Old railway viaduct at Beck Foot
One of my favourite train journeys, and today is a perfect day for it: sunshine and frost. The old viaduct was upon me before I realised it, but I was ready for the Lune by Tebay.
Lune Valley south of Tebay
Kendal castle
I went to the Abbot Hall art gallery today to visit the exhibition of Scottish Colourists (and others) from the Fleming Collection. There were at least two paintings I would happily have stolen:
(Apparently Peploe primed his canvasses with an absorbent gesso ground, which prevented re-working – so he had to paint fast.)
Kirkcudbright, S J Peploe, c. 1919, oil on canvas
Influences on the Colourists – Peploe, Cadell, Fergusson and Turner – included Manet, Monet, Matisse, Whistler, Cézanne and John Singer Sergent. Sometimes it was very clear whose style was dominant in a particular painting – like Cézanne in Kirkudbright. It was also interesting to note the differences in the ways that two artists painted the same subject, like a still life with flowers. I enjoyed the variations in the way the paint was handled – whether quick, small brushstrokes or larger blocks of colour. The painting of Iona (above) was flanked by another landscape of Peploe’s, where the brushstrokes suggested constant movement rather than stillness. And the variety of lines: whether angular and blockish, or flowing and discrete.
To complement the Colourists, there was a room of later painters who were influenced by their work, such as Anne Redpath and William Crozier.
In another room were some fascinating watercolours of Antarctica by Edward Wilson. He survived Scott’s Discovery expedition but perished on the later one. His paintings were detailed and informative . . . and very beautiful in an awe-inspiring way. I must find out more.
I also looked at the Portrait of Lady Scott by Lucian Freud. I don’t know how she felt about the portrait (masterful, of course), but I imagine that just a little bit of her must have wished she could have been painted by Joshua Reynolds with a dab of white in her eyes and on her lips like Mrs Luther!
West window in Lanercost Priory Church, designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris & Co
Lanercost Priory was Augustinian, founded in 1169, and dissolved in 1538. Very Early English again – all lancet windows and no tracery. Much of it fell into ruin, but the nave and north aisle were re-roofed to become the parish church. Like St Martin’s in Brampton, its interior is asymmetrical – but here not designedly so. Anthony Salvin (see Naworth – I do enjoy seeing these connections) worked on it in the 1840s and Charles Ferguson (Tullie House) in the 1870s.
George Howard (again!) commissioned Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris to work on the interior, so there are 3 stained glass windows and the dossal (woollen embroidery) on the east wall. It was interesting to note that Burne-Jones had moved away from the panel-style decoration of St Martin’s; instead he presented the angel appearing to the shepherds as a complete image. Also interesting was that Morris modified and re-used Burne-Jones’s image of St Luke from St Martin’s for Lanercost.
The rest of the priory is in ruins; I loved the shapes of the two-aisled cellarium.
St Martin’s Church by Philip Webb, 1878, with east window designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris & Co
St Martin’s Church, Brampton (tower added 1906)
It seems that George Howard (him again) decided that Brampton needed a new parish church, so he arranged for (and funded much of) one to be built. He got Philip Webb to design it and Burne-Jones and Morris to provide the windows. From the outside, the church is not a standard Victorian Gothic building: it’s asymmetrical, and the little crenellations echo the prevailing defensive architecture of the Border region. (It’s also very pink: I had forgotten about the ubiquitous red sandstone in this part of Cumbria. Northumberland was very grey in contrast.)
The windows are utterly glorious. There are no crucifixions (the window of Christ carrying the cross is later); the focus is on biblical characters and charity (it is St Martin’s, after all, and the pelican is in the centre of the east window). We had seen the cartoon of St George (in the east window) at Tullie House, and here he was in his pink glory. (He looks slightly feline thanks to the whiskery beard and the pointed “ears”.) The design was Burne-Jones’s; the choice of colour and all other matters Morris’s. Burne-Jones had visited Rome and seen the Sistine Chapel, and his St Luke is more Michelangelo than feline.
The rest of the windows are equally wonderful. The pelican, the Good Shepherd . . . and technically so accomplished so that the coloured glass is still brilliant.
Otherwise, the interior of the church is quite plain: open and spacious.
