JUNE REFLECTIONS

June is of course a dreamily nostalgic month, so proclaimed in dozens of catchy romantic songs:  

-          Fresh and alive and gay and young

June is a love-song, sweetly sung.

June is bustin’ out all over!

-          They say when you marry in June

You’re a bride all your life!

-          Honey moon, keep a-shinin’ in June

Your silvery beams will bring love’s dreams

We’ll be cuddlin’ soon

By the silvery moon!

And then, alas, you rudely wake up, to the sight of the RMT-led rail strikes, prices going through the roof, real suffering for quite a number, much anxiety everywhere, Russian troops devastating Ukraine, politicians running about like headless chickens and our whole world in disarray. That is not the natural order we so desire:

 εἴθε γενοίμην. . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! –

Yes, the church clock stands at ten to three

And there is honey still for tea.

                                                ……………………..

Her Majesty had a splendid Platinum Jubilee holiday in June and she made her necessarily rationed appearances with great aplomb. I hope she can quietly pop up to Balmoral as usual or stay snug at Windsor Castle if she prefers. It has been her Jubilee, bless her, but I confess to a spot of Windsor-fatigue now that it is effectively over. The loyalist media have never tired of telling us how smart and dignified is William, how lovely Kate was at Ascot, how beautiful was Sophie’s polka-dot dress in Cyprus, how happy was Beatrice in her horse-drawn coach! It is of course all twaddle and balderdash and grist to the republican mill with the UK divided on this issue as on many others! Please give us  media restraint for a decent period! Charles and Camilla will have a high charm-mountain to climb as it is, let alone cope with pap and over-exposure and unhelpful noises off from Andrew, Harry and Meghan.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!

                                                     …………………………

The leaders of the West cut unimpressive figures these days. Our Boris, thrashing around to find a much-needed rabbit to pull from his hat, quite simply has no moral compass, a minimum requirement even these days. Joe Biden, it is speculated, wants to run for a second term. Surely the US deserves better than this vain, IRA-loving, decrepit old goat who hardly knows what town he is in currently and can only sink lower. Macron’s popularity in famously ungovernable France (de Gaulle: How can you govern a country with 246 different kinds of cheese?) has plummeted, his Napoleonic mindset deterring voters and disgusting erstwhile allies. Olaf Scholz, with the charisma of a Bockwurst, struggles with Merkel’s legacy of a Germany lethally dependent on Putin’s Russia.

 

There are plenty young radicals knocking at the door but somehow I do not see Angela Rayner in the UK or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US achieving high office soon, even if both are easier on the eye than the present incumbents.

  

                                        

                                                        

Angela Rayner                                                 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The glittering prizes will go to boring middle-aged men in grey flannel suits, hopefully not the kind that rub the noses of their constituents in the fact of their wealth and privilege compared to their voters’ horribly stretched budgets.

………………………

I have recently returned from 3 weeks in Charlotte, North Carolina, most generously hosted by my youngest son. It gave me a taste of life in a Southern city, far removed from New York or Southern California. Many of my esteemed readers will know the US much better than I do, so I will save on the pontification.

Suffice it to say, I was greatly struck by the size and scale of America and its growth. Charlotte is a magnet for finance and medical companies and its airport hub claims to be the 5^th busiest in the world. Houses are being built at a rapid pace, spreading the city boundaries but there are plenty more dense forests of long-leafed pine to push up against. The 47% white population has a strong Christian Evangelical flavour (a prominent arterial road is Billy Graham Parkway!) while the 35% black population is much in evidence in up-market malls and restaurants, as well as in more modest occupations. I would guess there is more racial Wokery in London (13% black) than in Charlotte, which enjoys a laid-back and relaxed life-style. Long may both prosper!

 

SMD

22.6 22

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2022

THE WALLACE AND THE FRICK

 

One of the great pleasures of living in London or New York is the easy accessibility of two wonderful art collections, the Wallace Collection in Hertford House, Manchester Square and the Frick Collection at 1, E.70^th Street on 5^th. I am a fan of Rococo art and that first drew me to the Wallace. Rococo is regally displayed at the Frick too, so to me that makes it unmissable. But the range of joys in both Collections, beyond even Rococo, is immense; permit me to share with you, or remind you of, these manifold joys.

