THE QUEEN’S GALLERY BUCKINGHAM PALACE

TEACHER INFORMATION NOTES A journey through Paradise: A Creative Writing Workshop

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head and the heart go together. John Ruskin

And that goes for fine writing too. During this workshop session, the children will be encouraged and enabled to use all three: hand, heart and head.

Students will take away with them a ‘Writer’s Notebook’ of ideas and reminders of the two hours spent in the Gallery. These and the follow-up suggestions at the end of these notes can be developed into longer, finished pieces of writing or other creative projects.

Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden

Whether a sacred sanctuary, a place for scientific study, a haven for the solitary thinker or a space for pure enjoyment and delight, gardens are where man and nature meet.

This exhibition reveals the way in which gardens have been celebrated in art across four centuries. Bringing together paintings, botanical studies, drawings, books, manuscripts and decorative arts, the exhibition explores the changing character of the garden from the 16th to the early 20th century. It includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Maria Sibylla Merian and Carl Fabergé, and some of the earliest and rarest surviving depictions of gardens and plants.

A selection of the following images in the exhibitions will be used during your students’ visit: All images below can be found digitally at: www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions

The Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, 28th June, 1897

Lauritz Regner Tuxen, 1897-1900

Oil on canvas

RCIN: 405286

Although throughout her reign, Queen Victoria had welcomed small groups such as Crimean War Veterans to the Palace, the first grand scale royal garden party was established for her Golden Jubilee and these al fresco parties are still held today. On a summer afternoon, as many as 10,000 guests are entertained in the gardens of Buckingham Palace and, now as then, the garden party is an opportunity for display and spectacle that sets the Palace grounds alight with colour and vivacity. For many years after the death of Prince Albert, her husband, Queen Victoria had been withdrawn from the public eye. Her rare appearances were increasingly valued and her popularity re-established. The royal garden party was repeated for the Diamond Jubilee in 1897 when she was approaching 80 years old and it is this event that Tuxen’s painting depicts. It was commissioned by the Queen, who always kept pictorial records of all such events. The artist signifies the continuity of the Royal House of Windsor by the inclusion of the Prince of , seen in black formal wear amongst the fashionable hats and parasols in the middle distance, and the Queen’s great grandson, Prince Edward of York, the future King Edward VIII, in his sailor suit and petticoats in the foreground.

Tulip Vase

Adriaen Kocks c. 1694

Tin-glazed Earthenware

RCIN: 1085.1

The tulip vase evokes the many stories of the tulip mania of the 17th century, mainly in Holland but also having an effect in and ruining many a fortune on the turn of a single tulip bulb. By the time William III and Mary II arrived to ascend the throne of Great Britain together, the mania was over, but Mary retained a love and wide knowledge of plants. She had the Delftware vases made for Hampton Court, her favourite palace, to show off the exotic blooms she raised in the glasshouses she had built in the gardens. In the centre panel of the base is a portrait bust of William with swags of flowers decorating the plinth on which it stands. Exactly how the tulips or other species were arranged in the vase isn’t certain – as single specimens, in small bouquets or planted into earth concealed in the vase, which comes apart in sections to make that a possibility.

Flowers in a Vase

Jacob Bogdani c. 1691-1714

Oil on canvas

RCIN: 402807

Bogdani’s painting features flowers that are quite common to us today, but which in the 17th and 18th centuries, with the exception of the rose, were rare and exotic. The little bird on the plinth on which the urn stands appears to be a bullfinch, and the detail of the bird and in the depiction of the various flowers are not simply aesthetic, but represent the new fascination with natural science, and the notion of ‘bringing the garden into the house’. The urn from which the flowers tower up in front of the stone wall were the height of fashion. Some urns, similar to this one, were made by John van Nost, a Flemish sculptor who set up a workshop and foundry in what is now Piccadilly.

