Cumbres Borrascosas

Hernán Espinosa writes from Buenos Aires:
Back in 2007 you posted in your blog news about my rock opera Cumbres Borrascosas based on Wuthering Heights, when the opening night was frustrated due to a fire that burned the whole theatre, remember? (http://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2007/06/theatre-fire-in-cordba.html).


Well, it´s my pleasure to inform you that, nearly four years after the tragedy (in which I never found the strengh to return with the show), Heathcliff and Catherine are back! This time, we´ll be presenting Wuthering Heights, a rock-opera in the FIRST LATIN AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATER FESTIVAL which will take place in Buenos Aires next 6, 7 and 8 MAY.


Here in our production´s blog you will find all our updates, including photos of the brand new cast, TV presentation and more.


That´s all folks
Hugs from ARGENTINA!


www.eldiariodeohlamour.blogspot.com

¡Buena suerte a todos! (RW)

Jane Eyre - a review

Here is a review of the new Jane Eyre movie from the USA, where it has already opened. Look out for reviews on this blog in September, when it opens in the UK.


Paul Daniggelis writes from Texas:
Seeing Jane Eyre on the big screen was a tremendous pleasure.
The scenery was often overwhelming in its beauty and the delicate
piano music suited Jane very well. The acting was such that one
was not aware that they were acting. I was alone and allowed myself
to absorb the atmosphere that pervaded the film.


In less than two hours, there simply wasn't time to do the story justice
and I felt it ended rather abruptly. That may be due to the fact that I did
not want it to end. The best scenes from novel and film are the delicious
dialogue sequences between Jane and Rochester. These, again, were
severely curtailed by time restraints.


In order to justify the good nature of Mrs Fairfax, she claims in the film
that she was not aware that the lady in the attic was Rochester's wife.
Where they got that idea I do not know. As far as I can remember,
Charlotte wrote no such thing. Indeed, it is often speculated that it
was Mrs Fairfax who let Richard Mason know of the impending wedding.
How else to explain the untimely appearance of Mason at just the
fateful moment of swearing allegiance.


One other fault, in my opinion, was the full growth of beard and mustache
on Rochester's face. During the final kissing sequence it appears that Jane
gets a mouthful of hair for her troubles. Not a romantic conclusion.


Nevertheless, it was exciting to watch my favorite novel come to life once
again. Too bad they could not have added another hour or so.
------------------
Because I experienced a shortfall in an earlier attempt to see this film,
I have been promised the Jane Eyre poster that graces the theater as
soon as the run is over.
------------------
For the benefit of young people and those unfamiliar with Charlotte Brontë's story, I wonder that these Brontë films are not prefaced with a written and spoken explanatory note, i.e.


The film you are about to see is based on a novel written by Charlotte Bronte in 1847. It has sold an estimated x number of copies throughout the world. Jane Eyre has been translated into x number of languages and adapted for radio, film, stage and television x number of times. Her sister, Emily, has had equivalent success with her novel, Wuthering Heights written in 1847. Sister Anne, whose classic novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was written in 1848, has achieved classic status as well.
This remarkable family lived and died at their Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire, England.


(NB Check the links on the right)


Below - Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska in a scene from the movie. Associated Press/Focus Features.

The Brontë Boy - Review

Chris Went writes:

The Brontë Boy is a production which, rather than aiming to please the purist, seeks to explore the spaces between the known facts of the Brontë story through a dramatic – at times melodramatic -  representation of Branwell’s fantasies and failures to his decline and death.  It is unfortunate that the play’s author chose to stray beyond those spaces, producing an abridged tale abounding in inaccuracies, anachronisms and outdated scholarship.  Within the framework of the plot some of this was acceptable.  Having said that, Michael Yates demonstrated his clear understanding of Branwell’s inability to function in a world in which the actual was not interlarded with the imagined.  His Branwell, played  by Warwick St John, fuses the magnificence of his fantasy life with the facts of his sordid decline so that one is forced to conclude that, from childhood, Branwell was an actor, carrying his performance of himself as he wished to be portrayed, right to the end of his life.  If Warwick St John seems too loud, too energetic in the small space of the studio theatre, that is all to the good, reflecting something of the devastating effect Branwell’s histrionics must have had within the confines of the Parsonage.

