Vanitas Paintings: the meaning of life and death

Histatic blog wrote a very interesting piece on Victorian memorial art called Art or a little morbid?. Tammi felt the post-mortem photographs were popular with Victorian families who, for whatever reason, did not have any portraits of the parents and children painted or photographed in life. I imagine that with peri-natal mortality being so high, with young men going off to soldier so often and with disease being largely uncontrolled, death was a common visitor in many Victorian homes. But how morbid was it to hang these post-mortem images on the lounge-room wall? I suspect not morbid at all.

Pieter Claesz, Vanitas Still-life, 1630

I was reminded of vanitas paintings from a much earlier era and wondered once again how morbid was it for devout Dutch burghers to hang these images on their lounge-room walls.

Vanitas was a type of still life painting that was very popular in C17th Netherlands. So popular was it that Charlotte Herczfeld said that over a hundred painters focused solely on vanities and other still-lifes in the Netherlands. And another thing. Intelliblog suggested that still life paintings gave the artist freedom of expression, as well as allowing much leeway in selection of subject matter, colours, composition and technique than did most other genres of painting

The word vanitas referred to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity, so vanitas painting were full of symbols reflecting this depressing world view. Vanitas paintings reminded the viewer of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure and the imminence of death.

Common vanitas symbols included human skulls; decaying fruit that could be full of creepy bugs; watches and hourglasses marked the shortness of life; wine paraphernalia and musical instruments which suggested that even joyous experiences would end in death; and lit candles, snuffed out before their time. I am not sure if viewers now would read and understand all the symbols, but I am certain that all viewers in the C17th would have immediately understood their meaning.

Cornelis de Heem, Still-life with Musical Instruments, c1662

Pieter Claesz’s painting called Vanitas Still Life 1630 included more than one of these symbols. At a time when Italian art was soar­ing to new classical heights that celebrated Italian cul­ture, architecture, music, women and pleasure, Claesz was painting a tiny (40 x 56 cm), predominantly brown image dominated by an ugly skull and an upturned wine glass. Even the books on the table, a source of eternal wisdom, look battered.

Cornelis Janszoon de Heem painted a large (153 x 166cm) painting called Vanitas Still-Life with Musical Instruments in c1662. I am including this work because the elements were so rich that the modern viewer would be hard pressed to detect the vanitas elements. Note the viola, lutes, trumpet, flute, mandolin, violin, bagpipe, bowls crammed with luscious fruits and precious golden objects. But the snail on the ground, the half eaten fruit left to rot and the upturned objects tell of a sombre future for the family.

Nearly all Dutch still-lifes included an element of vanitas, even when a lumping great skull didn’t dominate the image. In Edwart Collier’s painting Vanitas Still Life 1697, the viewer noticed the implements that might be on any intellectual’s desk: ink-well and quill, candles, seals, wax, books and a globe, all within easy reach. Collier wasn’t criticising learning at all, but he was suggesting that even great learning isn’t eternal. If anything, this beautiful and detailed still life created a paradox in its very beauty. The message was consider the enjoyment of beautiful objects in a fine painting but at the same time be very beware of material concerns and intellectual conceits.

Edwart Collier, Vanitas Still-life, 1697

I recommend two other blogs on the subject. pre-Gébelin Tarot History blog has an amazing array of vanitas images in Homo Bulla Vanitas. And The Pond Seeker blog examined many examples of vanitas paintings, one of them being Holbein's famous Ambassadors, in Vanitas. His conclusions are worth reading.

For those interested specifically in the role of musical instruments in vanitas paintings, I wrote a guest post called "Musical Instruments and Dutch Vanitas Paintings" for Cynthia Wunsch.

Huguenots and the South African Cape

With the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French Protestants were stripped of any protect-ion they may have had in Louis XIV’s France. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the exiles' large communities in England, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland, but then people started talking about the small Hug­ue­n­ot diaspora in South Africa. I searched the other blogs and found a little eg The du Preez Family blog in Huguenot Exodus (1688 & 1689)

Cape of Good Hope and the Western Cape region

In fact the Dutch East India Co./VOC, under Jan van Riebeeck, had already made a permanent Calvin­ist settlement on the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived with five ships in Cape Town bay in 1652. Cape Town’s settlement was a predominantly as an interim port for VOC ships, en route from Europe to Asia. In order to fully stock Cape Town’s port, the VOC admitted good Protestant citizens who could settle as farmers and provide the food and drinks. As early as 1671 the first Huguenot refugee, Francois Villion/Viljoen, arrived at the Cape.

Clearly the Dutch East India Co. encouraged the Huguenots to emigrate to the Cape because they shared Calvinist beliefs. But they also recognised that most of the Huguenots were exper­ien­ced farmers from parts of France that specialised in wine growing. After their arrival at the Cape, the immigrants were expected to make a living from agric­ulture, business or by practicing a trade. If they decided to farm, they were allotted farm land without cost. As soon as a few families settled, they laid the first stone of the Cape’s Dutch Reformed chur­ch 1678, built and later renovated in the typical Cape Dutch style.

An agent was sent out from the Cape Colony in 1685 to attract more settlers and new immigrants began to arrive eg in 1686 the brothers Guill­aume and Francois du Toit reached South Africa. Timing was everything! With the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many a French Protestant was looking around for a home. By 1688-9 the 201 Hug­uenot families who arrived were just large enough to leave an impression on the young settlement at the Cape, only 70 km outside Cape Town.

Franschhoek Valley, site of Huguenot vineyards

In 1688, French Huguenot refugees were given land by the Dutch government in a valley called Olifantshoek/Elephant's Corner. The name of the area soon changed to Le Quartier Francais and then to Fransch­hoek Valley. That year a group of c200 French Huguenots arrived from La Motte d'Aigues in Provence and other areas. As described by fellow blogger A Post-Modern Protestant in Paris in his post South African Wine a French Protestant Heritage, they specialised in vineyards.

When the de Villiers brothers arrived at the Cape with a reputation for viticulture, and in time, the brothers planted many thousands of vines at the Cape. They moved from the original farm that they had been granted, La Rochelle, to finally settle on individual land grants near Fransch­hoek in places they named Bourgogne, Champagne and La Brie. Lucky were the passing ships that stopped in Cape Town.

