Ruskin - Study of a Wild Rose (above)
Brantwood - Wild Rose (above)
Sally Beamish - 'Locked out'!We are very aware today that our time here is coming to and end (today is Wednesday and we leave on Friday) and this has a peculiar affect. In many ways, we’re very aware of only just having begun here. Every day, some aspect of Brantwood’s secret plant life comes into focus, grows and becomes meaningful. This leads us to enquire into Ruskin’s mythology about a particular plant, which is always an incredibly rewarding journey. But we have but two more days. Proserpina is unlocked to us, but that is all. To really enter into it, to go through it and back out into one’s own life, requires much more time. So pressure of time leads to an urge to get on with things, to get a lot of stuff done. This is always at the expense of truth, and we are consciously resisting it.
We have both been very aware of the Rose, of the Dog Rose in particular. Interestingly, Ruskin has little really to say about the Rose in writing – it is simply present, as a given form of complete perfection, everywhere within and beneath his writing. We have looked several times at his portrait of Rose La Touche, downstairs – it is quite unlike anything else Ruskin has drawn. It has this quality of whiteness, of fragility, ethereality and subtlety, or dare I say it, love of a higher order, coupled with a strange degree of uncertainty, which quite overwhelms me in its poignancy. She has flowers in her hair – wood sorrel leaves and its flower perhaps, or is it clover (being Irish)? And Dog Rose I am sure of. I wanted to capture this somehow, to respect it, in dealing with the Dog Rose. For any artist, this is a kind of terrifying responsibility. He did a most wonderful drawing of the Dog Rose too, in 1871, which is just like the portrait of Rose in so many ways (above). Ruskin chose this drawing as part of a display for the teaching collection at Oxford, “the choice almost certainly had a very private significance for Ruskin, for on the 26th May 1875, Rose La Touche dies after a long illness.” Says Robert Hewison. Ruskin describes the drawing (in colour, and one if his very best), thus: “A sketch made expressively for these schools to show the degree of attention with which rapid studies should be made for landscape foliage. It will be seen that the leaves are almost in every case laid first with a single wash of colour and never retouched more than once. It is impossible to get a true study of a complex branch of Rose unless done at this pace, for the buds always open or the leaves of the open flower drop in the course of an hour. Exertion of attention in doing this piece of work, as this is to me the hardest task of any in art-practice, and in this particular case the exhaustion brought on by doing this drawing before breakfast, I believe, was the beginning of my Matlock illness.”
Matlock is often cited as his first episode of madness. But I don’t believe in madness at all.
I approached the Dog Rose with apprehension, not just for the brevity of its life, but because in many ways the Rose is Proserpina, the true deity of the book, never directly addressed, but assumed. The book is devotional in tone, though this devotion is shrouded in some kind of spurious educational intent. She is his greatest life-love, but also, somehow, the highest of all flowers. A god-like plant – though nothing like the christian god – essentially fragile, kind, wild and unruly, yet so subtle and full of love. Searching first of all for a sprig of Dog Rose that would do, and would not be missed if cut - rejecting those few in the garden here (pitifully), I eventually found a very old plant growing by the wall, across the road, between the house and the meadow which leads to the water. A small sprig cut, just like the one he drew, which I took back to the studio and carefully filmed, against white, for its purity.
Now, this Dog Rose, it doesn’t last an hour, as Ruskin states, but less than half an hour, before it loses its subtle glory. How anyone ever managed to draw it when picked I do not know. This fragility is quite unique, shared perhaps only by the poppy. Fragility, subtlety and purity (of both colour and form) are the essence of this plant. Though it’s petals fall quickly, you will find they are perfectly heart shaped, like the violet’s leaf, but white and pink and translucent in gradations.
Further, today, I finally captured, in the studio, the tumbling fall of the Erba Della Madonna (Ivy leaved Toadflax), with much better result. I believe Rose loved Ruskin when she saw this plant. When she looked at it, she thought of how he loved it as it tumbled from the ruins of the Venice architecture he loved. But maybe, though it was fair, he did not love it quite as she supposed, but loved the Rose far more.