Framed as Branwell’s dream, the play takes us from his early Angrian plays with Charlotte (Melanie Dagg) through his various attempts to make a living for himself, to his last days under the influence of gin, laudanum and John Brown.  The scene in which Branwell revisits his childhood is achieved with a good deal of humour, Melanie Dagg succeeding in presenting a Charlotte who, young enough to relish, still, the battles and bloodshed, is beginning to speculate on what happens when the fighting stops.  Love, they agree, and feasts.  But, warns Branwell, there will never be peace.

Asadour Guzelian as Patrick Brontë carries an awkward part with competence.  Yates has made his Patrick a rather conventional, scripture-quoting parson with little evident warmth.  He hints at a harshness towards his son which is not apparent in any textual source.  At the same time he seeks for the causes of Branwell’s faults beyond home and family, placing the blame, finally, on John Brown and the Freemasons.

With a rare and refreshing instinct Michael Yates has chosen to ignore the accepted perceptions of Emily as shy and unpleasant, and Anne as shy and frail.  These are small parts which allow little scope for the development of character, but we are shown an Emily (Vicki Glover) who is lively and vivacious and Anne, played by Hayley Briggs, comes over as the cheeky girl glimpsed in the earliest diary papers.  It is Melanie Dagg, however,to whom the script gives the fullest opportunity.  She carries it off with absolute conviction, always in her part even when the focus of attention is elsewhere.  Her ability to portray utter, pitiful, yet understated, misery is superb.

So much of this production was so very enjoyable, but the play lost direction in Act II when the focus of attention shifted to John Brown, portrayed as Branwell’s evil genius.  Eddie Butler played Brown as a very working-class Yorkshireman complete with Leeds accent and flat cap.  As such, he was good, but he was not John Brown.  As far as is known, Branwell’s downfall had nothing to do with his involvement with the Freemasons.  John Brown may have done little to discourage his drinking habits but, probably, he had no real influence in this area.  Yates’ Brown was a man distrusted by Patrick Brontë and blamed by him for his son’s failings.  Since, in reality, this could not have been the case – Brown was entrusted with Branwell after the debacle of Thorp Green, and was one of the few witnesses at Charlotte’s wedding – the plot here is inevitably thin and confused.  Brown is made to behave in ways which would have been unacceptable not only to the Brontës but to himself: the scene in which Branwell, drunk, introduces an equally drunken Brown into the Parsonage parlour strikes a very off-key note.  Brown’s dialogue with Emily concerning “many infinities, many truths”, and his attempt to waltz with her, suggests that Yates was tempted along different plot lines, as does the closing scene in which Brown, having dug Charlotte’s grave, refers back to that moment.

In spite of the confusion introduced by Brown’s character, this was still a professional production, well directed by Colin Lewisohn and sympathetically staged, and there were many, many instances of a real understanding of difficult characters.  Particularly clever was the way in which Branwell was made to lift well turned phrases from his fiction and insert them into his letters.  Indeed, the use of the text of Brontë letters was extremely well done.

Costumes and props were simple but appropriate and stage management neat and as unobtrusive as possible within a studio setting.  The simple programme, containing synopsis and details of the actors, was refreshingly uncluttered by advertisements, but it was good to see a recommendation to visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, with appropriate details, included in the layout.

This performance was presented by Encore Drama at The Carriageworks in Leeds on Saturday 16 April 2011. The Brontë Boy plays at The Square Chapel, 10 Square Road, Halifax, HX1 1QG on Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 April at 8.00pm.

See Encore's trailer by clicking here.

Spring Walk 2011

IMS writes:
 'We had to walk to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. We set out cold, we arrived at church colder.'

Not so for the twenty four members of the Society who met, in the car park at Cowan Bridge, to walk in the steps of the Brontës. It was one of those rare April days which seem more like June or July for the sun was shining brightly and copious amounts of sun cream were being applied before the group set off. The busy A65 was negotiated and soon we were outside the school where Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily had been for a short time and where it is thought Charlotte was provided with some of her deepest emotional experiences which are brought to the fore in Jane Eyre.

