Stave 1 : Repairing the Gas-Pipes

"In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture."

I am making two images for this (although I am completing them in reverse order...art doesn't tend to follow a straight line).  The first image is an aerial view of the workmen doing the repair work at the top of the image, with the street people at the bottom of the image.  This image is an unfinished preliminary sketch.  The second image, which is finished, "breaks the fourth wall", showing the workmen's brazier from the perspective of one of the street people (a child).  

I have relied on two main sources for this.  The first is, of course, Wikipedia : 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_manufactured_gas

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drawing_the_retorts_at_the_Great_Gas_Establishment_Brick_Lane.png

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gas_plant_Accum_(1815).JPEG

My second source is my own experience, of working construction many years ago, and of witnessing people suffering obvious and needless poverty in the United States and elsewhere, notably Southeast Asia.

"...and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to."

I have only been to London once, and only literally, not really.  This was in June of 2014, and I was returning to the United States after spending four years in Thailand.  my family was kind enough to buy the plane ticket for me, along with an overnight stay at a hotel at Heathrow.  So technically I was in London, sort of, once, for a period of less than 24 hours.  But really, I saw nothing of it.  I wasn't even there long enough to eat anything with brown sauce.

The images on this blog are from my current body of work, a series of illustrations for Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol".  I hope this blog will generate interest in the project (I am now looking for a publisher), and provide something enjoyable and informative to anyone who casually happens across it.  Kind of like Dickens, as he wrote in his own preface.

There have been numerous adaptions of the book, including illustrated versions as well as films.  Most of them are quite good, and I am not familiar with all of them.  In fact, I am trying to avoid looking at other interpretations of "A Christmas Carol" because I don't want to take any ideas from them.  So I am doing something a little different.  I am trying to keep as close to the exact wording of the text as I can, and I am researching images from the period (c. 1830s - 1843) as source material.  Many of my drawings contain elements that I deliberately derived from specific artworks of that period and earlier.  This allows me to avoid accidentally plagiarizing works that are currently under copyright.  It also allows me to create a connection with the way people in the 1830s and 1840s viewed themselves and their world.

The image above shows the main entrance to the Second Royal Exchange, on Cornhill.  Initially, I got most of my information from Wikipedia (here is a link to the page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Exchange,_London ).  This building burned down in 1838, five years before Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol", and the Third Royal Exchange wasn't opened until 1844.  So this is the building that Scrooge would have known, and to which he would have gone after Jacob Marley's death ("And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.").

Here are the links to the images and texts I used as source material for this illustration.  Please note that one of the source images, the statue of King Charles II, is used under a creative commons license.  The part of my drawing, showing a statue of Charles II in the same pose, by the same sculptor, may therefore be used under the same license.  The sculpture itself is in the public domain.  Out of respect for the photographer (Michael Reeve, whom I do not know personally or professionally), I feel it is appropriate to offer use of that part of my drawing under a similar license.  The other parts of my image should be considered to be under my copyright, as it is my drawing.  All other source material for the image is in the public domain.  The Wikipedia article is also where I found the links to the texts on archive.org.  The work of Wikipedia's staff and contributors has been a really valuable resource for this project.  If any of you are reading this, THANK YOU.

Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Exchange,_London


Source images of the Second Royal Exchange : 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ONL_(1887)_1.499_-_The_second_Royal_Exchange,_Cornhill.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Exchange,_1779.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Image-RoyalExchangeThomasBowles1751_2.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microcosm_of_London_Plate_067_-_Royal_Exchange_(tone_and_colour).jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Exchange_1760.jpg

https://archive.org/stream/royalexchangenot00masoiala#page/34/mode/2up

https://archive.org/stream/royalexchangenot00masoiala#page/n51/mode/2up


Source photo of a statue of King Charles II, taken by Michael Reeve : 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rhc-charles2.jpg

I believe this statue was cast from the same original as the statue that was in the Second Royal Exchange.  Both were by Grinling Gibbons, and the pose in this photograph seems very similar, even from the slightly different angle, as the pose in the low-resolution pen-and-ink elevation-and-plan drawing of 1779 (see link above).  The 1779 drawing shows very little detail of it, but A.E.W. Mason's description of it fits the statue photographed by Reeve (See Mason's "The Royal Exchange: a note on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Royal Exchange Assurance", pages 36-37, at https://archive.org/stream/royalexchangenot00masoiala#page/36/mode/2up ).

