a man for all seasons: 1904

A LATE HISTORY

To Herbert Cahoon

1.
Black, under the candlesticks, moving in harness
To a slow music, we hang the sepulchre

And hear the herald angels sing, “He is not here.”
It is mid-November. The first snows

Have fallen silently over the town. I eat
Black pudding at the alter while a dove

Descends from the flaming tower. Later,
Dr. Rashdall, behind whose scholarship

A generation’s knowledge burns, will unmask
Newman. But now it is mid-November.
I eat black pudding and the dove descends.

2.
In a hollow tree by the bridge, an owl awaits.
The moon is full and white. The stars are out.

Tall elms surround the statue of a nymph
Where old Etonians, festive in Norfolk jackets,

Commemorate D. G. Rossetti with a plaque.
I relish the scene, remembering old Watts-Dunton

Boasting, “Dogs have never bitten me!” that day
We talked about Rossetti. Later, attacks of gout,

That horrible baby that looked like Gosse, a wheelchair
Wobbling on toward Trinity, webs covering my eyes.

But tonight the moon is full, and white. Thus 1904 begins.

Weldon Kees

Weldon Kees, “A Late History” from
The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees edited by Donald Justice.
Copyright 1962, 1975, by the University of Nebraska Press.
© renewed 2003 by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Disappearing Poet

with thanks to laura for scans!

a season for all mans ... no, wait: 1921 (the calendars)

i have always loved calendars, things that mark time,
categories. in my life i have made made a number of them:

the first one was inspired by an exhibition at the berkeley art museum.
the point of the show was that along with the images
were words from the artist as part of the piece.
one was a calendar with the artist's life's events.
i made the lily pond and family history calendar.
my dad loved it.

the second one was a black & white calendar of my photos
of my friends, mostly women, mostly naked.

the third was a poster calendar
designed to remind women to do breast self exam
every month. 1981. i still have a whole unopened carton!

another way i've organized my impressions
has been to write down what bird arrives when,
what blossoms when, and like that.

for example this year everything's a bit late.
the robins and waxwings have only just recently
come for the red berries on the cotoneaster.

but by my bird tracking calendar,
i know that in '96 the waxwings were here as early
as the 6th of january. in 2004 it was jan 17th, and in 1990,
january 19th. i also know that though now one purple iris
has opened, in 2002 they started late january.

i also know the species who don't come anymore.
this year is the first one with no golden-crowned sparrows
accompanying the white-crowneds. haven't seen pine siskins
in years, nor song sparrows (in my yard).

once night many years ago there were dueling mockingbirds
atop the telephone poles, trading songs. i rarely hear even one, now.
trees have been cut down. other species have claimed the property.
due to the fires in the hills there are now crows and ravens and hawks
down here in the flatlands; they used to just be in the hills.

and then there's climate.

a man for all seasons: 1914

SINGING STARLINGS

REDSHANK IN FLOWERING FIELD

DRINKING ROBIN

WHITE HERON IN THE STORM

this is all i have for 1914.
it's the only other year with any words added to the images.

swimming in the shadows

i have read similar things about the dutch art nouveau porcelain in numerous places:

The Art Nouveau movement developed as a reaction against historicism. The interpre- tation of the wealth of forms to be found in the worlds of plant and animal life, follow- ing the example of Japanese art, was one of the innovative aspects of this movement.

It was also a reaction against the frequently low quality of industrial design. In the Netherlands as elsewhere there was a desire to reinstate honest craftmanship, which led to reforms of technical training and to exhibitions of good examples of design. Art Nouveau in the Netherlands, unlike that of other countries, generally takes the form of symmetrical compositions in which asymmetrical details are incorporated. Decorations are also often confined to the flat surface.

Dutch ceramics of this period are characterized by the large quantities that were produced and by the high degree of mutual influence present. Floral, linear and geometrical designs were adapted. A fairly small group of designers is respon- sible for most of the original models; the others often go back to classical Chinese porcelain and traditional Delft ware.

Inspiration for the decorations was drawn from the pattern- books of, for instance M. Verneuil and E. Grassèt, and the domestic and foreign magazines that circulated. 1

it's that part, as another book puts it, "The artists took as models illustrations from the French book on ornamental plants La Plante et ses Applications ornementales, published in Paris in 1896. This is an instance of how knowledgeable the artists were about the very latest developments in ornamenta- tion... the leading fashions were closely followed by the factories," 2 that confuses me.

it's clear that the influx of japanese arts and crafts had as much of an impact in the netherlands as they did elsewhere throughout the west. though as in every country the dutch put their own spin on it, the influence is unmistakable.

in fact, though japan's influence is mentioned in these books and sites, they seemed to pay more credence to the 'design books' of the times. but i have been through dozens of images of (mostly rozen- burg) porcelain, and the same amount of the many verneuil/ grasset/ mucha style books, and i have actually found very few that have seemed related except for on the most superficial levels. the japanese influence is throughout.

and yet, just as modernisme (art nouveau) in spain is influenced by moorish design and architecture, holland's nieuwe kunst is influenced by both the japanese (which we've discussed to great length), and the indonesian styles, as the dutch east india company set up trade in both places centuries before the rest of the west were allowed to.

note this particular rozenburg vase, one which makes quite obvious the reason their porcelains were called 'eggshell.' both indonesian and japanese influences are readily apparent. flowers with art nouveau grace, stems with the angularity of a shadow puppet.

my continuing ignorance can be immediately revealed when i tell you that it simply had never occurred to me that the afore-mentioned design books were used in such a way! i don't know what i thought they were used for, but never that!

and while i quite knew, as we have discussed before, that japanese design books were made for just exactly that reason, it didn't occur to me that the french ones were too!

