The Kindness of Strangers

'Catching Butterflies' by Colleen Parker
HERE:

I don't publish blog posts as often as I mean to. I have a folder full of subjects and images which whisper to me, spinning their stories like dream catchers. I continue to be delighted at the kindness of strangers (and friends) who read my little pieces and who take the time to comment, and in many cases to share information with me which had thus far eluded me.

The Dyng Year, Albert Klingner

We are well into the New Year, and although I do not like to commit to resolutions I think it is not a bad thing to just try harder to finish those things which mean something to us and enhance our lives, and possibly the life of someone else too.

People often ask me why that I write. I think most people who do so would agree with me that it fills some need. I simply must.

HERE:

Butterfly gloves by Tiny Owl Knits
HERE:

I almost always have thoughts floating round my head and must capture them and put them to paper or page before they fly away. I dislike things being forgotten whether that be people, places or words and images.

The past is full of wisdom and the older that we get we become full too. Where does it all go when we die? It is the ordinary folk who are often forgotten, and with them volumes of stories. So I think I write to share those stories.

from the things we say

The Storyteller, Albert Anker (1850-1899)

When I was little I was often sat enthralled by the old storytellers in my family, little did I think that one day it would fall to me to tell their tale along with those of many others, and my own.

I usually begin each new year looking backwards at the old one. Just briefly. I am not very good at goodbyes and I like to linger for a little while before moving on.

Joan Crawford in an art deco revolving door

The past to me is not a door which you shut firmly behind you. For me it is a revolving door which goes both ways. Always.

Like most of you, last year I said farewell to many familiar people and places. My world is less certain without the guideposts they provided and it will take more time for me to find my balance again. Over the next few weeks I want to try, very hard, to do them justice in putting a little of their stories to the page and sharing this with you so that hopefully, somewhere, sometime, someone will find them again.

Of course this year began with the death of two best beloved storytellers, David Bowie, and Alan Rickman. The loss is felt greatly by many, myself included, but then there are all of the little people who told stories quietly in smaller worlds and yet released them just as well.

Lost things often do become found and in so doing they are new again. If things such as us are remembered I believe we never completely die. Only a part of us does.

Lizzie Riches
more HERE:

I posted last Spring about paper mache eggs and boxes (which I collect) and ended the post with a lovey painting that has haunted me for sometime. I asked readers to leave me a comment should anyone know whose artistic hand had created this piece. The original post is HERE:

Woman by the fire
Lionel Percy Smythe

And, someone did. Thank you very much to Paresh Dholakia! It was especially interesting for me to have the name of this artist, Lionel Percy Smythe, because this time last year his work touched me quite deeply when I accidently came across it on a gallery catalogue. I posted a bit about him, and the story of the painting in the catalogue, 
HERE:

I had not guessed at all that this too was by his hand and without the kindness of strangers I may have never known.



I have always depended on the kindness of strangers, is a line from Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

BLACKTHORN AT BELTAINE

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun
Than Oak and Ash and Thorn.
(Puck of Pook’s Hill, by Rudyard Kipling, 1906)



Munchkin our Main Coon avoiding getting the snow in his furry paws

Trees in the wood just beginning to have leaf

Trees are late to come to bud and some parts of England remain snow dusted. It has been a hard fight here to shake off the icy arms of Winter from round the neck of Spring. Cold winds pull us back into our woollens. The bramble and the thorn have thrived while we all slept. 

 

 

 

Arthur Rackham

I really adore the work of Lionel Percy Smythe. His gentle use of colour and light is exquisite. Here  'Spring' is cloaked in pale clothes with her green mantle lined in violet. The Blackbird held close. They are one of the first to nest, as early as January.



Caught in the arms of icy Spring
Lionel Percy Smythe, 1918

The woods are silent but for a few bird songs, but the hedges are strewn with Blackthorn blossom, those tiny flowers dropped during Faerie revelries. 

People are sometimes confused or even frightened by the idea of Beltaine. You may worry that it goes against the church, or that it is a witches celebration. But neither is true. These seasonal celebrations are very old stretching back to the beginnings of man, but they are not un-Christian at all they just existed before Christianity, and carried on well after. I like to keep things simple. For me Beltaine is just literally the celebration and acknowledgement that Spring is here. I am grateful for the changing seasons, the new life after winter. Even as the old season dies the new one brings us Hope. I often think that eternal life must be like Spring.

Blackthorn is one of my favourite harbingers of Spring. The thorn, with it's black stems,  is associated with darker nature, being the branch which made the crown of thorns for Christ. Yet it also reminds us that after darkness comes the light. I love the William Morris fabric with the thorn blossoms bright against the dark green background, the sweet violets and the fritillaries, and the thorns long and sharp, clearly visible. When we bought our cottage a small built in wardrobe was completely papered in this wallpaper. It is beautiful dense paper with a raised design. I found curtains in the same fabric at a flea market. I enjoy having a seasonal home. We call this small bedroom 'The Winter Room', decorated in dark and icy blues, smokey green, grey and silver with a nod to Narnia. The  Blackthorn reminds us that the White Witch will be gone soon.  

 

I have long been obsessed with tangled woods, briar roses and the thorn. But even I grow weary of Winter after awhile. I feel like a long sleep is passing, the Prince has come with May.

Thorn Rose, 1975 by Errol Le Cain

There is a feeling of magic in the air as Nature comes to life again and the flora and fauna which slept or hid through Winter come out into our view. It is not the full blown heady feeling of Midsummer, which is dreamy and sleepy - this is a joyous awakening and a celebration of life following another Winter.

