29 August 2024
Empire and French Caricature from 1870-1871 (Part 2)
The British Library’s collection of 1870-71 caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune (shelfmark 14001.g.41, Cup.648.b.2, Cup.648.b.8) offer insight not only into their contemporary conflicts, but the political and cultural worlds which had formed the outlooks of their artists.
The theme of Empire reappears several times in the collection. Building on earlier royal invasions of Algeria, between 1852-70 Napoleon III’s Second Empire launched several campaigns of imperial expansion across the globe, including in China, Southeast Asia, Lebanon, Mexico, and continued interventions in North Africa.
Though designed in part to boost French prestige on an international level, often the campaigns were deeply unpopular at home. This was particularly acute in cases where French forces combatted republican foes, such as the repeated interventions on the Italian peninsula and in Mexico, where Napoleon III’s attempts to put Austrian archduke Maximilian on the throne were eventually thwarted by Benito Juarez’s [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benito-Juarez] republican army. Yet thanks to strict censorship laws, those wishing to be critical of these campaigns – particularly of Mexico – could make only vague allusions for fear of arrest or fines.
When these systems of censorship fell away with the Empire in September 1870, the floodgates opened, exemplified by the remarks of Jules Ferry – who would go on to decree several of the Third Republic’s own colonial efforts less than a decade later - in his description of the French people as ‘sickened by the overseas adventures of the Second Empire’.
Caricaturists likewise centralised the Second Empire’s imperial follies in their criticism of the fallen regime. An excellent example of this is A. Belloguet’s twelve-print series Pilori-Phrénologie, each of which rather resemble the artwork of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Belloguet applies popular interest in phrenology – the pseudo-science which reasoned that one could detect personality traits from skull shape – to twelve leading figures of 1870-1, including Prussian minister Otto von Bismarck, future French president Adolphe Thiers and Pope Pius IX, all found in the Library’s third volume.
A. Belloguet, Pilori-Phrénologie (1), Napoleon III, (Paris, 1870) Volume 3 14001.g.41].
The first of the set takes on fallen French Emperor Napoleon III, which is actually an update of an earlier print circulated in Belgium towards the end of the Second Empire. Belloguet details the Emperor’s visage with a series of ad hominem attacks and details of his eclectic political life, including mentions of his two unsuccessful attempted coups in Strasbourg (1836) and Boulogne (1840) and his surrender at Sedan in 1870.
Belloguet also highlights Napoleon III’s collar with four moments of repression. In addition to that of Paris in the aftermath of his coup in 1851, the collar lists ‘Mexico’, ‘Rome’, and ‘Aspromonte’. Each of the three were part of the Second Empire’s later expansionary aims – particularly offensive given that French opponents were republican, and in the case of the Italian campaigns in Rome and Aspromonte, French troops fought radical hero Giuseppe Garibaldi. As if to emphasise this, the bloody rag which drips from where Napoleon III’s mouth should be reads ‘Mentana’ – a conflict in November 1867 where Garibaldi was injured by French forces defending Rome on behalf of the Pope.
Though many caricatures directly attacked political personages or ideologies, several sets were dedicated to examining and gently mocking the disrupted rhythm of life in Paris under the siege. For instance, artists routinely produced images depicting the food crisis, making light of the fact that Parisians had turned to horsemeat to survive, and that some were even put into the position of eating cats, dogs, and even rats. Such social commentary also could include references to the Second Empire’s imperial campaigns.
An exemplar of such social caricature is found in the Library’s second volume, in a set entitled Paris Assiégé (Besieged Paris) by Jules Renard - signing his images as under a pseudonym the reverse of his surname, ‘Draner’. The twentieth of the set depicts novel positions taken up by Parisians in the boulevards in order to avoid the falling Prussian shells during their bombardment of the city, which had intensified in January 1871 after German forces had reached Paris in September.
Jules Renard (Draner), Paris Assiége (20) Les Effets du Bombardement (The Effects of Bombardment), (Paris, 1870) Volume 2 14001.g.41.
The figure in the foreground – subtly dressed in the colours of the French tricolore – claims that the Parisians kneeling were neither men nor women, but instead Ambassadors of Siam. Perhaps a rather obscure reference at first glance, but like the caricatures discussed in the previous blog of this series, Renard takes a cue from high art as inspiration for this print.
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Réception des ambassadeurs siamois par l’Empereur Napoléon III au palais de Fontainebleu, 27 juin 1861 (Reception of Siamese Ambassadors by Emperor Napoleon III at Fontainebleu Palace, 27 June 1861). (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)
Renard references a painting presented at Paris’s 1865 Salon, Réception des ambassadeurs siamois par l’Empereur Napoléon III au palais de Fontainebleu, 27 juin 1861 by Jean-Léon Gérôme. In it, rows of ambassadors from the Kingdom of Siam (modern-day Thailand) kneel before the French imperial couple, presenting them with a letter from their king Mongkut (Rama IV). The two states had long since established relations: almost two centuries before this meeting, the court of Louis XIV had received visits from the Kingdom of Siam.
In 1856 Siam and France had signed a commercial treaty which granted France a foothold in Southeast Asia – which simultaneously reduced Siamese influence on its neighbouring areas. Fifteen years later, upon hearing the news of Napoleon III’s forced abdication in September, the rulers of Siam expressed their ‘exaggerated sympathies’ for the fallen Emperor.
These exaggerated sympathies were shared by the vast majority of French caricaturists operating in 1870-71. Yet despite their antipathy towards the regime’s foreign exploits, it was not long before France once again pursued foreign glory, their colonial policies now led by who had once been at the forefront of the criticism of such policies. If the ire of caricaturists towards foreign expansion was ever-present during 1870-71, it certainly waned from any long-lasting political programme in the years thereafter.
Anthony Chapman-Joy, CDP Student at the British Library and Royal Holloway
References/further reading
Morna Daniels, ‘Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune’, Electronic British Library Journal, (2005), pp. 1-19
Quentin Deluermoz, D’ici et d’ailleurs: histoires globales de la France contemporaine (XVIIIe-XXe siècle) (Paris, 2021) YF.2022.a.12094
Bertrand Tillier, La Commune de Paris: Révolution sans images? (Paris, 2004), YF.2004.a.14526
David Todd, A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 2021) YC.2022.a.7337
19 August 2024
Religious Metaphors in French Caricature from 1870-71 (Part 1)
The British Library’s collection of Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune caricatures (shelfmarks 14001.g.41, Cup.648.b.2, Cup.648.b.8) exemplifies how artists from a variety of diverse national, political and cultural backgrounds engaged with l’année terrible.
Broadly speaking, 1870-71 prints can be split into two formats. Single-sheet images produced by small teams of editors and artists were sold on the street, pasted onto buildings and displayed in shop windows. On the other hand, pre-existing publishing houses – including those which produced weekly satirical journals, like Le Charivari (1832-1937), designed sets with print collectors in mind. This latter form was adorned with title pages, and arguably maintained a higher artistic sophistication. Artists did not limit themselves to just one category: for instance, Faustin Betbeder (1848-1914), who claimed that his first single-sheet image sold more than 50,000 copies, also created multiple sets during 1870-71, several of which can be found in the BL’s collections.
Both formats touched on the same topics. For example, references to Christianity shaped both single sheets and co-ordinated sets. Their use most frequently relied on the ironic comparison of biblical figures or parables with their contemporary parallels. The BL’s fifth volume (14001.g.41) holds a set of three images which each parody three scenes from the Bible immortalised in famous works of art. The first, drawn by F. Mathis, is a spoof of Leonardo’s Last Supper mural.
F. Mathis, La Nouvelle Cène (The New Last Supper), (Paris, 1871) Volume 5 14001.g.41.
It is an almost stroke-for-stroke reproduction, but for the substitution of Jesus and John with figures wearing a Phrygian-cap and an allegory of Paris, respectively. Further, Jesus’s apostles are replaced by figures of the twelve members of the ephemeral and unpopular Government of National Defence, which led France following the fall of the Second Empire in September 1870 until a new government was formed by Adolphe Thiers (the bespectacled figure on the far left of Mathis’s print, ominously peeping through the door) in February 1871.
The gesticulating guests at Leonardo’s Last Supper respond to Jesus’s proclamation that one of his disciples will soon betray him. Conversely, La Nouvelle Cène (‘The New Last Supper’) insinuates that all of the members of this flimsy government will betray France – if they had not already. Paris suffered under a winter of Prussian siege, before the government capitulated in late January. To make matters worse, their humiliation was ratified by the signing of a peace treaty which included the secession of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, a significant war indemnity, and a Prussian military march through Paris – augmenting an already biblical sense of betrayal. This theme was central to the set’s second print, in which Jules Favre plays the familiar role of Judas Iscariot, again drawn by Mathis.
The final print from the set, this time drawn by Charles Vernier (1813-92), is a little more complex. Though still a send-up of a famous Italian painting of a biblical scene – Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana , hung in the Louvre – Vernier mixes the story of Jesus’s first miracle, the turning of water into wine, with the narrative of a popular French song Le Baptême du p’tit ébéniste (‘The Baptism of the li’l ebonist’).
Paolo Veronese, Nozze di Cana (The Wedding Feast at Cana), (Venice, 1563), (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)
The scene is transformed from a wedding to a baptism, that of the latest French Republic (the Third, which lasted until 1940), with a couplet from the song in the image’s caption noting how France is like ‘a bouquet of flowers’ – in other words, that is made up of many colourful – and contradictory – parts.
Jesus is replaced by Thiers holding the baby Republic aloft, while monarchs of Europe, including Süleyman the Magnificent and Mary I of England from Verones’s painting are exchanged for representatives of various contemporary French political currents. These include the deposed Emperor Napoleon III, several of the aforementioned National Government of Defence, and even a pétroleuse – that mythical figure in anti-Communard discourse who had apparently delighted in setting Paris alight in the final days of May 1871.
Noces de Cana, (Paris, 1871) Volume 5 14001.g.41.
