her.[3]
Until now, no Traquair drawings have been associated with her wall
painting in All Saints.[4] A
lifesize drawing in charcoal of three saints’ heads (444 x 726mm) has recently
surfaced in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is a
Traquair drawing directly connected to her All Saints’ apse mural.[5] The Nova Scotia drawing is of three portrait heads from the sacra conversazione.
Phoebe Traquair, Drawing of Three Saints, 1920-22, private collection, Canada; photo
by Jeffrey Parker of Lyghtesome Gallery, Antigonish, N.S., Canada, 2009
Phoebe Traquair, Three heads of Saints, earth
section of Te Deum Laudamus mural,
All Saints Church, Thorney Hill, Hants., England, 1920-22 (Author’s photo,
2012).
Phoebe Traquair, earth section of Te Deum Laudamus mural in All
Saints Church, Thorney Hill, Hants., England, 1920-22 (author’s photo, 2012).
PROVENANCE OF DRAWING
The Traquair drawing has an impressive provenance. It went from the hand
of the artist to her son and then through three known subsequent owners after
her son's death. What the current owner remembers of the provenance is that Dr. Lauder Brunton had been Ramsey Traquair's doctor, and Dr. Brunton's mother had purchased Ramsey Traquair's house from Ramsey after Phoebe had visited her son there in Nova Scotia. Upon Brunton's mother's death, the house passed to Dr. Brunton, who then brought the drawing to the Lyghtesome Gallery to be framed. Whether Ramsey Traquair had given the drawing to Dr. Brunton before he inherited the house is not clear but presumed.
The passage from mother to son is dated 1923 right on the drawing
which makes the date of the drawing itself sometime between 1920 and 1923.[6] A
pencil inscription in the lower righthand corner says: Mrs. P.A
Traquair Avon Tyrrel.[sic] Hants / to
RT. 1923
and another inscription on the verso says: Original Study for two heads of Saints in Avon Tyrrel[sic] Church Hants, by / Mrs
P.A Traquair. Given by her to / me
November 3 1923. Ramsay Traquair /
McGill University.[7] The first inscription is most likely by the
artist herself, the second by her son. Ramsay Traquair, (RT)
(1874-1952), an architect who immigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1913. He
taught at McGill University in Montreal and summered in Guysborough, Nova
Scotia. In 1923, then, a year after Phoebe Traquair completed the Thorney Hill
mural, we can presume from the inscription that her son owned the drawing.
Since Phoebe Traquair died in 1936, Ramsay had it 13 years before her death. The drawing crossed the ocean in the period between 1920 and 1923, and it is likely that Phoebe herself brought it to her son, if what Dr. Brunton recounted was true.
Ramsay Traquair died in 1952 in Guysborough, Nova Scotia.
According to the appraisal written by Lyghtesome Gallery (Antigonish, Nova
Scotia) in 2008 (APPENDIX I), Dr. Brunton initially endowed the drawing as a
gift to the Anglican Church in Guysborough, but took it back when he saw it was
not being cared for properly.[8]
When Dr. Brunton died in 2007, his will entrusted the drawing to his personal assistant,
David Andrew, who then sold it to an anonymous buyer when Dr. Brunton’s estate
was put on the market in 2009. It is currently in that anonymous owner’s
private collection.[9]
COMPARISON
OF DRAWING AND PAINTING
The Nova Scotia drawing by Traquair[10]depicts
three heads of Saints. One only has to put the drawing next to three painted heads
from the earth section of her Te Deum in
All Saints to see that the features of the heads are identical and that all
three wear haloes. In both drawing and painting the measure
of the heads is approximately lifesize (8” head height). The portraits in the
drawing are carried out in charcoal with red and white highlights, in the
painting with an oil paint/turpentine mixture on dry layers of lead-white
paint.[11]
The three heads appear together in the
same order in the painting near the center of the figural "earth" group. The three saints
are to the left of Mary and the Christ Child.[12]
From left to right in the painting the three saints are: a wide-eyed younger
man, a middle-aged woman sandwiched between the two men, and an older man with
white beard (reddish in the drawing).
Phoebe Traquair, closeup of three saints, Te Deum Laudamus, 1920-22, All Saints, Thorney Hill, England.
Phoebe Traquair, Drawing of Three Saints, 1920-22, private collection, Canada; photo
by Jeffrey Parker of Lyghtesome Gallery, Antigonish, N.S., Canada, 2009
In both drawing and painting the far
left younger man has a high receding hairline with curled wisps of hair above
it; the woman has her hair tied back, her mouth open, and she looks up at the
same angle; and the bearded older man on far right is shown at ¾ angle from his
right side and has hair parted on his proper left. His glance is similar in
both drawing and painting, too.
The younger man on the far left shows
the only slight difference, apart from color, between drawing and painting. In
the drawing the young man’s eyes are more generally aimed outward toward an
unknown object; in the painting, they are aimed leftward and upward toward the
dove of the Holy Spirit in the sky. The faces of the saints in the drawing
resemble the faces in the painting and they both appear to be by the same hand
and about the same size.[13]
IDENTITY OF THE THREE FIGURES IN THE DRAWING
The man on the left is William Blake (1757-1827), the poet and painter, whom Phoebe Traquair
admired, and whose 1807 portrait by Thomas Phillips she must have
known since the drawing resembles it.[14] Blake
would have been age 50 in the Phillips portrait, and although he has some grey
hair in Traquair’s version, he appears younger, with fewer wrinkles. His
wide-open earnest gaze and pursed lips are features present in both the earlier
painted portrait as well as in Traquair’s drawn and painted portraits.[15]
Head of Blake in Traquair Te Deum mural, 1920-22 vs. Thomas Phillips, William Blake, oil portrait, 1807, National Portrait Gallery, London (photo permission of NPGL).