Huguenot Monument in Franschoek, 1945

Individual arrivals contin­ued on and off until the end of Company-supported emig­rat­ion in 1707. Undoubtedly these French Huguenot exiles created fertile valleys out of the tough land they had been given in the Cape. But the white pop­ulation in the Cape was small, so they soon married their children and grandchildren into the fam­ilies of other colon­ists. And it didn’t help that the Dutch East India Co. insisted that schools taught exclusively in Dutch. By the mid C18th the Huguenots ceased to maint­ain a distinct ident­ity. Within two generations even their home language largely disappeared.

What is left now? Some important surnames, today mostly Afrik­aans speaking, remain in families who had French-speaking great great grandparents eg Cronje/Cronier, de Klerk/Le Clercq, de Villiers, Terre-blanche and Viljoen/Villion. Plus a number of wine farms in the Western Cape still have French names, as do their products.

La Motte winery, named for the settlers' French home.

Then there is a large monu­ment, Huguenot Monument in Franschoek 1945, commemorating the arr­iv­al of the Huguenots in South Africa, that wasn’t inaug­urated by Dr AJ van der Merwe until 1948. The cen­tral fe­m­ale figure stood for religious free­dom, denied the Huguenots in their beloved France but offered by Dutch South Africa. A useful analysis of the Huguenot Monument can be found in the Franschhoek blog. Finally the Memorial Museum of Franschhoek next to the monument celebrates the his­tory of the French Huguenots who settled in the Cape.

Treasures in the attic: a lost Adriaen Coorte painting

Scholars of Dutch history – do you know the art of Adriaen Coorte? I looked him up in my essential undergrad reference Dictionary of Art and Artists and found five skimpy lines.

Adriaen Coorte (c1665–c1707) was a Dutch painter, a generation or two younger than all The Normal Suspects like Rembrandt van Rijn, Gerard Dou, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch, Nicolaes Maes, Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, Willem Van Aelst etc.

Coorte, Vanitas with Skull and Hourglass, 1686, 50 × 41 cm In private collection.

Coorte was born and trained in Middelburg, which is a beautiful, small, Dutch town but not the cultural centre of Europe. And he may well have spent a few years in Amsterdam, training under an experienced artist and teacher. But it was not going to be the Big Smoke for Coorte; in 1683 the young artist returned home to Middelburg, set up a workshop and spent the rest of his rather short life designing and painting small, beautifully crafted still lifes. Yet documentary material only exists for his membership in the Guild of St Luke in Middelburg from a later date and the taxation documents he filed. Coorte was a very shadowy character.

Since only c80 paintings have been attributed to Coorte, we have to assume that art wasn’t his only life (did he run a tavern as well? did he teach?) or that not all his paintings have been identified and catalogued. I am passionate about 17th century still life paintings from the Netherlands, but to say that Coorte’s works are understated is an understatement. They are stark!

Coorte, Still Life with Butterfly, Apricots, Cherries and a Chestnut, 1685, 41 x 35cm.

After 1683, Coorte seemed to have painted mainly small studies of slightly exotic fruit and vegetables on a plain slab of stone eg strawberries, apricots, gooseberries,  peaches and watermelon. Or rare biological specimens like coral and tropical shells. The slab of stone was constantly grey, the background was universally dark and shapeless, and any household utensils were simple and cheap.

Venetian Red examined a few Adriaen Coorte  paintings, concentrating on pictures where asparagus was a very important, or sole element in the composition.

Bonhams thought that when Coorte had a butterfly hover over the fruit, he was painting it in as a compositional device to punctuate the background and to create a balance to the fruit.  I, on the other hand, thought it might have been connected to a vanitas element. Vanitas referred to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. The fruit being painted was sometimes less than perfect, or it may have been a bug or two hovering around. The transient nature of vanity

I have heard of artists fading into oblivion after their death, only to be rediscovered in the 20th century. In this case, it seemed to be the Dutch art historian Laurens Bol who revived Coorte's reputation - Bol published a catalogue raisonné on Coorte in 1977.

More recently, there was an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art Washington DC (2003); the next year the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague were thrilled to borrowed four still lifes by Coorte from a private collection (2004). So this was more than having his career resuscitated. He went from “Adriaen who?” to “this museum urgently needs some Coorte paintings” within a few decades.

Coorte, Still Life with Shells, 1697, 17 × 22 cm. In Maastricht

Does interest expressed by the big public galleries translate into large payments at the auctions? Vanitas with Skull and Hourglass, 1686 was sold by Sotheby’s in 2008. This may be the most crowded of Coorte’s still life paintings (above). The skull and hourglass were certainly on the stone ledge as expected and the back-ground was darkly blank as expected, but many objects were squished into the small space – oil lamp, shell, book, recorder, musical score and corn bits. It sold well.

Consider the December 2009 auction of two of Coorte’s new-found paintings, each of which sailed way over the printed price estimates, including Still Life with a Peach and Two Apricots on a Stone Ledge 1692. Or see Still Life with a Butterfly, Apricots, Cherries and a Chestnut 1685 which was sold, very well, by Sotheby’s in New York in 2011 41 by 35cm.

Coorte, Three Peaches on a Stone Ledge with a Painted Lady Butterfly, mid 1690s

But then in December 2011, a Bonhams’ auction created an even newer record for Coorte when a previously unrecorded painting called Three Peaches on a Stone Ledge with a Painted Lady Butterfly sold for £2.1 million (Aus$3.1 million or USA $3.32 million)!!!  I don’t know the date of this tiny work (31 x 23 cm), but the mid 1690s seems about right. The painting had been found in Australia, was sent to Europe for authentication and was sold in the Old Master Paintings auction at Bonhams in London.

If I wanted to compare the simplicity and relative poverty of Coorte’s images with the lushness of other still life Dutch artists, I could do no better than Willem Claesz, a generation or two earlier. Claesz’s Still Life 1634 in the Rijksmuseum was also small, 45 x 62 cm but several gorgeous objects were arranged on the table: silver drinking bowl, green glass römer (ie a glass with a round bowl and a wide, hollow stem), a tankard and several valuable plates.