Single sheet images designed for public consumption and debate were not below making biting allusions to religious iconography to mock political figures during 1870-1. The most popular trope, inevitably, was drawing any of the members of the National Government of Defence as Judas.
Other prints were more erudite. An obvious example from the BL’s second volume at 14001.g.41 is A. Baudet-Bauderval’s Une fuite en Egypte en passant par la Prusse (‘A flight to Egypt via Prussia’), the seventh print of Grognet’s 87-strong Actualités (‘Current Events’). The set was printed unevenly from the outbreak of the war to the final days of the Commune – sometimes publishing as many as ten images in a single day – and comprised several artists, meaning the sets had little ideological or topical coherency.
A. Baudet-Bauderval, Une Fuite en Egypte en passant par la Prusse (A Flight to Egypt via Prussia), (Paris, 1870) Volume 2 14001.g.41.
Following his surrender at the Battle of Sedan in early September 1870, Napoleon III was taken prisoner at Wilhelmshöhe Castle in Kassel. Shortly after news of his capitulation reached Paris, the Empress Eugénie and their son Louis fled the city. In Baudet-Bauderval’s sketch, the imperial family replicate the flight of Christianity’s holy family to Egypt – another popular artistic motif, perhaps most famously rendered by Giotto at the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua.
Despite its hasty construction – and its design to invite public consumption over private collection – Une fuite en Egypte includes a subtle yet ingenious attack. The Emperor and his son wear two large yellow hats which resemble sombreros, the wide-brimmed hat typically associated with Mexico. This addition not only lampoons the halos which crown the imperial family in Giotto’s Flight to Egypt, but also imbricates a mockery of the Emperor’s disastrous campaign to install a French-friendly monarchy in Mexico, a failure itself famously memorialised by Édouard Manet’s Execution of Maximilian.
In the aftermath of the War and the Commune, partisans of the Church claimed that the disasters of 1870-71 were the inevitable result of the anti-clericalism which coursed through some strands of French radicalism and the materialistic opulence of the Second Empire. Yet religious metaphors, iconography and scenes, particularly those preserved in art, could just as easily be employed by satirical artists to mock the powerful throughout 1870-71.
Anthony Chapman-Joy, CDP Student at the British Library and Royal Holloway
Further reading:
Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (London, 2002), YC.2002.a.15995
Morna Daniels, ‘Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune’, Electronic British Library Journal, (2005), pp. 1-19
John Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France, 1870-1871 (London, 2000), LB.31.b.19108
Bertrand Tillier, La Commune de Paris: Révolution sans images? (Paris, 2004), YF.2004.a.14526
09 August 2024
The Marriage of Sport and Art : Poland at the Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions (1912-1948)
Unlikely as it sounds, until the middle of the 20th century, amateur writers, painters, musicians, sculptors and architects battled for the coveted Olympic gold. The art competitions, consisting of five cultural disciplines and nicknamed the ‘Pentathlon of the Muses’, were the pet project of the French aristocrat and founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin. Baron de Coubertin saw the athletic pursuit in classical terms and sought to restore the Olympics to their former glory by reuniting “a long-divorced couple - muscle and mind”. His idea, drawing on ancient Games, came to fruition at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, where none other than de Coubertin took top honours in the literature event for his poem ‘Ode au Sport’ (‘Ode to Sport’). In the ensuing years, the popularity and prestige of the competitions gradually declined and by the 1952 Olympics, the practice of awarding medals for sport-inspired art was finally abandoned. Today, the winning Olympic artworks have been largely forgotten, and the artists relegated to the shadows. In this blog, I would like to revisit the creative output of Polish laureates of the Olympic art competitions, particularly writers, who have etched their names in the annals of the bygone tournaments.
The rebirth of independent Poland in 1918 triggered a surge of interest in physical activity among the Poles, evidenced by over 200 sports periodicals published until the beginning of the Second World War. At long last, Poland made its first appearance at the Olympic Games in 1924. The expectations were high as Olympic success was widely seen as a measure of national prowess and progress. Between 1924 and 1948, Polish artists bagged three gold, two silver and three bronze medals, finishing seventh (out of 23 entries) in the medal table. Zbigniew Turski was awarded gold in the music category for his Symfonia Olimpijska (‘Olympic Symphony’, 1948). In painting competitions, Janina Konarska won a silver medal for her woodcut Narciarze (‘Skiers’, 1932), while Stanisław Ostoja-Chrostowski and Władysław Skoczylas earned bronze for Dyplom Yacht Klubu (‘Yachting Club Certificate’, 1936) and Łucznik (‘Archer’, part of the winning series Plakaty (‘Posters’, 1928), respectively. In sculpture, Józef Klukowski received the highest prize for Wieńczenie Zawodnika (‘Sport Sculpture’, 1932) and four years later a silver medal for the relief Piłkarze (‘Football’, 1936). Finally, in the field of literature, Kazimierz Wierzyński was decorated with gold for his slim volume of poetry Laur Olimpijski (‘The Olympic Laurel’, 1928), and Jan Parandowski clinched the bronze for the novel Dysk Olimpijski (‘The Olympic Discus’, 1936).
Janina Konarska and her woodcut work ‘Skiers’ (Image from V&A. Photograph of the artist from Wikipedia)
Władysław Skoczylas and his woodcut ‘Archer’, from Tadeusz Cieślewski, Władysław Skoczylas. Inicjator i twórca współczesnego drzeworytu w Polsce (Warszawa, 1934) 7863.ppp.46. (Photograph of the artist from Wikimedia Commons)
Józef Klukowski and his work ‘Sport Sculpture’ (Images from Culture.pl)
Since his sterling performance at the 1928 Olympics, the athletic and well-versed in sports matters author of Laur Olimpijski has been dubbed ‘the best poet among sportsmen and the best sportsman amongst poets’.
Kazimierz Wierzyński and his volume of poetry Laur Olimpijski (Warsaw, [1930]) X950/3682. (English translation: Selected Poems, (New York, 1959) 11437.l.22. (Photograph of the author from Wikimedia Commons)
Born in 1894 in Drohobych, Wierzyński studied in Cracow, Vienna and Lviv before settling down in Warsaw and taking up the prestigious post of editor-in-chief of Przegląd Sportowy (Warsaw, 1946-1958) MFM.MF1210P). His Olympic cycle, published in 1927 and translated into seven languages by 1930, is among the few noteworthy literary pieces ever presented at the Olympic art competitions. It comprises 15 individual poems, each portraying athletes in action and applauding sport for its aspirations to transcend human frailties. In paying homage to hurdles and runners, Wierzyński honours the Greek ideal of the athlete, as in the beautiful poem Nurmi:
My pace, a dancer’s thread -
my steps beat like a heart;
clock-tower of breath, I hover
in air, tall and apart.
Poems ‘Defilada Poetów’ (‘Parade of the Athletes’) and ‘Skok o Tyczce’ (‘The Pole Vault’) from: Laur Olimpijski (Warszawa, [1930]) X950/3682.
The poet glorifies the virtues of ancient Greece but at the same time creates a new mythology aided by the pantheon of heroes belonging to the era of the modern Olympics, among them the glorious goalkeeper Ricardo Zamora, the winged pole-vaulter Charles Hoff, and the omnipotent sprinters Charlie Paddock and Arthur Porritt. A keynote theme of the collection is man’s potential for heroism and his ability to transfigure life and achieve divinity through athletic excellence.
Wierzyński’s peer, Jan Parandowski, was born in 1895 in Lviv. He was educated at a classical gymnasium and received a solid foundation in Greek and Latin cultures. The First World War interrupted his studies in the philosophy department at Lviv University, and he received his degree in classical philology and archaeology only in 1923. Already in 1924, over a decade before the launch of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Parandowski’s interest in antiquity resulted in the publication of ‘Mythology’ (Mitologia. Wierzenia i podania Greków i Rzymian (Warsaw, 1962) 04422.f.19.), a canonical read for all subsequent generations of Poles, at least up to the turn of the twenty-first century.
Dysk Olimpijski (‘The Olympic Discus’, 1933), the writer’s only novel translated into English, is another brilliant example of Parandowski’s lifelong passion for classical antiquity. The author saw sport as an activity of utmost importance for the ancient Greeks, reaffirmed by the fact that many poets and philosophers, including Plato and Euripides, were keen athletes. The novel takes us back in time to Hellas and the 76th Olympiad when the Greeks engaged in joyous celebrations of their victory over the Persians.
Jan Parandowski and his Dysk Olimpijski (Jerozolima, 1944) YF.2013.a.12040. (English translation: The Olympic Discus: a Story of Ancient Greece, (New York, 1964) 76/18461 (Photograph of the author from Wikimedia Commons)
The reader of Dysk Olimpijski becomes a spectator, the past and traditions of the Olympic Games unfolding before his eyes. Parandowski indulges in detailed descriptions and provides thorough depictions of the stadium, the sports equipment, and athletic contests. He picks one instance in Greek history, but by putting it in a historical context, he places it against a broader canvas of Greek life. His narrative is taut, but with the greatest economy of means, he manages to conjure up images reminiscent of intricate paintings on ancient Grecian vases.
By the early 1950s the art competitions had run their course, and de Coubertin’s union of flesh and spirit did not stand the test of time. The ‘Pentathlon of the Muses’ saw thousands of dubious entries, saccharine poems, ugly statues and failed paintings, the vast majority of which have slipped into oblivion. Nevertheless, the tournaments also attracted the talent of the likes of Wierzyński, Parandowski and Skoczylas, whose works remain, and for good reason, well-established in the Polish national consciousness.
Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, Interim Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections
References/further reading:
Ireneusz Bittner, Adam Bryk, O sporcie i kulturze fizycznej, poezji i medycynie czyli o etosie ciała ludzkiego (Lodz, 2003) YF.2007.a.4610
Introduction by George Harjan. In: Parandowski Jan, The Olympic Discus: a Story of Ancient Greece (New York, 1964) 76/18461
Tadeusz Cieślewski, Władysław Skoczylas, inicjator i twórca w spółczesnego drzeworytu w Polsce (Warsaw, 1934) 7863.ppp.46
Barry Keane, Skamander: the Poets and their Poetry 1918-1929 (Warsaw, 2004) YD.2005.a.3982
Bernhard Kramer, Richard Stanton, ‘The Olympic Laurel of Kazimierz Wierzyński’, in Journal of Olympic History, vol. 23, no 2 (2015), pp. 50-56.