‘I was stiff with long sitting and bewildered with noise and motion of the coach.’

‘I dimly discerned a wall before me and a door open in it.’

‘There was now visible a house or houses- for the building spread far-with many windows’.

‘A large building- half of which seemed grey and old- the other half quite new. The new part containing the school-room and dormitory’.

We stayed awhile looking at the building- now three cottages- perhaps the top row of windows had been the dormitories- we imagined Emily peering out, south east,  in the direction of Haworth thinking of her animals, her brother and youngest sister she had left behind. We were brought back into the present by the rattling of a long ladder as one of the cottage residents prepared to clean his windows- it was time to move on. We passed through fields resplendent with spring flowers, watched the lambs gambolling together and eventually reached Tunstall church.

‘It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between services’

Soon rucksacks were being unpacked and shady spots sought and after sandwiches had been eaten, even on such a lovely day, there was a coolness as we entered the interior of the church and in the depths of winter it would have been miserable for the girls to eat their meagre allowance of cold meat and bread in the little room- its only access now up a very steep ladder- above the porch.

 The second part of the walk beckoned and as I walked toward the gate leading out of the churchyard I saw something very interesting. I love coincidences- chance occurrences or some connected persons and events- and it was quite by chance that I was drawn to read the inscription on one of the headstones. I was so surprised to read the name of an infant male with the first name of Hindley. The only time I have ever encountered this name before was in ‘Wuthering Heights’. I asked myself- was this a common name in use in that area- had Emily known someone at Cowan Bridge who had a brother with that name? Very intriguing- but that’s the Brontë story of course!

 ‘Great grey hills heaved up round the horizon’

Onwards we went. The scenery was magnificent. We saw Ingleborough, with its flat top, standing sentinel in the distance, we looked to the west and saw the gentler hills of Bowland, and away to the north the Lakeland hills stood out bold and proud.

‘We returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces.’

We crossed a ford, waded through a stream, we even carried out ingenious repairs to the sole of someone’s walking boot, and we commented many times how difficult the walk would have been for the schoolgirls with long skirts and thin shoes.

‘Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard;’ ‘a grey marble tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name.’

We crossed over the busy main road once again and made our way on a green path towards the church of Leck. Here we paused for a while around the grave of a girl from the school, who had died in the epidemic when the Brontës were there.

‘I discovered that a great pleasure lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of the garden: in a bright beck full of dark stones and sparkling eddies’

One evening, in the beginning of June, I had stayed out very late, with Mary Jane, in the wood.’

We made our way back towards the car park- making a detour through the wood. We imagined the girls, during the time when death was a frequent visitor to the school, enjoying their new found freedom, eating their repast of thick slices of bread and cheese amongst the majestic elms, ashes and oaks and the woodland plants which sprang up all around.

‘My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry from the very middle of the beck.’

Any of the many boulders and stones, in the babbling brook, fitted that description but it was good to think that the girls could give way to childish things even in the midst of much suffering and sorrow.

‘I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations, for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.’

 So our walk came to an end, farewells were made and soon I was joining the long queue of traffic returning home to West Yorkshire from the Lake District or perhaps the Lancashire coast. Had those people, impatient now to get home, enjoyed the day- eating in the many cafes- looking round the shops in the towns, partaking of ice creams, hot dogs and the like. Probably they had and I hope so, but I would not have exchanged my day with them for anything!

To be forever known

News release from Jenna Holmes:

A new sound installation by artist Catherine Bertola, in response to Haworth Parsonage and commissioned by the Brontë Society as part of its Contemporary Arts Programme, will open at the Parsonage  on Saturday 16 April 2011.

Catherine Bertola creates installations, objects and drawings that respond to particular sites, collections and historic contexts. Underpinning her work is a desire to look beyond the surface of objects and buildings, to uncover the invisible histories of places and people as a way of reframing and reconsidering the past. Bertola often draws on the historic role of women in society, craft production and labour.