Traquair seems to be paying homage to her great mentor by
including him as a younger writer and saint here, probably St. John the
Evangelist since St. John’s symbol, an eagle, crouches beneath this figure in
the painting. Also in the painting this figure holds a quill pen and book,
appropriate both for St. John (who wrote one of the Gospels) and Blake (a poet
and illuminator whose designs were models for Traquair when she illuminated
books herself).[16]
The bearded man on the right in the drawing
Head of Bishop William Cecil, Phoebe Traquair drawing. Traquair, Painted head of Bishop Cecil, Te
Deum, All Saints, Thorney Hill, 1920-22.
William Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Bishop of Exeter, Photo by Walter
Stoneman, bromide print, 1933, NPG x166493, (permission from NPGL).
is a
portrait of the Bishop William Cecil, Lord Bishop of Exeter during the period
in which Traquair was painting. William Gascoyne-Cecil (1863-1936) was the
second son of a Prime Minister, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury. We owe
the identification of this figure to the research of Burn and Elkins.[17] Canon
Elkins knew Lady Mary Manners (wife of Francis Manners, the heir in 1921)
before she died in 1994, and she told him that this figure is a portrait of her
father, Bishop Cecil, a fact confirmed by the photo comparison [18]
Since she was present in the apse while Traquair was painting the mural, she is
a direct source for the identity of this figure.
In the painting the Bishop is portrayed as St. Joseph with a book. His
robe nearly touches the robe of the Virgin, and he faces the Mother and Child, forming
a Holy Family group with them at the center of the composition.
As a Bishop,
Cecil is an excellent choice to represent a holy father figure. In 1920 he was
57, an appropriate age for Joseph, who is usually depicted as an old man with a
white beard. While St. Joseph traditionally has a staff in painted images,
there are other examples in art history where Joseph carries a book.[19]
Since this Bishop once said that the Bible was “an awkward book,” the attribute
here is appropriate to remind us of his phrase.[20]
Cecil was Bishop of Exeter from 1916 to 1936. In his diocese he was
known as “Love in a Mist” because of a most loving personality combined with
absent-mindedness.[21] The drawing combines the hard-edged lines of his face and hair with wispy or "misty"- edged lines for his beard, so presumably the artist knew of the epithet. Bishop Cecil in 1921 is the father-in-law of
Francis Manners, the heir of Avon
Tyrrell, who is portrayed as the baby, the Christ Child, next to him in the
painting, so the Bishop is appropriate for the role of Joseph for that reason
as well, not the father but almost.[22]
For me the third figure in drawing and painting, the woman half-hidden between the two men in both the drawing and the
painting is the artist, Phoebe Traquair herself. She has given herself what is ostensibly a modest position behind two more prominent men, but she has a halo, too, and she has placed herself at the center of the sacra conversazione, viewable from the front and not on the sides. If you compare her face with Traquair's self-portrait and other self-portrait images in her other works, the similarity is striking. She is an artist known, as most artists, for inserting her image into her works.
Phoebe Traquair, Photograph,
1890, SNPG (photo permission the SNPG).
Phoebe Traquair,
Self-Portrait, oil on panel, 1911, SNPG (photo permission of SNPG)
Left: Phoebe Traquair, Self-portrait, pencil on paper, part of Drawing of Heads of Three Saints,
drawing in Nova Scotia, Canada, private ownership, 1920-23, (photo by Jeff
Parker, Lyghtesome Gallery, Nova Scotia, Canada.)
Right: Phoebe Traquair, Self-portrait within
earth section of Te Deum Laudamus,
All Saints, Thorney Hill, Hants., 1920-22. (Author’s photo).
The features are of a middle-aged woman
with long oval-shaped face, reddish hair (in the painting), eyes raised to
heaven, and mouth open in prayer or singing. Traquair seems to be much younger
than 68, her age in 1920. We have a photo of her in her 40’s and a
self-portrait in her late 50’s (the oil self-portrait done on panel 1909-1911
now in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland (PG 1594)) to compare
with the drawing and painting and in the All Saints’ drawing and painting she
seems to be about 35 years old, consistent with the younger ages of the Manners family in the same mural. The intense observant look in her eyes, her
auburn hair, and her determined mouth in both the oil self-portrait and the
photograph make her identity clear.[23 She is dressed in red, as Mary Magdalene might have been. It is thought that Traquair had painted herself as Mary Magdalene in her earlier work in the Apostolic Church in Edinburgh.(See Allardyce, p. 31.) There on the back of the entrance wall, in the smaller scene of the Pentecost, she is dressed in red as Mary Magdalene, a saint who is sometimes thought to be present at Pentecost with the Apostles:
Traquair chooses the same saint for her identity in All Saints, minus the firy tongue on her head:
PREPARATORY DRAWING
Ramsay Traquair’s inscription on the Nova Scotia drawing reads,
“Original Study for two heads of Saints in Avon Tyrrel Church Hants.” It is
likely that Ramsay would refer to the drawing as an “Original Study for” only
if it were a sketch intended to map out her intentions beforehand for the three
figures. The scale of the heads
corresponds to the finished work (large drawing, lifesize painted heads). The
changing of the angle of Blake’s eyes from drawing to painting to conform to
the wall subject also speaks in favor of a drawing done before the main mural.
The problem with this assumption is that so few preparatory drawings for
any of her murals exist. We know that Traquair made dozens of preparatory
drawings for minor works, from those for embroideries[24]
to illuminated pages[25],
from enamels[26]
to jewelry.[27]
Cumming cites example after example of preparations in sketches for these
smaller artworks.[28]
But when it came to working on the wall, Traquair seems to have
preferred to sketch her ideas directly onto the wall surface, as shown in the
photo of her working in the Catholic Apostolic Church (CAC) in 1897 [29]
Publicity photograph of
PhoebeTraquair sketching designs on north wall of north aisle, 1897, (permission
from the Traquair family
through the Mansfield Traquair Centre.)