Richard Stanton, The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions: The Story of the Olympic Art Competitions of the 20th Century (Victoria, 2000) m02/36119
Nicolaos Yalouris (ed.), The eternal Olympics: Art and History of Sport (US, 1979) f81/0940
Architects’ games. What do you want, a medal?, Architectural Review, 11 July 2024
Why did the Olympics ditch their amateur-athlete requirement?, The Economist, 20 July 2021
03 February 2023
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: a genius cursed by fate?
Dulwich Picture Gallery is currently holding an exhibition of the works of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, the best known Lithuanian artist and composer. Over a hundred works are on loan from the M.K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art in Kaunas where most of the artist’s work is held. The exhibition venue itself has historical links with Poland and Lithuania. In 1790 Stanisław August Poniatowski, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, commissioned two art dealers to create a Royal Collection. By the time the task was completed, Poland had undergone three partitions and finally ceased to exist as a sovereign state. Stanisław August was forced to abdicate. As the British Museum’s trustees were considered to be “too arbitrary and aristocratic”, the collection was left to Dulwich College, on condition that it was made available to the public. What was supposed to be the Stanisław August Poniatowski’s Royal Collection became an important part of the collections of Dulwich Picture Gallery, the oldest public gallery in England.
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, 1905. Photograph by Stanisław Filibert Fleury. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was born in 1875 in the small Lithuanian town of Varėna, the eldest of nine children of a church organist. When he was three years old, the family moved to Druskininkai, a resort on the Nemunas river. Čiurlionis was a child prodigy, a pianist by the age of five and organist by the age of six. His talent came to the attention of Prince Michał Ogiński who became the boy’s patron. Čiurlionis moved to Plungė near Klaipėda where, between the ages of 13-16, he attended an orchestral school on the estate of Prince Ogiński. There he learnt to play several other instruments and also sang in the choir.
In later years Ogiński’s patronage enabled Čiurlionis to study piano and composition at the Institute of Music in Warsaw (1894-1899). Čiurlionis also studied harmony, the theory and history of music, natural sciences, astronomy, philosophy, numismatics and mineralogy. Later his studies took him to the Leipzig Conservatoire (1901-1902). He also attended lectures on aesthetics and other subjects at the University of Leipzig, until the death of his patron forced him to abandon his musical studies. Čiurlionis returned to Warsaw and devoted his life to art: he enrolled at the Warsaw School of Drawing and later the School of Fine Arts, supporting himself by giving private lessons. He never abandoned his music – he both painted and composed. During six very intense years (1903-1909) Čiurlionis created 400 musical pieces and 300 works of art. In 1911, diagnosed with severe exhaustion and struggling with his mental health, he was admitted to a sanatorium near Warsaw where he died of pneumonia at the age of 35.
M.K. Čiurlionis, The Family House in Druskininkai, 1905. Pencil on paper. Reproduced in Laima Marija Petruševičiūtė, Melancholy and Sun: Munch and Čiurlionis (Vilnius, 2010) LF.31.b.8488
Čiurlionis is a hugely important figure in Lithuanian culture and national consciousness. Not only is his work steeped in Lithuanian mythology and folklore; the artist, who declared his intention to “dedicate to Lithuania” all of his “past and future work”, was actively involved in the Lithuanian national movement and cultural life. In 1906 he returned to Vilnius and helped to organise, and participated in, the first three exhibitions of Lithuanian art. He was also a co-founder and board member of the Lithuanian Artists Union.
The influential Russian art critic Alexandre Benois called Čiurlionis “a genius cursed by fate, one of those true geniuses, mythmakers, who create works of sublime, ineffable meaning”. The artist’s originality has earned him a unique place in the history of art. Even though his direct contact with Western European art was limited, he is linked to symbolism, art nouveau, neo-Romanticism and abstract art. To the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, who knew Čiurlionis , he was the first surrealist artist. Čiurlionis was also an innovative composer who used polyphony, modern chords and musical arabesques, and created a series of compositions and open musical forms. Igor Stravinsky, who owned one of Čiurlionis’ paintings, described him as “possibly the most talented member of the Russian School at the beginning of this century”.
Čiurlionis’ art, rich in symbols, has an otherworldly, poetic quality. His art is strongly influenced by Lithuanian landscapes, mythology and folklore. His works are full of natural images like birds, the sun, trees, mountains, grass snakes. In the artist’s early, symbolic works, such natural forms often appear in the form of a human or animal. Most of Čiurlionis‘ paintings are based on dichotomies: light and darkness, morning and evening, life and death, vertical and horizontal.
M.K. Čiurlionis, The Mountain, 1906. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, The Sun, 1907. Pastel on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, Lithuanian Graveyard, 1909. Tempera on cardboard. Image from Wikimedia Commons
The dreamlike landscapes reflect Čiurlionis’ interest in Eastern philosophy and theosophy. A recurring theme is the figure of Rex – a mythical, benevolent figure of a godlike monarch, omnipotent creator and protector, reflecting the idea of the unity of the Earth and Universe and signifying protection and care.
M.K. Čiurlionis, Rex, 1909. Tempera on canvas. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, Fairy Tale (Fairy Tale of the Kings), 1909. Tempera on canvas. Image from Wikimedia Commons
The artist’s deep interest in the relationship between man and the universe is seen, among others, in his cycle of 13 paintings Creation of the World (1905/1906). Čiurlionis wrote that, “This is the Creation of the World, not of our world according to the Bible, but another, fantastical world.”
M.K. Čiurlionis, Creation of the World V, 1905/1906. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, Creation of the World IX, 1905/1906. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Čiurlionis is considered by some art critics as a pioneer of abstract art. According to the Estonian art critic Aleksis Rannit “Čiurlionis is the first abstract painter and yet few knew it... Kandinsky... only painted his first abstract work in 1911. But already in 1904, Čiurlionis gave the world a body of work that we must class as abstract, of semi-abstract painting”. Rannit’s statement started a discussion among art critics as well as a row with Kandinsky’s widow, who claimed that her husband had never seen Čiurlionis’ paintings and therefore could not have been inspired by them.
M.K. Čiurlionis, Sparks III, 1906. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, Winter IV, 1907. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, My Road II, 1907. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
There is a close link between Čiurlionis’ music and his art. His synaesthesia enabled him to see sound in colours and images; he imagined “the whole world as a great symphony”. His paintings often have musical titles, like prelude, scherzo, andante, allegro, finale. Applying the principles of musical composition to painting, the artist created seven sonata cycles. Although other artists at the time also explored the idea of fusion of music and art, trying to “paint music”, Čiurlionis was more interested in the structure of the painting reflecting the structure of musical composition. He painted repetitions of motifs, his lines followed a melodic rhythm, creating harmonies with colours.
M.K. Čiurlionis, Sonata No. 6 (Sonata of the Stars), Allegro, 1908. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, Sonata No. 7 (Sonata of the Pyramids), Allegro, 1909. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
M.K. Čiurlionis, Angel (Angel Prelude), 1909. Tempera on paper. Image from Wikimedia Commons
As an artist, for many years Čiurlionis did not achieve the recognition he deserved. His work was ahead of his time yet he remained on the fringes of Western art, in part because he lived away from Europe’s main artistic centres, on the fringes of what was then the Russian Empire. There were several occasions, however, when he came close to gaining an important place in the history of art. In 1908, during his stay in St Petersburg, Čiurlionis developed close links with the members of the Mir isskustva (World of Art) movement, especially Alexandre Benois, but unfortunately soon afterwards the artist’s health deteriorated. Another missed opportunity was the invitation in 1910 to take part in an exhibition held by Neue Künstlervereinigung München. The invitation came too late: Čiurlionis was already seriously ill. At the beginning of the First World War most of Čiurlionis’ works were moved to Moscow. The upheaval caused by the War and later by the Russian Revolution meant that planned critical works on Čiurlionis did not appear. In 1919 Čiurlionis’ works were returned to Lithuania. After a brief period of independence, the Second World War II and annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union followed. Čiurlionis’ works were not exhibited until the 1950s.
The 1960s saw a renewed interest in Čiurlionis in the Soviet Union but the modernist aspects of his art were often ignored. Until the restoration of Lithuanian independence, Čiurlionis’ original artwork wasn’t easily accessible to foreign art historians which excluded him from foreign art histories. His works rarely left Lithuania, partly for ideological reasons and partly because they are fragile (most of his works are tempera or pastels on paper or card as the artist could not afford oil paints or canvasses). However, there has been an increase in international interest in Čiurlionis in the last 20 or so years. His works have been exhibited in cities such as Paris, Bonn, Tokyo, Milan, and Helsinki. It was high time they came to London too.
Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator Baltic Collections
References and further reading:
Kathleen Soriano, M.K. Čiurlionis: between worlds (London, 2022)
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: album; preface by Rasutė Andriušytė- Žukienė (Kaunas, 2007) LD.31.b.1395
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911): jo laikas ir musų laikas = His time and our time (Vilnius, 2013) EMF.2015.a.81
Laima Marija Petruševičiūtė, Melancholy and Sun: Munch and Čiurlionis (Vilnius, 2010) LF.31.b.8488
Rasa Andriušytė- Žukienė, M.K. Čiurlionis: tarp simbolizmo ir modernizmo (Vilnius, 2004) YF.2007.a.10706
Vytautas Landsbergis, Visas Čiurlionis (Vilnius, 2008) YF.2009.a.8557
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: twórczość, osobowość, środowisko (Warsaw, 2001) YF.2004.b.618
Antanas Andrijauskas, ‘Musical paintings of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis and Modernism’, Music in Art, Vol. 37, No. 1/ 2 (Spring –Fall 2012), pp. 249-264. 5990.227850
Genovaitė Kazokas, Musical paintings: life and work of M.K. Čiurlionis (1875-1911) (Vilnius, 2009) YD.2010.a.2999
05 January 2023
The Photographic Collection of Indigenous Childhood
The digitised photographic archive of Siberian indigenous peoples (available online from the British Library’s website) is a rich source of information about late Russian and early Soviet colonisation of Siberia. The collection of over 4000 images is the result of five years of exploratory work led by David Anderson (University of Aberdeen,) and Craig Campbell (University of Alberta) in Central Siberia. The research group digitised glass plate negatives in five Siberian archives: Irkutsk, Minusinsk, Ekaterinburg, and Krasnoiarsk. Although many photographs lack any original descriptions, and thus it is not always easy to identify where and when they were taken, the visual archive nevertheless provides great insight into the lives of Siberian indigenous peoples, in particular, Mansi, Nenets, Evenki, Buryat, Karagas, Soyot, Nganasan, Dolgan, Khakas, Khanti, and Kety.
