January 2012 – Page 6 – { feuilleton }

Albert Bierstadt in Yosemite

Sunset in the Yosemite Valley (c. 1868).

After yesterday’s photos of the Yosemite Valley I have to follow up with paintings of the region by Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), a German immigrant whose landscape art is connected to the Hudson River School although much of his work concerned views of California and the Rocky Mountains. Some of the paintings apparently received criticism for their deliberately Romantic approach to landscape, especially the John Martin-like blazing sunsets. All the pictures here date from the same period that Carelton Watkins was taking his celebrated photos of the area (which makes me wonder whether artist and photographer ever met) so complaints about lack of realism would seem somewhat redundant.

Wikimedia Commons has a substantial collection of Bierstadt’s paintings.

Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California (1865).

The Domes of the Yosemite (1867).

Cathedral Rocks, A Yosemite View (1872).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Carleton Watkins in Yosemite
• Two American paintings

Carleton Watkins in Yosemite

Yosemite Valley (c. 1865).

The Getty Museum recently published a large and expensive ($195) volume collecting all the surviving photographs by one of the pioneers of landscape photography, Carleton Watkins (1829–1916). The most important of Watkins’ many photos of California in the mid-19th century are those taken in the Yosemite Valley, a series of views which helped persuade Abraham Lincoln to preserve the area as a national park. The pictures here are from the Watkins collection at the Library of Congress where many of the images can be downloaded as huge (200mb) tiffs. The LoC also has a number of stereograph views. The quality of these pictures is quite stunning when you consider that the photographic medium was only about thirty years old. To capture many of these views Watkins had to cart a bulky glass-plate camera up and down mountain trails.

Carleton Watkins, The Complete Mammoth Photographs edited by Weston Naef & Christine Hult-Lewis can be ordered direct from the Getty Museum. There’s also an earlier study by Weston Naef, Carleton Watkins in Yosemite.

Half Dome, Yosemite Valley (c. 1865).

Cathedral Rock, Yosemite Valley (c. 1865).

Front view, Three Brothers, Yosemite (c. 1865).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dead Roads

The art of Ronald Searle, 1920–2012

Undertakers. From Punch magazine (undated).

I started trying to draw like Ronald Searle when I was about eight. So there was Jabberwocky and Ronald Searle I was turning into by the time I was thirteen. You know, I was determined to be Lewis Carroll (giggles) with a hint of Ronald Searle.

John Lennon, 1968

Does the late Ronald Searle need any introduction? Everyone knows he created the anarchic schoolgirls of St Trinian’s in the 1940s, although their exploits had the greatest audience in the films based on Searle’s cartoons rather than the original drawings. Searle’s work first came to my attention through reprints of the Molesworth books he produced with Geoffrey Willans in the 1950s—Down with Skool! (1953), How to be Topp (1954), Whizz for Atomms (1956) and Back in the Jug Agane (1959)—a masculine riposte to St Trinian’s which allowed for a broader range of humour than the slapstick and short-skirted salaciousness the films drifted into. The Molesworth books are perhaps best appreciated at age 11 as this LRB review notes; looked at with older eyes all I see is a portrait of a rigidly class-bound nation whose boarding schools, gowned masters, “maters” and “paters” could only inspire affection in the Etonians currently attempting to govern Britain. But the drawings remain a treat: wiry and mordant with flashes of a viciousness that make Searle the godfather of Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman.

The girls of St Trinian’s, Lilliput magazine, December 1949.

Given Searle’s influence on generations of newspaper cartoonists it’s no surprise that the British papers are being free with the plaudits. Links to various stories follow. The images here are taken from earlier posts or pulled from my bookshelves. The illustration of Engelbrecht below is from the Savoy Books edition of Maurice Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht which I designed in 2010.

• Guardian obituary | Telegraph obituary | NYT obituary
• Ronald Searle in pictures: Telegraph | Guardian
• Ronald Searle: a life in pictures by Steve Bell.
• Mike Leigh: ‘Ronald Searle was my inspiration’.
• Ronald Searle: Now let’s have some fizz: Gerald Scarfe remembers his friend and childhood hero.
• Ronald Searle was our greatest cartoonist – and he sent me his pens, says Martin Rowson.

Other links:
• Perpetua, the Ronald Searle tribute
• Searle at VTS
• Winespeak at BibliOdyssey

Engelbrecht versus Grandfather Clock. From The Exploits of Engelbrecht (1950) by Maurice Richardson.

“A trap for dere Santa”. From How to be Topp (1954) by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle.

The Coming of the Great Cat God (1968).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Engelbrecht lives to fight another day
• Ronald Searle book covers
• Engelbrecht again

Lunation: Art on the Moon

Image by Noah Doely.

Steve Moore’s lunarian occult novel Somnium was published a couple of months ago, and now we have an art exhibition exploring similar themes. Lunation: Art on the Moon is a group show at Observatory, Brooklyn, NYC which opens on January 7th:

Artists portray the moon as a source of danger and power, and latter-day sorceresses and men of magic call up to that heavenly lamp, seeking to transcend the ordinary night. For them, the old myths have not changed so much: the moon is still a secret mirror, showing in pale light how the familiar contains always an element of the unexpected…

Participants include Grace Baxter, Jesse Bransford, Susan Crawford, Noah Doely, Joanna Ebenstein, Theo Ellsworth, Michelle Enemark, Ted Enik, Jesse Gelaznik, Ethan Gould, Dr. Gary Greenberg, Pam Grossman, Maria Liebana, Gerald Marks, Chad Merritt, Heidi Neilson, G.F. Newland, Rebeca Olguín, Kathryn Pierce, Lado Pochkhua, Dylan Thuras, Binky Walker, James Walsh and Julianne Zaleta.

Lunation: Art on the Moon runs to the end of February, 2012.

The Lake at Night by Jesse Gelaznik (2011).

Salvio Hexia by Chad Merritt (2011).

A gigantic space-man has landed on the moon, but why?! by Theo Ellsworth (2011).

Luna by Jesse Bransford (2009).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Somnium by Steve Moore
• Blood on the Moon
• Filippo Morghen’s Voyage to the Moon

Cthulhu for sale

As promised last month, my latest piece of Cthulhu art has spawned itself over a range of CafePress products including posters, cards, T-shirts and CafePress’s recent line of iPod/iPad cases. For the latter items and the apparel I’ve used the simpler version of the drawing above. See the artwork larger size here.

And it’s customary at the beginning of January to reduce the Coulthart calendars to a dollar above their base price. Psychedelic Wonderland and Through the Psychedelic Looking-Glass for 2012 can now be had for $17.99/£13.50/€16.00 each. My thanks to everyone who bought copies before Christmas.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive