Peter Paul Rubens: The Glamourist

“My passion comes from the heavens, not from earthly musings.”

Few artists have been as popular or successful in their own lifetime as Peter Paul Rubens.

Born in the town of Siegen in Germany he is most closely associated with the city of Antwerp where he was raised, trained as an artist, established his studio, and was to have one of his many homes.

His father, Jan Rubens, was a prosperous lawyer and magistrate but one whose suspected Calvinism led to the fear, if not always the reality, of persecution which led to frequent flight and constant instability but never to impoverishment and the dread pauperism.

When his father died in 1587, the young Rubens, born a Protestant, was raised a Catholic by his mother and educated in the humanist tradition providing him with a perspective that allowed him to carefully navigate the political and religious controversies of his day.

Indeed, he was to acquire a diplomacy as delicate as his brushwork and become as well-versed in the art of fine words as he was with oil on canvass.

He made friends in high-places, and he kept them, so much so that he could be knighted by both the Catholic Philip IV of Spain and the Protestant Charles I of England.

Although he was loathe to politicise his art, never shy of being all things to all men, his historical and religious work  became very visible exemplars of the Counter-Reformation strategy of using art as propaganda.

Said to have been influenced by Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, but most particularly Caravaggio, he never permitted the reality of the Italians vision to impinge upon his own. For him art was the portrayal of beauty whether contrived or merely imagined. He had no desire to devote his exquisite baroque style to the depiction of warts.

With his ability to make a small man larger than life, a sallow woman the buxom beauty of rude good health there were few notable people in seventeenth century Europe who did not want to be painted by Peter Paul Rubens.

He was the ‘Glamourist’ of his age.

Anne of Austria

Maria Pallavicino

Susanna Lunden

Clara Serena

Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia

Brueghel Family

Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel

Anne Fourment

Landscape by Moonlight

King Solomon

Feast of Herodes

Fall of Man

Immaculate Conception

St George and the Dragon

Notable Britons Who Fought In World War One

Lieutenant-Colonel Winston Churchill, Royal Scots Fusiliers

In remembrance of those many thousands who were deprived of the opportunity and the millions more who served their country and survived to live more humble but no less valid lives - a short article on notable Britons and their contribution in the Great War.

Lieutenant J.R.R Tolkien, Lancashire Fusiliers author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

A reluctant warrior who feared he lacked courage he did not enlist during the wave of patriotic fervour that swept the country following the declaration of war and only did so almost a year later in July 1915, when he began to find the whispering campaign against him intolerable.

Later joinig the Signals Corp he was to fight during the Battle of the Somme and in the ferocious struggle for the Schwaben Redoubt before finally being struck down not by enemy fire but trench fever.

He was later to write that his idea for Middle-Earth came from his experiences of the subterranean existence that almost constant shellfire often made trench warfare.

Private Ronald Colman, London Scottish - Oscar winning actor and Matinee Idol.

Serving in a Territorial Regiment prior to the war he was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force and so was one of the original ‘Old Contemptbles.’

He was seriously wounded by shrapnel at the Battle of Messines in October 1914, which was to leave him partially maimed, in frequent pain, and with a permanent limp.

Private Charles Laughton, Huntingdon Cyclist Battalion - Oscar winning actor he served on the Western Front where he was to fall victim to a poison gas attack.

 

Captain Robert Graves, Royal Welch Fusiliers  poet and author of I, Claudius was so badly wounded during the Battle of the Somme that he was removed from the hospital to be given the Last Rites.

His death was later confirmed and his parents informed.

Much to everyone's surprise and against the odds he survived.

 

Captain Harold MacMillan, Grenadier Guards - Prime Minister from 1957-63 he would tell the British people they had never had it so good and as a man who bore the burden of the trenches as a personal trauma he should have known for he never forgot the men who served under his command and would speak of them with admiration often with a tear in his eye.

Lieutenant Rupert Brooke, Royal Naval Division – a poet who expressed his love of country in his verse and was thrilled by the prospect of combat but instead died of blood poisoning en-route to Gallipoli on 23 April, 1915.

Captain Anthony Eden, King’s Royal Rifles – the Prime Minister 1955-7 who would be brought down by the Suez Crisis, an example of the very aggressive militarism he had spent so much of his life opposing.