In their articles based on the results of their research, Anderson and Campbell suggested several common tropes to interpret the photographs of indigenous peoples. They explored the themes of ‘travel photography’, ‘ethnographic photography’, ‘expedition photography’, and ‘community-driven portrait photography’, and provided examples. This, however, is by no means an exhaustive list of possible tropes to explore the vast visual collection. Drawing on Anderson and Craig’s observations, I would like to suggest exploring the subject which arrested my attention and the attention of several colleagues at the BL: the visual representation of indigenous childhood and its transformation during the time of intense Soviet collectivisation in the 1920s and 1930s.
Taimyr. The family of Nganasan, Dyutamo Turdagina: his wife Palai, son Murkari, baby Kurvak. 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev. (All captions are my own translations of the original annotations made by the Russian photographers)
Children during their class at school
The British Library’s digital photographic collections contain many photographs representing children, taken by various photographers – whose names are not always identifiable – during their expeditions. Although the goals of each expedition require some separate research, it is often possible to deduce from the photographs whether the photographers took pictures for ethnographic purposes or for political propaganda.
The ethnographic expeditions to Siberia usually sought to collect information about the ‘sparse’ native peoples of Siberia, and the children in such photographs are usually portrayed as immersed in their families’ social and professional lives, or engaged in traditional games. They are dressed in the national costumes which represent the ‘exotic’ features of Siberian peoples. It was a common colonial practice to collect various artefacts representing indigenous cultures, such as traditional clothing, musical instruments, tools, and housewares which would form vast museum collections.
Family
A woman with her child
Taim. A Nganasan man, Dyutalyu Turdagin, setting a fish trap, 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Taim. The Stalin collective farm: the collective farmer, Aksenova Evdokiia, a Sakha native, is making a sleeping bag. 1938. Photo by Tyurin
Taim. Durakova, a collective farmer at the Stalin collective farm, is decorating the male parka with some beads. She is considered a skilled worker. 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
A woman with two children. 1927. Photo by Tyurin
Studies of indigenous childhood had been one of the prominent areas of study in the Russian Empire’s ethnography, and it became even more significant in the 1920s and 30s, when the Soviet State rushed to construct a new society by culturally assimilating Siberian peoples. Indigenous children became the chief target of Soviet policies concerned with the creation of new generations of Soviet people. The photographs of children were not ideologically neutral: they were designed to show the transformation of the old into the new.
Pictures of children taken during the Soviet expeditions often represented them as integrated into Soviet culture rather than as representatives of their national cultures. Soviet photographs of children were often intended to demonstrate the result of Soviet reforms and the transformation of ‘savages’ into educated Young Pioneers. In the photographs we see the children dressed in uniform Soviet clothing.
A group of pioneer-children. Photo by Nosilov (assumed)
A group photograph of Evenki. Photo by Nosilov (assumed)
They are playing Soviet games.
Taim, Volochanka. Sakha children in the Volochanka residential school, in the playroom
The Nizhne-tunguskaia expedition. Children making a pyramid. 1925
We also find pictures of children visiting a picture gallery, something that can be interpreted as their symbolic initiation into the world of Soviet ‘civilised’ culture.
Buryat children visiting a picture gallery. 24.07.1923
Many such photographs were taken during the census expeditions of 1926, which were conducted in cooperation with geographers and ethnographers. The census was a worldwide colonial statistical practice, and the Soviets employed and developed new approaches to classifying the peoples of their vast empire. The indigenous peoples were surveyed within their households and individually to collect demographic data describing their diet, economy, trade data, beliefs, folklore, and so on. If the statistical information collected during the census was intended to provide an objective summary of life in the remote parts of the Soviet Union, then the photographs often offered a somewhat idealised picture of the social inclusion of indigenous peoples within Soviet life. The photographs of children were especially important as they depicted the social and cultural production of the new generation of loyal Soviet citizens.
Numerous aspects of Soviet modernisation were introduced in indigenous settlements, such as medical care, veterinary services, and housing. Often photographers chose to take pictures of children in these new Soviet settings.
Tura. An Evenk student, Hukochar Emel'yan, 11 years old, at a tuberculosis dispensary for a blood test. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
A young Yakut mother with a new-born at the Eseiskoi hospital. December 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
The most common setting for the pictures were school classrooms: the photographers were specifically advised to document ‘the dawn of cultural and primary school education’ among Siberian peoples, and the work of teachers liquidating illiteracy (Anderson, Batashev, Campbell, 2015, p. 501). To the modern eye, these pictures might look somewhat dystopian: students sit under a poster showing Stalin surrounded by children, located next to another with a wolf trying to kill two little pigs; children eat their meal under a poster instructing ‘eat only from your plate’; or a photograph taken during a sport class where all children synchronically perform the same exercise with a huge portrait of Stalin in the background.
Tura. Children playing a game at the district health department. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Tura, the Evenk national republic. A group of students during the May Day demonstration. May 1, 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Tura, the Evenk national republic. Children at the Turinsk District Health Department. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Tura, the Evenk national republic. Lunch in the nursery at the District Health Department. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
The most touching pictures are probably those where we see groups of children sitting in densely bedded dormitories. Taken away from their families – often involuntarily – children stayed in the residential schools during the academic year and were returned to their parents only for the summer holidays.
Tajm, Letov'e. The teacher of Letov'e school, Zlobin, meeting the first year Nganasan students who are accompanied by the leader of the Avamo-nganasansk settlement, Baikal, Turdachin
The Nizhne-tungusk expedition. Girls’ bedroom. 1925
Away from their families, children were expected to develop a sense of belonging to the larger Soviet society with its new system of values. The residential schools were also instrumental in the process of reorganising the indigenous populations of Siberia into cooperative settlements and demolishing their original tribal structures. During the first years of the Soviet Union the State tried to accommodate the educational needs of reindeer herders by initiating an experimental project of nomadic schools, which moved together with the clan, but by the end of the 1930s this practice was terminated. The number of residential schools in various parts of Siberia, on the other hand, reached 20 by 1935. Often reindeer herders chose to stay close to their children instead of continuing the traditional nomadic lifestyle. As a result, the introduction of residential schools greatly decreased the nomadic way of living, and saw indigenous Siberians become more settled.
The Nizhne-tungusk expedition. A man in suit sitting at his desk. The poster in the background reads ‘The diagram showing the growth of the number of schools’. 1925
The exhibition ‘Nomadic School’. 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
In the 1990s, several cultural initiatives tried to revive the idea of nomadic schools as a means of restoring traditional lifestyles and culture. Several nomadic schools were successfully organised, for instance, in the Republic of Sakha.
The residential schools continue to run in different part of Siberia, and a basic internet search shows many negative feelings associated with them. The experiences of indigenous peoples in the residential schools are actively explored by contemporary scholars. For example, in the 1990s, Alexia Bloch, an anthropologist from the University of British Columbia, collected accounts of elderly Evenki women, who studied at residential schools. Relying on these records, Bloch conclusively demonstrated a blend of positive feeling about the schools contrasted with ambivalence about the termination of the Soviet colonial project in general. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, many Evenki women recalled their time at the residential schools with a sense of nostalgia for the socialist era.
For many indigenous children, residential schools became a source of radical social mobility within Soviet society. After graduation, young people received an opportunity to continue their studies at university and move to big cities in central Russia, or secure more prestigious jobs back home. We do not know which paths were taken by the children in the photographs in the British Library’s digital collection, and this might be one of the questions which scholars could explore using the BL’s vast visual archive.
Anna Maslenova, British Library PhD placement student working on the project ‘Contextualising a digital photographic archive of Siberian Indigenous peoples’
References and further reading:
David G. Anderson, ‘The Turukhansk Polar Census Expedition of 1926–1927 at the Crossroads of Two Scientific Traditions’, Sibirica, 5: 1 (2006), pp. 24–61.
David G. Anderson and Craig Campbell, ‘Picturing Central Siberia: The Digitization and Analysis of Early Twentieth-Century Central Siberian Photographic Collections’, Sibirica, 8: 2 (2009), pp. 1–42)
David G. Anderson, Mikhail S. Batashev and Craig Campbell, ‘The photographs of Baluev: capturing the “socialist transformation” of the Krasnoyarsk northern frontier, 1938-1939’ in From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, ed. by Maja Kominko (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 487–530. ELD.DS.46613
Georgii Vinogradov, Etnografiia detstva i russkaia narodnaia kulʹtura v Sibiri (Moscow, 2009) YF.2011.a.853
«Provintsialʹnaia» nauka: etnografiia v Irkutske v 1920-e gody, ed. by A. Sirina (Irkutsk, 2013).
Olga Laguta and Melissa Shih-hui Lin, ‘Language and Cultural Planning in Siberia: Boarding School System Represented in the Texts of the Siberian Indigenous Writers’, Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies, 12: 1 (2019), pp. 1–37.
