knittedclanger.bsky.social
Don't ask me, I'm knitted.
Retired communications manager who once knew a lot about banking strategy. Now mostly having a cup of tea and reading a Victorian three-volume novel.
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Massive influence on the Pre-Raphaelites. A detail of Pforr's Sulamith and Maria (1811) compared to Millais' Mariana (1851). Mary and her cat take a break from their work while they wait for the Annunciation. Mariana takes a break from hers before a stained glass image of the Annunciation. (5/5)
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Rudolph's guard tells a posh boy to do one mate. Someone holds a baby up to see the horses and a frantic bald man tries to get the king's attention. (4/5)
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Franz Pforr's Entry of King Rudolph of Habsburg into Basel in 1273 (1810). Rudolph looks like he was a lot of bother. As always with this type of painting, it's the details that are fun. (3/5)
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Franz Pforr's self-portrait from 1809, startlingly like an early Lucien Freud. Possibly he knew them or the German artists inspired by them? (2/5)
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Mum was looked after by people who wanted the job so much they were prepared to travel halfway round the world, away from their families, to do it. That's who I want looking after me.
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Local landscape artist Samuel Lines. He gave art lessons at five in the morning and if you were late he’d come and get you out of bed.
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Sadder story told by the inscription on the side of the tomb. Two of the children died within 8 days. Another died two months after his father.
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I’m sure she will be.
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Then there was that time in 1982 when their Pope Gregory XVII got drunk and tried to steal the relics of St Teresa of Avila, only to be set upon by a mob of outraged locals while he accused women wearing trousers of being whores. Anyway, I expect things have settled down recently... oh
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And exit through the gift shop, where artistic brilliance is celebrated in sock form. (5/5)
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Several original etched copper sheets in the exhibition, amazingly crisp and new looking. (4/5)
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Poor hog. The man behind her has butcher’s tools and the gleeful boy plays with a ball made of an inflated pig’s bladder. (3/5)
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The Rat Poison Peddler appears to have a live rat in his shoulder, perhaps to convince people they have a problem he can solve. I like the fiddler’s scrappy dog on a bit of string. (2/5)
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Oddly, they pass the Bechdel test as they depict a female world where older women give wise advice and girls talk sorrowfully to dying mothers. Men are either absent, still minors, or dangers outside the household: 'When it comes to harassment, the call is never coming from inside the house'.
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They’ve probably come on the bus from Preston for the day.
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The dragon is so surprising I almost didn't notice that one of the angels is playing the mouth organ. More info here. www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/pre...
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A hailstorm on 14 April 1360 was so cold and miserable that Edward II made temporary peace with France, presumably so he could go indoors. And in 1392 a dolphin swam up the Thames as far as London Bridge, which was taken as a sign of storms, which followed the week after. (2/2)
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In Boucicault's The Phantom (1856), a vampire called Alan is fatally shot in a duel on the peak of Mount Snowdon but the opportunity to have him subsequently tumble into a ravine is sadly missed.
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Servants reading, even in their own time, was seen as a form of theft. As late as 1912 there were warnings against installing electricity in attics as it would encourage servants to read. Stories for Young Servants (1876) warned them what that would lead to. Poor Eliza. (3/3)
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(The inkwell on page ten is like the gun in Act One.) It was just as bad to be too assiduous. As Common Sense for Housemaids by A Lady put it in 1853: a literary man 'would rather have a lion let loose upon him than a cleanly housemaid'. Never touch a man's stuff. (2/3)
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Spell on a nebuliser then back home with a new steroid inhaler. Was going to go to the walk-in centre but when you search their website for asthma it takes you to emergency contraception, a bit like when Tesco are out of avocados so they send you a toaster instead.
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Think before you buy, though. Cheapside jousts were rained off in 1362. You’d feel pretty silly sitting in a pavilion eating cucumber sandwiches in full Italian bling.🥒🎪
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This is a great idea by the way. Comic sub-plot about Miss Lemon’s unrequited love for Captain Hastings. At the end, Poirot rises up dark and terrible in the library and drags a murderous vicar’s wife down to hell.