History, art history and architecture of Britain & Empire, Europe, Mediterranean & North America, 1640-1940.
I’ve cited Kat Lay ’s “ What effect will Donald Trump’s childhood vaccine recommendations have in the US and beyond ?” Since appointed in 2025, Secretary Health & Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr sought to loosen vaccine regulations. Kennedy is a leading vaccination sceptic who has for years increa-sed dishonesty about vaccines. A study found he was the top super-spreader of Covid-19 vaccine…
I can remember nearly every novel set by English teachers in high school (1960-65) . But when I recently found a 2006 newspaper article discussing my reading preferences, I couldn't remember the era when my children still lived at home. This newspaper article covered the books I most loved in the decades from 1975-2005. Book column Australian Jewish News Melbourne March 2006 The Women's Room is…
Kroyer, Hip, Hip, Hurrah! 1888, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden Impressionism was at first a French art movement, starting in the second half of the C19th. Impressionist techniques included visible, thick brush strokes of pure colour, creating a vibrant effect, and capturing the essence of the subject matter rather than focusing on minute details. Impressionists often painted outdoors to capture…
Duke and Duchess of York opened Parliament House May 1927. The need for a national capital city arose when the colonies united to form the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 . The constitution provided that a new national capital should be built half way between Melbourne and Sydney, to avoid jealousy and conflict. The new Australian capital city of Canberra was fixed in 1908 and the area was…
Built in 1892-4, this Romanesque Revival project was designed by architect Theodore Link for the Terminal Railroad Association of St Louis Mo . It was to serve as a Union Station for the multiple railroads that offered passenger services back then. The first train pulled into Union Station in Sept 1894, ushering in a new and exciting time for the city, known as The Gateway To The West .…
In his essay Civilisation & its Discontents 1929, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had analysed the aggressive cruelty that changed men into savages. After Hitler took power in Germany in 1933 , as much as he recognised these trends, Freud was reluctant to apply them to Vienna. Even when the Nazis burnt all the books in 1933 by hated authors, including Freud! Yet he supported his sons Oliver…
London-born Eric Ravilious (1903-42) spent his early years in Eastbourne E. Sussex and won a scholarship to attend the Eastbourne School of Art in 1919 . Later he enrolled at Royal College of Art London where he studied under Paul Nash , a War Artist in WW1. Later Ravilious worked as a painter, book illustrator and Wedgwood pottery designer . With war starting in 1939, he joined the Royal Observer…
Titus Salt (1803-76) was born near Leeds, educated in Wakefield and served an apprenticeship with a wool-stapler in Wakefield . He moved to Bradford in 1821 with his parents & siblings at 18. In his years in Bradford he worked with William Rouse & Son , learning textile manufacture. Titus’s father, Daniel , founded a Bradford business as a wool-stapler . In 1824, Titus joined his dad’s business,…
Born Nigel Neill in 1947 in Omagh, Nth Ireland to an English mother and a New Zealand father serving in the British army. His family moved to Christchurch N.Z in 1954 where Sam went to school. He became Sam because there were several Nigels at school, saying “I moved more easily as a Sam”. Sam Neill and Meryl Streep as Michael & Lindy Chamberlain, Evil Angels, 1988 Sam Neill went on to study…
Examine the legacy of the islands’ knitting industry . Started in the 1500s , the knitting industry first produced garments for commercial sale incl stockings & undergarment Guernsey frocks. Using a soft worsted wool, they supplied warmth. Their stockings were popular, worn by Queen Elizabeth I & Mary Queen of Scots! The industry was so large in the 1680s that 6,000 of the 14,000 population were…
Shirtwaist designs, The Modern Priscilla Needlework Magazine, 1906 5 Minute History Russians Max Blanck and Isaac Harris immigrated to the U.S in the early 1890s and, like hundreds of thousands of other impoverished Jewish immigrants, they began working in the garment industry in sweatshops. Harris became familiar with popular fashion designs while Blanck became a garment contractor. They…
20th explorers on their way to Antarctica, including Ernest Shackleton , often visited NZ . They used local ports and quarantine islands, and gratefully accepted other offers of assistance. They also took on New Zealander crew with them, to take part in the Antarctic trips. Capt Robert Falcon Scott 1905, Wiki Capt Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) was born in Devon to a sea faring family.…
