Hommage to Robert Henri

Oil on Canvas Board 18 x 24cm (7 x 9 1/2in)

This is a variant of a Paris street scene by Robert Henri. I find it more difficult copying an impressionist work than a realist one. An obviously rapid brush stroke in the original can be executed with equal rapidity – but not necessarily with anything like such a fortuitous result!  I like adding figures, preferably women, frequently with their backs turned. (The viewer is to run ahead in imagination, to see if they are really beautiful.)
This was my submission for the month of February for Following the Masters of Michelle Burnett..
From the first letter in Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit I am reminded that: 1) you start with something you want to say about the subject, having defined for yourself what attracted you; 2) you retain this -- ‘preserve the moment of revelation’ -- working as much as possible from the memory of it; 3) you block in the larger masses first, and their relationship; 4) you fully comprehend the character of a feature before setting brush to canvas; 5) you work as quickly as possible, ‘there is no virtue in delay.’ Pondering these suggestions I find the idea of working from memory the most daunting.

THE HEALER

My GP's pills having done me no good, and the common wisdom gleaned by my wife from local women pointing to the absolute necessity of seeking a 'healer,' I took my shingle-stricken self off to Mme M, who received me in a cabin at the bottom of her garden; a cabin windowless, containing wicker chairs, a carpet-covered plank bed, a desk supporting a lighted candle and an appointment book, and a stool on which I sat for half an hour or so while the lady gently stroked my painful right side -- face, neck, shoulder, arm -- descending to end at the wrist with a wringing of her hands, as though she were committing some substance to the earth.


I ought not to have let three weeks slip by before coming to her, she said; as the virus was now well established, more than one session with her would be needed, but she would certainly make me better. She does not charge; patients pay what they wish, or do not. She is not in it for the money, but is a sincere and dedicated worker. She is no quack, of that I'm convinced. If what she does is ineffectual she remains unaware of it. She exudes confidence; she believes unswervingly in her ability and in her mission of relieving pain. She boasts a loyal following in the region. Beginning by treating a nephew's third-degree burns, all traces of which vanished in two weeks, she claims, she has dealt with cases of shingles, burns, nervous ailments, over the last twenty years.

When she explained that her ability to heal had been passed on to her by her grandmother on her death bed, it flashed on me that she was a direct descendant of grandmothers and grand daughters, custodians of plant remedies and spells, passers on of secret knowledge, stretching back to the era of the witch mania; when many a harmless old woman was deemed to have entered into a pact with the devil and killed her neighbour's livestock or caused an outbreak of the King's Evil. Somehow, Mme M's progenitors had escaped; though many thousands of these poor 'sorcerers' were burned alive in towns and villages across Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

But I soon realized that this fanciful genealogy left something to be desired. When Mme M pressed and caressed a paper towel, then folded it and slipped it in an envelope which I was to put under my pillow for the night, I remembered Mesmer and the Magnetisers.

Born in 1734 in Swabia, FRANZ MESMER studied medecin in Vienna, before finding that he could cure merely by passing his hands downwards towards the feet of his patients. He formed the idea that a magnetic fluid pervaded the universe and could be used, charged by the will, as a cure-all. The laying on of hands was important; but objects -- paper, wood, glass -- could be rendered magnetic for his purpose. He set up shop in Paris and caused a furor. A royal commission of the Faculty of Medicin apppointed in 1784 and seconded  by another commission of the Académie des Sciences to investigate his claims concluded that imagination accounted for any and all favourable results. It was a singular case of mind over matter; and of how 'we are fearfully and wonderfully made.'

Lack of official approval did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of Mesmer (or reduce his by then enormous income), however; his fame spread thoughout nineteenth century France, his pupils and imitators established 'Societies of Hamony' for curing diseases by means of magnetism.

It is from Mesmer that Mme M may trace her more direct descent, I suppose. Along with half a dozen other 'healers,' their cabins dotted among the charmed vineyards of South West France.

'The wonderful influence of imagination in the cure of diseases is well known,' Charles Mackay drily remarks in beginning his essay, 'The Magnetisers', in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.



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PHOTO OP, LAKE ONTARIO

Oil on canvas. 40 x 30cm (15 1/2 x 11 3/4in)

A sunny morning in parkland, Niagara-on-the-Lake, where we spent a couple of happy days this summer. The town is a gem, architecturally homogeneous -- having been rebuilt at once following destruction in the War of 1812-15. The tranquil setting, between vineyards and the blue lake is to be savoured.

Pages from an Unpublished Novel

Outskirts of a village, South-West France.
Oil on board 18 x 13cm (7 x 5in)

Title:  OF EVIL GRAIN
’Of evil grain can come no good seed.’ – Proverb

   Commentary:  In falling in love with an attractive Parisian divorcée only weeks after his wife’s tragic death from cancer, is the irreligious ex-scientist, Dale Ingram, guilty of a monstrous afront to decency and decorum; or are certain members of the small ex-pat community in his region of south-west France the more to be blamed for motives far from pure in mounting a campaign of rumour and invective against him? The religious fanatic, April Hayter, in particular, has a very personal reason for seeking Ingram’s downfall. It is she who unwittingly recruits a would-be murderess to punish him.

