Ford Madox Brown at Haltwhistle

My photograph of the Brazen Serpent Window at Haltwhistle has appeared in the book of the current Brown exhibition at Manchester . I am sure that a reassessment of Ford Madox Brown's curious art is long overdue. I don't really think he improved with age and there is a certain world-weariness about the later art which seems slightly depressing.The  decorative side is seems to come into greater prominence. The Manchester Murals are striking in this respect.

Bosanquet window

We went to Rock the other day.I had not been there since I was young. It was a delight to see the church again . It is a fairly decent,small Norman building with many artistic and intellectual associations.(David Jones, Ben Nicholson etc from the time when Helen Sutherland lived here). The intellectual links come from the Bosanquet family who were archaeologists, administrators and active in charitable work.The church has an excellent late window by Leonard Evetts from 1991.This window commemorates four members of the Bosanquet family.Robert Bosanquet and his wife Ellen, his son Charles and his wife Barbara.The older Bosanquets are remembered in the left hand panel where you can see a Minoan double axe, a Greek temple and a circular Greek motif-RCB excavated in Crete.In the right hand panel reference is made to CIB's activities as first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Newcastle by display of the university's coat of arms.CIB's birth in Athens is hinted at by the appearance of the owl from the rebverse of an Athenian tetradrachm.I have not worked out the significance of the eagle yet It may relate to Barbara Bosanquet who was American. In that case the images at the top of the left hand panel would relate to her mother -in-law.(PS Will get a better picture when I visit next).Here is a detail of Athena's owl-it gives abetter impression of the window.

St Martin's Church, Brampton, Cumberland: Window by Burne-Jones

St Martin's Church, Brampton, Cumberland, a photo by James Holland on Flickr.

I have just read Fiona MacCarthy's book on Burne-Jones. What I like about Burne-Jones is his work s a designer (sort of)and his humorous drawings. But there isn't that much on the stained glass-we hear that he made some but nothing significant about the manufacture-can you imagine B-J grozing away? I cannot. As a painter he is alien to me -it is more like heraldry than art.We do have one of his better works in Newcastle but all those people with their pointy chins are boring. The female portraits with their huge eyes are quite repellent. This is a kind of historicist, hot-house painting which I cannot admire.
The book is a typical MacCarthy production and is perfectly readable.The index is decently done. She uses the word mouvementé like a new toy-too often.She is maybe a bit credulous about the use of ox-gall and might have been clearer about the position of Legros in the Victorian art world. Steer is named with Sickert as being a painter of urban squalor-a very odd duo they would be. Sickert yes, Steer, no (page 298).The place name Assonan should most likely read Assouan the French name for the place in Egypt which we call Aswan.

The BM has recently published a selection of Burne-Jones' funny drawings (and also a book on Eric Gill). Both seem to be nicely produced and the price is reasonable. You can read about the Burne-Jones here.
The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Immagination
Fona MacCarthy,Faber&Faber 2011.