‘To be forever known’, is a haunting new sound installation for the Dining Room, that draws on the history of Haworth Parsonage and its famous occupants. Using scientific methods of revealing the resonant harmonies and tones of architectural spaces, Catherine Bertola will ‘capture’ the sounds of the Parsonage. The artist recorded herself reading aloud extracts from the Brontë sisters’ letters. These recordings have been played and re-recorded over and over again into the space, until the words become whispers and the resonances of the room are revealed; the sisters’ thoughts and feelings once again echoing within the walls of the house.

The sound installation will be accompanied by a series of photographs ‘Residual hauntings’ that feature the artist recreating some of the domestic rituals that took place in the house during the Brontës’ time.

To accompany her exhibition, with support from Art in Yorkshire, supported by Tate, Catherine Bertola has also curated a series of three ‘Conversaziones’ to take place at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Conversaziones were small gatherings held by the Victorians in their homes, to discuss topics of the day. Catherine will recreate this Victorian custom after hours at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, bringing together a series of expert speakers and a small intimate audience to discuss themes relating to the Brontës.

Conversaziones

Thursday 12 May, 7pm

Radical Women

Lucasta Miller and Jane Robinson discuss the role of radical women, from the original Bluestockings to the 20th Century suffragettes, who like the Brontës, transcended perceived ideas of femininity.

Jane Robinson is author of Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education.

Lucasta Miller is a writer and critic, and author of The Brontë Myth.

Thursday 16 June, 7pm

Everyday Lives

Ann Dinsdale and Suzanne Fagence Cooper take us through the domestic rituals of an early nineteenth century household, to discover how the Brontë sisters would have occupied their time outside of writing. Ann Dinsdale is Collections Manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Suzanne Fagence Cooper is V&A Research Fellow at Buckinghamshire New University, has written several books on Victorian art and culture, and has been a consultant for BBC programmes including What the Victorians Did for Us, and Simon Schama's History of Britain.

Thursday 7 July, 7pm

Between the Lines

Historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes explores how artefacts and historical evidence can help us to access the people and places of the past.

Kathryn Hughes is Professor of Lifewriting at UEA. Her biographies include George Eliot: the Last Victorian and The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton. She is a journalist and critic, regularly writing for The Guardian and appearing on BBC Radio 4.

Tickets are £14 per event and places limited. Bookings: jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

Artist’s Biography

Catherine Bertola was born in Rugby in 1976, grew up in Halifax and studied Fine Art at Newcastle University. She currently lives and works in Gateshead, UK. She has created site specific installations for a variety of sites and contexts, for organisations such as Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester), V&A Museum (London), Millennium Gallery (Sheffield) and the National Trust. Catherine Bertola has work in several public and private collections and is represented by Workplace Gallery, Gateshead and M+R Fricke, Berlin.

http://www.workplacegallery.co.uk/artists/_Catherine%20Bertola/

Further Information

Art in Yorkshire, supported by Tate

Art in Yorkshire, supported by Tate is a year long celebration of the visual arts in 19 galleries throughout Yorkshire. Works from Tate’s collection of historic, modern and contemporary art will be showcased through a compelling programme of exhibitions and events. Visit http://art.yorkshire.com

Personal Tempest

To be forever known forms part of Personal Tempest; a group exhibition curated by Tereza Kotyk, inspired by Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Thomas Bernhard’s publication Amras which will exhibit at UH Galleries, Hatfield in 2011. An exhibition of Conrad Atkinson’s Emily Brontë-inspired work will be on show at South Square Gallery, Thornton (the Bronte birthplace) from 2 April until 22 May 2011. As well as revisiting Conrad Atkinson’s 1992 installation For Emily, originally commissioned by the Henry Moore Foundation, South Square will also curate previously unseen drawing works which illustrate Atkinson’s fascination with the impulses of the literary mind. Writers William Wordsworth, Emily Brontë and Ted Hughes are represented metaphorically loading shopping trolleys with the components of their inspiration.

ENDS

Saturday 16 April – Friday 08 July 2011

Museum open daily | 10am – 5.30pm | Last admission 5pm

For further information contact the Arts Officer Jenna Holmes

Telephone:      +44 [0] 1535 640188

Email:              jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk

Website:          www.bronte.info

Worse than expected...