There are only two other extant
figural drawings, besides the Nova Scotia one, which might be said to be
preparatory drawings for one of her murals. They are:
1)
a plan mentioned above sketched for the Mortuary Chapel paintings in Edinburgh(ca. 1891-2) before their final
arrangement on the walls.[30] Similar but not identical to finished work.
2)
a pastel portrait on paper in chalk and pencil of Lady Katherine Hill. [31]
Traquair, chalk sketch on
brown paper, Lady Katherine Hill, AGGV, 1904-5.
Traquair, Child with heart,
mural at St. Peter’s Clayworth, Nottinghamshire, 1904-5.
Traquair, section of left wall of nave, St.
Peter’s Clayworth, Nottinghamshire, 1904-5.
(Author’s photo, 2010)
Elizabeth Cumming realized this was a preparatory
drawing for a girl in Traquair’s mural of the Adoration on the north wall of St. Peter’s nave in
Clayworth, England,[32]
in a figure holding a heart. The artist has idealized the girl in the finished painting and smoothed out the skin, but it is still a recognizable portrait, produced from the sketched portrait.
Both the drawing of Katherine Hill and the drawing of our three saints
are portraits carried out with enough realistic information that someone can
identify the people as though they saw them in a room. In the All Saints
example the visual information is virtually identical in the drawing to the
figures on the wall.[37]
The fact that the three
heads in the Nova Scotia drawing match (except for Blake’s eyes) the three heads in the
painted mural, the fact that the artist’s own son owned the drawing, and the
fact that other exact “Studies” for this mural have not been found, make this
Nova Scotia drawing the only known surviving preparatory drawing for Traquair’s
whole apse mural at All Saints, Thorney Hill, England. It is also only one of
three known extant preparatory drawings for any of Phoebe Traquair’s large
mural works, and only one of two known where portraits are sketched directly
before being painted on the wall. It is, lastly, and perhaps most importantly,
the only preparatory drawing of Traquair’s for mural work that has a
self-portrait in it.
CONCLUSION
The painted image of the apse mural corresponds almost literally to the
text of the hymn of Te Deum Laudamus.
Traquair thought of the artist as musician and she has set the words of the
prayer to music on the wall.
The painting presents the earthly and heavenly worlds together and emphasizes
the harmony of that union with the joining of souls in the sacra
conversazione with the Holy Family in the center. Human action is implied
in the presentation of the dead heir to the holy figures, in the fish that have
been caught in the net, in the dragon that is dead, and in the beaker of the
scientist and the basket of the mason.
Her mural reflects a deeply-felt
spiritual sensibility as well. In book illustrations she creates a year after
the mural, in 1923, she paints a watercolor miniature depicting Divine Love
sustaining the Pilgrim [70]
Traquair, ‘Succour’, L’Amour Divin soutient le pèlerin,
(Miniature)p. 101, in Grace Warrack, Une guirlande de Poésies Diverses
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1923).
Her
pilgrim is the soul who is given sustenance by God’s Love. In another illustration for the same book,
she entitles her work, “Gift of the Spirit of Power”, “L’âme dans sa faiblesse
reçoit le baptême du feu divin” (The soul in its weakness receives the baptism
of divine fire) [71]
Traquair, ‘Gift of the spirit of Power,’ L’âme dans sa
faiblesse reçoit le baptême du feu divin(fresco), p. 108, in Grace Warrack,Une
guirlande de Poésies Diverses (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1923).
The last illustration she does in that book is a small initial decorated with
the saying, “He poured forth his spirit upon him and man became a dwelling
place for the eternal” [72]
Traquair, ‘Reception of the Spirit,’ L’âme par l’effusion de
l’Esprit Divin est faite habitation de dieu, (Miniature) p. 131, in Grace
Warrack, Une guirlande de Poésies Diverses (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1923).
The essence of what she believes is put into words in these small
instances, but certainly the pictures on All Saints’ wall reflect the same
belief: that human beings are souls on a
journey toward God and that God’s eternity is present in all of us, even when
we are only images on a wall. Her earth
is imagined as a conversation with the divine figures; heaven is a display of
sacred glory. Her ability to transport the viewer from thoughts of death to
thoughts of divine Love is her innate gift. She uses her artistic color sense
to convey a happy spirit about life and its journey’s end.
Beauty is nourishment. The beauty of
Traquair’s rural scene of springtime and personal gathering, the sparkling
colors in harmonic balance, the smiling young faces, all contribute to a
nourishing of the audiences who view the mural. The birds and flowers,
reminders of Constance’s garden,[73]
even without the beautiful idealized portraits of the people, make it
attractive and charming.
Traquair, Ducks, birds, water
pool, detail of Te Deum.
The only physical acknowledgement of
death on the wall is the dead dragon under the figure of Baron
Manners. The dragon is a comical figure,
painted with turquoise scales and pink tongue projecting sideways out of a
mouth full of teeth.
Traquair, Dragon killed by St. George (Lord Manners), Te Deum.
All sense of the horror of death is
erased here and replaced with mirth. There is no reference to hell in the
prayer or in the painting.[74]
The afterlife is a pleasant light-filled spring landscape with good company and
singing. Eternity resembles life on a good day, a remembered happiest day.
The patron, his deceased wife and children, are the motivation for the
entire mural. The love of the parents for their children, as witnessed in the
rest of the chapel, is expressed by the painter in the apse, too. Constance’s
poem, written to God on the death of her son, (See APPENDIX II) is moving in
the same way that Traquair’s painting is, because Lady Manners tries in the
words to come to terms with the deaths of her two children and to reconcile her
belief in God’s goodness with the pain and sorrow from those deaths. That
request for reconciliation is given a visual answer in Traquair’s painted figures.