For the text on the statue's pedestal, see W.H. Pyne's "Microcosm of London (volume 3)", page 22 ( https://archive.org/stream/microcosmoflondo03pyneuoft#page/26/mode/2up ).  I simply drew lines roughly proportional to the text.


Source image for the statue of King James I, above the north entrance in the background : 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_King_James_I_%26_VI_(1618-1620).jpg

I chose James I for this niche based also on the text, page 22, of "Microcosm of London", but I could find no image that showed that specific part of the building.  So I looked at paintings of King James I, and decided upon this one.  I just liked the black-and-gold of the outfit, and I can't really say if this is what the actual statue looked like.


Text sources (via the Wikipedia article) :

https://archive.org/details/oldnewlondonnarr01thor

https://archive.org/details/microcosmoflondo03pyneuoft

https://archive.org/details/royalexchangenot00masoiala


As you can see, I did some research on this.  Not the kind of intensive research that an academic would do, but I think enough to provide a reasonably accurate view of the building as Scrooge would have known it.  After all, the reason for the research was to make the drawing, which in and of itself took some time.  The total time to produce this drawing was just over 28 1/2 hours.  Was it worth it?  Do leave a comment, or find me on Facebook (V.A. Kenyon).

The Christmas Soldier

"Scrooge Studies" is a blog about one of my projects, a series of illustrations for Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.  I hope to eventually produce a printed version of the book.  But that's a long way off.  So I thought it might be worthwhile to set up a blog to introduce the drawings and my research behind them.  This way, people can view the drawings as they progress, and hopefully I can gain some support for the project.  You can see these and other drawings at flickr.com (flickr : V.A. Kenyon - Dickens's A Christmas Carol) and on facebook (facebook : V.A. Kenyon - Dickens's A Christmas Carol).  And please submit comments on the images here (or on flickr or facebook).

This blog will show the illustrations in no particular order.  As I continue to make images, I will set up a second blog, which will be the full story of A Christmas Carol, in serial format - not unlike the way many novels used to be published in the nineteenth century.  This will have the added benefit of making the work available free of charge, whether or not I can publish a print edition.  To that end, I will also be setting up a crowdfunding project.  At this time (May - June 2016), I am still working on the specifics for that.

The opening image for this blog features Scrooge's nephew, Fred.  I haven't done a background for him yet.  It will likely feature some wood paneling, which I've used in another drawing as an appropriately conservative material for the interior of Scrooge's office.  On the other hand, I may leave the background blank.  It might be interesting to play with text layout around his portrait.  Tell me what you think.

Fred is modeled after the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz.  For my source, I have used his portrait by Karl Wilhelm Wach, which is on Wikipedia here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz .  Wikipedia is a great tool for this type of project, and I've used it as a starting point for the research on a number of my images.  I want to get historical accuracy in the the details, such as clothing, architecture, and technology, and I also want my images to be stylistically familiar to people in the early 1840s.  As I am learning about early Victorian London, I hope my audience will forgive me if I get a few details wrong.  I hope that my illustrations will do justice to Dickens and Scrooge, and give some enjoyment to a wide range of people.  I'm gaining an appreciation of and fascination for the City of London, and I especially hope that the Citizens of London will approve of my drawings.  I also hope that all the Wikipedia editors who donate their time will like what I've done with their efforts.

But why Clausewitz?  Well, Fred is clearly at "war" with Scrooge, and thinks he'll never get through to him.  But he doesn't lose his optimism and faith in humanity's basic goodness, or Scrooge's potential to change.  Clausewitz, for his part, saw some serious brutality over the course of his life - but look at Wach's portrait.  He's got a kind of Mona Lisa smile, in spite of everything he's seen.  And so I thought, "Well!  He looks like Scrooge's nephew!"

Fred's wife, of course, will be modeled after Clausewitz's wife, the brilliant Countess Marie von Brühl.  You can see the article about her at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_von_Brühl .

Do let me know what you think, and I am open to ideas for images for this project.