  

     

The heavy Wallace exterior

                                                           

                                                           The elegant Frick exterior

Both collections were founded by enormously rich men, who were not entirely respectable. The Wallace was the creation of the first 4 Marquesses of Hertford, whose family name was Seymour-Conway. The 3^rd Marquess, who died in 1840, was the most serious collector with a brilliant eye for French 18^th century art, then deeply unfashionable. This Marquess’ favourite painting was the paint adorning the faces of the harlots of London with whom he notoriously cavorted as he lived the life of a Regency rake. The 4^th Marquess who lived almost all his respectable life in Paris, owning the Bagatelle chateau in the Bois de Boulogne, diversified the Collection and was much helped by his illegitimate son, who became Sir Richard Wallace. Oddly Sir Richard was never formally recognized as his son by the 4^th Marquess but was warmly embraced and cherished by his paternal grand-mother and her daughter. Sir Richard inherited the Collection and all the unentailed property from his father in 1870, becoming an MP and baronet, dying in 1890. His French wife bequeathed the Collection to the nation in 1897 and it opened to the public in 1901.

 

                   The 3rd Marquis of Hertford 

Sir Richard Wallace

 

Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) was an archetypical “robber baron”. Operating a coke business near Pittsburg, he befriended Andrew Carnegie and played a part in the creation of Carnegie Steel and later US Steel. He was a big-shot at the Pennsylvania Railway, but then sold all his interests for a vast sum to Carnegie. He earned a bad reputation for hushing up his partial responsibility, by failing to maintain the South Fork Dam, for the Johnstown Flood of 1889, a major catastrophe causing the death of 2,209. He was involved in the armed repression of the Homestead Strike of 1892 and only just survived an anarchist assassination attempt that year. Prudently deciding to move to less dangerous New York (sic!), he devoted the rest of his life to philanthropy. He had long been an avid collector of American painting but he then turned to Old Masters and European furniture and artefacts.

                                                                      Henry C Frick

As you enter Hertford House, your first sight is the elegant stair-case, which once adorned the Banque de France, with metalwork depicting money-bags and gold coin, rather blatantly even for our taste. Amid lovely Boulle furniture and walls of Dutch cabinet-pictures, we find one of the Wallace’s iconic paintings, The Swing by Fragonard, as the beauty kicks her slipper over the head of her ardent wooer, epitomising the carefree spirit of the Collection.

                                                   The Swing by Fragonard

 

Not to be outdone, the Frick has a whole Fragonard Room, a truly sumptuous confection containing The Progress of Love in 4 delectable panels.

        

                                                   The Meeting from The Progress of Love

Unable to match this richness, the Wallace counter-attacks with a surfeit of Bouchers, redolent of 18^th century eroticism.

                    The Rising of the Sun by Boucher

 

Boucher painted delicate pastorals and famous portraits and his works grace many a staircase at the Wallace. Yet the floorboards creak with the weight (or is it the pleasure?) of the wonderful furniture they carry – escritoires, chairs, armoires in splendid profusion:

                   A Chest of Drawers by Reisener

The Frick can match this with its own exquisite pieces spread throughout the Collection. In truth the Collections are both so rich we should banish all thoughts of rivalry between them. Let us review some of the iconic paintings from both: first the Wallace

             

Christ's charge to Peter; Rubens

                                                    
                                                                         

                                                         Frans Hals: The Laughing Cavalier

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 

                                                              Rembrandt: Portrait of Titus

                                             

         Canaletto: Basin of San Marco, Venice

The Frick has an equally distinguished selection:

                                                 Vermeer: The Soldier and the laughing Girl

                                             Hans Holbein: Portrait of Thomas Cromwell

The modernist critic might say that the taste displayed by these Collections is conventional and unadventurous. Yet many others deplore the often-sloppy technique and crowd-pleasing sensationalism of some modern artists. Both collections are relatively sparsely visited, other galleries or exhibitions cater for or speak to the “edgier” audience. In my view the Wallace and the Frick, the first unchanging and the second still growing, move us with the profundity of their artistic respect for the historic achievement of Western Art. Visiting either is a life-enhancing experience galvanizing us with the zest of being civilised and human.

I give you below two more works from the Frick and I finish with a personal favourite from the Wallace, the gorgeous majolica plate from lovely Urbino.

Mortlake Terrace: J M W Turner

                            
 

                                                                                    

                                                                                                         Doge G.Mocengo by Bellini

 

                        

                      Maiolica Plate from Urbino

SMD

12.06.22

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2022