Merry Christmas

Here is Robert Seymour, as Bob Cratchit, taking a slide down Cornhill on Christmas Eve, undaunted by Scrooge's bad attitude towards the holiday:

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, to all of you!

Another Hi-Res Promo Image

And so, just less than a week before Christmas, if you're looking for any last-minute Christmas gift ideas, Scrooge Studies is available as an eBook on Amazon. (Because of the number of images, it won't display on some e-readers. But Amazon has free apps to allow it to be read on laptop computers, etc., and the listing will show which e-readers are compatible.)

If you have already bought Scrooge Studies, thank you! And if you haven't, thank you for reading my blog. Here is a high-resolution version of one of my favorite images from the book: "There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence."

Thank you for your interest. The above image is available free of charge, to anyone for any lawful, non-commercial use, as thanks for your interest in my work and to encourage sales of the eBook.

The listing on Amazon can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Scrooge-Studies-Illustrated-Exploration-Christmas-ebook/dp/B07GZ9QJKX/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545255581&sr=1-2&keywords=scrooge+studies

Happy Holidays!

A Book Recommendation

I have been re-reading Death and Mr Pickwick, by Stephen Jarvis, which deals with the evolution of British caricature and the origins of The Pickwick Papers. Jarvis presents, in the format of a novel, the theory that the artist Robert Seymour invented the character of Pickwick, and not Charles Dickens. I had come across the work of Seymour myself in 2016, as I was working on Scrooge Studies, and wondered about his influence on Dickens. I later had the good fortune to make the online acquaintance of Mr. Jarvis, who is much more knowledgable on the subject. Jarvis's arguments are quite compelling, and Death and Mr Pickwick ultimately influenced my illustrations for A Christmas Carol in a pretty significant way.

Even though I've read it before, Jarvis's writing is so fresh and engaging that it still feels new. There are numerous gems of phrases and sentences that have prompted me to start putting little paper sticky-flags in the margins, so that I can go back and find those anecdotes and pieces of language more easily.

And a little before page 200, I realized something - I was so pulled in to the story that I had forgotten I was reading a book.

Now that's some good writing.

As we approach Christmas, it's my distinct pleasure to recommend Mr. Jarvis's book. You don't need to have read The Pickwick Papers before, or to have previous knowledge of Dickens, to enjoy the book, but if you do know of any fans of The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens, or nineteenth-century Britain generally, this book would be an excellent Christmas gift.

You can find Death and Mr Pickwick online at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Pickwick-Stephen-Jarvis-21-May-2015-Hardcover/dp/B011T884CW/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544648845&sr=1-2&keywords=death+and+mr+pickwick), Barnes & Noble (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/death-and-mr-pickwick-stephen-jarvis/1120160537?ean=9781250094667) and at many brick-and-mortar bookstores.

I have neither received nor sought any compensation for the above endorsement.

Interior of Strawberry Hill Meeting House

Today (December 2, 2018) there is a Christmas Stroll scheduled for the village of Yarmouth Port, here on the Puritanic Sands.  We have unfortunately encountered that Usual Event Around Here, often called Rain, which is probably discouraging people from attending.  My excuse is that I am occupied with Work Stuff and Christmas Decorating At Home.

Last year, a giant of American Theater passed away in Yarmouth Port - the brilliant set designer Helen Pond.  She and her professional and life partner, Herbert Senn, lived on Church Street in Y-Port, in an old Unitarian meeting house which they had lovingly and painstakingly restored and decorated over many years.  They had spent decades working together, and one of their most famous projects was their frequent work designing sets for Boston Ballet's annual Nutcracker.

The estate sale was yesterday and the day before; I had the opportunity to go inside once, about 20 years ago, for a Christmas party - the Pond-Senns used to throw these huge events every year, and I had the good fortune to be able to tag along with some friends who had been invited.  I felt a little intimidated so I did not introduce myself to the Pond-Senns.  

As for the estate sale, I knew that I probably wouldn't have the opportunity to see the interior again, so I went and took a few photographs.  My mom bought me a large coffee mug from the kitchen with an "H" on the side - and it still had a coffee drip on it!  I'm drinking from it now as I write this.

