Two Other Projects, and the Rookery (Stave 4)

In late 2016, I started work on an overmantel painting.  This was a commission from some friends of mine.  I went into high gear on it in January 2017.  This is the completed painting, before installation.

It shows the marsh shoreline of Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, with some of the town's historic architecture at left, and the lighthouse at Barnstable Beach Point on the right.  There are two coastal fishing schooners under sail, and the five-masted cargo schooner Harwood Palmer at anchor in between them.  The ship on the left is after an 1864 photograph taken in Canada.  The ship on the right is after drawings by William Bradford and Albert van Beest.  

Harwood Palmer was run aground by her captain in January of 1905, during a winter storm.  She had first put in to Provincetown, but her anchor chains parted.  The captain knew that there were sand flats, but few rocks, off of Yarmouth Port, so he steered her there, to minimize damage to the hull.  He succeeded, but it took until May 1905 to get her free of the sand.  Here is a close-up of Harwood Palmer:

The buildings on the left are, from left to right (or east to west): the onion steeple dome of the former Congregational Church, since dismantled, at what is now the Yarmouth Port playground; the current Congregational Church, built in 1870; the cupola of the Colonial House Inn; the steeple of the Strawberry Hill Meeting House, a former church renovated with considerable love by the much-admired theatrical set designers Herbert Senn and Helen Pond; and the New Church, also know as the Swedenborgian Church.

It is NOT an accurate rendition of the town.  This was necessary to incorporate all of the desired buildings and ships.  Today, it would be difficult to sail ships of this size out of Bass Hole (which would be to the left side of the painting), because so much sand has filled into the channel there.  The coastline today is forested much as I've depicted it here, but in 1905 the area was mostly farmland.  The onion dome hasn't been there since sometime in the 1800s, and that church is entirely gone now.  Strawberry Hill is actually higher than the New Church, and of the four extant structures, only the Congregational Church is visible from the shore.  And Barnstable Beach Point Light would be at least 6 feet or so beyond the right-hand side of the image.

The painting is irregular, about six feet wide by approximately fifteen inches on the left side, and approximately seventeen inches high on the right side.  This is because of the dimensions of the existing space, over a fireplace in a historic sea captain's home.  This fireplace is in a part of the house dating to circa 1670, so there are few truly straight lines or right angles.  The painting is acrylic on masonite.

I must also extend my thanks to the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth, for collecting and archiving so much information that was necessary for my research, and to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which many years ago hosted an outstanding exhibition of the work of William Bradford.  Publications from these two institutions provided valuable research material and inspiration for this project.

This next piece is titled 潮州歌剧院之王 / The King of the Teochew Opera.  I lived in Thailand from 2010 to 2014, saw Chinese Opera there for the first time, and absolutely fell in love with it.  I couldn't understand the language, so I'm learning Chinese on my own now. It's slow going - there's just a lot of information to memorize for the writing system - but no matter.  All learning is worthwhile, no matter how long it takes.

And last, but not least, and back to A Christmas Carol, a scene from Stave 4, showing the three people who have pilfered Scrooge's deathbed belongings and are taking them into a London slum to sell them to a dealer in things unsavory.  I used conté crayon on a pencil underdrawing.  In order to get the detail on the figures, I made the image bigger than usual, 15" x 15" instead of 7.5" x 7.5".  The text doesn't mention stairs, but does mention arches.  I took the stairs-and-arches motif from da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi,turning the Three Wise Men into the pilferers, and the barn and manger into Old Joe's shop.

Stave 3 : Ignorance and Want

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him. 

I drew the children Ignorance and Want after an illustration of the effects of the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) in Ireland by the artist James Mahony.  The background is my own imagined London skyline, showing the General Post Office, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, after images by the artist Thomas Hosmer Shepherd.

A quote attributed to Sir Charles Trevelyan on Wikipedia regarding the Famine's role for Ireland : an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population."  See the article on Trevelyan.

The second image shows Scrooge and Christmas Present outside a workhouse.  I modeled Scrooge after a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci by Francesco Melzi, and Christmas Present after a number of period images of Robert Blum.  I adapted the workhouse façade from the design of a British workhouse by Sampson Kempthorne.  

All source images can be found at Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Overall, I have a really good life, and I'm thankful for it.  Not everyone has that kind of luck.  We have to remember to be decent to each other.

Stave 3 : The Norfolk Biffins

One of the things that makes A Christmas Carol so endearing is Dickens's detailed and often humorous descriptions of London life.  One brilliant example is when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a tour of the sights and smells of grocery shopping at Christmastime.  I made this post's image from the following line in the text, describing some baked apples for sale : "...there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner."  I hope I've done them justice.

Stave 3 : The Ghost of Christmas Present

In keeping with the historical referencing that I'm trying to do with these illustrations, I thought I should find a special person as a model for the Ghost of Christmas Present.  Robert Blum, one of the leaders of the Revolutions of 1848 in Germany and Austria, seemed to have both the right appearance and personality.  Here is my initial sketch, after a portrait by August Hunger (Hunger's painting was provided by Wikimedia Commons).