He was awarded the Military Cross for valour and would rise to become the youngest Brigadier in the British Army.

Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon, Royal Welch Fusiliers – a poet so brave that he earned the nickname ‘Mad Jack’ and was awarded the Military Cross but was later to turn very publicly against the war.

Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, the Manchester Regiment – a poet who unlike his friend Sassoon, never ceased to believe in the justice of the cause he was fighting for.

He was killed on 4 November 1918, during the last great offensive on the Western Front.

His parents learned of his death on 11 November just as the church bells rang out in celebration of the end of the war.

Lieutenant Basil Rathbone, London Scottish – actor.

Most famous for his roles alongside Errol Flynn and as Sherlock Holmes he was awarded the Military Cross for valour but after his brother was killed on the Western Front was often criticised for being reckless with his own life and with those of his men.

Major Clement Attlee, South Lancashire Regiment and future Leader of the Labour Party who would shock the world by defeating Winston Churchill in the post VE-Day Election.

He would serve as Prime Minister from 1945-51 and would introduce the Welfare State and the National Health Service thereby transforming British society forever.

He was the second from last man to be evacuated from Gallipoli and fought in Mesopotamia and on the Western Front.

Lieutenant Ralph Vaughan Williams, Royal Army Medical Corps – one of Britain’s favourite composers he was already 41 years of age when war was declared but enlisted nonetheless as a private serving as a stretcher-bearer, one of the most traumatic and perilous assignments on the front-line.

Lance-Corporal Arnold Ridley, Somerset Light Infantry – Actor most famous for his role in Dad’s Army and as the author of the Ghost Train he was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Somme where he was shot, clubbed, and bayoneted but managed to survive and fight on.

Later promoted to Captain he would also serve in World War Two.

Lieutenant Wyndham Lewis, Royal Artillery – the painter and author who despite his often louche manner became an effective battery commander on the Western Front before becoming the official war artist for the Canadian Army.

Lieutenant A A Milne, Royal Warwickshire Regiment – the poet and author of Winnie the Pooh fought on the Western Front and first wounded at the Somme was later repatriated following a serious illness where he transferred to Military Intelligence.

He also served as a Captain in the Home Guard during World War Two.

. 

  

Jan Vermeer; Magic as Light

Born on 31 October 1632, Johannes Vermeer was barely known outside of his hometown of Delft in the Netherlands where a local celebrity, at least as a painter of some distinction, he found patronage enough to provide for his wife and ever increasing family.

But following his death in 1675, aged just 43, he was speedily forgotten only being rediscovered in France in the 1860’s. His reputation has since soared and he is now considered to be one of the premier Dutch Masters.

Yet he only produced 34 known paintings during his lifetime leaving no etchings or preliminary drawings and his subject matter was limited rarely painting beyond the parameters of his own physical and emotional awareness with one or two rooms of his modest house, the furniture artfully reassigned, becoming the tiny sphere of his creativity.

With the emphasis on light and colour he daubed the canvass with a delicacy and precision that would leave a paintbrush barely tainted and in doing so created images of crystallised perfection.

His alleged use of the Camera Obscura, a box that captures and preserves the image reflecting it upon a canvass or wall whilst also maintaining both its colour and perspective remains controversial.

His unrushed and sober style of painting has seen him accused of lacking both dynamism and daring and drawn comparisons with his contemporaries most notably Rembrandt.

 

But whilst Rembrandt, for whom there could never be enough paint, revealed beauty in the grime and filth of everyday life and sought respect through the willingness to offend, Vermeer painted unblemished visions of perfection leaving the space of eye and thought for the suggestion of others.

Magna Carta

Most great change comes about as the result of conflict of one sort or another and the chaos that invariably ensues as a result. Never is this more so than in the realm of politics and alterations to the balance of power. Now and again such change creates a legacy and invokes a memory that goes far beyond its original intent and indeed the imagination of its protagonists.

The meeting between King John I and his Barons on the field of Runnymede on 15 June 1215, and the document it subsequently produced is one of those moments.

Article 39 and 40 (The Justice Clause)

“No free men shall be seized or imprisoned or stripped of his rights or possessions or outlawed or exiled or deprived of his standing in any way nor will we proceed with force against him or send others to do so except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the laws of the land.”