I in turn saw a "His" and "Hers" pair of mugs, also unwashed, which I bought for a young married couple I know.  I met them through theater work - she is a lighting designer, and he assists her - and I thought they should have a small piece of American Theater History with coffee and tea sometime.

Here are some photos of the interior of Strawberry Hill Meeting House, 17 Church Street, Yarmouth Port, Puritanic Sands, Massachusetts.  Most of the surfaces are flat - the Pond-Senns were masters of Trompe-l'oeil painting.

A "small" trompe-l'oeil ceiling:

Floorboards with a faux-marble checkerboard pattern:

The large trompe-l'oeil ceiling in the Great Hall:

The ceiling of the Great Hall, from the balcony, to give an idea of the scale of the room:

These two photos show some details of the Pond-Senns' painting skills:

Dangerous Christmas Games, and a Proposal for Wassail-Legislation

From pages 31-32 of The Book of Christmas, by Thomas K. Hervey, illustrated by Robert Seymour:

"In that long space of time, besides the uncertainty of what may happen to ourselves, there is but too much reason to fear that, unless a change for the better should take place, some one or more of the neglected children may be dead. We could not but have apprehensions that the group might never return to us entire. Death has already made much havoc amongst them, since the days of Ben Jonson. Alas for Baby-cocke! and woe is me for Post-and-paire! And although Carol, and Minced-pie, and New-year's Gift, and Wassail, and Twelfth-cake, and some others of the children, appear still to be in the enjoyment of a tolerably vigorous health, yet we are not a little anxious about Snap-dragon, and our mind is far from being easy on the subject of Hot-cockles. It is but too obvious that, one by one, this once numerous and pleasant family are falling away; and as the old man will assuredly not survive his children, we may yet, in our day, have to join in the heavy lamentation of the lady at the sad result of the above "Hue and Cry." "But is old, old, good old Christmas gone?—nothing but the hair of his good, grave old head and beard left!" For these reasons, he and his train shall be welcome to us as often as they come. It shall be a heavy dispensation under which we will suffer them to pass by our door unhailed; and if we can prevail upon our neighbors to adopt our example, the veteran and his offspring may yet be restored. They are dying for lack of nourishment. They have been used to live on most bountiful fare,—to feed on chines and turkeys and drink of the wassail-bowl. The rich juices of their constitution are not to be maintained, far less re-established, at a less generous rate; and though we will, for our parts, do what lies in our power, yet it is not within the reach of any private gentleman's exertions or finances to set them on their legs again. It should be made a national matter of; and as the old gentleman, with his family, will be coming our way soon after the publication of the present volume, we trust we may be the means of inducing some to receive them with the ancient welcome and feast them after the ancient fashion."

Wassailing in the Puritanic Sands?  Good luck with that.  Two years ago, six days before Christmas no less, I got harassed by the police for Walking-While-Female-and-Sober on public streets and nature trails (maintained by the town, for both locals and visitors to enjoy nature year-round) because somebody didn't like the way I looked.  

While I am NOT in favor of alcohol abuse, with that incident in mind, I think the tradition of Wassail should be firmly re-established, indeed encouraged, throughout the Commonwealth by an Act of the Massachusetts Legislature.  The Normalization of Some Excesses just might serve as an effective antidote for Paranoid Reactions to Normal Activities.

But I digress.  The quoted paragraph from Hervey mentions a game called Snap-dragon, and Seymour made a drawing of this for the same page of The Book of Christmas.  Here it is:

In Seymour's illustration, the players are all children (though the game was not played exclusively by children, and not exclusively at Christmastime).  A wide, shallow bowl is filled with brandy and set alight.  Then raisins are tossed in, and the kids gather round to pluck them out while trying to avoid getting burned.