Wuthering Heights

BBC Radio 3

Sunday 27 March,2011

8.00pm

Ellen Dean                 Janine Duvitski

David Birrell              Mr Lockwood/Linton Heathcliff

Russell Boulter         Hindley Earnshaw/Hareton Earnshaw

Samuel Barnett         Edgar Linton

Carl Prekopp             Heathcliff

Natalie Press             Catherine Earnshaw/Catherine Linton

Produced in Bristol by Tim Dean

Review by Chris Went:

Lovers of Emily Brontë’s novel  have endured much over the years, from William Wyler’s abbreviated Hollywood rendition through Juliette Binoche’s French accented Cathy, the BBC’s radio serial which made the house the narrator, to Tom Hardy sniffing his way through the last TV version.  “Oh, damn my soul! but [it’s] worse than I expected – and the devil knows I was not sanguine!”  So said Heathcliff on first meeting his son.  As a comment on this latest offering, it seems appropriate.

Jonathan Holloway’s new radio adaptation promised a ‘modernised and hard-hitting’ version, and listeners were warned that it contained strong language and racist terms.  According to Holloway this  was ‘.....part of my attempt to capture the shock the book caused when it was published.’  The Daily Express told its readers that the play would ’.....portray Cathy and Heathcliff as listeners have never heard them before.’  This proved to be true, but not entirely in the way the Express reporter meant.

 Andrew McCarthy of the Brontë Parsonage Museum has been widely quoted as saying that ‘It doesn’t take much imagination to fill in the blanks’ referring to the part of the novel where the child Hareton horrifies Ellen Dean with his ‘string of curses’ and his admission that it is Heathcliff who taught him to swear.  There are many points in the story where a modern adaptation might insert the words which Brontë undoubtedly knew but could never write - at least not for public consumption:  Heathcliff’s first encounter with the Lintons when his swearing shocks old Mrs Linton; Hindley who ‘entered, vociferating oaths dreadful to hear’ and any number of lesser occasions.  In a dramatisation the inclusion of the F-word for such scenes makes some sense: Brontë meant us to imagine stronger terms than ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ so there is no point in being mimsy about it.  The problem was not the word itself, but how and where it was used.  Its insertion it into dialogue for which Brontë allowed no such implication was irritating but to have it interjected into a massacred version of Cathy’s great ‘I am Heathcliff’ speech was unforgivable.  Several  terms of abuse used of, and by, Heathcliff jarred horribly less because they were offensive but because they were wildly anachronistic.  In a thoroughly modernised version they would have been appropriate but, inserted into the fractured remnants of the original text, they sounded ridiculous.

However,  the use of offensive language was not the problem.  That aspect was a mere curiosity, artistically defensible if properly executed within a high quality production.  In this case it was little more than a gimmick, and the whole best forgotten.  Whilst there are many difficulties in the way of a satisfactory visual rendition of Wuthering Heights, it would seem perfectly possible to produce a creditable – even a great – radio version of the book.  What we had was a disjointed script which gave the impression of being written by someone who had relied on a précis based on a skim-reading of the book.  A listener new to the work would have been hard put to follow the plot, while those who know it well could only be infuriated.

Jonathan Holloway’s script did manage to keep the main characters more or less to their correct ages – something virtually every film adaptation has failed to do – though Ellen Dean was played by Janine Duvitski as a middle-aged woman throughout.    It was Ellen who opened the play with a fanciful speech about the moor,  and who was given dialogue and opinions which come straight from Holloway’s mind.  According to his Ellen: Hindley Earnshaw’s wife, Frances, was ‘an impoverished, doll-like idiot’; Isabella broke into the Grange after her escape from Wuthering Heights, and the mingling of Cathy Linton’s and Hareton’s light and dark hair were reminiscent of the light and dark curls which went with Catherine to her grave.  But the worst is not yet!