View of the Amphitheatre in the Tiergarten, Cleves, from the North

Dutch School c. 1671

Oil on Canvas

RCIN: 406170

The landscape garden was a new way of designing private estates and public spaces. Long views, or vistas, were created, taking in eye-catchers and landmarks on the way, often involving stretches of water, statuary, hills and woodland. The gardens at Cleves were leaders in the trend, both famous and popular, though now forgotten. They were the haunt of artists exploiting the growing fashion for landscape pictures to decorate houses, and to ‘bring nature indoors’, thus lifting their status in the genres of painting. We are looking up past the amphitheatre at the at the top of the Sternburg (Star Mountain), so called because of the twelve radiating vistas it commanded. The prospect from the amphitheatre looking down, was the longest in the gardens, along a canal to a distant town, passing on the way, the pools with their sculptures with cascades of a different kind!

Cabinet

Adam Weisweiler c. 1785

Two panels of 17th century pietra dura. Oak, ebony, hardstones, tortoiseshell, brass, pewter, mahogany, boxwood, purplewood, gilt bronze, brocatello marble (marble Spanish from Catalonia)

RCIN: 2593

Adam Weisweiler’s vibrant and tactile cabinet with its gleaming stones and tiny mosaics, is thought to have been bought by King George IV when Prince of Wales, and whose love of the glittering and glamorous is legendary. The promise of ‘works of beauty that would last forever’ must have been attractive to the Medici dukes who ruled Florence in the late 16th century when the pietra dura technique was introduced. As the skills in technique grew, the bright colours of the polished stones were considered to be ideally suited to the depiction of still lifes from nature. The outside door panels of the cabinet showing botanical specimens (tulip and crown imperial) were made much earlier than the flamboyant central panel and show the difference in taste between the 17th and 18th centuries.

Boys Among Apple Trees

Mortlake Tapestry Works c. 1650.

Woven silk and wool tapestry.

RCIN: 28160

The garden feature that abounds more than any other in tapestry designs of the 16th and 17th centuries is the , and the tapestry Boys Among Apple Trees certainly depicts a splendid example, terminating in a tunnelled arbour. But it’s the antics of the little boys, full of mischief, scrumping for apples and playing games that capture the eye. Such images for a 16th century audience, referred to the dawn of a new Golden Age – the age of innocence, when a bounteous earth provided all the food man needed to survive. There followed a proliferation of Playing Boys tapestries in the 1650s when the version on view was woven, and when a promise of the dawn of a new Golden Age would have been particularly welcome after the troubles of the English Civil War.

Pleasure Garden with a

Lodewijk Toeput, called Pozzoserrato c. 1579-84

Oil on Canvas

RCIN: 402610

The water was a 16th century elaboration of the ancient notion of the single path that traces a hidden and circuitous route to a central point – the most famous of these myths is of the Cretan Minotaur. These mythological origins were gradually assimilated into Christianity and used as symbols of the one true route to God, suggesting the temptations and distractions to be met with on the way. were laid out in stone on the floors of French during the 11th and 12th centuries, before taking on a more ornamental form in the gardens of a hundred years later.

Toeput’s painting is one of the earliest depictions of a water labyrinth in existence. The island itself is fictional, but the gondolas and the view of St Mark’s in the background place the image of the dreamlike pleasaunce in Venice. A pleasaunce was a pleasure garden with the sole purpose of giving pleasure to the senses, but not offering fruit or sustenance. In the case of the painting, the little feasts being enjoyed have been brought into the garden, rather than being found there.

The labyrinth, or maze, is constructed of pleached trained over a fence and approached through a tunnel arbour. The feast on the left is sheltered by a pergola and in the top left of the picture is a . Not all are hedged, a turf maze is simply raised slightly underfoot but is equally challenging to follow as a hedged maze, except that escape is easier. In medieval times, the idea of the Shepherd’s Race, or dance around the turf maze became part of rural celebration and now, of folklore.

Follow-up Suggestions:

 Take your favourite piece of writing from your time in the gallery and finish it. Make sure it’s perfect – all the spelling and punctuation just right. Decorate it with twining plants, flowers, fruit, or even a pergola as a frame, if you like.