As I said before, I am NOT in favor of alcohol abuse, and I would NOT suggest that children should be playing games involving alcohol and getting burned.  But I find this game interesting because it reveals such a different attitude towards child-rearing during the early nineteenth century and earlier.  I recall, from studying German many years ago, an idea presented by my professor about Grimms' Fairy Tales.  The original German stories are, in short, full of violence.  As I remember it, my professor referred to a psychologist (I think)(and whose name I can't remember) who had postulated that the violence in those children's stories was socially necessary: at the time, Germany was politically fragmented and the economy was heavily agrarian, so violence was a fact of life.  Wars happened, and civilians got caught in the middle of them.  Even in peacetime, children growing up on farms had to learn to slaughter animals that they had raised themselves and had formed emotional attachments to.  Violent children's stories may have been used to acclimate children to a difficult, dangerous life.

I think games like Snap-dragon may have served a similar purpose — and the disappearance of it in the nineteenth century may reflect a new need for fire safety in dense urban areas.

Over the course of 2018, I've made a number of drawing studies from Jan Steen's Twelfth Night Feast at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  I started awkwardly, because it's a dauntingly brilliant painting.  I did a decent pencil study of Steen's self-portrait in the middle of the canvas (see my blog post here: https://scroogestudies.blogspot.com/2018/09/jan-steen-twelfth-night-feast.html) and drew details from many of the other characters in the party.

In the lower left corner, there are a boy and girl playing what I'll call "Three-Kings'-Candles" — they're apparently competing to see who can jump the farthest over the three candles, which represent the Magi.  I'm guessing that they would set the candles farther and farther apart.  Kind of dangerous.  And reminiscent of Snap-dragon.

Here is my study of Steen's kids playing Three-Kings'-Candles.  I'm posting it here as a high-resolution jpeg, and allowing anyone to use it free of charge for any lawful, non-commercial use (such as using it to make your own Christmas cards, etc.):  

Anyone who wants to use it commercially will have to contact me to negotiate appropriate licensing (obviously, Blogger and its affiliates in the Alphabet group of companies may use the image in accordance with Blogger's Terms of Service).  This is as a general thank-you to anyone who has purchased my eBook of Scrooge Studies, and to promote additional sales of it.

Here is the link to the eBook: https://www.amazon.com/Scrooge-Studies-Illustrated-Exploration-Christmas-ebook/dp/B07GZ9QJKX/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542584731&sr=1-1&keywords=scrooge+studies

If you really like the image — thank you!  Likewise, if you have purchased the eBook of Scrooge Studies — thank you!

A Second Library Show

I'd like to thank the East Branch of the Falmouth (Massachusetts) Public Library for hosting a display of my drawings through the end of 2018.  Here is one of my favorites, which is included in the show:

These are the "Spanish Onion-Friars" from Stave Three: 

"There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe."

Please remember to support your local library - libraries are places for researchers, book lovers, families with kids, and kids from 1 to 92 (and beyond!). Libraries provide information on local events and serve as gathering places for different community groups. They're an integral part of what makes a strong local community!

Scrooge Studies: An Illustrated Exploration of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" is available as an eBook on Amazon.  Here is the link:

https://www.amazon.com/Scrooge-Studies-Illustrated-Exploration-Christmas-ebook/dp/B07GZ9QJKX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542309622&sr=8-1&keywords=scrooge+studies&dpID=518LI5CbYjL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

Thank you for visiting my blog, and may the upcoming Holiday Season be full of joy and happiness for you!

Three Timely Excerpts

Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States.  I won't tell any American readers how to vote, but here are three excerpts from A Christmas Carol that I think are important to keep in mind — especially because the Holiday Shopping Season now seems to be starting at the beginning of November, not the end.

Scrooge's nephew Fred, from his argument with Scrooge in Stave One:

   “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

Scrooge and Marley, discussing what makes a good businessman, also in Stave One:

   “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
   “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

And the Ghost of Christmas Present, correcting Scrooge on an erroneous assumption, in Stave Three:

   “Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.”
   “I!” cried the Spirit.
   “You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge. “Wouldn’t you?”
   “I!” cried the Spirit.
   “You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.”
   “I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.
   “Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge.
   “There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

Thank You to Sturgis Library

I'd like to thank Sturgis Library, in Barnstable Village, Massachusetts, for allowing me to use one of its display cases to exhibit some of my Scrooge Studies drawings.  I hung the show today and it will be up for the whole month of November (2018).  