There are so many plants we cannot reach in the time we have – the Milkwort (Giulietta), Butterwort (Pinguicula), Self-Heal (Brunella), Red Rattle (Monacha), the Poppy (Papaver Rhoeus), Cyclamen (the plant, with it’s petals turned out, it’s associations with spirals, circularity and death, that precipitated his abandonment of Proserpina). Salvia Silvarum (what’s that?), Hawthorn blossom (ever now associated with the death-day of Rose La Touche). Then there are those in a Proserpina passage, where he imagines a walk with Proserpina to gather flowers at Brantwood – The Foxglove, the Eyebright, Common and Spiked Speedwell, a crimson Snapdragon, Figwort and Teucrium Scorodonia (what’s that too?). The Vervain and Dianthus, of St Ursula and Carpaccio – we haven’t worked yet with those even. And what about the Whortleberry, the Anagallis Tenella (Pimpernell), Contorta Purpurea, the Buttercup leaf, the Bramble, the Wood Sorrel, Saxifrage, Herb Bennet, Herb Robert, Bog Myrtle? Oh yes, and the marvellous Agrimony? Or Ivy? And Moss… the moss is beneath all, in almost everywhere we might look.
The Vervain here… it should be in a big clump, alone, in a way that we can see its similarity to the clump of Vervain in St Ursula’s window. It has a wonderful sculptural form. I know little about this plant, but have always been intrigued by it.
But together Alex and I filmed the Foxglove today, in the garden, blowing in clumps naturally in the breeze off the lake. It was a wonderfully sunny day, made all the better for the fact that my shoes finally actually fell apart, which necessitated a trip to Consiton to buy some new ones – and new shoes made me cheerful all day. We locked ourselves out too.. but we were rescued by the warm and wonderful Sally Beamish… it was she who is responsible for the note you see today above. By chance after our daily late afternoon coffee, we at last met Pamela – who informed us that Proserpina was in fact written for children. She runs guided tours here, and we hope to join her on one.
Reading also; the library here is an (almost) endless joy. And conversations about India and Ghandi and the idea of passive resistance and Ruskin’s influence on Gandhi. A bust of Gandhi sits on the shelves - sent here, it appears, by the High Commissioner of India, to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of Gandhi. We’ve also been especially drawn to the letters between Ruskin and Susie Beever (unusually for Ruskin, a woman14 years his senior), over the last two days. The letters reveal a quiet, loving tenderness – she lived just across the lake here, at the Thwaite. In an early one, Ruskin says gently “and above all, you’re to write me just what comes into your head”… Think about it – it’s an incredibly beautiful thing to say to anybody.
We have both been very aware of the Rose, of the Dog Rose in particular. Interestingly, Ruskin has little really to say about the Rose in writing – it is simply present, as a given form of complete perfection, everywhere within and beneath his writing. We have looked several times at his portrait of Rose La Touche, downstairs – it is quite unlike anything else Ruskin has drawn. It has this quality of whiteness, of fragility, ethereality and subtlety, or dare I say it, love of a higher order, coupled with a strange degree of uncertainty, which quite overwhelms me in its poignancy. She has flowers in her hair – wood sorrel leaves and its flower perhaps, or is it clover (being Irish)? And Dog Rose I am sure of. I wanted to capture this somehow, to respect it, in dealing with the Dog Rose. For any artist, this is a kind of terrifying responsibility. He did a most wonderful drawing of the Dog Rose too, in 1871, which is just like the portrait of Rose in so many ways (above). Ruskin chose this drawing as part of a display for the teaching collection at Oxford, “the choice almost certainly had a very private significance for Ruskin, for on the 26th May 1875, Rose La Touche dies after a long illness.” Says Robert Hewison. Ruskin describes the drawing (in colour, and one if his very best), thus: “A sketch made expressively for these schools to show the degree of attention with which rapid studies should be made for landscape foliage. It will be seen that the leaves are almost in every case laid first with a single wash of colour and never retouched more than once. It is impossible to get a true study of a complex branch of Rose unless done at this pace, for the buds always open or the leaves of the open flower drop in the course of an hour. Exertion of attention in doing this piece of work, as this is to me the hardest task of any in art-practice, and in this particular case the exhaustion brought on by doing this drawing before breakfast, I believe, was the beginning of my Matlock illness.”
