February 2021 Newsletter – Issue 10 Dear Member, I hope you have been keeping well, safe and busy at home in these lockdown days. My art group now meets via Zoom on the day we would normally be painting. It is fun to see everyone and to show and discuss our latest work. Some of us were looking for a new subject after Christmas and this developed into a weekly challenge, like Grayson Perry’s TV programmes last April. So far, we have covered winter trees; first flowers in the garden and fruit or veg! Still Life is a good winter subject. Do you have oranges left over since Christmas, or have you been making marmalade like me? All this thinking about fruit has inspired a piece on the history of marmalade, illustrated by a Van Gogh “Basket of Oranges” from 1888. This is Paul Cezanne’s “Apples and Oranges” c.1900. Please email or send me your own photographs of fruit or veg, real or painted, and I will include them in the next issue. One of the joys of belonging to The Arts Society is that we discover art and artists we know nothing about. For me, Misia Sert was one such. We had such an interesting, well- illustrated lecture about this remarkable woman last month, a resumé follows. I hope you will join us this month, when we have one of our favourite lecturers, Linda Smith, coming back to talk to us. She will tell us about Paula Rego: Painting Women On The Edge and Telling Tales of the Unexpected She is an influential 20th Century British artist of Portuguese origin, who is new to me. Her work is fascinating and at times challenging and controversial. It is so good to have horizons of the mind widened, especially when we are physically constrained! Rego is an incredibly important cultural figure in Portugal, considered to be one of the nation's most famous and influential artists. In 2004, she had a retrospective at the Serralves museum in Porto, which was so popular that it had to keep its doors open 24 hours a day. In 2009, she was honoured by her country of origin through the creation of The Paula Rego House of Stories, a dedicated museum built in Cascais, where she had spent much time as a child. She has been honoured here in the UK too and was made a DBE in 2010. The huge painting above, called The Dance, was acquired by The Tate in 1989. Rego then donated 11 of her preparatory working drawings in pen and ink to them. Arts Society Bodmin – January Lecture On Wednesday 13th January Julian Halsby gave us a fascinating lecture on “The Extraordinary Life of Misia Sert, “Queen of ” in Belle Époque France. Misia Sert had a sad early life. She was born in St. Petersburg, where her Polish sculptor father, Cyprien Godebski, was working for the Tzar. Her mother died in childbirth so she spent her early years with her maternal grandparents in . When her father re-married, he took her back to Paris but she so disliked her stepmother she was sent to board at a convent school. At 16 she eloped to London with Felicien Rops, the notorious Belgian symbolist painter. Misia soon returned to Paris alone. She had shown great musical ability at a tender age, so she supported herself by giving music lessons to students recommended by her tutor, Gabriel Fauré, who considered her a prodigy. She married her cousin Thadée Natanson, a Polish émigré and socialist, in 1895. Thadée published the influential avant-garde arts magazine, La Revue Blanche. The Natanson home on the Rue St. Florentine became a gathering place for post-impressionists, , authors and composers, many of them Dreyfusards. The fiery red-headed Misia became the muse and symbol of La Revue Blanche, appearing in advertising posters created by Toulouse-Lautrec and others. Édouard Vuillard was hopelessly in love with her see his painting “Nape of Misia’s neck” below and ’s paintings above right. Although she was unconventionally pretty, to the painters Misia was miraculous with her amazing legs and wonderful bosom. A great friend, the poet Stephane Mallarmé, near to whom Misia is buried, suggested the Natansons get a country house so they bought Le Relais, Villeneuve s/Yonne. Vuillard and Bonnard were regular guests. But when Thadée lost all his money their marriage broke down. He hoped the media tycoon and Trump-like figure, Alfred Edwards, might rescue his magazine but instead Edwards fell for Misia. She divorced Natanson and married Edwards in 1905. Edwards money enabled her to continue to patronise the arts but Edwards was soon unfaithful with actress, Genevieve Lantelme so in 1909 Misia divorced him. She loved Diaghilev’s 1908 production of ‘Boris Godunov’ and developed an enduring close relationship with Serge Diaghilev and the . She helped finance the company and took a keen interest in the new music. She was with him when he died in in 1929. In 1908 she had begun a passionate affair with Jose-Maria Sert, Spanish painter of fashionable grisaille murals, remembered for the Vic Cathedral in Catalonia. They married in 1920 but he was also unfaithful and in 1927 left her for the Russian, Roussy Mdivani. Misia was heartbroken. After Roussy’s death in 1938 they were reconciled and Misia nursed him through his final illness until he died in 1945. She was supported by her great friend and companion, , whom she first met in 1917. They had much in common and were inseparable. Coco designed the pink dress in which Sert was buried in 1950. Chanel and Diaghilev were Misia’s two lifelong and most faithful friends, seen on the left here in 1925 with her and Contessa Marcello. Without Misia’s influence and support, much of the painting, music, and ballet of the first half of the twentieth century simply would not have happened. Arts Society Bodmin – Spring Study Days You will not be surprised that our March Study Day on English Furniture has been postponed to 2022. Instead, we have two on-line Study Days to offer you this spring. Kington Langley Arts Society invites us to join them on Tuesday 23rd February. Timothy Walker, Director of Oxford University Botanic Garden from 1988 to 2014, will lecture on “ A History of the Art and Colours of Garden Design, ‘From monochrome to polychrome – how Colour transformed the art of Garden Design’. This Special Interest Day will be in three parts, as usual, with lectures from 10.30-11.30am, 12 noon -1.00pm and 2.00-3.00pm. The cost per household for the day is £15.00. We will shortly email you a flyer with full details and instructions on how to pay and receive the Zoom link.