so how did that work? were the designs under some sort of copyright, and a fee had to be paid to the designer (or, more likely, the publisher) to use them? what about the silver studio designs? surely they were not available without some kind of licencing.

the answers to these intriguing questions will have to wait. maybe someone read- ing this knows! if so, please add your knowledge. see another part of the same loop in the paintings of jan toorop -- clearly the same set of inspirational inputs. look too at all of the dutch calendar makers we've been chronicling: they also designed the pottery, painted the paintings; it was not a large crowd, but it was, as we've seen, a tight one.

a man for all seasons: 1907

i have done very little translating but i did once write an essay on it, and the devilish difficulty of it as an art. i now know whereof i spoke.

in another of his inspirations from the japanese, hoytema added poetry to this year's images. i was half-way through google-translating them when i realized that in the dutch, they rhymed.

so part of my englishifying them was once or twice looking for the rhyme, but more often sifting through what i thought they were to have meant, and making more clear the connotations in english. corrections will be welcomed. many of them just don't make sense to me, but i like them anyway.

Hear how the gray thrush called,
"Who called?" "Who called?" "Who called?"

The sparrows call from their branch:
"Spiou, spiou, spialak!"
or from the high tree top:
"Tsjaki, tsjaki, tsjakop!"

The duck calls with its flat beak:
"Quack-Quack-Quack-Quack!"
and from the shore:
"Croak, croak, croak, croak, croak!"

Shouted suddenly from the wood,
"Green gold, gold, gray, yellow gold!"

From the flowering branch,
the thrush sings with all his might.

The Oriole lures in a foreign language:
"Guadatleadaal, guadatleadaal!"
but jays like him understand:
"Fluaidaat, fluaidaat!"

The redshank glides o'er the fields each hour:
"Tureluur, tureluur, tureluur!"

The magpie calls from the forest:
"Do the door, sweetheart, do the door again!"

Still leaves sounds go through the reeds:
"Quits, quits, - carts, carts, - quits, quits, quits!"

Though most birds migrate away;
the blue heron and the siskin stay.

Now pull it back through the dark night,
the softest sounds: "luwiet," "loewite."

From snow outside the house of men
sounds the clear song of the wren.

lion-cachet & dijsselhof & nieuwenhuis, oh my! (the calendars)

three additional dutch artists included wonderful calendars in their bodies of work, and in research- ing van hoytema i've come across them frequently.

The striking impressionist group portrait by Isaac Israels is not only a demon- stration of his dexterity as an artist, but also illustrates the friend- ship that existed between, and is characteristic of, the artists of the Eighties Movement in Amsterdam.

This movement determined the artistic climate in the last decades of the 19th Century. In the present lot, three (decorative) artists are portrayed who worked in the area of the applied arts and were important representatives of the 'Nieuwe Kunst' group, which developed in the Netherlands under the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Depicted are, from left to right, Carel Adolph Lion Cachet (1864-1945), Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof (1866-1924) and Theodoor Willem Nieuwenhuis (1866-1951).

These three men would become emblematic of the applied arts department of the firm Van Wisselingh & Co., which founded a furniture and crafts workshop in Amsterdam in 1898. Israels' portrait of his three friends and contemporaries was painted in 1894 when they were around thirty years old and thus predates their commercial success with Van Wisselingh & Co.

Israels, who moved to Amsterdam in 1887, soon befriended his peers like the artists and designers that are portrayed in the present lot. From 1888 until 1904 he lived in the house on the 1e Parkstraat 438, which would later become Oosterpark 82 and is currently known as the 'Witsenhuis'. This house was bustling with artists and writers; George Hendrik Breitner (1857- 1923) had his studio there from 1887 until 1891, Israels' friend, the writer Frans Erens (1847-1935), lived there regularly and Willem Witsen (1860-1923) bought the house in 1891.

Lion Cachet sometimes worked in Israels' studio, and in the year the present lot was painted, he and Israels painted en plein air on the island Marken in order to portray its inhabitants dressed in their local costumes.

Dijsselhof lived on the ground floor of the house at the beginning of the 1890's, when he had just achieved his first successes with his paintings of aquarium fish. Just before Witsen married Marie Schorr in 1907, the front room on the first floor was adorned with wallpaper which was decorated with dragonflies and flowers designed by Theo Nieuwenhuis which can still be admired in the 'Witsenkamer' today.

Isaac Israels was, next to Witsen, a key-figure as friend and host in this lively house on the 1e Oosterparkstraat which was so popular amongst artists. (see: Jessica Voeten, Het Witsenhuis, Amsterdam 2003, passim).

It is very likely that Israels painted the portrait of his three friends in his studio by the Oosterpark, which they regularly visited. Some careful planning can be detected in the composition: behind Lion Cachet and Dijsselhof we can see a section of the 'Delftsche Slaolie' lithograph which was designed by Nieuwenhuis in 1893.

The compo- sition of the group portrait, a cropped close-up, can be related to the then developing and popular art of photo- graphy. Breitner, Witsen and Israels were active photographers, and both Witsen and Israels used photographs as study material for their paintings.

A photograph by Witsen or Israels that could have formed the basis of the present lot has not yet been found. This being the case, we may assume that Israels painted this spirited work from life. Nieuwenhuis' role in the creation of the present lot is not confined to his poster for 'Delftsche Slaolie' in the background and his portrayal in the picture.

He also made a carved frame for the panel with decorations burnt into it and monograms above the portraits of the three sitters. Unfortunately, the location of the original frame is presently un- known, but the knowledge that it was made for this painting adds to the value of the work as an extraordinary docu- ment of four 'Tachtigers' which so clearly reflects the creative spirit of the era.

We are grateful to Drs Wiepke Loos for writing the catalogue entry. 1