And this is my finished drawing of him as the Ghost, appearing in Scrooge's magically decorated room.

I don't actually consider myself to be a Christian, but I appreciate the holiday for its message of kindness to others.  There is always too much greed and nastiness in the world, so it is important to remind ourselves of the joy of being nice to each other.  So let me thank you for reading my blog, and please accept my warmest wishes to you, your families, and your friends for a happy and healthy 2016 holiday season.

Stave 3 : The Ship, with my Apologies

I must apologize to anyone who has checked in on this blog recently, because I've taken a (hopefully brief) hiatus from this illustration project.  I'm working on some paintings, including a commissioned piece, and I've also been doing some costume and backstage work at a local theater.  And there are only so many hours in the day.

This is from Stave 3.  After visiting the lighthouse, Christmas Present flies with Scrooge over the ocean, where they see a ship.  

I made my drawing after studying this Dutch drawing of a barque (my eternal thanks to Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and their contributors!) : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barkskibs_staende_rigning2.png

I am also indebted, once again, to Turner, Hokusai, and Hiroshige.  They aren't the only artists I look at, but they're pretty good.

Stave 3 : The Lighthouse

"The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped—whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
  Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself."

Maritime trade was, of course, critical for the development of modern Europe, and especially for the development of Great Britain.  Before the widespread introduction of railroads, sea routes provided the fastest means of transporting goods.  Coastlines, however, don't care one way or the other for the safety of human travel, and numerous coastal regions have lots of underwater hazards.

I modeled my lighthouse after J.M.W. Turner's watercolor painting of Bell Rock Lighthouse, off the east coast of Scotland.  Dickens doesn't give a specific location for the lighthouse, so my choice was influenced by Turner.  I like his blending of realism and abstraction, so I looked for an image by him of a lighthouse, preferably in a storm, and found it.  My version of Bell Rock Light is from the air, and I've tried to interpret the same wave action shown in Turner's sea-level view.  I made this image before I made the mining country image (see the previous post, Post 10, of this blog), and Hokusai and Hiroshige also influenced my image of Bell Rock Lighthouse.  My image above is gouache on watercolor paper.

Bell Rock and other lighthouses were relatively new things, despite the longstanding historical need.  Lighthouses had often been constructed as aids to navigation, and as warnings of subsurface hazards.  But it wasn't until the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the engineering difficulties of building long-term storm-proof structures on sites like Bell Rock began to be overcome.  Bell Rock was completed in 1810, and Turner painted his watercolor in 1819.  The costs were staggering - 42,000 pounds, according to Wikipedia.  Wikipedia in turn references Lynn F. Pearson's Lighthouses Volume 312 of Shire book (Osprey Publishing, 2003) for this number.  This was no small amount of money during the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.  Obviously, lighthouses of this type were high-priority national infrastructure investments.

The construction began only 35 years before A Christmas Carol.  I'm writing this in 2016 on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where we have a number of lighthouses, which are nothing new to us here and now.  But, I think, in 1843, a lighthouse like Bell Rock would have been a symbol to many people of the progress that could come from industrial technology and human willpower overcoming the forces of nature.

The Wikipedia article on Bell Rock Lighthouse can be found here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Rock_Lighthouse.  It has links to Wikimedia Commons for both Turner's watercolor, and an 1824 technical illustration showing the construction as of 1809, drawn by Bell Rock's designer, Robert Stevenson.  It also has an additional link to a Wikipedia article on the earlier Eddystone Lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall.

Turner's watercolor is located in the National Gallery of Scotland.

Following is my preparatory sketch.

Stave 3 : "A Place Where Miners Live"

In Stave 3, the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a tour of Christmas, as it can be experienced in all manner of situations.  He doesn't shy away from showing Britain's industrial poverty to Scrooge - shy is the last word one could use to describe Christmas Present - so that Scrooge can see that everyone deserves Christmas cheer whether rich or poor.  After a tour of London, including a stop to bless the home and family of Bob Cratchit in Camden Town, Christmas Present and Scrooge fly over Britain and then out to sea.  

Industrial Britain was powered by coal.  Coal mostly comes from underground.  Somebody has to dig it out, if it's to be used.  So, after seeing so much Christmas cheer in The City : 

"...without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.
'What place is this?' asked Scrooge.
'A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,' returned the Spirit. 'But they know me. See!'
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song—it had been a very old song when he was a boy—and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again."

Here is my image of the mining country :

It's a composite image.  The background is gouache over pencil.  The mining pump at the left is an overlaid addition, drawn after an actual British mine pump called Fairbottom Bobs, which I had the opportunity to see in person.  It is on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan.  Fairbottom Bobs was no longer in operation by the time of "A Christmas Carol", but it was still on site.  In fact, it was not taken down until it was shipped to Michigan, a gift from Lord Stamford (who owned it) to Henry Ford.  This information is from Wikipedia, and the full article, with a late nineteenth-century photograph, is here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbottom_Bobs.

Other influences on this image are the inestimable J.M.W. Turner, the Japanese printmakers Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the Massachusetts painter William Bradford (for some of his arctic scenes; do check out his work at http://www.william-bradford-gallery.org).