Portrait of a Young Woman, 1915 Wiki Pastry Cook of Cagnes, 1922 The Guardian Grotesque self portrait, c1923 Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris. Thanks to George Prochnik for this review. From 1913, to get from Smilovichi, a shtetl in Belarus , to Paris . 20 year old artist Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) made many visits to the Louvre to study the canvas. In the mid-1920s he decided to translate it into his…
The theft discussed here was the latest in a series of robberies targeting major European museums, soon after a series of other high-profile heists. “ Poppy Flowers ” by Vincent van Gogh, stolen from Cairo's Khalil Museum in 2010 , was never found. Neither was “ Soldier on Horseback ” by Anthony van Dyck, stolen from University of Oxford in 2020. The shameless day-light robbery of precious jewels…
A 2023 survey by Travel + Leisure invited readers to vote on the world’s most beautiful cities . Clearly the answer differed for everyone, but see their non-exhaustive list of the world’s 25 most beautiful cities. I chose Palermo. transport from Southern Italy to Sicily On Sicily 's Nth coast the sunny city is a dream for architecture fans, right on the Mediterranean 's cross roads. Palermo…
I have travelled the vast widths of Australia and Canada by very comfortable trains, and long parts of France and India by comfortable trains. But never on The Flying Scotsman , which was the world's most famous train service. In 1860, 3 companies established the East Coast Joint Stock for services using common trains, and it is from this agreement that the Flying Scotsman arrived. After WW1 the…
6 English farm labourers who were sentenced in March 1834 to 7 years’ transportation to an Australian penal colony for organising trade-union activities in Tolpuddle Dorset . Leaders George & James Loveless created a Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers’ lodge during the national wave of trade-union activity in 1833–4. The Whig government, alarmed at working-class discontent, arrested the…
Police court summons and photo, Nov 1911 Photo credit: Leeds Museums & Galleries Leonora Throp Cohen (1873–1978) was born in Leeds to Canova & Jane Throp. Her father was a stone carver but died in 1879 when Leonora was only 5, after he developed TB of the spine. This left her widowed mother to raise the 3 young children. Her seamstress mother worked to provide for the family, especially…
Read Tyrannicide Brief: Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold by Geoffrey Robertson. Charles triggered the tragic civil wars (from 1642) when 1 in 10 Englishmen died. But in 1649, Parliament struggled to find a lawyer with guts to prosecute a king who claimed to be above the law. In the end, they chose the radical lawyer John Cooke (1608–60) whose Puritan conscience,…
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was born in Paris , son of banker Augustin De Gas. At 11 Degas enrolled in Lycée Louis-le-Grand , graduating in 1853. He was painting seriously and by 18, his bedroom became an artist's studio. He began making copies in the Louvre , but his father wanted him to study. So Degas enrolled in Law at Paris Uni i n Nov 1853 but was bored. In 1855, Degas met Jean Auguste Ingres…
The idea of photographing the dead might be seen as morbid today but it made perfect sense to Victorians. Readers might like to find Audrey Linkman 's book Photography and Death , published by Reaktion Books in 2011. Most photographs of a recently deceased person were taken by professionals, and were kept at home in the same way as all other family photographs were kept – mounted on the wall or…
ARTNEWS assembled a list of 11 must-haves books that cover art history , from classical antiquity to now. Art history is a flexible discipline, subject to revisions as things change. Below I have included the books I know and found excellent. Gombrich The Story of Art 1. Penelope & Davies et al, Janson’s History of Art For 60+ years, Horst Janson’s large book was the key text for first Art…
Madeira (under blue spot), Portugal and Morocco Wiki Madeira ’s written history started in 1418. It was then the navigators led by João Gonçalves Zarco sighted, after days afloat on the high seas, a small island that saved them from tragedy, a safe harbour they named Porto Santo Island. Next year, 1419, they reached Madeira Island. Navigators Tristão Vaz Teixeira, Bartolomeu Perestrelo & João…
Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922) was an art-dealer of belief; when the young Impressionists were ridiculed by French dealers , he bought their work and nurtured their cause, slowly influencing public taste in Europe. In 1865 he opened his first gallery in Paris. This dealer shaped the art market by discovering artists who later became global favourites. Paul Durand-Ruel in his gallery, c1910…
The Lutetia hotel was one of Paris ’ landmarks, a monument to the city’s cultural memory where art, history and luxury met. In Dec 1910 Lutetia was opened by Marguerite and Aristide Boucicaut , visionary founders of Le Bon Marché . They created a hotel to welcome the department store’s wealthy clientele and reflect the cosmopolitan Left Bank . The result was unlike any other in Paris: a fusion of…