Sargylana Zhirkova, ‘School on the Move: A Case Study: Nomadic Schooling of the Indigenous Evenk children in the Republic of Sakha Yakutia (Russian Far East)’ (unpublished master’s dissertation, University of Tromsø, 2006)
Alexia Bloch, Red Ties and Residential Schools: Indigenous Siberians in a Post-Soviet State (Philadelphia, 2004). m04/19814
Alexia Bloch, ‘Ideal Proletarians and Children of Nature: Evenki Reimagining Schooling in a Post-Soviet Era’, in Bicultural Education in the North: Ways of Preserving and Enhancing Indigenous Peoples’ Languages and Traditional Knowledge, ed. by Erich Kasten (Münster, 1998), pp. 139–157. m03/16772
Alexia Bloch, ‘Longing for the Kollektiv: Gender, Power, and Residential Schools in Central Siberia’, Cultural Anthropology, 20: 4 (2005), pp. 534–569. 3491.661000
Natalia P. Koptseva, Ksenia V. Reznikova, Natalia N. Pimenova and Anastasia V. Kistova, ‘Cultural and Anthropological Studies of Indigenous Peoples of Krasnoyarsk Krai Childhood (based on the field studies of Siberian Federal University in 2010-2013)’, Journal of Siberian Federal University: Humanities & Social Sciences 8 (2014), pp. 1312–1326.
28 November 2022
Stanisław Wyspiański: Shades of Melancholia
‘November is a difficult time for Poland’ Stanisław Wyspiański wrote in his play Noc listopadowa (November Night). Wyspiański, was a versatile and prolific artist – playwright, poet and theatre director – one of the generations of artists who grew up in the partitioned land.
Cover of Stanisław Wyspiański, Noc listopadowa. Sceny dramatyczne (Kraków 1904). Shelfmark: X.909/354.
The 11th month of the year – listopad, literally leaf-fall – is a time of particular significance in Polish culture and history. The month of the fallen leaves witnessed the November Uprising or the Cadet Revolution (1830–31) against the Russian Empire when Poland was partitioned. It was in November when finally, after 123 years, Poland regained its independence following the First World War.
There is something fascinating about the approaching darkness and nature’s hibernation that appealed to Polish imagination and Wyspiański could definitely feel the ambiguous allure of the cold month. In November 1901 Wyspiański lost his father Franciszek, a renowned sculptor and an alcoholic struggling with mental issues. Stanisław was only too familiar with death from his early years. As a child he lost a younger brother and soon after, when the boy was only seven, his mother succumbed to tuberculosis. His own struggle with a deadly disease – he suffered from syphilis – is thought to have played a substantial role in his artistic proliferation. After the diagnosis Wyspiański worked tirelessly until his death. He was burning through life with an exhaustive energy, with a constant awareness of its finality, with gusto characteristic for the Young Poland modernist era, flavoured with Nietzscheanism.
The artist’s life was marked by emotional and complicated relationships with women. His mother and an aunt who brought him up both had a profound impact on his life. While living with his aunt Stanisław came in contact with Jan Matejko, one of the most celebrated Polish painters, who gave him art lessons and later invited the young man to work for him. Last, but not least in a long line of Wyspiański’s women, was Teodora Pytko, a servant whom he married causing a stir in Krakow’s social circle and a fallout with the aunt.
Jan Matejko, Polonia, 1864, National Museum in Kraków.
Wyspiański’s childhood was spent in the Austrian partition. His father studio sat a few feet away from the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków, a symbol of the Polish grandiose past. The imposing structure, in a state of disrepair, full of memories evoking melancholy, was a former seat of the Polish kings degraded to serve as a barracks for Austro-Hungarian troops. This is how Stanisław describes it in one of his lyrics:
At the foot of Wawel my father’s atelier was placed.
A great white vaulted chamber,
Animated by a crowd of images of the dead;
There, as a little boy I wandered, and what I felt,
Later I forged in the shapes of my art.
At the time, by emotion only, and not rational understanding,
I grasped the outlines, moulded in clay,
Which grew before my eyes into giants:
Statues, carved in lime wood.
From Stanisław Wyspiański, Acropolis: the Wawel plays; translated from the Polish and introduced by Charles S. Kraszewski, (London 2017). YC.2019.a.2648
Wyspiański grew up dreaming of becoming one of the artists chosen to restore the Royal Castle to its former glory. A dream that despite many efforts has never come to fruition. The painter’s stained-glass designs, meant for the Wawel Cathedral, were rejected by the church authorities. Wyspiański’s thought-provoking depiction of Saint Stanislaus, a national hero, crushed by his coffin alluded to the playwright’s conviction the saint’s cult was partly responsible for Poland’s downfall.
Unrealised stained-glass design for the chancel of Wawel Cathedral, 1900: Prince Henry the Pious, National Museum in Kraków, in Young Poland: the Polish Arts and Crafts movement, 1890-1918, edited by Julia Griffin and Andrzej Szczerski (London 2020). YC.2022.b.346
A childhood spent in a place where walls permeated history, gazing at the striking stronghold, wandering around Kraków’s Main Market Square surrounded by the city hustle and bustle resulted in a deep love and attachment to his home town and played an immense part in the artist’s journey. Four of the playwright’s dramatic works deal with Wawel: Legenda II, Bolesław Śmiały, Skałka and Akropolis.
Wyspiański’s stage costume designs. Stanisław Wyspiański, Stanisław Wyspiański, myśli i obrazy (Olszanica, 2008). YF.2009.b.2095
Charles S. Kraszewski in the introduction to his English translation of the artist’s works remarks: ‘Wyspiański introduces his “eternal” characters neither from the pages of Christian hagiography, nor from the theories of psychoanalysis, but rather from the traditions of Polish/Cracovian legend, as a way of understanding what it means to be “Polish” in Europe where the country that bears the name no longer exists’.
Model based on Stanisław Wyspiański and Władysław Ekielski’s ‘Acropolis’ design for the renovation and expansion of Wawel, 1907. National Museum in Kraków, in Young Poland, YC.2022.b.346
Wyspiański’s works were a reflection of his identity. Myths, legends and symbols infuse his plays, scenography, paintings and drawings. A Renaissance man, Wyspiański excelled in many forms of art. He was a visionary who made his mark on Polish theatre, poetry, typography, applied art, design and painting. He passed away prematurely, departing together with the autumn leaves on 28 November 1907.
Stanisław Wyspiański, Morning at the Foot of Wawel Hill, 1984. National Museum in Kraków
Olga Topol, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections
Further reading:
Stanislaw Wyspiański, The wedding: a drama in three acts (London 1998). ELD.DS.551705
Stanislaw Wyspiański, The Return of Odysseus. A Drama in three acts (Bloomington 1966). Shelfmark: Ac.2692.w/16.
Stanisław Wyspiański - Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: the neighbouring of cultures, the borderlines of arts, editor-in-chief Wiesna Mond-Kozłowska (Kraków 2012), EMD.2017.b.6
23 September 2022
‘As if some long-since inhabited country had been fished up out of the bottom of the sea’: Travel Literature on Iceland
As the National and University Library of Iceland commemorate the 250th anniversary of Joseph Banks’s expedition to Iceland with an exhibition, we are publishing a series of blogs on all things Icelandic in the British Library collections.
For those who want to know more about Joseph Banks’s expedition to Iceland, check out our guest blog from 2017 by the foremost expert, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Iceland, Anna Agnarsdóttir, who also curated the current exhibition.
In the second blog of this series, we look at writing from the past 250 years of British travel to Iceland.
Ever since Joseph Banks paved the way and established friendly relations between Britain and Iceland in 1772, a steady stream of travellers have been inspired to venture to Europe’s far North-West. Natural scientists, geologists, saga enthusiasts, explorers and anyone with enough money and ‘spirit of adventure’ saw the appeal of the always seemingly mysterious country, producing along the way a raft of accounts, published journals, translations, maps and drawings.
John Cleveley Jr., Cathedral at Skálholt, Add MS 15511, f. 29r
For those interested in getting to grips with the full range of writings over the last two-and-a-half centuries, look no further than Haraldur Sigurðsson’s bibliography Writings of Foreigners Relating to the Nature and People of Iceland. If something a little less bibliographic is required, you could do worse than consult the list of references at the end of ‘Sheaves of Sagaland’, chapter 6 of W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice’s Letters from Iceland, an alternative take on the travel account formed of irreverent poems, anecdotal advice, letters and other short pieces. The chapter in question compiles quotations from those that went before them, which might give more of an insight into the attitudes of the average Victorian traveller, than of Icelandic life itself. Deliberately out of context, and compiled supposedly for the benefit of John Betjeman, they speak to every aspect of Icelandic life:
‘Concerning their food
“It cannot afford any great pleasure to examine the manner in which the Icelanders prepare their food.” (Von Troil)
Concerning their habits
“If I attempted to describe their nauseous habits, I might fill volumes.” (Pfeiffer)
Concerning their dress
“The dress of a woman is not calculated to show the person to advantage” (Mackenzie)’
George Stuart Mackenzie, Great Jet of Steam, on the Sulphur Mountains, from Travels in the Island of Iceland, during the summer of the year 1810 (Edinburgh: 1811) 983.e.23
More recently, H. Arnold Barton’s Northern Arcadia gives a fantastic overview of the first wave of travel from Banks to the missionary Ebenezer Henderson’s trip in 1814-15. And, for a more visual introduction to the topic, the University of Nottingham’s online exhibition, ‘Ice, Fire and Northern Myths’, takes us through the richly illustrated material contained in their comprehensive Icelandic special collections. And, with the current exhibition in Iceland, it’s safe to say interest in the history of travel writing on the region has not waned.
Ebenezer Henderson, The Geysers, as seen on July 30th 1814, from Iceland; or the journal of a residence in that Island during the years 1814 and 1815 (Edinburgh, 1818) 979.i.3
The British Library is uniquely placed to navigate the copious literature that emerged from such journeys. Not only can we find the vast majority of accounts published before 1882 digitised courtesy of Google Books, but the Library also holds the four volumes of original drawings from the Banks expedition to the Hebrides, Orkney and Iceland by the artists John Cleveley Jr., James Miller and his brother John Frederick Miller (all drawings available online: vol.1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4), as well as William Morris’s travel diaries from his two trips in 1871 and 1873 (digitised here).