Lord Manners as St. George is a key here, too; he is vanquishing the
dragon, vanquishing death itself. The artist pays him the highest compliment by
making him the hero of the piece, consistent with his reputation as the hero in
the horse-race wager that won him the money to help pay for the construction of
the Avon Tyrrell manor house and church.[75]
In what is ostensibly a very traditional image, however, Traquair is a
rebel-artist. Firstly, her God in heaven seems to be feminine, perhaps is God
as a woman.
With long hair, slender fingers, and softened features S/He is more
feminine than many images of God. Then Traquair’s saints are ordinary people
who have not been given the title of saint by any traditional religious
organization or church: her saints are
of her own making. Even if the Lord Bishop was tolerant of her views, her own
saint-making is radical in Anglican and Catholic terms.
She makes herself a saint, her favorite authors, Tennyson and Blake, saints, and
even a 15-year old artist Whistler a saint. If the prominent choir singer in the mural is Mary
Christine (Molly), she has also broken down the tradition of male choristers by
painting a female one.
In addition, she places common workmen (the stone mason) on the same
level of soul as the great scientist (Lister or Pasteur), barrister (Raymond
Asquith), or Baron (Lord Manners) so she undercuts the social conventions
of titles and political positions. All saints are equal, all souls the same. Her drama has no consistencies of time, place, or age except eternity. She
controls the age of people, mixes times, and places contemporaries with people
long dead, all with the understanding that eventually we are all part of the
earth-heaven continuum, all part of eternal time, the time-space continuity, even
as she is now as we discuss her.
The representation of herself
between Blake and the Bishop of Exeter in both drawing and painting is not
coincidental; she sees herself as a rebellious visionary and a traditional
religious devotee, so she is sandwiched between an artistic visionary and a conventional
bishop. She is being paid by the Lord of Avon Tyrrell, so she sets the scene in
the landscape of the local estate and includes the family portraits and friends
of the family; but she also uses the occasion to promote her own idea of the
Godhead and of the soul. In keeping with the hymn she illustrates, she
numbers herself already with the Saints; she, as believer and as painter, is
never confounded. Death has no hold on her. Her nourishment goes on, in paint,
and also, now, in pencil.
She saves a drawing of herself between artist and clergyman, the drawing
now in Nova Scotia, as a reminder of her role as artist in All Saints; she gives it to her son as a keepsake. Her painting, in the same way, is a keepsake for the Manners family, a way of holding on to their dearest in a space that reminds them that family members can be easily
lost. The humans are singing and raising their voices together as they
imagine living again with the dead, as they imagine the dead alive again. Eternity
as painted by Traquair is an earthly joining of loving and lively souls set in
a landscape of color, light, birds, flowers, and water. The therapeutic value
of art and music to the grieving human being is witnessed here. The congregants
in the church are meant to look at and admire all the saints present in All Saints
and believe and heal their wounds of sorrow brought on by sickness or death.
That they would sing the Te Deum as
they look would be a reverberation and confirmation in music of the painted
prayer on the curved wall.
Phoebe Traquair keeps a souvenir from the wall for herself and passes it
on to her son, on to posterity, and unknowingly, on to the internet through Canada. Why should death make one question faith? Art will make eternal life visible,
combining poetry, youth, religion, music, and sheer beauty of color. Traquair
has drawn and painted it so, and has thereby ensured her own place in the eternal
scheme of things.
ENDNOTES
[1] The mural is signed by the artist four times and
dated twice. (see my blog entry on the signatures.)
[2]
Many
of the identifications of those portraits have been worked out by Canon Patrick
C. Elkins and Mrs. Janet Burn in their very informative book, The Annals of
Avon, The Story of the Avon Tyrrell Estate 1891-1947, (Ringwood: Pardy
& Sons, Ltd., 2006), a private publication on the occasion of the centenary
of the All Saints Church in Thorney Hill. Since Revd. Canon Elkins is the Canon
Emeritus of Winchester Cathedral and Hon. Archivist for the Rt. Hon.The Lord
Manners, the book contains primary sources and permissions from the Manners’
Family and Estate Archives. He has written up a riveting account of John Manners' death in WWI. Janet Burn,
very knowledgeable lecturer in history of the New Forest and South Hampshire, gathered the history of the Manners family in diary years and did extensive
archival research at the Grenadier Guards’ Headquarters for the account of John's death. Mrs.
Burn also discovered a receipt for the mural dated 30th September,
1921, written on Avon Tyrrell notepaper from Traquair to Lord Manners, giving
the artist’s fee as 400 pounds (not clear if that was the total asked.) I am much indebted to Mrs. Burn and Canon Elkins for their expertise and help.
The All Saints mural
has undergone four restoration programs, one in 1988 by Roger A. Harris after a
fire in the church, a second in 1993-7 by Simone Pelizzoli, third in 2006, and
the last in 2010 by The Wall Paintings Workshop. The wall has suffered damp
from roof and window leaks and consequently one face, the man in between
Tennyson and Blake, has been completely replaced with the portrait of Bron
Herbert, a local veteran of the Boer Wars. (Burn and Elkins, 101). Pelizzoli
and Harris left notes on the same molding where Traquair left hers.
[3] Elizabeth Cumming, Phoebe Traquair
1852-1936, (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1993); catalogue for
the exhibition held Aug. 6 – Nov. 7, 1993, National Scottish Portrait Gallery,
Edinburgh. I would like to thank Elizabeth for her generous and wise
scholarship in conversations and emails relating to this article. The other two
books she has written on the subject are Phoebe Anna Traquair
(Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2005) and Hand, Heart, and Soul,
The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland,
(Edinburgh: Birlinn, Ltd., 2006). She also contributed to the Mansfield
Centre’s booklet on the murals in the Catholic Apostolic Church in Edinburgh: Allardyce,
Cumming, and Thomson, Guide to the Mansfield Traquair Centre,
(Edinburgh: Friends of the Mansfield
Traquair Centre, 2006). Traquair was born in Ireland, trained at the School of
Design in Dublin, married a Scotsman in 1973 and moved to Edinburgh the next
year.