Willem Claesz, Still Life, 1634, 45 x 62 cm. In the Rijksmuseum  

The Rijksmuseum bought the their first Coorte 100+ years ago but it didn’t seem to excite much attention at the time. Today the Rijksmuseum has 5 Coorte paintings and I presume they will be looking to buy more.

C19th ferneries, greenhouses & conservatories

It is said that by the late Georgian years, everyone in England was becoming excited about the science of exotic plants: collecting, studying and classifying specimens from all over the world. In time it was ferns that fascinated country home residents and gentlemen botanists.

Bicton Park palm house, 1820

The Palm House at Bicton Park in Devon is the earliest glass structure I could find. It dates back to the 1820s and was amazingly constructed using 18,000 panes of glass. 1st Baron Rolle must have been passionate about things horticultural because he also commissioned a hermitage garden, rose gardens, fernery and a pinetum for conifers.

The architect, John Loudon, was said to make the domical conservatory his signature shape. He wrote booklets on the construction of hot houses in 1805, 1817 and 1818, and greatly influenced Joseph Paxton who erected his great conservatory at Chatsworth at least 15 years after Bicton Park was completed.

The availability of cast iron and mass-produced glass to build large glass houses for growing tender and exotic plants could not have come at a better time. The loveliest part of Syon Park's gardens was the Great Conservatory. The 3rd Duke of Northumberland commissioned Charles Fowler to build a new conservatory in 1826, one of the first of its kind to be built out of metal and glass. It was originally designed to act as a show house for the Duke's exotic plants and, like Bicton Park, is said to have inspired Joseph Paxton in his designs for the Crystal Palace.

Syon Park conservatory, 1826-30

Surgeon and amateur naturalist Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward soon realised that he needed to provide a special environment for growing these delicate plants, a micro-climate that was light, airy, warm, moist and pollution free. Not easily achieved, I'd imagine. But he soon popularised large structures for ferns that had glass panes in the sloping roof sections. These could be carried on ships returning from exotic locations, ensuring that collectors back home received their precious speciments in a thriving condition.

James Bateman and his wife Maria, who bought Biddulph Grange in Stoffordshire in 1840, had a passion for plants AND the money to make their botanical dreams come true. Of course it was not difficult when James' father made a fortune in coal mining... and left it all to James. Nonetheless Bateman had every single explorer and scientist who ever sailed to Egypt, China, North America and other lands bring back fabulous botanical samples. This Victorian plant-hunter became an expert botanist, especially re pines, orchids, dahlias, ferns, azaleas and rhododendrons.

In the late 1830s Joseph Paxton, 6th Duke of Devonshire’s estate manager, built a wonderful conservatory at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire (now destroyed). This was the largest glass building in the world, at the time.

Palm House, Kew, 1844-8

Temperate House, Kew, 1859-98

Besides educating visitors in the natural world, one of the functions of English green houses at the time was to display the exotic range of plants and flowers that flourished in the British Empire. Inspired by Chatsworth and by the passion for scientific knowledge, architect Decimus Burton and iron founder Richard Turner designed the much larger palm house in the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in 1844-48. Palm House was 363’ long, 100’ wide, 66’ high. For big, beautiful photos of Kew Gardens, inside and out of the glass houses, see Architecture of Europe blog.

At Kew Gardens, this summer holiday, they are filling the Palm House with the sounds of the rainforest with Chris Watson’s Whispering in the Leaves sound installation, recreating the rainforests of South and Central America. The education, and the pleasure, continue at Palm House, 160 years after it all started.

In 1859, the Government allocated a substantial budget to build the Temperate House at the Botanic Gardens and directed Decimus Burton to prepare designs for the conservatory. The Treasury was clearly having budgetary problems but the building was finally completed in 1898. Temperate House was the greenhouse that had twice the floor area of the Palm House and is the world's largest surviving Victorian glass structure. It still contains plants from all the world’s temperate regions.

Crystal Palace, interior, 1851

Joseph Paxton achieved great fame by his designs for Crystal Palace, which housed the Great Exhibition in 1851 in Hyde Park London. Crystal Palace was another stunning cast-iron and glass building. It may not have looked very different from previous greenhouses in shape, but it was gigantic compared to earlier structures. It was five times as long as the Palm House in Kew and nearly twice as high.

A very fine collection of gardens was assembled at Tatton Park near Tatton Hall in the beautiful Cheshire Peak District. The first formal gardens were already well established and consisted of a walled garden to the south of the house, a formal semicircular pond to its north and formal lines of trees to the east and west.

But by the 1850s, the Egerton family needed a top quality fernery built, specifically to house their collection of ferns, especially tree ferns, from New Zealand and Australia. Tatton’s fernery and Italian garden, which first appeared in 1859, were designed by the very same Joseph Paxton. And Paxton’s assistant in the Tatton project was his son-in-law, George Stokes. Once again Paxton designed Tatton’s fernery to be a structure of glass and cast iron.

Tatton Park fernery, 1859.

Today the glass houses, fernery and showhouse at Tatton Park are open to visitors. The fernery still contains tree ferns and the showhouse has changing displays of flowering plants. How wonderful that Paxton could find it exactly as he had left it, 150 years ago.

Ballywalter Park conservatory, mid 1860s

Ballywalter Park is located on the outskirts of Ballywalter in Ireland. It is a classic example of an early Victorian county house in the palazzo style. A fine conservatory was added to the garden in the mid 1860s, containing important collections of rhododendrons and roses. The architect Sir Charles Lanyon had considerable experience in designing conservatories - his 1840 palm house at Belfast botanic garden was one of the earliest examples of curvilinear iron & glass construction. The delicate glass dome at Ballywalter Park is both functional and beautiful to look at.

Royal Greenhouses of Laeken, exterior

The Royal Greenhouses of Laeken, in the park of the Royal Castle in Brussels, were and are a vast complex of monumental heated green houses. The complex was originally commissioned by Belgian King Leopold II, designed by Alphonse Balat and built towards the end of the 19th century (1874-95). The total floor surface of this immense complex is 2.5 hectares so it requires a substantial amount of heating. Unfortunately these greenhouses are not open to the public for most of the year.