All of the staff have been very friendly and supportive; they also helped me early on in my project when I was studying the work of J.M.W. Turner.  I'd especially like to thank Director Lucy Loomis and Reference Librarian Corey Farrenkopf.

Sturgis Library is a really important and vital local institution, and I'd like to take the opportunity to encourage people to support Sturgis Library on Giving Tuesday (November 27, 2018).  There are also some upcoming holiday events there, including a Christmas Tea on December 8, 2018, and a Holiday Ornament Sale starting on December 3, 2018 (which will run for two weeks).  You can check out Sturgis Library's monthly newsletter at http://www.sturgislibrary.org/monthly-enewsletter/.

Happy Halloween From Ye Puritanic Sands!

Here is one of my early images for Scrooge Studies, showing the gravestone of Ebenezer Scrooge in Stave Four.  It's modeled after the headstone of Captain Joseph Griffith of Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, buried in Ancient Cemetery, Y-Port.

And here is a photo of Captain Griffith's headstone itself:

Ancient Cemetery dates to the time of the founding of Yarmouth in 1639.  I don't know how long cultural continuity between Great Britain and the American Colonies survived - undoubtedly some things have survived to the present and other things fell away at different points, accents being the most obvious of things that have diverged.  There is also the very nature of the founding of Plymouth Colony.  I saw a BBC documentary about it where the Puritans were described by historian Pauline Croft as "a very, very small group of very extreme people" (The Mayflower Pilgrims: Behind the Myth, 2016, quote starting at around 00:02:00).  I think that's a fair characterization.

I've come to think of coastal New England after a phrase by Herman Melville's Ishmael: "the Puritanic sands" (Moby-Dick, end of Chapter 6).  There's the oft-remembered bit about Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawing the observance of Christmas.  I sometimes wish that certain Christmas traditions, such as depicted by Seymour in The Book of Christmas, had been more popular on the Western Side of The Pond.

On headstones, there is a survivor into the 1800s: "ye" on tombstones.  Recently I learned about this from Stephen Jarvis, author of Death and Mr Pickwick: The "y" in "ye" is actually a morphing from the old Anglo-Saxon "thorn" character, which was pronounced as "th," not "y" (so "ye" should actually be pronounced "the").  Having studied a bit about the evolution of German, where thorn appears in the First Germanic Sound Shift, I was delighted to see its descendant here in my neighborhood Puritanic cemetery.  

I would also like to take this opportunity to highly recommend Death and Mr Pickwick, in which Stephen has packed an enormous amount of historical information into an insightful, sometimes tragic, frequently comic, and uniquely engaging novel about the origins of The Pickwick Papers.

In the spirit of Halloween - a tradition whose practice seems quintessentially New England despite its probably very pagan (or at least un-Puritanic) origins - here are some photos of other headstones from Ancient Cemetery.  There's some lovely detail on some of them, especially in the borders.  And a comparison of the dates reveals a "fashion" in the half-round areas on the top of the tombstones.  Early tombstones (1600s-early 1700s, as near as I can guess - often they don't have dates) tend to be small, with an abstract design that might be opposed clouds.  In the 1700s, the classic Death's Head, often winged, became widely used.  Around 1800, this in turn became supplanted by a Weeping Willow, an urn, or both, and remained widely used until the mid-1800s. I'm guessing that the stones may have been commissioned en masse and then used as needed, which would explain the "popularity" of particular styles in particular periods.  

There are also some other interesting script details, such as a merging of the "c" and "t" in "Oct." and "October," "lyes" instead of "lies," and elongated "s" characters which look a bit like "f."  Some of these show the elongated next to the regular "s," such as on the headstone of "Mifs DESIRE GRIFFITH" (Captain Griffith's daughter).  This form of a double-s is quite similar to German "ß" as well.  All of these photos are under my copyright.

This grave, of Lucrecia Sturgis, is one of the early headstones.  This shot shows the abstracted opposing-cloud motif:

And this one, of Thomas Baxter, shows an interesting joining of the "T" and "E" in his last name:

Happy Halloween!