John Barrow Jr., Basaltic cave at Stappen, from A Visit to Iceland, by way of Tronyem, in the “Flower of Yarrow” Yacht, in the Summer of 1834 (London, 1835) 791.e.3
Why Iceland loomed ever larger in the imagination of travellers has to do with a blend of scientific interest in the Age of Exploration in the ‘land of ice and fire’ and the search for cultural and racial self-understanding, which saw Englishness increasingly linked to an Anglo-Saxon heritage, its purest vestige supposedly residing in Iceland (Kassis). That association with ‘Viking’ culture grew through the Victorian era with the interest in sagas, which could be flexibly interpreted for any cause, from the imperial to the social democratic. That Icelanders were in some way exemplary did not preclude visitors from understanding that singularity as ‘primitive simplicity’, as Uno von Troil’s reflections have it. Given that some 19th-century journeys went via the Sápmi as well, like John Barrow Jr’s A Visit to Iceland by Way of Tronyem, accounts often give the unpleasant impression that travelling North equalled a trip back in time and ‘backwards’ in the ‘civilisation’ process.
W. G. Collingwood, Descent of Arnardals-Skarth, from W. G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson, A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland (Ulverston, 1899) 10281.i.11
In Banks’s wake and lifetime, several journeys were made, often with Banks facilitating, all with a published output, which is more than can be said for the Banks expedition itself. The Swede von Troil’s Letters on Iceland was the only text that came from that, which did however set the standard for future writing, itself including a bibliography of 120 texts on Iceland to date. John Thomas Stanley’s expedition is captured in the diaries kept by the wealthy Englishman and his companions, James Wright, Isaac Benners and John Baine, eventually published only 50 years ago. Following Stanley, came William Jackson Hooker, the first director of Kew Gardens, whose Journal of a tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809 contains some of the illustrations from the Banks voyage engraved for the first time.
W. G. Collingwood, Gill at Gilsbakki
Encouraged by Banks to go and collect specimens, Hooker’s specimens and notes were destroyed on his way back, leaving him to rely on memory and samples collected by the Stanley party for his 600-page journal. The mineralogist George Mackenzie followed in the company of Richard Bright and Henry Holland, whose diaries have also been published. The last of this first wave of travellers was Ebenezer Henderson, who spent by far the longest on the island, there as a representative of the British and Foreign Bible Service. Barton calls his account ‘the fullest and most sympathetic’ of the early texts, no doubt in part due to his great knowledge of Scandinavia and his proficiency in multiple languages.
Ethel Brilliana, First view of Iceland, from A Girl’s Ride in Iceland (London, 1894) 10281.c.6.
John Barrow Jr, later known for his heroic efforts in coordinating the search expeditions in vain for John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to the Northwest Passage, was the next traveller to Iceland, noting that ‘twenty years have expired since a fresh word has been uttered respecting Iceland’. And while several journeys were made by others through the 1840s and early 1850s, including notably by Ida Laura Pfeiffer, it was not until 1856 and the introduction of scheduled steamship sailings to and from Iceland that travel became regular and affordable, and with that came a flurry of travel journals. Frederick Dufferin’s Letters from High Latitudes was hugely popular, inaugurating a new register for travel writing, less forensic and more comic, perhaps the ease of travel reducing the pressure to note every encounter in meticulous detail.
Samuel Edmund Waller, Hlidarende, from Six Weeks in the Saddle: A Painter’s Journal in Iceland (London, 1874) 10281.bb.42
So, for Dufferin, the Faxaflói bay, where Reykjavík lies, is magnificent while also ‘mouldy green, as if some long-since inhabited country had been fished up out of the bottom of the sea.’ For Frederick Metcalfe four years later, ‘the prospect was […] by no means cheering’: ‘as if to mock the foreigner for his infatuation, his way is beset, not only by dangerous rivers, appalling lava streams, hidden pits of fire, and chasms of ice, but his imagination is tortured by chimeras dire, phantom gorillas, or by whatever name he may please to call the shapes in stone and slag, that grin and frown on his solitary journey.’ Anthony Trollope’s also very popular account is perhaps so light on meaningful engagement with local culture that it becomes ‘mainly a reproduction of Englishness in the peripheral world rather than a study of Icelandic physiognomy’ (Kassis).
Sabine Baring-Gould, Öxnadals-Heithi, from Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas (London, 1863) W48/4817
Iceland’s epic beauty was ripe for drawing and painting, and most travellers in this period seem to be accomplished artists, so these books were also a platform for their pictures. The Banks expedition’s artistic output is important for its documentary and almost genre quality but later visitors perhaps allowed themselves to heighten the drama of landscapes, often inflected by a knowledge of the sagas that unfolded there. Sabine Baring-Gould’s Iceland: its Scenes and Sagas is notable for its fine watercolours. Henderson’s geysers and jets shoot out like shafts of light to the heavens.
Ethel Brillliana, Cod-Fish drying
W. G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson published an epic picture book with coloured plates depicting the scenes of the sagas, while Ethel Brilliana Tweedie’s emotive sketches, often ‘from pony’s back’, give over something of the ephemerality of the traveller’s experience. What the use of illustration has in common, beyond their obvious appeal to the reader, is its necessity in helping to describe the indescribable, encapsulated in Simon Armitage’s final poem, ‘Listen Here’, in his and Glyn Maxwell’s homage to Auden and MacNeice, Moon Country:
It will not be had,
or fixed. Made of finer stuff,
to find it is to let it come to mind, then bluff,
or lie, or think, or wish.
Now hear this.
George Stuart Mackenzie, New geysers
Another way of thinking about the inability to put Iceland into words, or, in Baring-Gould’s phrase, the ‘fail[ure] in rendering the wild beauty of colouring’, is that Iceland exceeds expectations and exceeds the journal format. This is common to many accounts all the way up to Damon Albarn’s latest solo album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows, which began life as an ‘orchestral interpretation of the view outside of his [Reykjavik] living room window’ before ending up abstracted, ‘a stream-of-consciousness meditation on earth’s natural forces’. And, similarly, even while William Morris’s journals are precise, anecdotal day-to-day accounts, for Lavinia Greenlaw, ‘it is a document of a journey that becomes a description of all journeys’. Greenlaw is able to use passages from the celebrated journal as jumping off points for her own poetic reflections on travel, strangeness, the nature of experience.
W. G. Collingwood, Melstad and Reykir
William Morris’s Iceland journals have a strong claim to be the best of the genre and ‘amongst the best prose Morris ever wrote’ (McCarthy). Written for his confidante, Georgiana Burne-Jones, he worked up his manuscript into a fair copy but the journals weren’t published in his lifetime at his request. Amongst Morris’s travel companions was Eiríkr Magnússon, a theologian and linguist who got to know Morris in London, before becoming a close friend and collaborator on saga translations and on the edited volume of the journals. Morris was without doubt the most important Icelandophile of his day, translating numerous sagas, further introducing audiences to their themes through his own poetry, and creating epic works, such as Sigurd the Volsung, so steeped in saga influence, they would go onto inspire the next century’s fantasy genre.
John Cleveley Jr., Eruption of a geyser at Geysir, Add MS 15511, f. 43r
Arriving at the already much-visited Geysir, Morris, the purist and knowledgeable Iceland scholar, ‘bewailed it for the possible Englishman whom I thought we should find there’. Clearly not in the best mood, he continues:
the evening is wretched and rainy now; a south wind is drifting the stinking steam of the southward-lying hot springs full in our faces: the turf is the only bit of camping-ground we have had yet, all bestrewn with feathers and wings of birds, polished mutton-bones, and above all pieces of paper: […] understand I was quite ready to break my neck in my quality of pilgrim to the holy places of Iceland: to be drowned in Markfleet, or squelched in climbing up Drangey seemed to come quite in the day’s work; but to wake up boiled while one was acting the part of accomplice to Mangnall’s Questions was too disgusting.
Allergies to tourists aside, Morris was enamoured by the place and the people, who never fail to be depicted as exceptionally hospitable, which is also the case in the accounts across the centuries. As the last entry in his 1871 journal says, Iceland ‘is a marvellous, beautiful and solemn place, and where I had been in fact very happy’.
The references below include the most notable (mainly) English-language travel books and manuscripts on Iceland in the Library’s collections with a link to a digital copy where available.
Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator Germanic Collections
References
‘Drawings illustrative of Sir Joseph Banks's voyage to the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Iceland in 1772’, Add MS 15509-12
Uno von Troil, Letters on Iceland (London, 1780) 152.c.44
William Jackson Hooker, Journal of a tour in Iceland in the summer of 1809 (Yarmouth, 1811) 791.e.2, digital copy
William Morris, ‘Diaries (in the form of octavo ruled note-books and all written in pencil) kept by Morris on his two visits to Iceland in the summers of 1871 and 1873’, Add MS 45319 A-C, digital copy
George Stuart Mackenzie, Travels in the Island of Iceland, during the summer of the year 1810 (Edinburgh: 1811) 983.e.23, digital copy
Ebenezer Henderson, Iceland; or the journal of a residence in that Island during the years 1814 and 1815 (Edinburgh, 1818) 979.i.3, digital copy
John Barrow Junior, A Visit to Iceland, by way of Tronyem, in the “Flower of Yarrow” Yacht, in the Summer of 1834 (London, 1835) 791.e.3, digital copy
Ida Laura Pfeiffer, Journey to Iceland: and travels to Sweden and Norway … From the German by C. F. Cooper (London, 1852) 10280.d.32, digital copy
Frederick Dufferin, Letters from High Latitudes; being some account of a voyage in the schooner yacht “Foam” ... to Iceland, Jan Mayen, & Spitzbergen, in 1856 (London, 1857) 10281.c.28, digital copy
Frederick Metcalfe, The Oxonian in Iceland: or, notes of travel in that island in the summer of 1860, with glances at Icelandic Folk-lore and Sagas (London, 1861) 10281.b.22, digital copy
Sabine Baring-Gould, Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas (London, 1863) W48/4817, digital copy
Samuel Edmund Waller, Six Weeks in the Saddle: A Painter’s Journal in Iceland (London, 1874) 10281.bb.42
William Lord Watts, Snioland: or, Iceland, its jökulls and fjälls (London, 1875) 10281.aaa.22
Richard Francis Burton, Ultima Thule; or, a Summer in Iceland (London, 1875) 2364.f.1.