Chapter 1

   Reggie Hayter had lowered the window of his Xsara enough for Mme Montegut to think he could hear above the car radio everything she was telling him about the phlébite in her legs when something caused him to abandon all pretence of commiseration and stare over the stray wisps of her white hair at something in the the distance.
   Monsieur?
   ‘C’est bien drôle,’ he said in his grammatically respectable but unrepentently English-public-school-accented French.
   ‘Drôle, Monsieur ‘Ayter?’
   ‘A woman,’ he said. ‘There’s a woman –‘
   “A woman?’
   ‘Yes. There’s a woman.  At Monsieur Ingram’s.’
   ‘Ah, une femme de ménage.’
   Reggie Hayter changed the station to hear the météo, then waggled the gear lever to show her he meant to go.
    ‘Or someone for the jardinage, now the poor man has no help.’
    ‘Not that sort of woman.’  He shot the old paysanne a look that added something to the assertion, then added jocularly, ‘Of course, she could be a relative. – Bonne journée, Madame.’
   As a friend once remarked, Reggie Hayter had a one-track mind running mostly below his navel. Relative, my foot, he said to himself when he had cleared the village.  Ingram had had his arm around the woman.  The two of them were probably at it this minute, frotting, making the beast with two backs. Ingram could screw as he liked now, lucky bugger. Reggie felt a mixture of envy and contempt; then, glancing up the now empty road leading to Ingram's property as he passed it, he became aware of a peculiar satisfaction in his discovery of the woman, and he began with a kind of smouldering excitement to turn over in his mind a singular possibility arising from it.
     (To be continued)

‘Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance . . . ’

        Oil on canvas, 41 X 33cm (16X13in)

   Should a painting speak for itself? -- This title, from the sonnet by Keats beginning 'When I have fears that I may cease to be,' came to mind, I suppose, because of the clouds, and also the reverie the damsel appears to be in.  She loiters, unaware of the world outside herself, unwilling or unable to appreciate the sea and clouds, feel the grains of sand between her toes, hear the lapping waves.
   A title affects the way we view a painting.  Walter Sickert was known to alter the title of a work from one exhibition to another.  A nude woman lies on a bed -- asleep or dead?  On the bed's edge sits a shirt-sleeved man with his head in his hands.  And the title? -- No, titles:  first 'How do we pay the rent?' and then 'The Campden Town Murder.'

FRANCE'S LETHAL LEFTOVERS - Concluded from 23 November:

   Not surprisingly, mines were foremost on the agenda of those who first took on the daunting task of cleaning up. Following the Normandy landings, the advancing Allies cleared the first mines; then, in August 1944, a company of young volunteers was formed to fight the faceless enemy. Trained and equipped by the British, and operating until demobilised in May, 1945, these were the first French démineurs, or mine disposal personnel. Earlier that same year the Direction du Déminage took charge of the raising and destruction of mines in and around Paris. With the major minefields deemed under control two years later the destruction of other munitions became practicable, many dating from the First World War and some even from the War of 1870-71.

Between 1945 and 1985 the démineurs neutralised 650,000 aircraft bombs, and 13.3 million mines, and 23 million shells or other explosives.

The cost in lives lost in the line of duty was high. Of the 3,200 French démineurs operational between 1945-47, 592 died and 800 were gravely wounded. In addition, at least 2,500 German prisoners of war pressed into the same service were killed. To date, more than 630 French démineurs have been killed.

For years these men have hauled away munitions by night, on roads as out of the way as possible, without causing any civilian casualties The munitions are stockpiled in guarded and cordoned off areas. Up until 1994, when the criticism of ecologists stopped the practice, some were disposed of by exploding them under water in the Somme. In 1996 the government decided to build a special plant to deal with munitions both conventional and chemical at Mailly-le-Camp, near Troyes. Three different methods were proposed: crushing, burning or dissolving in nitric acid -- all to be carried out by machinery. The plant is now ready and will by operational for at least thirty years.

The démineurs, heros of 'l'après-guerre,' have tended to be 'les oubliés,' the forgotten. In the interest of public confidence they have always gone about their work unobtrusively, worn no distinguishing uniform, and drawn scant attention from the public and media. It is remarked by one of their number, Thiérry Vareilles, author of Encyclopédie du Terrorisme International, that there exists for these men a strange fascination for each of the munitions with which they must deal. Their foe, a diabolical device, the product of ingenuity and deadly purpose, is to be conquered by knowledge, intelligence, total self-control. To triumph over a mine or shell is above all to triumph over oneself, to tame one's inborn fear. Their messages to one another tend to be signed with the motto 'Corpos Sui' -- master of oneself -- followed by their personal number. Today the several hundred démineurs in France are a closely knit band, a dedicated family. When one of them is killed the death is felt by all.

In the lurid light of past and recent history it comes as a cheering surprise to discover that of the tens of thousands of unsuspecting tourists from around the world who have chosen France for their holidays every year not one has suffered the fate shared by some of these démoneurs with certain unfortunate farmers and the eleven-year old boy from Dunkerque.
 
[Refs.: Voldman, Danièle: Le Déminage de la France Après 1945; Reig, Jean: Les Oubliés, Paris, n.d.]

HOMMAGE A INGRES

Hommage à Ingres © 2009 Alan Osler

Oil on canvas 46cm x 36cm (18in x 15in)

Ingres held that drawing was the basis of painting, yet he 'drew' bodies that aren't anatomically accurate.  Take his three-quarter length portrait of the Countess of Haussonville (whose head I've attempted here): the right arm is an impossible length.  Another arm, again a right one, that of his 'Odalisque,' appears too long, and rather sausage-like -- as though his interest lay elsewhere and he decided to leave this to an apprentice. Or is there some other explanation?
Try this link to Following the masters, to see more works.