 All the pictures you have seen at the Gallery have shown gardens in fine weather. Gardens do need rain to make them flourish, but they also have to survive all weathers. Choose your favourite picture and write a description of it in the rain, a thunderstorm, fog or snow. Was the garden party a disaster? Did the trees lose their leaves and the people leave the amphitheatre in winter and did the woods feel quite different then? What did the little boys do in a thunderstorm? Suppose the maze was muddy, or the river frozen? Here are some poems about weather to think about before you start, or after you’ve finished: Thomas Hardy Weather Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Christina Rossetti Who Has Seen the Wind? Carl Sandburg Fog Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind Sonnets 18 and 34 William Wordsworth Skating at Night (from The Prelude)

 Design a hat for a royal garden party. Remember some of the new words you discovered, such as parasol, cascade, marquee, or others from different pictures. Could you incorporate one of those objects into your design? Why not make your hat out of paper or card, decorate it and hold a hat parade in school?

 Make a storyboard about the monkey gargoyles on the tulip vase. Start with the gargoyle with its open mouth, and then show how the plant inside grows through it day by day, first a tiny green leaf sprout, then the leaves growing longer and longer, then a bud, then a flower. Write the thoughts of the gargoyle beneath each picture, or perhaps the thoughts of someone watching events.

 Think of all the sounds you might have heard if you were in the landscape garden at Cleves. Make a list of them individually and then make one long list of all the sounds you have between you in the class. Make sure everyone or perhaps each pair has a sound and then put them together to create an interesting sound track. Experiment with the order, volume, frequency of the sounds and see if the atmosphere changes. Write some scenes to be accompanied by the various sound tracks. You can follow the story you began in the Gallery or start afresh.

 Make a mosaic collage of birds, fruit or flowers. Start by drawing your design in outline, and fill them in with words – you might choose colours, shapes, and other descriptions such as ‘matt’ or ‘shining’. Use lots of contrast that will, when you make your collage, help you make it brilliant and exciting like the one on Prince George’s cabinet.

 Find as many games and recipes as you can for apples – you can start with toffee apples, ducking for apples, apple dumplings. Make as many as you can and have an apple festival. Play all the games and eat all the apples. Take photos and mount a display giving each picture a good title. Apple Day was initiated by Common Ground in 1990 and usually takes place on the Saturday and Sunday closest to 30 October.

 Finish the song you started at the Gallery and set it to music. Lay out a maze shape using just one long line of string or wool. You could make knots in the string to mark stopping places where something special might happen, or simply for a change of song. Create a dance to the music that everyone can perform one behind the other, dancing along the maze line. You will have created a Shepherd’s Race. Perhaps you could all wear your garden party hat.

Some Gardening Words

Bloom Gather Shoot Blossom Graft Sieve or Sift Bud Grow Sow Cut Harvest Sprinkle Dibble or dibber Sprout Die – die back Hoe Tend Dig Hose Train Divide Mow Turf Espalier Mulch Water Feed Pick Weed Flourish Plant Wither Pleach Pluck Prick out Prune Rake Reap

Words introduced during the session:

Queen Victoria’s Garden Party - marquee, parasol, cascade Tulip pot & flower painting – urn, plinth, swags, Delftware, bullfinch, gargoyle Landscape – Gazebo, Amphitheatre, grotto Cabinet – Pietra dura, mosaic, cabinet/cupboard, hoopoe Boys and apples – Scrumping, tunnelled arbour/pergola, gnarled Maze – labyrinth, bower, gondola, pleasance

The Five Senses as represented in the Maze painting:

Sight The Eagle - perched on a pergola Hearing The deer Taste The ape – usually shown eating fruit, but here simply in the maze Smell The dog beside the table in the pergola Touch The couple, their arms intertwined, at the entrance to the maze

The Flowers in the painting, Flowers in a Vase

Crown Imperial, tulip, rose, pansy, lilac, pansy, hyacinth?

eLearning interactive resources www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions

Play our interactive game to discover your own personal painted paradise.

Take a journey through six key questions to ascertain which type of garden most suits you.

Add a photo of yourself and share #paintingparadise

The Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden exhibition microsite features digital versions of all the paintings, prints and works of art from the 2015 exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, in addition to:  A zoom feature enabling you to closely examine the detail of the amazing images and works of art.  Video footage featuring Royal Collection Trust staff and other specialists working on pieces from the exhibition