[4] Lady Mary Manners “always said she was sure there was a full cartoon of
the whole mural [at All Saints], but that it was now lost, possibly through the
move from Avon Tyrrell to Tyrrells Ford (c. 1947); she did launch a full scale
search but nothing was ever found to date.” (emails from Elkins and Burn, 2012.) Lady Mary Manners was the wife of Lord Francis Manners.
[5] I owe my knowledge
of the existence of the drawing to Jeffrey and Elizabeth Parker, owners of the
Lyghtesome Gallery in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; I extend them my deepest
gratitude. The drawing was brought to them for framing and cleaning in 2006;
they sent it to Leaf by Leaf in Halifax for paper restoration and then framed
it; later in 2008 they wrote an appraisal for David Andrew; the appraisal included
documentation of the inscriptions on the
recto and verso; see APPENDIX I for
their appraisal. I add here warm thanks to Lynn Fairfield and Dr. Alistair
Duckworth for their careful editing of this article.
[6] The date on the drawing is only the date when
she gave the drawing to her son, not the exact date when she made it.
[7] See Lyghtesome appraisal, 2008, APPENDIX I. [Tyrrell should be spelled with two l’s.]
[8] See Lyghtesome appraisal, 2008, APPENDIX I.
[9] Lyghtesome appraisal, 2008. Thank you to that
private owner for permission to publish the drawing. The link for the drawing
to Traquair’s own hand has been also confirmed by the living artist sister of
Dr. Brunton, Alice Hoskins, 94, who knew her brother’s collection, lived in
Guysborough, and was taught drawing by Ramsay Traquair as a young girl. Alice
met Ramsay’s sister, Hilda, but never his mother. I thank her for her gracious
and helpful correspondence.
[10] “Traquair”
will refer to Phoebe Traquair and not her son from now on.
[11] Lyghtesome
appraisal, 2008, “sketch in unfixed
charcoal/pastel with dark red and white highlights” for the drawing.
Traquair’s wall painting technique is described at length in the Allardyce,
Cumming, and Thomson, 2006, 34-35: she began with five layers of lead white,
dried each, then applied on the resulting smooth wall, oil color from tubes
mixed with turpentine and beeswax; she then added varnish and a wash of
turpentine and wax rubbed onto the final layer. Traquair describes the colors
of the All Saints painting in a letter to her sister, “The run of colour is
goldy browns, rose, cream whites and spots of olive green, and blue.” NLS MS
8123, fol. 48, undated letter, written at Avon Tyrrell. Cumming, 1993, 47.
[12] St. Joseph is the
bearded man (in both drawing and painting) whose robe nearly touches the Madonna’s,
but there are two other heads in the painting between St. Joseph’s head and the
Madonna’s in the mural.
[13] All the heads in the
mural are lifesize. In the earth section there are 23 figures to the left of
the Madonna and Child and 20 figures to the right of the Madonna and Child from
the viewer’s perspective; spread over the curved apse wall are 47 figures
altogether, if we include the Madonna and Child, the 2 putti (child angels)holding the banner of the title, and those
figures shown only in halo. See website architect4conservation.org
for measurements of the building.
[14] Thomas Phillips, Portrait
of Blake,1807, National Portrait Gallery, London, www.npg.org.uk/;
NPG 212; Blake appears in Traquair’s earlier Mural for the Song School of St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in
Edinburgh(1888-1892); he is part of the procession of artists and writers on
the north wall (1890). See Margaret G. Campbell, Phoebe Anna Traquair’s
“Benedicite Omnia Opera”, Mural Paintings in the Song School, (Edinburgh:
St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, 1998).
[15] Blake’s orant
figures in some of his works (such as his manuscript page in the Scottish
National Gallery, God Writing upon the Tables of the Covenant (1805)SNG,
D2281), inspired Traquair’s own orant angels in this mural, and in the
Children’s Mortuary Chapel and Catholic Apostolic Church in Edinburgh.
William Blake, God Writing upon the Tables of the Covenant, 1805, watercolor,
Scottish National Gallery, Edinbugh.
Phoebe Traquair, seraphim in heaven, Te Deum, All Saints, Thorney Hill,
England,
1920-22.
Phoebe Traquair, Children’s Mortuary, Royal
Hospital for Sick Children, 1885-1901,
Edinburgh. (Author’s photo, 2010).
Phoebe Traquair, Seraphim, Chancel chapel,
Catholic Apostolic Church, (Author’s
photo, 2010).
[16] Cumming, Phoebe
Anna Traquair, 1852-1936, 2005, 34, 56, and 59; Allardyce, et.al, 2006, 24,
and Campbell, 1998, 15.
[17] Burn and Elkins, 99.
[18] Email from Revd.
Canon Elkins, 2012; Burn and Elkins, 99 (for them Bishop Cecil is St. Matthew).
[19] An example of Joseph
with a staff is Raphael’s Holy
Family with Palm Tree, NGL 062.46, in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.
Two examples of Joseph with book are:
Annibale Carracci’s The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist, also called
the Montalto Madonna,1600, NG 6597, National Gallery,
London,
and a Scottish example,Fig. 43a,b William Bell Scott, Nativity,
1872, in the Scottish National Gallery
[20] Trevor Beeson, The
Bishops (London: SCM Press, 2003),
13.
[21] Beeson, 12-15;
according to his parishioners, he fed crumpets to two rats in his house at tea
time and regularly on pastoral visits outside the parish would call up his wife
to ask where he was.
[22] The Bishop is also
the son of a former Prime Minister, as is Raymond Asquith, the male figure on
the right side of the Virgin Mary. The Bishop’s three sons, killed in WWI, are
painted in a group in the far left corner of the mural; is his daughter painted next to them? Burn and Elkins, 103.