Anthony Trollope, How the “Mastiffs” went to Iceland (London, 1878) C.124.g.1
Elizabeth Oswald, By Fell and Fjord; or, scenes and studies in Iceland (Edinburgh, 1882) 10281.bbb.4, digital copy
John Coles, Summer Travelling in Iceland; being the narrative of two journeys across the island (London, 1882) 10280.g.4., digital copy
William George Lock, Guide to Iceland, a handbook for travellers and sportsmen (Charlton, 1882) 10280.bb.22., digital copy
Ethel Brilliana, A Girl’s Ride in Iceland (London, 1894) 10281.c.6., digital copy
W. G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson, A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland (Ulverston, 1899) 10281.i.11
Mrs Disney Leith, Iceland (Peeps at Many Lands) (London, 1908) W10/1133
W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, Letters from Iceland (London, 1937) W4/2845
William Morris, Icelandic Journals (Fontwell, 1969) 72/5914
The journals of the Stanley Expedition to the Faroe Islands and Iceland in 1789 (Tórshavn, 1970) 84/02018 – 84/02019
Henry Holland, The Iceland Journal of Henry Holland, 1810 (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society. Second series; no.168) (London, 1987) Ac. 6172/188
Haraldur Sigurðsson, Ísland í skrifum erlendra manna um þjóðlíf og náttúru landsins : ritaskrá = Writings of foreigners relating to the nature and people of Iceland: a bibliography (Reykjavik, 1991) YA.1995.b.8642
Fiona McCarthy, William Morris: A Life for our Time (London, 1994) YC.1995.b.276
Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell, Moon country: further reports from Iceland (London, 1996) YK.1996.a.22671
H. Arnold Barton, Northern Arcadia: Foreign Travelers in Scandinavia, 1765-1815 (Carbondale, 1998) 99/20599
Andrew Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians: inventing the old north in nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge: 2000) YC.2000.a.6087
Dimitros Kassis, Icelandic Utopia in Victorian Travel Literature (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2016) ELD.DS.93013
Lavinia Greenlaw, Questions of travel: William Morris in Iceland (London, 2016) ELD.DS.203595
Martin Stott, Iceland Journals Introduction (2020), on William Morris Archive website
14 July 2022
Christian Boltanski’s ‘Les Habitants de Malmö’ (1994)
One of the most influential artists of the last century, Christian Boltanksi, died one year ago today. Although, he would have had you believe he actually died many times before: ‘When you are asked to make a retrospective, it basically means you’re dead’ (from an interview with Alexis Dahan for the Brooklyn Rail). The son of Holocaust survivors, Boltanski was born in 1944 in Paris, where he continued to be active throughout his life. His work was often preoccupied with memory, memorialisation and the archive, using everyday objects, personal or administrative material, and the concepts of listing and cataloguing to evoke the profundity of what is lost by displaying the infinity of what we know, have and record.
For an exhibition at Malmö Konsthall in 1994, Boltanski made the artist’s book Les Habitants de Malmö, a copy of which has recently entered the British Library’s collections. It comprises the city’s real telephone directory from 1993 only with a new cover displaying its new title and a four-page insert of errata that Boltanski introduces with the line: ‘You can’t reach these inhabitants of Malmö on the phone anymore. They died in 1993.’
Cover of Christian Boltanski, Les Habitants de Malmö (Malmö, 1994) YF.2022.b.994
Looking at it now, this directory (if not all phone directories) has lost its functionality in the internet age, as its function is more aesthetic and metaphorical. However, Boltanski’s point was that its pragmatic function was already in question in 1994 when he issued a bunch of them with his front cover. As Ernst van Alphen has suggested, ‘the finiteness of pragmatic listing is illusionary’, the directory is merely ‘the temporary fixation of an ongoing process’, which soon ‘over time […] becomes a memorial of all the former inhabitants of Malmö’. Besides, when removed from its original context, the 90s Malmö phone box say, the hundreds of pages of names and numbers lose any referentiality. We simply take stock of a long list of people who may now have joined the ranks of the errata list of deceased. This is what van Alphen terms the ‘Holocaust effect’, an experience of a certain aspect of the Holocaust, here evoked somewhere between the sheer mass of names (like public memorials that list the names of the deceased in full) and the memorialisation of these former inhabitants.
Title Page of an 18th-century Danish auction catalogue for the possessions of …, 821.b.11.(4.)
As Boltanski’s work stages the archival, making once functional lists into memorials, we might ask ourselves at the library about the endless lists and catalogues housed in our collections. For example, some 17th- and 18th-century catalogues for auctions of the estates of deceased persons have recently come to light via our collection audit colleagues. Cataloguing these lists of personal effects, whose title pages list every single category of item for sale, you can’t help imagining them in a Boltanski exhibition. With their referential function lost in time and space, we might see these lists more symbolically as the things that represented someone’s life as opposed to items for sale. At the very least, Boltanski’s lists allow us to dwell on the natural imperfection of our own archives, lists and catalogues, reminding us of the ongoing process of describing our items for new times and new readers.
Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator Germanic Collections
References
Ernst van Alphen, Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media (Chicago: 2014) YC.2016.a.1489
15 March 2022
Swedish Bird Books
Many of us would have taken part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, the much-loved annual mass participation birdwatch at the end of January. At the Library, we were delighted to catch a rare sighting ourselves. Colleagues in our Collection Audit team rediscovered a volume of collected booklets of bird illustrations, shelf-marked but hitherto unavailable in the catalogue. Magnus and Wilhelm von Wright’s Svenska foglar (Stockholm, 1828-38; 74/781.k.31) is one of the finest examples of bird illustration in a long history of Scandinavian ornithological literature.
A great tit by Wilhelm von Wright
The brothers Magnus, Wilhelm and Ferdinand von Wright were pioneers of Finnish painting, who early on developed a passion for depicting birds on their hunting trips with their father Henrik Magnus von Wright. While Magnus would go on to develop a reputation as a landscape painter as well, the brothers are well known for their work on birdlife in service of both art and science. Having moved to Stockholm to begin his artistic training, Magnus was given the opportunity by Count Nils Bonde, the master of Hörningsholm manor on the island of Mörkö, to illustrate an ambitious work on Swedish birds, Svenska foglar. Efter naturen och på sten ritade af M. och W. von Wright. So overwhelming was the commission, Magnus brought in the help of his brother Wilhelm, and by the end of the project, Ferdinand, who later painted the iconic The Fighting Capercaillies, would also be involved, despite his young age. Svenska foglar became a hugely popular series.
A song thrush drawn by Magnus and lithographed by Wilhelm von Wright
Between 1828 and 1838, 30 booklets were published, each containing up to six plates of hand-coloured lithograph birds, with 137 species represented across the 186 birds. In the early 19th century, one of the ways to catch a good enough look at a bird was to shoot it, a skill the von Wright brothers regularly deployed, as well as buying specimens and studying others in the natural science museums in Helsinki, St Petersburg and Stockholm (Lehtola, Lokki and Stjernberg).
Wilhelm would go on to concentrate his artistic efforts on scientific illustration, taking on another commission from Count Bonde to illustrate a guide to butterflies, Svenska fjäriler, before eventually undertaking his greatest achievement, Skandianviens fiskar (Scandinavian Fish), with Bengt Fries, also in the library (BL 727.l.26.).
The brothers made substantial contributions to zoology beyond offering these precise and captivating illustrations. They travelled extensively, making trips to the far North to places such as Tromsø in the Norwegian Arctic and Aavasaksa in Finnish Lapland, where they kept journals and made drawings that furthered ornithological knowledge. They were at the heart of what Björn Dal has called the Swedish ‘Zoological Golden Age’. Of course, the von Wrights, while figuring prominently in Swedish zoology, were Finnish, and Magnus’s unfinished work on his homeland’s avifauna was issued posthumously as Finlands foglar in 1873 (BL Ac.1094.4.).
A Eurasian Jay from Olof Rudbeck’s Book of Birds
The brothers entered the ornithological picture when the discipline was burgeoning, a few decades after Linnaeus had pioneered zoological nomenclature and at a time when global exploration proliferated knowledge, interest and possession of the natural world. This handy list of Swedish bird books is comprehensive, locating the first mention of birds in Olaus Magnus’ Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, the classic work on the history and culture of Scandinavia originally published in Rome in 1555 (152.e.9 and two other copies). Illustrated copiously with woodcuts, it contains plenty of insights into our relationship with birds, including a not-so-faithful image of two men hauling a net full of swallows out of a muddy lake.
The next major contribution we might mention is Olof Rudbeck the Younger’s bird book, a set of astonishing illustrations that some say were unrivalled until the age of Audubon. Rudbeck’s work helped him deliver lectures on ornithology and his images and classifications form the basis of some of the species listed in the tenth edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae (956.e.6.7), the accepted starting point of zoological nomenclature. Rudbeck was Linnaeus’s mentor and patron. The watercolour birds, which were the artistic work of Rudbeck himself, Andreas Holtzbom and potentially others, were accomplished around 1693-1710 but were not published until 1985, with a monumental English edition appearing in 1986 (HS.74/99). The editor’s introduction suggests that had the planned book materialised in its own time, then ‘eighteenth century ornithology, at least as far as Sweden is concerned, would have received an impetus towards unprecedented achievements.’
A golden eagle from Wilhelm von Wright
One of Linnaeus’s disciples, Anders Sparrman, would produce the ‘earliest monumental pictorial work on ornithology published in the North’ (Anker), known as the Museum Carlsonianum (Stockholm, 1786-89; 32.g.8), a bird book based on the collection of Johan Gustav von Carlson. It is the first large illustrated work to use the Linnaean naming system and the birds are from around the world, making it of significant scientific interest. Some of these plates, the work of Jonas Carl Linnerhielm, would make it into Sparrman’s subsequent ambitious compilation Svensk Ornitologi (1806), published the same year as another important work, Johan Wilhelm Palmstruch’s Svensk Zoologi (Stockholm, 1806; 454.b.20.).