Royal Greenhouses of Laeken, interior

**

Now to something quite different. The first time I saw the Palmenhaus in Vienna’s 1st District, I thought it was a Paxton building... with the shape of Crystal Palace and the role of a greenhouse. The site had been occupied by a greenhouse which was from the 1823-6 era, built according to the designs of architect Ludwig von Remy. The architecture was in neo-Classical style and was actually inspired less by Paxton and more by the orangery of Schönbrunn, the Imperial Summer Palace in Vienna.

Palmenhaus Vienna, exterior and interior

At the turn of the century (1900-1), the first Palmenhaus greenhouse was demolished and a new one built, 128 metres long and 2050 square metres in area. The current Palmenhaus was built by architect Friedrich Ohmann, combining 19th century historicist architecture and the Jugendstil/Art Nouveau taste. Palmenhaus still houses plants of course, but it is today it is better known as a restaurant.

St George’s Memorial Church and School in Ypres, Belgium

Established by Royal Charter in 1917, the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission was established in tribute to the 1,700,000 men and women of the British Empire forces who died in the two world wars. It is a non-profit-making organisation founded by Sir Fabian Ware.

The Menin Gate site in Belgium was chosen as a memorial site by the Commission because of the hundreds of thousands of men, from all British Empire nations, who passed through it on their way to the WW1 battlefields. The Ypres Menin Gate Memorial now bears the names of more than 54,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. The memorial, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield with sculpture by Sir William Reid-Dick, was unveiled in July 1927.

Soon after the Great War ended, British families also wanted an Anglican church in Ypres. Parents and widows had not received their sons and husbands’ bodies back for a proper burial, so it was important to have a safe, peaceful and Christian place for mourners to visit. It took some time, but in 1924 a fund was finally launched, with the intention of building a church possibly next to the old Menin Gate. The choice of architect (Sir Reginald Blomfield) was a good one since he was already involved with a number of the British and Commonwealth military cemeteries in the Ypres area.

St George’s Memorial Church, Ypres, opened in 1929

The foundation stone of St George's Memorial Church was laid in 1927 and building started on the simple brick church. The interior, which was to serve as a memorial to the young men who lay in the soil near Ypres, had enough room only for 200 people. Families, schools and military units donated pews, plaques, windows, the font and the altar. The Bishop of Fulham dedicated the completed church in 1929 and soon there were regular services and a Sunday school.

What I hadn’t realised, until I saw the BBC4 film The Children Who Fought Hitler, was that it was decided to open a school in Ypres as part of the same project. It was to be funded from donations by Old Etonians who needed to build a memorial to the 300+ old-Etonians who had lost their lives in the Ypres area from 1914 on.

The tiny school opened in April 1929. There were 62 pupils learning at the school at the beginning, most of whom were the children of British workers who had moved to Ypres with the Imperial War Graves Commission. The Commission's bus brought the children to school each day, from their homes in the villages all around Ypres.

Imperial War Graves Commission workers who lived in Ypres in the inter-war years.

Eventually more teachers and a headmaster arrived from Britain until, by 1933, 130 pupils were enrolled. The original principal was delighted to introduce a full curriculum, along the lines taught in schools in Britain. In 1934 the new principal changed the name from Eton Memorial School to the British Memorial School and also introduced a British school uniform.

It was appropriate that the Belgian King Leopold III visited, given that he had himself studied at Eton college during the Great War. But eventually, during WW2, the school had to close. In May 1940 all the British students returned home and the Germans took over the church buildings; they used them as their officers' club.

So from 1929 on, the school had served a special community of ex-servicemen and their families who cared for the WW1 graves in Ypres. Steeped in ideals of patriotic service and sacrifice, many pupils and ex-pupils refused to surrender to the invading Nazi forces and went on to make names for themselves in missions across Europe. As that is another, huge story in its own right, I recommend the book by James Fox and Sue Elliott called The Children Who Fought Hitler: A British Outpost in Europe, published by John Murray in 2009.

Children of the Ypres British colony celebrate Empire Day, 1933. The Telegraph

Post-WW2, the church's chaplain was paid for by the Imperial War Graves Commission. The British community of Ypres had so shrunk that there was a much smaller number of people to attend the church on a regular basis. Furthermore there were hardly any British children based in Ypres who would attend the school, even if it ever tried to open again.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest by British families tracing a relative who fought in the First World War. Many visitors to Ypres now visit St George's church, specifically to look at the special memorials and to locate the graves. And to add memorials to their relatives who died in the Second World War. Services are still held at the church by the chaplain. But these days, the most special annual services are held for Armistice Day (11/11).

St George’s Memorial Church, Ypres today. Memorial windows and plaques

Rembrandt and colleagues: the Book of Esther

Triumph of Mordechai, by Pieter Lastman, 1624

Between 1624-1685, Rembrandt van Rijn, his colleagues and then his students painted and etched scenes from the Book of Esther. They took their themes from various stages in the Esther story, intense, full of imminent danger, sometimes highly decorative. The paintings were almost all of fine quality, so my research questions published in The Jewish Magazine, Feb 2008 did not deal with connoisseurship. Rather I was asking what was the endless appeal of this slightly obscure, historically questionable post-Biblical Jewish story to a particular group of 17th century Dutch Christian artists?

Calvinist collectors in the Dutch Republic WERE often very interested in Old Testament art; Calvin had advocated careful study of the biblical narrative, from both Testaments equally. But a general interest in Biblical stories does not explain why the Book of Esther, in particular, was popular. There have been three main reasons offered to explain the popularity of the Purim story:

Esther Accuses Haman, by Jan Lievens, 1625

1.)  The Netherlands had a free open market, religious tolerance and a broad intellectual life (Brown et al 1992). Jewish merchant families had both the finances and the taste to live well and to buy art for their increasingly attractive homes. Naturally they would want to buy narrative tales based on much loved  Old Testament stories.

What was Jewish Holland like? The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, had a monopoly on all profits from trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. Lisbon had been conquered by the Spanish so the Dutch had to find their own way to the East for spices. Luckily the Portuguese Jews, who had fled their country, brought a great deal of experience and expertise with them. Eventually the Dutch East India Co. became a public company, and commerce expanded to the extent that the Dutch Republic was culturally and economically the most flourishing country in Europe. And by then, Dutch Jews were allowed to practise their religion. They lived their lives openly, surrounded by all the religious and community facilities they required.