Holloway’s script used several scenes from the book which are invariably omitted from dramatisations but in virtually every case there was distortion.  Ellen’s vision of Hindley as a child at the stone pillar is a notable example.  In the book this incident is so sharply evocative that one wonders whether Bronte had her brother in mind when she wrote it.  Holloway reduced it to the banal by making the vision a real child – Hareton.  Again and again there were changes, additions and contradictions.   Mr Earnshaw was away to Liverpool for six days;  Isabella went to live in Surrey;  Heathcliff had been in the army; Catherine’s final illness was brought on by her being out all night on the moors; Cathy Linton was pleased to discover that Hareton is her cousin; Hareton turned against Heathcliff and threatened him; Ellen told of the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff peeping through Joseph’s bedroom window.  Joseph, incidentally, was referred to but never heard, while Zillah was made to give Ellen an account of the wedding of Cathy and Linton Heathcliff.   We also heard that Edgar Linton gave his nephew up to Heathcliff before the latter made a single demand.  To be fair to Holloway, his portrayal of Linton Heathcliff as a self-obsessed, whining, unpleasant wretch was true to the book, but not the deception by which Cathy and Ellen were imprisoned at The Heights.  The mangling of the plot at this point was particularly exasperating.

The disjointed nature of the plot as portrayed by Holloway has already been noted as bewildering to anyone unfamiliar with the novel.  Based on this portrayal, anyone who has heard of ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a story of a passionate love affair, of Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s obsession with eachother, would struggle to understand just why Heathcliff cared twopence for Catherine.  Her part was reduced to a few words here and there other than what might be called her great speeches.  ‘Great’, however, is not an appropriate word in this context.  The scene in which Catherine confides in Ellen about her intention to marry Edgar even though she does not love him as she loves Heathcliff was edited and ’modernised’ into trivial, contradictory nonsense.  The interchange in the kitchen of Thrushcross Grange which culminates in Edgar’s attack on Heathcliff and Catherine’s hysteria was similarly reduced.  Worse still, Natalie Press’s Catherine delivered her lines in an early BBC accent strongly reminiscent of Joyce Grenfell.  As for passion, Violet Beauregard exhibited far more in her desire for a Wonka golden ticket!  Doubling up as Cathy II, Press’s voice and flat delivery were exactly the same. 

This doubling up – David Birrell as Lockwood and Linton Heathcliff and Russell Boulter as Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw – was occasionally confusing and, with the omission of the character of Joseph, implied underfunding.   A few seconds, here and there, of incidental music failed to inject any desperately needed atmosphere.  Heathcliff, played by Carl Prekopp, did manage to sound devastated at Catherine’s death but, particularly in the second half of the story, his voice lacked the necessary harshness so that his Heathcliff came across as a nice man with a sense of humour trying hard not to be.

A Lockwood soliloquy closed the play, but what the character had to say – thankfully not much - simply carried the awfulness to the bitter end.  The dereliction of Gimmerton chapel was applied to The Heights, Bronte’s lyrical ending was ignored, and Lockwood, echoing the opening words of Ellen Dean, cursed and blessed the moor.  The listener would be heartily forgiven for cursing the BBC for this infliction and blessing it for having the charity to limit it to ninety minutes.  

John Martin: Heaven and Hell

The Laing Art Gallery, New Bridge Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 8A

Until 5 June 2011.  Monday - Saturday 10 am – 5pm; Sunday 2pm – 5pm.  Closed 29 April 2011.  Entry is free.

Review by Chris Went:

In 1829, describing the founding of Glass Town, Charlotte Brontë wrote: ‘How long has it taken to rear the Grand Hall where we now are?  Have not those marble pillars and that solemn dome been built by supernatural power?  If you view the city from this Gothic window and see the beams of the morn gilding the battlements of the mighty towers, and the pillars of the splendid palaces which have been reared in a few months, can you doubt that magic has been used in their construction?’  If the 13-year-old Charlotte could have seen the original painting of ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’, a mezzotint of which surely influenced her first vision of Glass Town, she might have imagined that the artist too had worked under the influence of magic.

There is something distinctly strange, surreal, about Martin’s work, something – one is tempted to believe -  precognitive and uncannily knowing.  The scale of his representations of Belshazzar’s palace, of Nineveh and Pandemonium reminds one of the vastness of the computer generated cities of “Star Wars”, or the similarly devised landscapes of “The Lord of the Rings”.  To look at the depiction of the destruction of the earth in his ‘Last Judgement’ is to be reminded painfully of the recent disaster which struck Japan.  Not for nothing was that event described over and over as being of biblical proportions, and biblical proportions are what John Martin produced so successfully.