On Wednesday 3rd March we will have our own Study Morning on Scottish Art given by Elaine Hansen on Zoom. It will be free to our members as a thank you for renewing your membership. The programme will start at 10.00 am with a lecture on The Glasgow Girls. After a break for coffee and a chat, at 11.30 there will be a fun question and answer session - Quiz: Treasures of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The Glasgow Girls were a group of women artists and designers active in Glasgow at the turn of the twentieth century. This period was a time of great prosperity for the Clyde. The Glasgow School of Art was established in 1845 to service growing industries such as shipbuilding and textiles. The city became an important centre for avant-garde design and innovation. Under Head, Francis Newbery, women were encouraged to study applied arts. Two of the most prominent Glasgow Girls were also members of The Glasgow Four – the sisters Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh and Frances Macdonald MacNair. Together with their husbands Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Herbert MacNair, they were instrumental in the Celtic Revival, the development of the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau distinctive Scottish brand. Macdonald Mackintosh – Embroidered panels, 1902 www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and- artists/glossary-terms/glasgow-girls Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum reopened in 2006 after a 3-year refurbishment. It was originally built for the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1901. At its heart is a vast concert pipe organ. The 22 galleries house a great range of exhibits: a Spitfire, a collection of arms and armour, European jewellery, natural history and artifacts from ancient Egypt. The art collection includes many outstanding European paintings, from Rembrandt to Van Gogh, as well as Scottish Colourists and the Glasgow School. Its pièce de résistance, Salvador Dali’s ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’, is currently out on loan. Nine paintings you have to see at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum - Glasgow Live The Arts Society – Instant Expert The Art of Cartoons

A cartoon for our times by Harry Venning from his Clare in the Community comic strip from The Guardian newspaper Do you know your manga from your fumetto, your cartone from your caricatura? This entertaining article from cartoonist and Arts Society Lecturer Harry Venning gives us a short history of the art of the cartoon, some tricks of the trade and the terminology such as dites, hites, vites, briffits, plewds, indotherms! Many of these tongue-in-cheek terms caught on. It is great fun. Become an instant expert the art of cartoons | The Arts Society The Art of the Bruegel Dynasty Sons, siblings and soaring talents – the Bruegel dynasty spanned almost 200 years, starting with Pieter Bruegel the Elder. An artist of remarkable skills, he was the first to capture snowfall in large-scale oil paintings. Our expert, Arts Society Lecturer, Dr Amy Orrock, tells us about this unique family of painters whose energy, inventiveness and reach remains unrivalled in the history of art five centuries later. The Art of the Bruegel Dynasty (mailchi.mp) Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565

Marmalade The Romans learned from the Greeks that quinces slowly cooked with honey would "set" when cool. In 1524, Henry VIII received a "box of marmalade" from Mr Hull of Exeter. As it was in a box, this was probably marmelada, a solid quince paste from Portugal, still made and sold in southern Europe. It was a favourite treat of Anne Boleyn and her ladies in waiting. The first printed recipe for orange marmalade was in Mary Kettilby's 1714 cookery book. This receipt called for whole oranges, lemon juice and sugar. Acid in the lemon juice helped to create the pectin set of marmalade and boiling it fast ‘until it will jelly’. The Scots are credited with making marmalade as a spread, with Scottish recipes in the 18th century using more water to produce a less solid preserve. The Scots moved marmalade to the breakfast table, and in the 19th century the English followed the Scottish example.