Naworth Castle, 14th century but rebuilt by Anthony Salvin after a fire in 1844
Naworth Castle was the home of George Howard, the ninth Earl of Carlisle. (He also had Castle Howard in Yorkshire.) Some of his watercolours are still hanging on one of the staircases, and above the fireplace in the library is the bronze relief of Flodden Field.
It’s interesting to see an historic house which combines generations of stuff (furniture, books, ancestral portraits, art – there was a delicate little Holbein sketch in one room) with everyday living. The great hall was absolutely enormous: Salvin kept the antiquarian aspect, but gave it straight lines.
Pensive Head, Percy Wyndham Lewis, 1937, oil on canvas
This was a trip to Tillie House Museum to prime us for the following day’s visit to Naworth Castle and St Martin’s, Brampton, for the museum contains Burne-Jones’s cartoons for the church windows and a version of the Battle of Flodden Field bas-relief that hangs in the castle library.
Naturally, other pleasures are available, including two Stanley Spencers, a Wyndham Lewis and a drawer of William Morris fabrics. Morris, because George Howard, ninth Earl of Carlisle (1843-1911), was an artist and a patron of the arts, particularly the later pre-Raphaelites. Morris, Burne-Jones, Rossetti and others all stayed with him, and his art collection was extensive. (It was sold in the early 20th century. I ended up hearing more about the Howards than I really cared to. It’s fascinating to think of the wide-ranging and sometimes arbitrary power* that individuals had/have and the way that particular families keep cropping up in schoolbook history. Admittedly, the more eccentric relatives are always good value, but I quickly turn Bolshevik when faced with a whole lineage of them.)
The Battle of Flodden Field, designed by Edward Burne-Jones and Philip Webb, sculpted by Edgar Boehm, 1881-1882, bas-relief of gilded gesso. (The battle was in 1513 in Northumberland; Sir Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, defeated James IV of Scotland on behalf of Henry VIII.)
After yesterday’s discovery of Burmantofts tiles, I noticed the tiles lining the late-Victorian staircase. They were from the Craven Dunhill factory near Ironbridge. That is probably as much as I want to know about tiles. (C J Ferguson designed the extension; he also did further work on Lanercost Priory church after Antony Salvin’s earlier remodelling.)
It was a little odd to be visiting Carlisle as a tourist, but it did make me have a better look at the cathedral. I was quite disoriented inside, until I realised that the nave had been knocked down (Cromwell again) to leave just a stump and a disproportionally large choir.
* Admittedly, such power can seem benign when it acknowledges responsibility. It was magnanimous of Sarah Losh to fund and build the village church in Wreay, or of George Howard to build St Martin’s in Brampton, but even magnanimity can be an imposition on the powerless.
St Mary’s Church, Wreay, by Sarah Losh, 1840-42
Sarah Losh (1785-1853) was truly unusual and remarkable. Wealthy, educated and extremely clever, she designed and built the village church when the old one fell into disrepair. She had travelled on the continent, had antiquarian interests and decided that she wanted a simple Romanesque basilica rather than something in the prevailing neo-Gothic style. Being the lady of the manor and willing/able to pay for the church, she got her way. She designed the building and hired a local builder, producing clay models of her design for him to work from. She enlisted her gardener to carve the wooden door frames. (How did he feel about that? It is such a beautiful piece that he must surely have taken pleasure in his work.) Fallen chestnut trees, bog oak, broken bits of stained glass were all pressed into use and recycled in the decoration. The capitals of the 14 columns lining the apse are not finely carved, but they are individual and personal.
Losh banished the images of death and suffering that are common in churches. Once beyond the arrows in the door, you are in a building teeming with symbols of life and regeneration : pine cones, cereal, ephemeral insects, intertwining leaves.
She also designed the chapel of rest in the nearby cemetery, which she based on the recently uncovered St Piran’s Oratory in Perranporth.
There was a sad element to all this: Sarah had lost her beloved sister prematurely and created a rough-hewn mausoleum for her close to the church.
Mausoleum with memorial to Katharine
It was rather nice to see that, amongst all the symbols of life, there was some real life in the church (albeit asleep):
Aides memoires part 2 