Tiny Tim

I've tried to use historical figures as the models for as many characters as I can.  Tiny Tim is a central figure in the story.  Of all the characters, he's the first who really starts to melt Scrooge's icy heart, and he maybe has the strongest impact on Scrooge.

But I had trouble finding a suitable person to portray him.  Fortunately, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, helped me out.  In the Netherlandish Collection there is a delightful painting by Jan de Bray, titled "Portrait of a Boy Holding a Basket of Fruit" (1658).

I wasn't able to learn the identity of the sitter, so I've credited him as "Jan de Bray (The Younger)."  The boy may or may not have been Jan de Bray's son, but painters from that period often used their own family members as models.

Here is my original sketch, which I made at the MFA:

I decided to do the final version in silverpoint.  I'm not presenting that one here (it's in the eBook), but this is a practice version in silverpoint:

Both images in this post are high resolution jpegs to show the detail.

The eBook (Scrooge Studies: An Illustrated Exploration of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol") is available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Scrooge-Studies-Illustrated-Exploration-Christmas-ebook/dp/B07GZ9QJKX/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539908783&sr=1-2&keywords=scrooge+studies.

A Preparatory Sketch

This is a preparatory sketch for an image from Stave Two of A Christmas Carol.  It shows Belle's husband arriving home with a porter, who is carrying Christmas presents, and the porter being overwhelmed by all the children:

"Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection!"

The final image is a paper cut-out.  What you see above is what I removed, and becomes solid black.  However, I still like this as a drawing, because it reveals some things that the final black-and-white image doesn't.

I took a tracing of it before I cut it out - just in case of mistakes:

The final image is in my eBook (Scrooge Studies: An Illustrated Exploration of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol"), available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Scrooge-Studies-Illustrated-Exploration-Christmas-ebook/dp/B07GZ9QJKX/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1538945246&sr=1-1&keywords=Scrooge+Studies.

I Saw (more than) Three Ships

This post is not directly about A Christmas Carol.  But it is about some of my ideas on the art-making process.

While working on a commission two years ago, I looked at Canaletto's Bacino di San Marco, Looking East.  Because it's in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it was convenient for me to go look at it in person.  Here is a photo reproduction, from the Web Gallery of Art (https://www.wga.hu/art/c/canalett/5/canal512.jpg) (photo reproductions of 2-dimensional public-domain artworks are considered to be in the public domain in the United States, where I currently live and work):

I have a few thoughts on Canaletto, and I'd be interested to get others' feedback (I'm NOT an art historian, so I don't intend to make any definitive claims):

1. I understand that there is some debate about whether or not Canaletto used a camera obscura to make his paintings.  I think that he did use a camera obscura for this painting (and probably others as well).
2. I think he painted most of this painting over the course of a single day.
3. I think Canaletto was left-handed.

The painting is brilliant.  It is incredibly accurate, which suggests a camera obscura.  I understand that there's some question about whether or not the aperture of a camera obscura would allow for accurate focus.  This is a Venetian painting by a Venetian painter.  I think it's likely that the Venetian glass industry would have been capable of producing high-quality optical lenses at that time - if you lived in Europe in the 1700s and you wanted eyeglasses, a telescope, or a nautical spyglass, where would you go to get the highest quality?  Probably Venice, if you could afford to travel.

I understand that Canaletto trained under his father to be a theatrical set painter.  So he would have developed his skills with speed in mind.  Any trick he could come up with to produce a painting faster would have been desirable for him.  Combined with the likely availability of high-quality optical lenses, a camera obscura would be a tremendous, and logical, aid in speeding up his process.  

Notice the change in sunlight on the architecture.  At the left side of the canvas, shadows fall to the right.  The sun is low, behind us and to the left, placing it in the west.  So this part of the canvas was painted in the evening.  But then, look at the right side of the canvas.  The shadows fall to the left, at a steep angle, placing the sun high up and to the right, and so probably painted in late morning.

If the image had taken multiple days to complete, it would have made sense for Canaletto to pick a single position for the sun.  The fact that he didn't (pick a consistent position for the sun) suggests that he wasn't thinking about his light source at all, which in turn suggests that he was working quickly.  You can actually track the movement of the sun by the shift in direction and angle of the shadows across the canvas, from right to left.