[23] For the oil self-portrait of Traquair, see Cumming,1993,
46-47, Entry 119,p.85, Cumming, 2005, 87, and for the photo, the Scottish
National Portrait Library website entry for Phoebe Anna Traquair. For other
self-portraits in her works, see Cumming, 2006, 26-27, Allardyce,et. al., 2006,
30-31. I think she puts self-portraits also in the CAC Virgin cycle (Cumming, Hand,
Heart, and Soul, 2006, 153) and in the Kellie Castle mural of 1897(Cumming,
2005, 60).
[24] Cumming, 1993, 76,
Entry 79, 83, Entry 104, 81, Entry 97.
[25] Cumming, 1993, 73,
Entry 67 and 84, Entry 113.
[26] Cumming, 1993, 78,
Entry 84, 79, Entries 87 and 90, and 85,
Entry 117.
[27] Cumming, 1993, 78,
Entry 84.
[28] Cumming, 1993, 86-7,
Entries 124, 125.
[29] Even for such a vast project as the
Catholic Apostolic church there are no extant preparatory drawings. The
Guide to the Mansfield Traquair Centre
says, Traquair must have done preparatory
sketches both for the Catholic Apostolic congregation and to help in the
planning of the compositions, but very few of these have survived.”Allardyce
et.al., 33. In fact, the only one that is certainly for the Edinburgh church
mural project is a foliate decoration design in pencil (with no figures)
supposedly at McGill University Library, Montreal, Canada; the librarian is not
able to locate it.(Cumming, 1993, 66, Entry 41.)
Both
Elizabeth Cumming and Rosemary Mann of the Mansfield Traquair Trust maintain no
extant preparatory drawings for the Apostolic church exist in Edinburgh. All of the archives of the Scottish church
were shipped to London. According to the website for the CAC in London, the
archives were then split among the Bodleian Library (1972), the Lambeth Palace
Library, and the North Germany branch of the New Apostolic Church; are these likely
places for these drawings? That Traquair should have completed the enormous
task of painting Old and New Testament stories for the entire nave of the
Apostolic Church without preparatory drawings of any kind is remarkable,
however. Elizabeth Cumming (1993,83,entries 109,110) discusses two other
drawings for the Virgin cycle in CAC that are copies of the wall work, then
reused for an enameled casket project. Our drawing is not reused for another
work in the same way.
[30] Cumming, 1993, 63,
Entry 31.
[31] Cumming, 1993, 77,
Entry 81. AGGV stands for Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, located in British
Columbia, Canada. For their website, see http://www.aggv.ca
[32] My thanks to Chloe
Foulerton for her well-prepared guided tour of the church in 2011.
[37] Odd that no other
examples of portrait drawings by Traquair for mural works have been found, but equally
odd that no complete figural drawings for her murals exist.
[38] For most of the information about the
family I rely on my own 2006 and 2012 visits to the chapel and on the 2006 Burn and Elkins book. I arrived at some of the same portrait identities they
did, but on my own, (Blake, Tennyson, Lister, Pasteur, Edward Horner), some are portraits I have
discovered myself (Eric
Gill, Rex Whistler, and Traquair), but Burn and
Elkins are responsible for the identifications of Lord Manners, Lady Constance Manners, John Manners, Francis
Manners, the twins, Charles Gore, Laura Lovat, Asquith and Katherine Horner, and
Bishop Cecil and his three sons, all of whom appear in the painting.
[39] Burn and Elkins, 66-74.
[40] Burn and Elkins, 74.
[42] Edgar Bertram MacKennal,(1863-1931), Australian; in
1914 he is not yet “Sir” as he is knighted in 1921.
[45] Cummings,
1993,30(includes Traquair’s illuminated manuscript portrait of Carmichael),47,and
70 (cat.entry 54). See also Endnote 2 about Traquair’s fee receipt.
[46] Burn and Elkins, 96;
the photo showing the school children from 1922 is now lost.
[47] Burn and Elkins, fronstipiece.
[48]As Elizabeth Cumming
and Juliet Brown understood when they wrote comments on the mural in 1993 and
2001 respectively, the tapestry part of the wall allies Traquair with her other
mentors in the Arts and Crafts movement in England and Scotland, John Ruskin
and William Morris. Her animal and foliate decoration used to intimate cloth
and nature is similar to works found in that movement. I myself see elements quoting a chapel in
Florence, Italy, but that is for another article.
[49] For a loving description of Lady Constance, see
pp.184-186 in Margot Asquith, Margot Asquith, an Autobiography – Two volumes
in One (Lexington, Kentucky: Aeterna, 2010).
[50] Burn and Elkins published a photo as that of
Constance, only to be told by a researcher at Clovelly after their book went to
press that the image was of Evelyn, her sister.
[51] Burn and Elkins,
158; Cumming, 1993, 28, quotes Traquair as saying, “Perfect harmony, is not
that what we all strive after?”; and Cumming, 2005, 46.
[52] The red robe with white
surplice is worn by choristers in Exeter Cathedral, but according to Elkins,
the family chapel had no choir robes. Burn and Elkins base their idea that
Molly’s portrait is to the left on family lore. For me the harmonic balance in
the composition guides Traquair’s arrangement and makes more sense if Molly is
the figure just beside her father; Molly is the reason the chapel is originally
built and if she is relegated to the back of the upper left crowd, the family’s
unity is disrupted. As the choir girl on the right side, she fits into the
scheme of two siblings on each side, one parent on each side, and her youngest
brother, Francis, the heir apparent in 1920, in the middle.
[53] A precedent for the
inclusion of more than one name saint is found in Giotto’s chapel of Giovanni
Peruzzi in Santa Croce in Florence (1322); there the patron Giovanni
(John)covers his bases and has Giotto paint the life story of St. John the
Baptist on one wall and that of John the Evangelist on the other. See Burn and
Elkins,160-61.
[54] I am indebted to
Canon Elkins for the initial explanation of the Latin inscription and I am most
grateful for learned help from Dr. Sears Jayne, Dr. Alistair Duckworth, and
David Handforth. Thanks to all of them.