Haman Begging for Mercy, by Rembrandt, 1655

Artists had long painted Old Testament stories, but often from a Christological point of view i.e Old Testament stories were only important in as far as they could prefigure New Testament events. Rembrandt painted many New Testament scenes of course, but they were not full of explicitly Christian symbolism. No crucified Christs, weeping Madonnas or vengeful Jewish onlookers. Dutch Jews at last found paintings they could buy and be proud of.

2.) In 1609 King Philip III of Spain agreed only to a 12 years' truce with the Netherlands. Freedom for the tiny Dutch nation arrived, after 30 miserable years of war. But the Netherlands were still at risk. Renewed in 1621 as part of the wider European conflict of the 30 Years' War, the Dutch battle for independence was continued until 1648. Via the Peace of Westphalia, Spain finally and formally recognised the independence of the United Provinces.

The Dutch, who were well versed in the Bible, saw themselves as The New Israel and their tiny country was likened to the land of Canaan. The leaders of the revolt in the Netherlands became identified in general with Biblical heroes, while the Spanish appeared to them like tyrants eg Pharaoh, Haman and Nebuchadnezzar. Every Dutch citizen would have either remembered the tragic war against Spain from his own experience or would have remembered his parents' stories. So by celebrating the original Purim story, tiny Netherlands could explain God's miracle in their own generation.

Consider the timing of the emergence of Queen Esther paintings in the Netherlands. After only 12 years of independence, by 1621 the Dutch could see their freedom at risk again. Purim stories appeared there for the very first time in 1624 and 1625, by Lastman, Lievens and others. The audience could easily recognise the figure of Haman, with his idolatrous demands, as a representation of the hated Spanish. Esther and Mordechai were clearly personifications of the virtuous, pious Dutch. The artists paid careful attention to material and emotional detail, and often dressed the characters in contemporary garb, to reinforce the scene's moral and civic lesson.

The King and Queen with Haman, by Rembrandt, 1666

3) Rembrandt was personally fascinated with the Old Testament and he chose to live in a Jewish area of Amsterdam. He and his students were naturally drawn to Jewish characters, Biblical and contemporary. Both Testaments provided subjects for his artistic output, and counting his paintings etchings and drawings, I would have to admit that New Testament themes predominated. And yet the impression remains that the Old Testament held a greater attraction for him.

In 1634 Rembrandt married the wealthy Saskia van Uylenburgh, niece of a successful art dealer, who also lived in the Jewish quarter: Jodenbreestraat. Her money allowed the young family to live a life of prosperity and joy, and to buy a house in the main Jewish area. The family lived on the lower floors of the house, leaving the first floor for his studio. Rembrandt had at least 50 pupils and followers who worked there.

Although there was probably very little connection between Dutch Jews of the mid 17th century and Biblical Jews in the Middle East, the Jewish environment in which Rembrandt lived helped him get a feel for the Old Testament's world at the source.

Zell (2002) found a positive sympathy in Rembrandt to Judaism and to Christian messianism, via a group of philo-semitic Protestants. Zell saw that Rembrandt became intimately familiar with the deeper meaning of the Old Testament via his close friendships with two of the most important Jewish figures in Holland. They were the scholarly Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, 1654, owner of Holland's first Hebrew printing press, and the erudite physician and community leader Dr Ephraim Bueno, 1647. They were in and out of each other's houses, studios and publishing houses. Many etchings of these two famous Jews survive, mostly by Rembrandt, Govert Flinck and Jan Lievens.

Reverend Mom and Women in the Bible blogs have a wonderful painting called The Banquet of Esther 1645 by the Dutch artist Jan Victors (1616-76), a student of Rembrandt van Rijn.

Read:
1. Nadler, Steven Rembrandt's Jews, Chicago UP, 2003  (one chapter is on line) and
2. Zell, Michael Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in C17th Amsterdam, Uni California Press, Berkeley, 2002.

Tulip mania revisited

17th century middle class Dutch homes loved having fresh flowers on their hall stand. If they couldn't afford a constant supply of fresh flowers, they could commission a beautiful painting of fresh flowers, and put the painting on their hall stand instead. The 1620 Ambrosius Bosschaert painting below included tulips and other flowers.

Tulip cultivation in the United Dutch Provinces was rare. It probably started in 1593 when tulip bulbs were sent from Turkey by the Dutch ambassador there. Those beautifully coloured and variegated tulips, newly arrived, cost a fortune. Only the wealthiest aristocrats and merchants could afford them. But by the early 1630s, flower growers successfully raised crops of more simply-coloured tulips in Holland. So tulips became one of the few luxury goods that could be purchased by a wider portion of the community.

When I wrote a post last January called Tulip mania: Netherlands in the 1620s and 30s, I thought I would probably come back to the topic of 17th century Holland again. But not to a novel. The Tulip Virus by Dutch writer Danielle Hermans (Minotaur 2010) changed all that.

The novel, published 2010

The publishers wrote that “it is a gripping debut mystery set in contemporary London with roots in 17th century Holland and the mysterious tulip trade. In 1636 Alkmaar, Wouter Winckel’s brutally slaughtered body is found in the barroom of his inn, an anti-religious pamphlet stuffed in his mouth. Winckel was a tulip-trader and owned the most beautiful collection of tulips in the United Republic of the Low Countries, including the most coveted and expensive bulb of them all, the Semper Augustus. But why did he have to die and who wanted him dead?

In 2007 London, history seems to be repeating itself. Dutchman Frank Schoeller is found in his home by his nephew. Severely wounded, he is holding a 17th-century book about tulips, seemingly a clue to his death moments later. With the help of his friend, an antique dealer from Amsterdam, the nephew tries to solve the mystery, but soon comes to realise that he and his friend’s own lives are now in danger.

The Tulip Virus is a fast-paced, fascinating mystery. It is based on the real-life events surrounding the collapse of the tulip bubble in 17th century Holland, the first such occurrence in history, a story that plunges readers deeply into questions of free will, science and religion, while showing the dark fruits of greed, pride and arrogance”.

By now the publishers had my attention, since I am passionate about 17th century Netherlands. But publishers always promise fast-paced, fascinating mysteries; it is like a 19 year old boy promising his young girlfriend a lifetime of total honesty and tenderness.

