Author: penwithlit

Here’s the view from Handyside Garden, which is just north of the canal, part of the new Kings Cross development, Coal Drops Yard.

People rested on the grass eating takeaway food from containers. Children toddled under supervision. I painted.

On the roof of the barge “Word on the Water”, Hidè Takemoto played detailed guitar tunes. I recognised “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” by Tarrega, which I hadn’t heard for years. Each thread of the tune was insistent: the low climbing bass, the vibrating tremolo and the soaring high points, speaking clearly. It was perfect on that warm evening. He went on to play tunes I did not recognise: navigating his way through rhythms and moods. He gave us controlled and technical melodies and then, suddenly, wild abstract rock. A really talented musician.

This weekend, come over to our house on the Isle of Wight. It’s usually lovely at this time of year, before the season’s rush of tourists. To save you the high cost of the ferry crossing, claimed by many to be the most expensive stretch of water in the world, and sleeping on our floor, your visit comes courtesy of a succession of artists, from intrepid Danish explorers to Berthe Morisot, the French Impressionist.

The south coast of England is known for its white cliffs, which become steadily more spectacular as the coast reaches the Isle of Wight. The most famous landmark here is the Needles, chalk sea stacks that have been both a welcome and a hazard to mariners over the centuries.

Philipp Georg Friedrich von Reck (1710-1798), untitled sketchbook page (c 1736), media not known, 36.5 x 28.8 cm, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, Denmark. Courtesy of Det Kongelige…

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Maria Sybilla Merian at wikiwand

The Maria Sibylla Merian Society

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Maria Sybilla Merian At Sunnyside

Thanks for Visiting🙂

~Sunnyside

Eugène Delacroix started painting at a challenging time. Apart from the dramatic political changes that brought first the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon as Emperor in 1804, his abdication and exile a decade later, then the Bourbon Restoration, painting was on the change as well.

Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799), oil on canvas, 385 x 522 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

The dominant Neoclassical style of Jacques-Louis David was on the wane. With the end of Napoleon’s empire, David had been put on the list of proscribed individuals, and had gone into self-exile in Brussels. Following his death at the end of 1825, only his heart was allowed to return to France for burial. Delacroix described David’s The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799) as “earthy, bleak and lifeless”.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833), Phaedra and Hippolytus (1815), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Musée des Beaux-Arts…

In a previous poem (Anno Dylani 1969), I alluded to how Dylan Thomas made me want to write. When Wendy and I flew to New York to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary, I wanted to walk in the footsteps of my hero. In 1953, on his fourth tour of the United States in less than three years, Dylan Thomas was not a well man. The people who were supposed to be taking care of him…tour manager…lover and doctor all failed him spectacularly and Dylan died of oedema, fatty liver and bronchopneumonia in a New York hospital.

We visited The Chelsea Hotel, a haunt of the great and good in the New York artworld and Dylan’s home at the time of his death and a visit to The White Horse Tavern, arguably Dylan’s favourite haunt in Greenwich Village. Once there we had a drink in Dylan’s honour.

A DRINK WITH DYLAN…

Transated by Lytton Smith

This newly re-published book (February 2023) was sent to me for review by the people at Peirene. I’ve long admired the USP of Peirene, a small publisher of contemporary, high-quality European novellas in translation. Unfortunately, our house is being renovated at great length, and I lost the book in the boxes and rubble for a while, but it eventually resurfaced for a photo.

First published in Icelandic in 2016 (and in an English translation elsewhere in 2019), the story revolves around a PhD candidate researching the life and work of an obscure artist, who believes she has stumbled upon a mind-blowing revelation in the course of her historical research.

When it dawns on her, however, that in her haste to draw professionally-useful conclusions she has made a fatal error, her working premise implodes. She enters an all-consuming spiral of denial, shame and paranoia.

The book’s style…