“To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right of justice.”

The Justice Clause is the most famous and the most often quoted of Magna Carta’s 62 Articles and has evolved to form not only the basis for the legal systems of liberal democracies around the world but also the judicial reference point for regimes in which the dispensation of justice is not entirely devolved from the practice of political power.

Articles 12 to 14 (The Taxation Clause)

“No scutage or aid (tax) may be levied within our Kingdom without its general consent.”

The King could no longer impose taxation upon his subjects without making provision for the calling of the (Barons) Council and the agreement of that Council.

The Taxation Clause of Magna Carta would be used to oppose the imposition of taxes by Charles I during the suspension of Parliament and the period of his personal rule.

It would also serve as the inspiration for the rallying cry of the American colonists of ‘No Taxation without Representation’ during the War of Independence.

Articles 60 and 61(The Security Clause)

“Since we have granted all these things for God, for the better ordering of Our Kingdom, and to allay the discord that has arisen between us and our Barons, and since we desire that they shall be enjoyed in their entirety, with lasting strength, forever, we give and grant to the Barons the following security:

The Barons shall elect twenty five of their number to keep, and cause to be observed with all their might, the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by the Charter.”

Also contained within it was the proviso that:

“The King shall seek to obtain nothing from anyone, in our person or through someone else, whereby any of these grants or liberties may be revoked or diminished.”

Arguably the most significant of all Magna Carta’s Clauses this for the first time saw restraints imposed upon Royal power and the prerogatives of the King.

If the King failed to abide by the terms of the Charter after notice had been given of his failure to do so by at least 4 of the 25 Barons on the Council and if any non-compliance continued thereafter then the Barons would be absolved of their Oath of Fealty and could take up arms against him.

The King was no longer the sole power in the land and the Security Clause would provide the principle upon which Parliament would oppose the Stuart Monarchy’s claim to rule by Divine Right.

The Dambusters

On the night of 16 May 1943, as darkness descended, 19 Lancaster Bombers of 617 Squadron commanded by the 24 year old Guy Gibson took off from R.A.F Scrampton in Licolnshire armed with a new weapon - the Bouncing Bomb.

Their targets were the Mohne, Eder, and Scorpe Dams of the Ruhr Valley deep in the heart of industrial Germany, their intention to breach the dams, flood the surrounding area, and severely hamper German wartime production.

Flying barely 100 ft above sea level to avoid detection by enemy radar the planes instruments were not sophisticated enough to determine how far above the water they were and so a lamp was attached beneath each plane to light up the sea but even so one plane hit a wave and had to return to base.

Descending even further to just 60 ft to launch the attack, making it impossible to take evasive action, the planes became vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire from the heavily defended dams.

Having to fly at a precise speed and launch their bombs at an exact distance for them to be effective the Mohne and Eder Dams were breached with some 1,600 people, many of them forced labourers from Eastern Europe and Soviet prisoners-of-war being drowned as a result.

The Sorpe Dam remained intact, however.

One of the most daring raids of World War Two had achieved only partial success with the dams soon repaired and German war production barely effected, though the Nazi Minister of Munitions was later to say that it had come close to being a catastrophe for German industry.

But with its audacity, its inventiveness, the courage of the men involved, and the flying of the pilots the Dambusters Raid caught the imagination of the British people and was a great morale boost during the darker days of the war, but it had been bought at a high price - of the 18 bombers that participated in the actual attack 8 were lost and 53 men of the 133 of 617 Squadron were killed.

Guy Gibson was awarded the Victoria Cross not for leading the hazardous raid but for remaining in the area after dropping his own bomb to draw enemy fire away from those planes still to do so.

He was killed in action 17 September, 1944.

In Flanders Fields

On 3 May 1915, the Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae who had just presided over the funeral of his friend Alexis Helmer killed at the Second Battle of Ypres wrote arguably the most famous poem to emerge from the First World War - In Flanders Fields.

Disappointed at the attempt to express his emotions and sense of loss  he threw the poem away.

 It was retrieved by one of his soldiers.

Like his friend McCrae did not survive the war, dying of pneumonia in January, 1918.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.