What IS true is that by 1636, tulips were traded on the stock exchanges of many Dutch towns; the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands were turned upsidedown by a tulip frenzy. Serious Calvinist Dutch citizens from every walk of life, if they had some spare money to invest, really did get involved in buying and selling tulip bulbs. Speculators, who wouldn't have known a tulip from a begonia, began to enter the market.

Warning pamphlet from the Dutch government, printed in 1637

The bubble didn’t last for long, but while it did, rare bulbs changed hands for ever-increasing amounts of money. Contemporary reports noted that a rare bulb might have been worth more than the cost of a family’s home.  It was not until Feb 1637 that tulip traders could no longer find new buyers willing to pay increasingly inflated prices for the precious bulbs. As this realisation set in, the demand for tulips suddenly collapsed and prices plummeted. The excitement came to a shuddering, crashing halt.

Both the government and the church had published pamphlets, warning about the foolishness of investing all of the family’s assets on tulips. But the character in The Tulip Virus, Wouter Winkel, didn’t listen. He and his wife seemed to have been the owners of an average tavern who died before their bulbs had been sold. It seems likely that during this bit of Dutch history, their seven children ended up in an orphanage and the bulbs were auctioned off to defray the orphanage’s costs. The auction price was so hysterically high, the children became rich overnight.

I loved The Tulip Virus but what did other reviewers think of  Danielle Hermans' novel? Mandythebookworm's Blog said she did not want to put this book down and whenever she had to, she was always thinking about how to wangle the next reading opportunity. She was hooked right from the first page. The Mystery Gazette believed the tulip connection to 17th century Holland added a very fresh spin to a secret that must be concealed at any cost. To be completely honest, I must let you know that not everyone loved the book. The Greenman Review didn’t enjoy the two intertwined, parallel stories at all.

Ambrosius Bosschaert, Flower Vase in Window Niche, 1620

My favourite reference for this period is The Embarrassment of Riches: An interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, written by Simon Schama and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1987.

Huguenot domestic architecture: 1696

Eggington House near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire has been for sale. I am interested in the home for two important reasons. Firstly it was built in 1696, soon after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). The Edict forced Protestant Frenchmen to flee France or face forced conversion to Catholicism, galley slavery or even execution. Secondly not many William and Mary era homes survive for us to examine, splendid or otherwise.

Nikolaus Pevsner, my hero amongst architectural historians, carefully differentiated between this William III style and the later Queen Anne style of William’s sister in law. The houses and gardens of the William III era (1650–1702) were graceful but rather heavy, coming mid-way between the French-inspired Baroque of the Restoration and the rather austere Queen Anne period that might have better reflected Protestant Huguenot taste. For example, the use of brick became popular in Britain as an element of William’s international influence. He was, after all, born and raised in the Netherlands.

To restate the importance of the Huguenots on William III taste, note that among the Huguenots seeking refuge in Calvinist Holland was interior designer Daniel Marot, himself the son of an architect. The stadtholder soon  commissioned Marot to work on his palace at Het Loo in the Netherlands and other buildings. William also took a keen interest in the gardens that Marot designed, so it was not a surprise when Marot followed William and Mary to England.

Treasure Hunt made a similar point. Dyrham Park in Gloucestershire has a variety of Dutch art objects, collected by Secretary of War William Blathwayt during his travels with King William III to the Continent. Blathwayt adored Dutch paintings, seventeenth-century Delft glazed earthenware, cut flowers, Dutch stamped leather wallhangings and a state bed in the style of Daniel Marot.

South Bedfordshire in particular discovered late-Renaissance mansion architecture from France and the Netherlands. It foreshadowed the distinctive brick houses of the 18th century which were introduced through the royal patronage of King William.

Eggington House, built in 1696

Eggington House was built in 1696 for Jean Renouille, a Huguenot described as a merchant tailor who fled from Montauban in Languedoc in SW France. Bedfordshire encouraged newly arriving Huguenots to settle in the towns and surrounding county, thus becoming an important centre for the Huguenot lace-making industry in Britain.

I’d love to know how Jean Renouille made his livelihood in Bedfordshire - we know for a fact that he eventually became Sheriff of Bedfordshire, an establishment position if ever I heard of one. And within a generation, we know the Renouille family must have integrated rather nicely, because they Anglicised the family name to Reynal, moved to the very smart Hockliffe Grange and let out Eggington to other well-to-do families.

Pevsner described Eggington House as an uncommonly fine example of C17th domestic architecture, completely up to the moment in features. It was built of red brick under a tiled roof with a panelled parapet. The main façade had 7 bays of classical segment-headed sash windows and was three storeys high. The roof line was concealed by a panelled parapet decorated with urns. Surrounded on three sides by its own land and woodland, the house was approached down its own gravelled drive through a set of gates. Pevsner didn’t call it smallish, but I will.

Descriptions in CountryLife .co.uk are very useful. The house has magnificent reception rooms, all with high ceilings and full length sash windows allowing light to flood into every room. The interior contains a staircase with twisted balusters. The drawing room is peaceful with light, soft-oak panelling on all walls with attractive carved wooden alcoves either side of a carved wooden fire-place with a French door leading out onto the terrace and garden. The sash windows have their own light oak shutters and with wooden floor boards and wooden cornicing. The study has walls of decorative painted panels, a unique painted alcove which is thought to be of the original William III style and an impressive marble fire-place. The dining room leads off from the reception hall with walls of painted wooden panelling, wooden floor boards and an open fireplace.

Over the decades, this house has enjoyed a series of impressive owners, including Sir Gilbert Inglefield, a Lord Mayor of London after WW2, and, more recently Lord Slynn. Slynn was no slouch himself; he held the office of Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Judge of the European Court of Justice and Advocate General of the European Court of Justice.

I have seen some modern photos of Eggington House’s interior, but I wish I could find drawings or photos from previous centuries. [Since the house was requisitioned by the Army during WW1, it is possible that substantial internal renovations were required, post-war]. In general, we can say that William and Mary design styles included French, Dutch and eastern influences. In wealthy homes, these influences could be found in furnishings carved in walnut, fruitwood and ebony, along side marquetry. But perhaps Huguenots, in that first difficult generation of exile and adaptation, had simpler tastes.