 The exhibition occupies the five galleries which make up the whole of the first floor of the gallery and as such, is the largest the Laing has ever mounted.  Each room’s display is themed to tell a part of  Martin’s story from his birth in 1789 at East Landends near Haydon Bridge in Northumberland, to his death on the Isle of Man in 1854 using clear wall-mounted text boards which, cleverly sited, are accessible without being intrusive.  Indeed, both the staging and the lighting of the exhibition are superb: nothing is allowed to detract from the works.  The atmosphere is comfortable, the staff friendly and helpful, and there are plenty of places to sit down.

It is obvious that Martin always intended his art to be commercial. Whilst working as a painter on ceramics he produced small landscapes, watercolours of classical subjects and illustrations for prints, all of which were designed to sell.  Some of his earliest oils seem somewhat flat and almost amateurish: two small paintings of Kensington Gardens, both done in 1815, do not prepare one for the awesome scale and drama of the Welsh mountain landscape of ‘The Bard’ (1817).  Again and again he painted cities which appear almost organic: growing out of crags and peaks apparently intended not merely to impress but to overawe, and when Martin illustrates destruction, be it Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh or the earth itself, he does so with all the visual tropes of a modern disaster movie.

Although Martin was never beloved of the art Establishment, he enjoyed a long period of commercial success largely through the production of mezzotint prints of his most popular works.  As well as ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ the Brontës owned ‘Joshua Commands the Sun to Stand Still’ and ‘The Deluge’.  They may also have had a copy of ‘St Paul Preaching at Athens’ all of which feature in the exhibition, as does ‘The Last Man’ which Charlotte saw on her visit to London in 1850, describing it in a letter to her father as “a grand, wonderful picture”.  She might have added that it provokes a strong sense of desolate misery.  Many of Martin’s prints were used in popular annuals of the time, some of which the Brontës owned, and it was common for publications such as Blackwood’s Magazine to analyse popular works in great detail.  In July, 1828 Blackwood’s published a detailed description and critique of Martin’s ‘The Fall of Nineveh’ which is believed to have influenced Charlotte’s poem ‘The Trumpet Hath Sounded’  (December, 1831).

It is easy to imagine, whilst viewing the main part of the exhibition, that the young Brontës must have wished for coloured reproductions of Martin’s works.  However, the display of mezzotints in the Barbour Gallery allows a completely different view of Martin’s best-known pictures.  While the prints lack the drama of colour, this is more than compensated for in sharpness of line and detail.  The monumental scale of the buildings, the ominous quality, the turbulence of celestial phenomena are depicted with a startling clarity. There is a sinister eeriness about the prints which is not present in the paintings.  In short, the mezzotints are far more frightening than the coloured works.

The final section of the exhibition, The End of All Things, shows Martin’s last great work: the three enormous paintings entitled ‘The Great Day of His Wrath’; ‘The Last Judgement’ and ‘The Plains of Heaven’, all painted between 1851 and 1853. Each one is disturbing, either obviously or subtly.  One expects to be disturbed by scenes of cataclysmic annihilation; one does not expect to find a representation of heavenly bliss unsettling.  It may have been entirely unintended, but in the waterside rocks of paradise one seemed to see the ghosts of those monumental, monstrous palaces and colonnades which one had just seen swept away at the last judgement.

  

The Laing Art Gallery is staging John Martin: Heaven and Hell as part of ‘The Great British Art Debate’, a partnership project between Tate Britain, Tyne and Wear Archives & Museums, Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service and Museums Sheffield.  The Great British Art Debate is a series of events and exhibitions bringing art from national collections to the regions.  It aims to encourage the public to join in a debate about what British art has to say about identity and Britishness today. The exhibition will also be staged at the Millennium Galleries, Sheffield from 22 June to 4 September, and at Tate Britain, London from 21 September to 15 January, 2012.

The Laing has a pleasant cafe offering a good range of snacks and meals at reasonable prices.  There is also a shop selling postcards, prints, gifts and books.  In stock is “John Martin Apocalypse Now” by Barbara C. Morden which tells Martin’s story, exploring the nature of his art with lavish illustrations.  It is published by Northumbria Press at £30.00.