With the boats, this is less consistent than in the architecture, but he could have added some of the boats after he painted the architecture.

His treatment of the surface of the water also suggests working quickly.  A photo reproduction doesn't show this as well as looking at the painting in person, but here it is: why would a painter be so exacting and accurate in his depictions of architecture and boats, only to paint the surface of the water with simple little U-curves?  Looking at it at the MFA, one can see this contrast between his attention to detail and then the lack of it.  That contrast in turn is highlighted by comparisons with other nautical works, especially in the MFA's Dutch collections.  Most nautical painters who really know their ships also take great care in their depictions of water, but Canaletto doesn't.  So again, like with the change in the sun's position, this suggests that Canaletto cared about speed as much as (or more than?) anything else.

Finally, as to Canaletto being left-handed: using oil paint, with a slow drying time, he wouldn't want to smudge his work.  The inside of a camera obscura must be dark, except for where the image is projected (obviously).  Based on the change in the sun's position, he had to have painted right-to-left.  If he were right-handed, he would have created a high probability of messing up his own work.  But if he were left-handed,  the risk of smudging would be minimized.

I also think he painted the entire background in the light blue sky color some time beforehand, and started painting in the late morning to avoid the architecture being backlit, but I'm not as confident about that.

Again, I would be interested in the opinions of anyone who is more knowledgable about Canaletto than I am...so please feel free to make a comment.

Stave Three: The Spanish Onion-Friars

"There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe."

The imagery of the sentence is too humorously irreverent for me not to have made a drawing of it.  

Jan Steen - "Twelfth-Night Feast"

This drawing does NOT appear in "Scrooge Studies." But it did influence my eBook.

It is my pencil study of a self-portrait by Jan Steen, which he included smack in the middle of his 1662 painting "Twelfth-Night Feast." I started making small drawings from this painting some months ago at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Do look it up on the MFA's website. The details of hands, poses, and facial expressions in the painting are really well done, and a lot of fun to boot; this and other Dutch paintings helped me hone my illustrations for "A Christmas Carol."

The painting is intricate, skilled, but down-to-earth. Obviously a high-end work of art, it's nevertheless decidedly full of low-brow elements, from the egg shells casually tossed on the floor, to the jester in all his crassness, to the undoubtedly drunk carolers at the door in the background. Gotta love it.

My eBook is Published; Three Institutions; and two Thank-Yous

At long last, I've completed sixty illustrations for A Christmas Carol, and I've published them as an eBook.  Scrooge Studies: An Illustrated Exploration of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" is now available on Amazon.

I apologize that Scrooge Studies is not available in a print edition.  Also, due to this being an image-intensive eBook, it is not readable on some devices.

I would like to mention three institutions, with my thanks for their important work in preserving and presenting so many historical, technological, and cultural treasures: 

• The Henry Ford, Dearborn, Michigan, which houses the restored Fairbottom Bobs mine pump; 
• Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, which displays numerous examples of early nineteenth-century material culture and technology; 
• and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, whose extensive collections provided me with valuable material to sketch and study, to better refine my drawings.

I would like to thank the collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, who recently made a truly massive donation of Netherlandish art to the MFA.  Being able to make studies from some of these masterpieces really helped me enhance my drawings in a significant way.  Obviously I do not know the Otterloos personally, but they have my appreciation anyway.

I would also like to thank Stephen Jarvis, author of Death and Mr Pickwick, for the insights into Dickens and Robert Seymour that he presented in his book.  It is both an entertaining and informative novel, and any fan of Dickens should read it.  I had come across Seymour early on while working on Scrooge Studies, but Mr. Jarvis's novel really gave a very in-depth and personal view of Seymour that I wouldn't have been able to access otherwise.  

I won't be posting all sixty of the finished images on this blog.  But over the next few months, leading up to the Christmas Season, I will be posting many of my working drawings - the studies from which I built the final images in the book.  And of course I'll have to continue on to other projects, but from time to time I'll probably make additional new drawings for "A Christmas Carol."  Thank you for your interest, and stay tuned...