[55] Canon Elkins’ idea
that the mural is hopeful because so much importance is given to the younger
generation, in particular to Francis, is evident here in the arrangement that
places him in the center of his family.
[56] For biographies of
Gill, see Fiona McCarthy’s, Eric Gill (London: Faber and Faber, 1989)
and Malcolm Yorke’s, Eric Gill, Man of Flesh and Spirit (New York:
Universe Books, 1981).
[57] Fiona MacCarthy, Eric Gill, pp.143-146.
[58] Charles Gore wrote
about the Holy Spirit and its power, so he is appropriate for a mural where the
Holy Spirit is in the center between heaven and earth. Gore was one of the
founders of the Oxford movement and had a special connection to women because
in 1917 he licensed the first female lay readers in the Anglican Church.
Despite that innovation, he had a deep regard for the traditional sacraments
which makes his appearance here as Peter most apt. Why he is depicted in close
consultation with Lady Constance is not known to this author; was she a lay
reader?
[59] Burn and
Elkins, 76.
[60] An equestrian statue
of Edward Horner stands inside St. Andrew’s Church in Mells, England; in
Traquair’s painting he is placed close to Molly and his head leans towards her,
much as Raymond Asquith’s leans towards Edward’s sister. When Mary Christine
died at age 17 in 1904, Edward Horner was 21, close in age to Molly (his
sister, Katharine Horner, would have been 19, Asquith would have been 26);
since the families were friends, is more intended by the artist in this
coupling? He also died in WWI but not until he was 34 in 1917; in the
equestrian statue as well as in the mural he is given back his youth. (Fig.
29d)
Sir Alfred Munnings,
Equestrian statue of Edward Horner, St. Andrew’s, Mells, 1917. (Author’s photo,
2012.)
[61] Burn and Elkins, 99.
For more on the Asquiths and Lovats, see Colin Clifford, The Asquiths,
(London: John Murray, 2002). Lord
Ribbesdale was painted by Sargent in 1890; his daughter, Laura, was painted by
Sargent when she was 4 in 1896.
[62]Cumming, 2005, 90;
1993, 47, from NLS 8123 fol.48, undated letter, written from Avon Tyrrell to
Traquair’s sister Amelia Moss. Interesting to note that two of the “fine
things” are locations in the mural where she places her signature, i.e. in the
flowers at bottom right and in the cross-badges worn by Pasteur and Lister. See
Endnotes 1 and 60.
[63] Janet Burn (2012
email) tells me that Hon. Tom Manners, brother of Lord Manners, remembered Rex
Whistler was in the mural. When photos and self-portraits of and by Rex
Whistler are compared to figures in the mural, they resemble this central head in
yellow. (Elkins’ email, 2011, favors the choir singer for Rex Whistler, but
acknowledges that the identity is unsure).
[64] The inscription
“IMMORTAL” appears on both cross-orb badges at the top; beneath that word is
written “Pasteur” on Pasteur’s badge and “Lister” on the other. Beneath both
names Phoebe placed her initial signature – PAT (Phoebe Anna Traquair) similar
to the initial signature in the Song School mural but with the position of the
P changed.
[65] Bishop Cecil looks
at the scientists, Traquair’s way of acknowledging that his book, Science
and Religion, defends religion to Darwinists. He clutches either the Bible
or his own book to protect it from scientific attack imagined from Lister and
Pasteur.
[66] The estate house of Avon Tyrrell can be seen
in the background through the trees above the Madonna and the estate’s windmill
is silhouetted to the right of that and even further right the ‘Avon Tyrrell
Clump’ of pine trees (now no longer existing on the real land). See Burn and
Elkins, 96.
[68] This second meaning for “confounded”, an older
meaning in the OED, was pointed out to me by Lynn Fairfield.
[69] Excerpt from a
letter from Traquair to her nephew, Willie Moss, Cumming, 1993, 28; Elkins,
158.; Elkins thinks Traquair may have been a person who experienced synaesthesia, the sensation of hearing
sounds for colors; if so, she tried to reproduce harmonic effects on the wall
from that ability.
[70] (L’Amour divin
soutien le pèlerin) on 101 of Grace Warrack, Une guirlande di poésies
diverses, From the Song of France;
Poetry Early and Recent, (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1923).
[73] Burn and Elkins, 97
and 159.
[74] No Hell or Purgatory
appear in her images for the Catholic Apostolic Church in Edinburgh either;
only Heaven is portrayed on both Chancel Arch (1893-4) and in the Second Coming
on the West Wall (1900-1901).
[75] http://www.avontyrrell.org.uk/page/History.jsf?cid=63 and http://www.the-grand-national.co.uk/history/1880-1889. John Thomas Manners-Sutton,
3rd Baron Manners (Figs.16a&b), made a bet in 1882 to buy,
train, and ride a horse to victory in the Grand National Race in England. He
bought a sickly horse, Seaman, for only L.1,900 and trained him in four months.
To get experience he rode in various smaller races on other horses. March 24,
the day that he rode Seaman in the Grand National was unusual; it snowed
heavily and only 12 horses began the race; another horse was favored to win;
the favorite horse’s rein strap broke at the second lap. Seaman became lame by the last 300 yards, but
he managed to edge out the only other 2 horses to finish. Seaman never ran
another race; he was brought to Avon Tyrrell, and when he died was buried
between two trees on the property. Lord Manners’ luck and skill gave him enough
money from the bet to build the Avon Tyrrell estate house and the chapel of All
Saints in 1906. The land was owned by Constance’s elder sister, Evelyn, who
gave it to them as a wedding present. The money meant that he could marry
Constance Hamlyn-Fane in 1885, hire William Lethaby to design the large manor
house, and eventually have the chapel built by Detmar Blow.
APPENDIX I
FOR APPRAISAL:
Black and white preliminary sketch in unfixed
charcoal/pastel with dark red and white highlights (approx. 444 x 726mm) by
Scottish artist Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936).