If the house sells, I wonder if the new owners will know about the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Bedfordshire's Huguenot community, the Dutch stadtholder, Daniel Marot and Jean Renouille.

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I couldn’t find many bloggers discussing Huguenot architecture, after the expulsion (1685). katy elliot blog has wonderful images from Huguenot Street: New Paltz, NY but the slightly later date (early 1700s) suggests that the New York Huguenots had been living for a generation in The Netherlands. She suggested that the windows and shutters felt Dutch and different from anything she had ever seen in New England. Sam Gruber’s Jewish Art and Monuments also has an image of Huguenot architecture, but again it is early C18th. In 1742 a Huguenot chapel was built on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street in Tower Hamlets in London’s East End. Called La Neuve Eglise, this dark brick and rather austere building later became Spitalfields Great Synagogue.

I would like to write a post on The French Protestant Hospital, La Providence, of the same era. But sofar I cannot find any photos of its original 1718 architecture.

The best books are:
Cottret , BJ and P Stevenson Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement c1550-1700, 1992
Davies, Horton and Marie-Helene French Huguenots in English-Speaking Lands, 2000
Gwynn , Robin D Huguenot Heritage: History and Contribution of the Huguenots in England, 1985
Gwynn, Robin D The Huguenots of London, Alpha Press, 1998 (my favourite)
Sparks , R.S and Van Ruymbeke, B Memory and Identity: Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora, 2008
Vigne, R and C. Littleton From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America 1550-1750, 2002

Travel posters: Harwich to Hook 1930s-50s

I have always had a passion for travel posters. By the late 19th century the art work for travel posters was already very interesting, but at that stage, most ordinary families realised that the promised excitement of Venice or Cairo was not meant for them.

Day and night services on the three sister ferries

It was only just before WW2 broke out and especially after it ended that package holidays opened up travel options for the non-wealthy. So it was very interesting to hear of a travel poster exhibition at the National Railway Museum in York Feb-Sep 2010. Called Once Upon a Tide, North Sea Ferry Tales, this exhibition has focused on the romance and excitement of international travel. In partnership with the National Railway Museum in the Netherlands, York Museum’s excellent poster collection has been used to explore the Harwich-Hook ferry route.

The NRM curators reminded the modern viewer that since 1867, ferries transporting passengers to Holland have been one of Britain’s main links with Europe. The first ferry, the Avalon, took 13 hours to steam from Harwich in Britain to the coast of Holland. But bigger, faster ships soon followed.

And the trip represented more than just a connection to the Dutch coastline. In 1890, the service began calling at Hook; and Hook was itself connected to the rest of Europe by rail in 1904. For the next 60 years, a system of boat trains linked with the day and night sailings from Harwich.

Visitors to the exhibition can explore the personal recollections of travellers throughout over 100 years of North Sea crossings, and from Hook to Europe’s holiday hot spots, including Switzerland, Berlin and Rome.

elegant Berlin café society, 1925

Almost always, the posters relied on powerful graphic design. The images were simple, the posters were not cluttered with too much text and the colours were clear and strong. The poster designers had to assume that they had only 30 seconds of the viewer’s time to impress the eye and to attract his/her closer attention. In the case of modern and efficient transport, the images had to be dynamic; the angled windows and sleek ships gave the posters a feeling of movement.

Once travel became a realistic option for the non-wealthy, a myriad of travel destinations competed for tourists. Posters had to lure tourists to Paris, Amsterdam, Venice and many other places. The poster-mad travel industry elevated advertising to an art form by romanticising and stylising their product, including the methods of transport and the possible destinations. The glamorous world of European café society and wide boulevards was a recurring theme of the advertising campaigns before WW2. Even service on board the ferry looked both modern and attentive.

The ferry trip

A fine poster showed the three sister ferries (Prague, Vienna and Amsterdam - see above) that were built by John Brown of Clydebank in 1929. The Antwerp 1920 was also visible on the left side of the poster.

Harwich to Hook

The Blue Lantern blog has raised another important point. In parallel to the travel posters, consider the emergence of beautifully illustrated travel magazines in the 1930s, directed at women. New styles in clothing offered freedom of movement and there was the possibility of adventure, especially at slightly exotic beach resorts. Examine the superbly simple graphic design in the travel advertisements that Jane selected.

Canada’s Golgotha sculpture: why was it hidden away?

In England in 1887 British artist Francis Derwent Wood entered art school and worked as a modeller. In 1890 he joined the National Art Training School where he studied under Edouard Lanteri, the man who also taught Charles Sargeant Jagger. Quite independently of this particular post, I have written several times about Jagger in the past: Low Reliefs and War and Sex.

From 1918 on, Wood was professor of sculpture at the Royal College of Art and one of his commissions was to model the wreaths for Sir Edwin Lutyens' Centotaph.  Lord Beaverbrook decided to document Canada's huge contribution to WW1 by commissioning 116 English and Canadian artists to produce 800 art objects. One of 116 artists was Francis Dervent Wood.

This post is going to concentrate on Canada's Golgotha, a half life-size bronze sculpture by Wood that depicted a crucified WW1 soldier. It illustrated the story of an unknown man from the Battle of Ypres in April 1915. We know only that he was a Canadian (from the maple leaf insignias) and that he was surrounded by jeering Germans as he died on the makeshift cross. You can see the tatty barn door in the background. Appropriately for a war casualty, this young man had baynets in each wrist and ankle, not nails. And he was in heavy army clothing: a great coat and boots, rather than a mere loin cloth.

The sculpture was first displayed in an exhibition for the Canadian War Memorials Fund 1919, at Burlington House in London. But the sculpture was withdrawn from the exhibit after protest. The Allies were disgusted at German barbarity and they were particularly horrified that a Christian symbol be used to kill a young Canadian soldier. The Germans, on the other hand, were outraged that an atrocity story could be publicised without any evidence of it having been historically accurate. They assumed it was more Allied propaganda.

But why was the sculpture, controversial though it might have been in 1919, hidden away for the rest of the century? Whose interests were being served?
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Wood, Canadian Golgotha, 1919, 83 cm high x 64 cm wide

After the end of the war, the Germans formally requested the Canadian government provide proof of a crucifixion. But there were two insurmountable problems: the written eyewitness accounts were unclear and contradictory, and no crucified body was ever found.

