There is a cost of living problem, even for the middle classes.
I’m glad the subsidised National Gallery brought Winslow Homer’s pictures to London. Not a block-buster exhibition but importantly a chance to see this largely unknown (in Europe) artist’s work and at a price so nugatory my hostess was able to boost the economy by splashing out on a fishy lunch nearby, even in these challenging times.
W Homer (1836 – 1910) did not sit in a field of sunflowers or look at lily pads (like Jeremy Fisher). In other words he was not Pre-Raphaelite or Impressionist. He started as an engraver in the days when newspapers couldn’t print photographs and, as today, wars sell papers. The American civil war was his theatre and this one of his many arresting pictures at the Nat Gall. You can find his engravings elsewhere.
It was ‘murder at a mile’ desensitising assassination before modern weaponry (HIMARs) can kill at 300 km. in the “battle field” and nukes …
Many artists would have stuck to a theme of post civil war America and for a while he did. Pictures of folk, lives not much improved by the abolution of slavery, made me think of our freedom from the EU. Then Winslow, whose private life remains private, came to live by the North Sea on where is today Tyne and Wear, revelling in depicting maritime views and people. Did you know that a fisherman’s wife would knit a distinctive pattern for her husband’s jersey so his body could be recognised when drowned? A war hardened Winslow painted everything he saw before going back to America and Maine.
The examples look Victorian but he had a broader range. Some of his major pictures are overly imaginative and looked slightly ridiculous to me. Others are so slap-bang up-to-date they could be prints in any high street gallery. OK a bit kitsch but there’s that dead fish.
Actually I didn’t want to write about Winslow Homer but he’s more interesting than the Prime Minister’s exhortation to grow the economy – jump down, turn around and pick a bale of cotton. I cannot – my knees.
Boris Johnson tried to emulate Winston Churchill but the comparison between Truss and Thatcher is closer. Do you remember Thatcher’s strangulated vowels, poor media performance and unpopularity even within her own party in 1976? (Maggie Thatcher the Milk Snatcher.) Thatcher was set up to be defenestrated, a European way of deposing leaders sadly not yet done at Downing Street. Lady T learnt it on the hoof and I wonder if Truss will pull it off too?
I loved that blog, and it has inspired me to try and get to the exhibition.
Thank you so much, and hope all is well with you both and the lovely Bertie, who has such bad luck recently poor chap. Perhaps I could give you a fishy lunch, or any other chosen food?
Ax