Below, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:

  

Buy Ponden Hall?

Ponden Hall is up for sale. All the details are here.

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Branwell wrote a short story about the house - Thurston's at Darkwall - and used the well-stocked library there along with Emily. She knew the well-off Heaton family which lived there very well. Heaton sounds rather like Hareton, and there is a date plaque above the main entrance which informs us that the rebuilt version of the house dates from 1801, which happens to be the date when Wuthering Heights begins, and this leads some to believe that Emily imagined Heathcliff living there. I like this idea, for the simple unscholarly reason that a few years ago I walked by it in heavy snow...

There is a tiny single-paned window on the east gable. Emily, some believe, had that in mind when she wrote about the ghost of Cathy scratching at it, trying to get in. I like that idea as well, but there is no evidence...

The main tradition, however, is that it is identifiable with Thrushcross Grange, home of the Lintons: it would probably have seemed grand to the Brontës, with few other large houses in the area, but again there is no evidence at all. The Grange was in a large park, too.

The library has been dispersed to who knows where since the late nineteenth century when many of the books were sold off in a Keighley market-place. Perhaps someone there still has a Shakespeare First Folio in an attic.

You would still have to be well-off to buy the place: the interior has been refurbished brilliantly.

John Martin in Newcastle

Chris Went writes:
 A major exhibition of John Martin's paintings opened on 5 March at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  The exhibition, which will run until  June, features eighty of Martin's oil paintings including Belshazzar's Feast, which is on loan from America.  


This is a rare opportunity to see the originals of the prints which inspired the young Brontës when they created their imaginary worlds.  Entry to the exhibition is free.

‘Saucy Pat’ exhibition opens at the Parsonage

News release from the Parsonage:

He was father to three of the most famous authors in the world yet most of us know very little about Patrick Brontë. This year marks the 150^th anniversary of his death in 1861 and the Brontë Parsonage Museum will be opening a new exhibition to celebrate the life and work of this ‘somewhat eccentrik’ Irish curate. The exhibition, Patrick Brontë: In His Own Right will open on 17 March, St Patrick’s Day.

Patrick was born in Ireland in a small cabin and was the eldest son of a poor farmer. From a very young age he was highly ambitious, enthusiastic and intelligent; by the time he was just sixteen he had already opened his first school. A few years later Patrick had secured himself a place at Cambridge University to pursue a career in the Church. He left Ireland for England where he was to spend the rest of his long life, eventually settling in Haworth at the Parsonage.

This new exhibition features some of Patrick’s own publications, as well as many letters and personal possessions …

This exhibition is a first for the museum. Understandably, there’s been a tendency to focus on Patrick’s famous daughters and their great literary achievements, but Patrick was an extraordinary figure in his own right; as an author, scholar, clergyman, and social campaigner, as well as the father and educator of his remarkable children. This exhibition is long overdue and will give visitors an insight not only into Patrick as the ‘father of genius’, but also into his own fascinating background and his prominent role within nineteenth century Haworth

(Andrew McCarthy, Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum)

The exhibition will also feature a number of important loan items from the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester and the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. After the death of his last daughter, Charlotte, Patrick asked Elizabeth Gaskell to write “an account of her life”. The letters on loan from the John Ryland’s Library document Patrick’s involvement in the first biography of Charlotte Bronte by providing Gaskell with background information on his early life and memories of his daughter.

Also included in the exhibition will be a very special letter on loan from the Brotherton Library in Leeds. Written by Maria Branwell before she married Patrick, it is addressed to ‘My Dear Saucy Pat’ and is one of the few surviving letters that exist by Mrs Brontë, giving a wonderful insight into their courtship. After the sudden death of his wife, Patrick was left to raise their six young children on his own; of which his three youngest girls made them the most famous literary family in the world. He outlived all of them, eventually dying at the age of 84.

Contacts & Further Information:   

               

Sarah Laycock (Collections & Library Officer) 01535 640199 sarah.laycock@bronte.org.uk/  

Ann Dinsdale (Collections Manager) 01535 640198 –a.dinsdale@bronte.org.uk