Matlock is often cited as his first episode of madness. But I don’t believe in madness at all.
I approached the Dog Rose with apprehension, not just for the brevity of its life, but because in many ways the Rose is Proserpina, the true deity of the book, never directly addressed, but assumed. The book is devotional in tone, though this devotion is shrouded in some kind of spurious educational intent. She is his greatest life-love, but also, somehow, the highest of all flowers. A god-like plant – though nothing like the christian god – essentially fragile, kind, wild and unruly, yet so subtle and full of love. Searching first of all for a sprig of Dog Rose that would do, and would not be missed if cut - rejecting those few in the garden here (pitifully), I eventually found a very old plant growing by the wall, across the road, between the house and the meadow which leads to the water. A small sprig cut, just like the one he drew, which I took back to the studio and carefully filmed, against white, for its purity.
Now, this Dog Rose, it doesn’t last an hour, as Ruskin states, but less than half an hour, before it loses its subtle glory. How anyone ever managed to draw it when picked I do not know. This fragility is quite unique, shared perhaps only by the poppy. Fragility, subtlety and purity (of both colour and form) are the essence of this plant. Though it’s petals fall quickly, you will find they are perfectly heart shaped, like the violet’s leaf, but white and pink and translucent in gradations.
Further, today, I finally captured, in the studio, the tumbling fall of the Erba Della Madonna (Ivy leaved Toadflax), with much better result. I believe Rose loved Ruskin when she saw this plant. When she looked at it, she thought of how he loved it as it tumbled from the ruins of the Venice architecture he loved. But maybe, though it was fair, he did not love it quite as she supposed, but loved the Rose far more.
There are so many plants we cannot reach in the time we have – the Milkwort (Giulietta), Butterwort (Pinguicula), Self-Heal (Brunella), Red Rattle (Monacha), the Poppy (Papaver Rhoeus), Cyclamen (the plant, with it’s petals turned out, it’s associations with spirals, circularity and death, that precipitated his abandonment of Proserpina). Salvia Silvarum (what’s that?), Hawthorn blossom (ever now associated with the death-day of Rose La Touche). Then there are those in a Proserpina passage, where he imagines a walk with Proserpina to gather flowers at Brantwood – The Foxglove, the Eyebright, Common and Spiked Speedwell, a crimson Snapdragon, Figwort and Teucrium Scorodonia (what’s that too?). The Vervain and Dianthus, of St Ursula and Carpaccio – we haven’t worked yet with those even. And what about the Whortleberry, the Anagallis Tenella (Pimpernell), Contorta Purpurea, the Buttercup leaf, the Bramble, the Wood Sorrel, Saxifrage, Herb Bennet, Herb Robert, Bog Myrtle? Oh yes, and the marvellous Agrimony? Or Ivy? And Moss… the moss is beneath all, in almost everywhere we might look.
The Vervain here… it should be in a big clump, alone, in a way that we can see its similarity to the clump of Vervain in St Ursula’s window. It has a wonderful sculptural form. I know little about this plant, but have always been intrigued by it.
But together Alex and I filmed the Foxglove today, in the garden, blowing in clumps naturally in the breeze off the lake. It was a wonderfully sunny day, made all the better for the fact that my shoes finally actually fell apart, which necessitated a trip to Consiton to buy some new ones – and new shoes made me cheerful all day. We locked ourselves out too.. but we were rescued by the warm and wonderful Sally Beamish… it was she who is responsible for the note you see today above. By chance after our daily late afternoon coffee, we at last met Pamela – who informed us that Proserpina was in fact written for children. She runs guided tours here, and we hope to join her on one.
Reading also; the library here is an (almost) endless joy. And conversations about India and Ghandi and the idea of passive resistance and Ruskin’s influence on Gandhi. A bust of Gandhi sits on the shelves - sent here, it appears, by the High Commissioner of India, to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of Gandhi. We’ve also been especially drawn to the letters between Ruskin and Susie Beever (unusually for Ruskin, a woman14 years his senior), over the last two days. The letters reveal a quiet, loving tenderness – she lived just across the lake here, at the Thwaite. In an early one, Ruskin says gently “and above all, you’re to write me just what comes into your head”… Think about it – it’s an incredibly beautiful thing to say to anybody.
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