In the lower right hand corner is a manuscript pencil
inscription: Mrs. P.A Traquair Avon
Tyrrel (sic). Hants / to RT. 1923.(Traquair leaves out the second l of Avon Tyrrell-EJD.)
On the verso is another note in manuscript pencil: Original Study for two heads of Saints in Avon Tyrrel(sic) Church Hants, by / Mrs
P.A Traquair. Given by her to / me
November 3 1923. Ramsay Traquair /
McGill University. (Ramsay
Traquair the spelling- EJD.)
HISTORY:
Given as a gift by Phoebe Traquair to her eldest son, Ramsay
Traquair (born 1874), as transcribed on the back of the drawing. Ramsay Traquair had moved to Canada in 1913 and while
an architecture professor at McGill University, Montreal, had purchased a
summer home in Guysborough, Nova Scotia.
The home was subsequently bought by the family of Dr. Lauder Brunton,
a medical doctor in Montreal, to whom Ramsay later gave the drawing as a gift.
Dr. Brunton donated the drawing to the Anglican Church in
Guysborough and then retrieved it many years later when he discovered the
church was no longer used during the winter months and the drawing was not
being appropriately cared for. In 2006
Dr. Brunton had it assessed and cleaned by a conservator and then framed
according to conservation standards.
Upon his death it was passed onto David Andrews, a resident of
Guysborough, who had worked for Dr. Brunton for many years. Our appraisal for Mr. Andrews was completed in 2008.
APPENDIX II
Constance Manners’ PRAYER written after
her son’s death: (1914)
Grant to us, almighty God,
That when our vision fails, and our
understanding is darkened,
When the ways of life seem hard, and
the brightness of life is gone,
To us grant wisdom that deepens faith
when the sight is dim,
And enlarges trust when the
understanding is not clear.
And whensoever Thy ways
In nature or in the soul are hard to be
understood,
Then may our quiet confidence, our
patient trust,
Our loving faith in Thee be great,
And, as children knowing they are
loved,
Cared for, guarded, kept,
May we with a quiet mind at all time
Put our trust in the unseen God.
So may we face life without fear, and death without fainting;
And, whatsoever may be in the life to
come
Give us confident hope that whatsoever
is best for us,
Both here and hereafter,
Is Thy good pleasure and will be thy
law.
Amen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Allardyce,
Fiona, Elizabeth Cumming, and Duncan Thomson, A Guide to The Mansfield Traquair
Centre. Edinburgh: Friends of Mansfield Traquair Centre, 2006.
Asquith,
Margot. Margot Asquith, an Autobiography
– Two Volumes in One. Lexington, Kentucky,
2010.
Beeson,Trevor. The Bishops. London: SCM Press, 2003.
Burn, Mrs. Janet and Elkins,The Revd. Canon Patrick C. The
Annals of Avon, The Story of the
Avon
Tyrrell Estate 1891-1947. Ringwood: Pardy & Sons, Ltd., 2006.
Campbell, Margaret G.
Phoebe Anna Traquair’s “Benedicite Omnia Opera”, Mural Paintings in the Song School. Edinburgh: St. Mary’s
Episcopal Cathedral, 1998.
Clifford, Colin. The
Asquiths. London: John Murray, 2002.
Cumming, Elizabeth. Phoebe Traquair 1852-1936. Edinburgh:
National Galleries of Scotland,
1993. Catalogue
for the exhibition held Aug. 6 – Nov. 7, 1993, National Scottish Portrait
Gallery,
Edinburgh.
Phoebe
Anna Traquair, 1852-1936. Edinburgh: National Galleries of
Scotland,
2005.
Gascoyne Cecil, Rev.
Lord William. Science and Religion. London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1906.
Reprinted 2012 from the collections of the University of California libraries.
Glasscoe, Marion and
Michael Swanton, eds. Exeter
Cathedral - A Celebration. Exeter: Dean
and Chapter of Exeter, 1991.
Gore, Charles. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians: a Practical Exposition. Sheffield, U.K.:
HP
Publishing,
1898.
The Holy
Spirit and the Church. London:
Murray, 1927.
Hall, James. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art.
New York:Harper and Row, 1974.
Hutchison, Noel, Bertram MacKennal, Great Australians.
Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973.
Joad, C. E. M. About Education. London:
Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1930, 113.
McCarthy, Fiona. Eric
Gill. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.
Mackenzie, Jeanne. The Children of the Souls. A tragedy
of the First World War.
London: Chatto and Windus, 1986.
Prestige, G. L. The Life of Charles
Gore – a great Englishman. Budge Press,2009.
Warrack, Grace. Une
guirlande di poésies diverses, From the
Song of France: Poetry Early and Recent. Oxford: Blackwell, 1923.
Whistler, Laurence. Rex Whistler. London: Art and Technics, 1948.
Yorke, Malcolm. Eric
Gill, Man of Flesh and Spirit. New York: Universe Books, 1981.
Photo and painting of second, water garden (painted bridge has been replaced with a lower arc bridge now):
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is closer and closer to the flowers until he blocks out the weeping willows, bridge, water and sky; we look down on the lily pads without any other sense of perspective.The white and pink flowers alone captivate his color sensitivities. He transposes the floating plants onto canvas with impasto
blotches of pink, white, and yellow paint. These lilies (called Nympheas in French) dominate his paintings and towards the end of his life are the subject of huge triptychs that sometimes curve, obscuring the view of anything else for the person who sees them in art museums today. The colors become the viewer's focus, a new narrowing that calms and satisfies as prayer. 
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In all of his series the painter's desire to reproduce and enhance nature in every season and hour comes across vividly. Monet draws us in with the combinations of colors and makes us question what is deep pond, what is cloud surface reflected in the pond water. And does that matter, if the colors harmonize and cohabit so pleasantly?
