Dwelled long upon the Sparrowhawk feather of yesterday, which has a peculiar personal power for me – a special bond I once had with this bird. Spent some hours filming the feather this morning. Ruskin of course wrote a lot about feathers, and the fine falcon feather from his drawing is here at Brantwood in a display cabinet. I came across a wonderful chapter in The Laws of Fesole, which is a very fine example of his astonishing powers of observation, though here he does to the feather what he doesn’t like the botanist to do to flowers. It’s an aesthetic passage, but it’s almost scientific in the systematic way he breaks the structure of the feather down. I think feathers held an intellectual fascination for him, and a unique beauty, but did not connect to his personal mythology in the powerful way that flowers do. There’s a fine passage in which he compares and contrasts the structure of the leaf with that of the feather. And he was quite enthusiastic about the capacity of the feather to put its structure back in order when disturbed… “for truly it is woven thing, with a warp and woof, beautiful as Penelope’s and Arachne’s tapestry; but with this marvel beyond beauty in it, that it is a web which re-weaves itself when you tear it! Closes itself as perfectly as a sea-wave torn by the winds, being indeed nothing else than a wave of silken sea, which the winds trouble enough and fret along the edge of it, like a fretful Benacus at its shore, but which, tear it as they will, closes into its unruffled strength again in an instant.”
Alas, my poor honeysuckle grows more menacing every time I look at it. Studying it in all its profusion today in the Brantwood garden, I noticed another dark thing, beyond its serpent qualities, and that is that wherever it grows, it has an alarming quantity of deformed and misshapen leaves. This is much more pronounced in the honeysuckle than in other plants. And again I am reminded of a dreadful Ruskin passage, I cannot remember where it was, where he rails against ‘malignancy’ in leaf growth, and how it indicates a plant of a devilish order. So I collected and filmed the honeysuckle today, and loved it still. The serpent stem, twisting and writhing, gives birth to the beautiful balletic grace of the flower. But I need to think now of other plants, before I start dreaming of serpents.
Alex was away with his family most of the day and spent some time with his brother and their children. He was reminded of when Ruskin went to see his publisher, George Allen, in May 1885. They wanted Ruskin to see the books they had been preparing, but he didn’t want to do this – “he said he didn’t believe anybody really wanted to read all those books, he preferred us to go with him to the flowers and woods” said George Allen’s son, William.
We had a walk along the road toward Coniston this evening. In the dusky gloom of damp overhanging trees, two young badgers came out onto the road. Standing dead still, they paid no mind to us, shuffling along toward us, within a few feet, before disappearing into the undergrowth with a snort. A wonderful moment.
Feeling a need to see a good reproduction of Carpaccio’s St Ursula (above), and wondering where the copy that Ruskin made now resides. Six months spent copying someone else’s painting, when you are Ruskin, seems like a long time. We keep coming back to the significance the Dianthus and Vervain gained because Carpaccio put them in his picture, which we’ll seek tomorrow in the garden here. The garden, after several days here now, is only just starting to become familiar. We both feel as if we are only just beginning to understand what we are seeing here.
Alas, my poor honeysuckle grows more menacing every time I look at it. Studying it in all its profusion today in the Brantwood garden, I noticed another dark thing, beyond its serpent qualities, and that is that wherever it grows, it has an alarming quantity of deformed and misshapen leaves. This is much more pronounced in the honeysuckle than in other plants. And again I am reminded of a dreadful Ruskin passage, I cannot remember where it was, where he rails against ‘malignancy’ in leaf growth, and how it indicates a plant of a devilish order. So I collected and filmed the honeysuckle today, and loved it still. The serpent stem, twisting and writhing, gives birth to the beautiful balletic grace of the flower. But I need to think now of other plants, before I start dreaming of serpents.
Alex was away with his family most of the day and spent some time with his brother and their children. He was reminded of when Ruskin went to see his publisher, George Allen, in May 1885. They wanted Ruskin to see the books they had been preparing, but he didn’t want to do this – “he said he didn’t believe anybody really wanted to read all those books, he preferred us to go with him to the flowers and woods” said George Allen’s son, William.
We had a walk along the road toward Coniston this evening. In the dusky gloom of damp overhanging trees, two young badgers came out onto the road. Standing dead still, they paid no mind to us, shuffling along toward us, within a few feet, before disappearing into the undergrowth with a snort. A wonderful moment.
Feeling a need to see a good reproduction of Carpaccio’s St Ursula (above), and wondering where the copy that Ruskin made now resides. Six months spent copying someone else’s painting, when you are Ruskin, seems like a long time. We keep coming back to the significance the Dianthus and Vervain gained because Carpaccio put them in his picture, which we’ll seek tomorrow in the garden here. The garden, after several days here now, is only just starting to become familiar. We both feel as if we are only just beginning to understand what we are seeing here.
1 comment:
Well written and beautiful cyanotypes. I can see that you are having fun there and will need to return. Keep going.
Grazyna
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