The perfect May Queen
Rapturously beautiful Evelyn Nesbit
Age 16, by Gertrude Käsebier

It is easy to understand why it was that our ancestors danced and crowned a May Queen. As the Blackthorn blossom begins to fade the Haythorn leaves open and the blooms, sweetly scented, follow. It was thought bad luck to bring May Blossom into the house before May. And in truth you rarely see it before mid May anyway. Do you know the difference? Blackthorn blooms before it's leaves, hence the startling beauty of the white delicate blossoms against the dark stem and thorns - whilst Hawthorn has leaves before it blooms.

 

Queen Guinevere's Maying by John Collier

The chill remains upon us but sun shines brightly, and birds are nesting. House Martins have returned to tend their little homes on our cottage, always a welcome sight each year. The Snow Drops and Daffodils are now faded and the Bluebells are just coming into blossom with our Apple Trees, soon the Blackthorn flowers will turn to Berry.

Blackthorn Sloes

A lovely vintage Blackberry brooch by Exquisite

There is definitely a bustle in the hedgerow, as Robert Plant once sang. Things are afoot all over the place.  Hopefully if the predicted cold spell does not materialise this weekend we will celebrate May Day with a bluebell walk. We should acknowledge the turning of the seasons, as our ancestors did. But if you stray into the woods remember the Rules of Faerie, do not stray from the path and do not eat or drink anything!

Some of my favourite images of this time of year.

By Arthur Rackham, from
Hans Christian Anderson's The Elf Mound



Marc Bolan of T Rex
Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltaine .....

The remarkable looking Palmate Newt larvae, from
the magical Heligan Gardens.
Here:

 

Abigail Edwards The Bramblewood plate
Here:

Read more about Beltaine and Spring Here:





THE FIRST BUDS OF SPRING



The First Buds of Spring
watercolour, 25 x 16 inches, signed and dated 1885
Lionel Percy Smythe 

It is still very cold here but the first buds of Spring are opening bringing us hope that soon winter really will pass. It has been a mild Winter overall, with snow only coming in small amounts in January and February.

Countryside Info website

 

I've been in the Cotswolds for a week with friends. Driving through the villages and up Cleeve Hill the hedgerows were dotted underneath with the pale creamy blooms of wild primroses. I love seeing this wild flower and much prefer them to the more vibrantly coloured hybrids which people put in baskets. According to the excellent website, 'Countryside Info', "The Primrose (Primula vulgaris) is native to Britain and Europe. It  is a small plant, typically no more than 10 cm (4") high. It produces flowers which generally vary in colour from pale cream to deep yellow." There is also a pale pink variation which is rarer than the yellow. 

Blackbirds are everywhere gathering food for their young, when we drove at dusk we slowed right down for them because they fly very low from hedge to hedge across the road.

Before our holiday I visited one of my favourite art galleries and came across a catalogue from 2000 which caught my eye. The cover had the most exquisite watercolour on it, of a young girl in a wood with a blackbird in the bush beside her. The composition is soft and luminous and somehow conveys an air of melancholy. I found it quite poignant, the young girl perched on the brink of womanhood, and the Spring, both poised to bloom.

I'd been shopping all day and my bags and baskets were full but I had to have this. It was only a few pounds. I set off weighted down with my captures of the day towards the car.

Royal Albert Primrose Hill teacup

Once home and fortified by a cup of tea in a pretty cup I looked more closely at the catalogue and read the entry about this watercolour. The painting is called, 'The First Buds of Spring' and is by Lionel Percy Smythe (1839-1918). Lionel was the son of the 6th Viscount Stratford. He spent his early years in France before his family returned to settle in London in 1843. He trained in London and some of his paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863. Smythe and his wife made their home in Normandy, first at Wimereux (where the artist had spent his summer holidays as a child) and, from 1882 onwards, at the Château d’Honvault, between Wimereux and Boulogne. 

 

Lionel was a student of nature and he often portrayed the woods and fields of the countryside where he lived. His work was popular with a small following of collectors in England and became associated with 'The Idyllists',  a group of Victorian artists and illustrators which included Frederick Walker and John William North.  His work is represented in the collections of the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

 

This piece is one of a series which Smythe painted using the woodlands around his home as a backdrop to a young girl pushing through a thicket in Spring time. The model was his daughter Norah, known as Noe. One of the compositions, 'A Wood Nymph' was exhibited in 1884. I have been unable to find an image of that painting, with that name, but the catalogues states that it is, 'surely close in composition to the present picture with its 'silver velvety bud of the willow palm' and 'a blackbird preening itself'. I wondered if this could have also been named 'Springtime', as this painting is so similar to the description and Noe is also the model here.

 

Lionel Percy Smythe
 'Springtime',
possibly also known as 'A Wood Nymph'

And there is one other painting which I located, entitled 'Bramble' which has the same composition but the girl is dark haired.

Lionel Percy Smyth
Bramble

His paintings of farm and seashore workers and children picking flowers and playing have magic about them although they often portray quite common circumstance. Stephen Ogden Fine Art sums this up in their bio entry of the artist when they say that, writing in 1910, one scholar noted of the artist that ‘Mr. Smythe proves plainly that a man may be as realist and still retain his poetic sense; that he may record the life about him faithfully and convincingly and yet miss none of its poetry, none of its imaginative suggestion, and none, certainly, of the beauty it may happen to possess.’

 

The Chris Beetles catalogue entry ends thus, "Its suggestion of melancholy is given poignant emphasis by the knowledge that Noe developed pleurisy in 1897, and died of tuberculosis a year later, before her 13th birthday'.

I have fallen in love with his work, and with this beautiful girl who lit up his paintings.  I hope to see some of his pieces in galleries when I am feeling better and can travel again.

Lionel Percy Smythe
Playmates
(love the flower collar on the dog)

Credits :

Stephen Ongpin Fine Art HERE:

Chris Beetles Art Gallery

Royal Albert China