With vast pictorial works on birds and fauna abounding across Europe and America in the early 19th century, Sweden was no different. Soon the von Wrights’ booklets would appear followed two decades later by Carl Sundevall’s impressive Svenska foglarna (Stockholm, 1856-1886; Cup.1256.aa.18) with illustrations by Peter Åkerlund and Paulina Sjöholm. Sweden’s contribution to zoology and botany in the 18th and 19th centuries is often confined to the (albeit immense) influence of Carl Linnaeus and his disciples. However, through its ornithologist-artists, whose work is distributed in a host of epic illustrated bird books, we get a sense of its wider contribution to our understanding of birds, not least through the plates of the von Wright brothers.
Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator Germanic collections
Further reading
Björn Dal, Sveriges zoologiska litteratur : en berättande översikt om svenska zoologer och deras tryckta verk 1483-1920 (Kjuge, 1996), YA.2003.b.2445
Erkki Anttonen and Anne-Maria Pennonen, The von Wright Brothers: Art, Science and Life (Helsinki 2017), YD.2018.b.404
Anto Leikola, Juhani Lokki and Torsten Stjernberg, ‘The von Wright brothers and bird research’, in Anttonen and Pennonen (above)
Olof Rudbeck, Olof Rudbeck’s Book of Birds: A Facsimile of the Original Watercolours [c.1693-1710] of Olof Rudbeck the Younger in the Leufsta Collection in Uppsala University Library (Stockholm, 1986)
Jean Anker, Bird Books and Bird Art: An Outline of the Literary history and Iconography of descriptive Ornithology (Copenhagen, 1938), LR.106.a.8
Claus Nissen, Die illustrierten Vogelbücher: ihre Geschichte und Bibliographie (Stuttgart, 1953), 2731.y.1
21 January 2022
“Only your work will be remembered”: the 150th anniversary of Jože Plečnik’s birth
On 21 July 2021, UNESCO added four new cultural sites to its World Heritage List. One of these four was the work of the architect Jože Plečnik on Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana in the years between the world wars, transforming it from a provincial town into a celebrated example of modern, “human centred design” that nevertheless maintained a “dialogue” with the older elements of the city centre.
Portrait of Jože Plečnik by Alenka KhamPičman. Reproduced with kind permission of the artist.
A few months later, the Slovenian government declared that 2022 would be considered “the year of Plečnik”, emphasising this honour and the 150th anniversary of his birth. There will be exhibitions, tours and new publications focusing on his oeuvre, which extends far beyond Ljubljana and can be found in every corner of the country. It will kick off with a series of events in the historic yet industrious town of Kamnik, where among other things he designed a memorial chapel to soldiers of both world wars, renovated the station, and – in the forest nearby – erected a hunting lodge for the first King of Yugoslavia, Alexander.
Hunting lodge in Kamnik designed by Jože Plečnik for the first King of Yugoslavia, Alexander. Photo: Janet Ashton
Slovenia is justly proud of Plečnik as the architect of a very recognisable national style, but he was also a true son of Central Europe, born in 1872 as a subject of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and educated also in Graz and Vienna, where he studied under Otto Wagner. To Vienna he contributed the immediately noticeable Zacherlhaus in the city centre, and enjoyed a certain measure of favour in highest quarters, working on a fountain in honour of the mayor Karl Lueger, and collaborating with Lueger and the ill-fated Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg on building a church in the district of Ottakring, whose working class inhabitants they hoped to inspire with religious feelings that would immure them against radical activities. Plečnik had instinctive sympathy for the Christian Social movement Lueger represented, and throughout his life was interested in popular expressions of Catholicism and their links with national identity.
Given his success and his position in the political mainstream, he even hoped to succeed Wagner as professor of Architecture at the School of Fine Arts, but the style of the Holy Ghost Church fell foul of the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, whose tastes were far more conservative and who likened the church to a stable crossed with a sauna. Plečnik found his appointment blocked.
Obelisk designed by Plečnik on the Moravian Bastion of Prague Castle. Photo: Janet Ashton
Convinced that his career in Vienna was over, he moved to Prague at the invitation of Jan Kotěra, another of Wagner’s pupils, and took up a post at the college of arts and crafts. He was teaching in Prague when the Habsburg empire split apart and the cities in which he had made his life and career found themselves in three separate countries. On a personal level, this was a traumatic experience for many people, never again sure to which nation they belonged, but for Plečnik it also afforded new opportunities in developing national styles with specific political overtones. His first major project for the successor states was to renovate Prague Castle, transforming the dilapidated and forbidding Habsburg fortress into a “democratic” residence for the new President of the Czechoslovak Republic, a seat and symbol of the liberal, middle class nation its leaders aspired to create. Whereas his contact with hereditary royalty was always awkward, he developed a great rapport with both the President, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, and with Masaryk’s daughter Dr. Alice Masaryková, who shared a profound involvement in the project. Symbolic of their complex national history, he and Alice corresponded in German, the language of the vanished empire, because despite his years in Prague Plečnik lacked confidence in his own Czech-speaking abilities.
Interior of the Sacred Heart Church in Vinohrady designed by Jože Plečnik. Photo: Janet Ashton
In 1921 he was invited to return to Ljubljana and take up a post at the School of Architecture at the new University. He was reluctant at first, fearing that he was moving to a backwater, but he also felt a patriotic obligation to the Slovenian people, and in the end he accepted. This post would lead to his celebrated impact on the whole of the Slovenian capital, where he remodelled bridges, built churches, and designed the national library, city stadium and cemetery. But at the same time, he also worked on projects in far more modest locations, renovating a church in the tiny north-eastern town of Bogojina, for example, simply in the hope of inspiring its townsfolk. He had limited impact on the wider Yugoslavia of which Slovenia was a component part, but did undertake two projects for the Yugoslav royal family for their visits to Slovenia. His relationship with the military-minded King Alexander was as awkward as that with Franz Ferdinand had been, however, and nothing ever came close to the rapport he had enjoyed with Masaryk and Alice.
Drawing of the National/University Library and Napoleon memorial in Ljubljana by Alenka KhamPičman. Reproduced with kind permission of the artist.
Jože Plečnik lived an ascetic and fairly reclusive life according to his own motto, “Minljiv si, le tvoja dela so tvoj spomin” (“only your work will be remembered”) at his home in Ljubljana (which is now a museum). He survived the occupation of the city by first Fascist Italy and then Nazi Germany, and continued to teach until the last days of his life. Alenka KhamPičman, now an artist who often paints her tutor’s buildings, recalls that he came on foot to the University every day and sat all morning marking projects and sketching out ideas for his students to take up. She admired him for his “imagination, knowledge, perseverance and discipline” and for his strict commentary on his pupils’ work.
Plečnik died aged 85 in 1957. Under Communism his architecture was unfashionable and often ignored (“he was pushed away by the modern world” says Alenka KhamPičman sadly), but from 1991 the independence of Slovenia brought a new focus on his work and the national spirit he had tried to embody, elevating him to the status of a national hero and symbol of his country.
Janet Ashton, West European Cataloguing Team Manager
With particular thanks to Alenka KhamPičman for her memories and permission to use her paintings
References/further reading:
The British Library holds a very large number of books and journals in various languages that throw light on Plečnik’s life and work. They range from beautifully illustrated city guidebooks and exhibition catalogues to critical academic studies to facsimiles, memoir by associates, and biographies. A mere sample is as follows:
Maja Avguštin, Saša Lavrinc. Plečnik na Domžalskem in Kamniškem, [fotografije Drago Bac]. (Ljubljana, 2010). YF.2012.a.19139
Noah Charney. Eternal architect: the life and art of Jože Plečnik, modernist mystic. (Ljubljana, 2017). LD.31.b.4492
Great immortality: studies on European cultural sainthood, edited by Marijan Dović, Jón Karl Helgason [includes studies on the cultural and Catholic admiration for both Gaudi and Plečnik]. (Leiden, 2019). YD.2019.a.5108
Andrej Hrausky. Plečnik’s architecture in Ljubljana (Ljubljana, 2017). YF.2019.a.8928
Andrej Hrausky. Jože Plečnik: Dunaj, Praga, Ljubljana. (Ljubljana, 2007). LF.31.b.8502
Ivan Margolius. Church of the Sacred Heart. (London, 1995). LB.31.b.24563
Josip Plečnik: an architect of Prague Castle. [compiled by] Zdeněk Lukeš, Damjan Prelovšek, Tomáš Valen. (Prague, 1997). LB.31.b.17345.
O plečniku: prispevki k preučevanju, interpretaciji in popularizaciji njegovega dela. Tomáš Valena ; prevod iz nemščine Marjana Karer, Špela Urbas ; prevod iz češčine Nives Vidrih. (Celje, 2013). LF.31.b.10948
Plečnik na Loškem: Galerija Loškega muzeja Škofja Loka, 8. 6.-31. 10. 2007. besedila Damjan Prelovšek et al.; uvod Jana Mlakar; fotografija Damjan Prelovšek ... et al.. (Skofja Loka, 2007). YF.2011.a.12830.
Jože Plečnik, Jan Kotěra. Jože Plečnik--Jan Kotěra: dopisovanje 1897-1921, uredil, komentiral in prevedel Damjan Prelovšek. (Ljubljana, 2004). YF.2010.b.2359.
Jože Plečnik, Dunajske risbe =The Vienna drawings. text by Peter Krečič. (Ljubljana, 1994). HS.74/1194
Damjan Prelovšek. Josef Plečnik, 1872-1957: architectura perennis, aus dem Slowenischen von Dorothea Apovnik. (Salzburg, 1992). LB.31.b.17818
Lukeš Zdeněk. Jože Plečnik: průvodce po stavbách v České republice; současné fotografie Jiří Podrazil. (Prague, 2012). YF.2013.a.1546
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