Nige pays tribute to the extraordinary Victorian spinster, globetrotter, botanist, artist and 'very wild bird', Marianne North... Tomorrow marks the birthday of the brilliant flower painter and tireless traveller Marianne North (born 1830), who, even by the standards of intrepid, globetrotting Victorian spinsters, was pretty extraordinary. In an age before jet ... Read More...
Painting
Nige reflects on the power and meaning of still life painting, in the light of a book by American poet Mark Doty... Still Life with Oysters and Lemon is the title of a painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem (above) that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York - or ... Read More...
Waking before dawn I first reached for my phone to check on England’s latest reassuringly routine cricket thrashing by Australia, then groaned out of bed to descend and in the kitchen force tea and toast into unwelcoming guts. Twice since the last diary I have had long work days in ... Read More...
An audio-visual treat for you this Sunday, as Mahlerman brings you three pieces of music inspired by great paintings... Musical inspiration is, like mercury, almost impossible to grasp. It can arrive, as many believe it did to a certain WA Mozart, in a 'lightbulb moment' as if from God, and the ... Read More...
The Dies Irae is one of the most-used themes in western music. Mahlerman selects some fine examples... Scholars are split, but to put the four note descending motive (and the bars that follow) into some sort of context, I will give the palm to the 13th Century Franciscan Thomas of Celano for conjuring-up ... Read More...
Nige reflects on the enduring appeal of a high Victorian painting... 'Flaming June eh?' we sigh, and roll our eyes, as the rain siles down relentlessly, the cold wind blows, and temperatures struggle to stay in double figures (in the new money). And so, unwittingly, we keep alive the name of the ... Read More...
He was a friend of Keats and almost as fine a prose stylist - what a pity then, that Benjamin Robert Haydon wanted to be a painter... Keats, Bewick & I dined together, Keats brought some friend of his, a noodle. After dinner, to his horror, when he expected we should ... Read More...
Nige reflects on a precocious talent, and his disappointing son-in-law... I was up at Tate Britain, mooching among the rehung Romantics, when this very accomplished oil painting caught my eye. Its subject is Kensington Gravel Pits, and it was painted in 1811/12 - when Kensington was still a village surrounded by ... Read More...
In this bulletin from Norbiton, Toby examines the place of teeth in the art of fifteenth century Italy and Northern Europe... I have come to realise that if I am to make any real progress on my much anticipated, much delayed History of Whistling, I will first have to address the ... Read More...
Today sees the return of our occasional series featuring some of the finest pictures in London's National Gallery, as Nige admires a vast procession... Norbiton Toby's reflections on processions brought to mind a National Treasure that has so far escaped the attention of Dabblers - Frederic Lord Leighton's Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna Carried in ... Read More...