BEST FREE DOCUMENTARIES described new historical evidence which identified the crucified soldier as Sergeant Harry Band. He was from the Central Ontario Regiment of the Canadian Infantry. Based on letters from other soldiers in Band’s unit to Band's sister Elizabeth Petrie, and her letters back, the family in Canada eventually discovered that the horror stories about a crucified Canadian soldier were true. Like other soldiers without a proper grave, Band was commemorated only on the Menin Gate memorial.

It is interesting to me that when the sculpture was displayed in 2000 at the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, it again provoked controversy. People are still very angry about German atrocities, assuming that crucifixion of the old Canadia soldier was the most barbaric of all atrocities. I, a non-Christian, personally think the massacre of thousands of French and Canadian soldiers in Belgium by poisonous gas to be far more barbaric. But I might be missing the critical symbolism here. In any case, note the name of the 2000 exhibition: "Under the Sign of the Cross: Creative Expressions of Christianity in Canada".

In 1921 the entire War Memorials Collection was donated to the National Gallery in Ottawa, but the Gallery was not in a hurry to display any of these precious art objects. Particularly Canada's Golgotha.

Canadian War Museum, Ottawa

Now at least the sculpture is in its rightful home, the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Perhaps the 1984 book Art in The Service of War: Canada, Art and The Great War by Maria Tippett will provide some answers.

Amazing botanical artist III - Berthe Hoola van Nooten

Here is another amazing female botanical artist in the tradition of Marianne North and Marian Ellis Rowan.

Berthe Hoola van Nooten (1817 - 1892) was the daughter of an Utrecht vicar. There is little on record about her young years, except that she was already fascinated by natural science and particularly skilled at flower painting.

In 1838 she married Dirk Hoola van Nooten. After their marriage, the couple travelled to the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America, where Dirk Hoola van Nooten worked as a judge. Berthe often travelled between Suriname and Batavia (now Jakarta) with her husband, and it was during these travels that her interest in botanical plants and painting grew. The records show that she sent cultivated plants back to botanical gardens in the Netherlands. These specimens were collected on trips through Suriname and Java with her husband.

Only nine years after her marriage and with five young children, van Nooten’s husband suddenly died in 1847, leaving her with large debts and a large young family. Unable to pay for the family’s journey back to the Netherlands, the young widow decided to take advantage of her compulsory banishment. Aware of the great interest in Europe for lavish illustrations of exotic fruit and flowers, she decided to produce watercolour plates depicting interesting plant species from Java. Would she have bothered creating professional works, had she not been so pressed financially? Probably not.

Cynometra Cauliflora or Nam Nam
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After returning home to the Netherlands, she tried to get her watercolours publish but failed. It was only through the intervention and eventual patronage of the Netherlandish Queen Sophie Mathilde, who strongly supported the arts, that Berthe was finally able to get a selection of her paintings published in 1864. Queen Sophie, wife of the Dutch King William III, was no intellectual slouch. She corresponded with several European scholars, protected and stimulated the arts and supported her favourite causes, including the construction of public parks. But the records don’t say how Berthe came to the Queen’s attention.

The forty large plates in the book "Fleurs fruits et feuillages choisis de l’ile de Java" were printed in Belgium from Van Nooten's original sketches by the Belgian lithographer Pieter Depannemaeker, using the new technique of chromolithography. The exquisite colour-plates, often finished by hand, depicted a range of Java’s tropical splendour; its indigenous and introduced flowering trees, shrubs, decorative flowers and plants with edible fruits. Each brilliantly coloured plate was accompanied by a description of the plants and their culinary, medical and other uses in French and English.

BibliOdyssey blog has beautiful versions of some of the fruit illustrations. Botany Photo of the Day blog has an exquisite flower I have never seen before: torch ginger which was native to Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Thailand. Visual Creative blog saw the arts works of famous Victorian women and dreamt of becoming a specialist in botanical illustration.

Van Nooten managed to accentuate the splendour of each species by adopting a style that combined great precision and clarity with a touch of neo-Baroque exuberance, revelling in the rich forms and colours of the tropics. Cynometra Cauliflora/Nam Nam for example, is native to Southeast Asia and is a small tree having a knotted trunk yielding edible light brown or greenish yellow flowered fruit.

Carica papaya

Despite three editions of the work being published during her lifetime, Berthe Hoola van Nooten died in poverty in Batavia in 1892. So how did copies of the original publication get into Australian libraries? Apparently the books were acquired from Daphne van Nooten whose late husband was the artist’s great great nephew. Published some 16 years after the first edition, the 1880 editions held by the 3 Australian libraries (National Library of Australia in Canberra, the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne’s library) is regarded as an improved edition. In acquiring this publication, the libraries were aware of another C19th female artist whose work complemented those already held in Australia.

The Tropenmuseum is an anthropological museum located in Amsterdam and established in 1864 in order to show the Netherlands’ overseas possessions. The museum, operated by the Royal Tropical Institute, uses visual arts and photographic works for its exhibitions.  Its two beautiful portraits of our artist are in the permanent collection.

Two recent specialist exhibitions should be noted. In Washington DC, Illustrating Nature: Three Centuries of Botanical Prints showcased the tremendous contributions women artists made to the development of botanical art from the C17th onwards. The 2001 exhibition, organised by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, featured 50 prints and four books by British and European artists. The illustrations of artists who completed works while travelling abroad make up a significant part of the exhibition, including Berthe Hoola Van Nooten.

Map Batavia/Jakarta

Studio Botanika NY specialises in botanical and natural history prints from 1700 on. They are having a very special exhibit showing the work of women botanical illustrators, including Berthe Hoola van Nooten. They noted that it was typical for many women artists to sign their work only as: 'by a lady.' Victorian women were modest, reserved and not self-promoting; thus their contributions, however great, were rarely recognised. Those who did illustrate professionally were typically underpaid. However the time was right because, during the Victorian era, exploration became so common because the elite of society craved the most unusual plants. Plant breeding exploded, and vast conservatories were constructed to hold the plant oddities.

The Bluest Blue has a gorgeous botanical print by Augusta Innes Baker Withers (1792–1869). Now I must look for any published material about Ms Withers.