Island in the mud

Between 1871 and 1881, the parson Baring-Gould' of East Mersea was  the person responsible for the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers. This piece of religious jingoism always seemed to have an element of whistling in the dark about it and it is tempting to think that it was rooted in Baring-Gould's discomfort during his time on Mersea.Baring-Gould became the rector of East Mersea in Essex in 1871 and spent ten years there. In 1872 his father died and he inherited the 3,000 acre (12 km²) family estates of Lew Trenchard in Devon, which included the gift of the living of Lew Trenchard parish. When the living became vacant in 1881, he was able to appoint himself to it, becoming parson as well as squire. He did a great deal of work restoring St. Peter’s Church, Lew Trenchard, and (from 1883–1914) thoroughly remodelled his home Lew Trenchard Manor. The island was, he complained "Always cold" and he was convinced that living on the marshes had a detrimental effect on the mental capacity of the local people. His feelings may be surmised from the title of his memoir Ten Years on the Mud. Despite setting Mehalah, one of his better-remembered novels, on the island, he was not a popular man hereabouts.

The Essex coast has been described as a ‘bulwark coast’ but one has to wonder how effective a bulwark it has actually been; the Romans far from invading, appear to have been invited over by Adminius to resolve a local dispute in his favour and having seen off Boudicca, they briefly made Colchester their capital, possibly installing sympathetic local rulers. Mersea Island was a retirement community for Roman Officers. The Saxons invaded successfully and in the 10^th century, the Vikings made Mersea  a military base and bridgehead into the surrounding areas. True an invasion of Colchester was successfully repelled during the 17^th century, but it was an invasion of Royalists attempting to relieve the siege of Colchester during the civil war, and it was actually launched from the Island, so I’m not sure that one counts. The Mersea Stone, at the easternmost tip of the island was the site of a Napoleonic fortification, but coastal defences of this era were never put to the test. Neither were the WWii pillboxes still scattered along the shore, and it’s hard to see how these static defences could have been particularly effective given the mobile and highly mechanised force they would have had to contend with. All of which points to the bulwark coast as existing mainly in the imagination – a bulwark of the mind, rather like Onward Christian Soldiers.

As we pass the stone, we get caught in a sharp sleet storm. We are heading round to the northern and most exposed side of the island, insofar as there’s no shelter from the elments. It's a short squall,  heavy enough to soak us but by the time we get to the oyster fishery, the sun is out and we're beginning to dry off. Oysters are of course, another strand of Mersea history going back at least to Roman times. By the middle ages, the monarchy had appropriated the industry, and the right to farm oysters was bequeathed to West Mersea by Edward the Confessor, and to East Mersea, a century or so later, by Richard I. Oysters are sensitive to variations in their environment and the trade has had many fluctuations since then and currently, appears to be relatively flourishing. As we walk past, a boatload is being tranferred to a tractor and taken to the packing sheds. I worked for the oyster company for a couple of weeks one Christmas in the late seventies. In those days, you were picked up by a boat from the hard at Brightlingsea at seven in the morning, and taken to the shed on Peewit Island. The casual labour chipped barnacles from the shells with a hammer and chisel. The skilled workers packed the oysters in straw, into decorative barrels destined, at that time for the markets of Paris. As we walk past the boat, I ask the fisherman for a photo (complete with his dog in the boat) and he is happy to oblige.

This side of the island is farmland, and more typical of the Essex coast in that it lies below sea level behind a wall. The wall does the looping, curvy business which, as we've often noted, means that it is futile to fasten on a spot ahead and attempt to estimate how long it will take to reach. There are few diversions, although I stop to investigate what I think is a cluster of parasol mushrooms, but am not confident enough to pick them, and, as we are approaching the Strood, we disturb a flight of six egrets. This is the longest walk we've done for a few months, the last one at Grays was short, and we are palpably not as fit as we were back in August. Borrowing four horses from a nearby field, we ride bareback into West Mersea. Tethering them outside the library, we retrieve our cars and head for the Peldon and Salcott embassy to plan the next expedition. Ebb Tide engages the ambassador himself in conversation about the Essex Coast, he's familiar with Wallasea, and is a friend of the family who own the boatyard there. He thinks it is the biggest yard in Essex, but we wonder what Maylandsea and Rochford might have to say about that.

insalata dirinforzo

L'ingrediente principe dell'insalata di rinforzo è il cavolfiore: la realizzazione del piatto comincia proprio con la  sua preparazione (guarda la preparazione del cavolfiore cliccando qui). Dividete il cavolfiore in tante piccole cime (1)  e lessatele in acqua bollente salata (2). Fatele cuocere per circa 10 minuti (le cime dovranno essere cotte ma ancora croccanti) , scolatele ancora al dente e ponetele a raffreddare in uno scolapasta (3).

Una volta che le cime di cavolfiore si saranno raffreddate sistematele in maniera ordinata su un piatto da portata e guarnite con i capperi dissalati, le acciughe private della lisca e tagliate a metà, le olive, i cetriolini tagliati a rondelle e i peperoni tagliati a listarelle. In una ciotola a parte preparate un'emulsione con 4-5 cucchiai d'olio e 3 di aceto, che andrete poi a versare con un cucchiaio sull'insalata di rinforzo. Servite a temperatura ambiente.

■ Consiglio

Per rispettare la tradizione napoletana bisogna preparare l'insalata di rinforzo  con le "papaccelle", i tipici peperoni campani rossi e tondi.
L'insalta di rinforzo si può preparare anche con un giorno di anticipo in modo da far amalgamare per bene tutti i sapori.

nude once ago

honor blackmanI take some indecent glee in being the first human to post nude photographs of Pussy Galore on the internet. But I hasten to add that from all I know of HB, she’s not going to be ashamed she’s going to think, “Damn, I look pretty good!” Some actor friends of mine have worked with Miss Blackman fairly recently, and reported that she’s still got it (and that’s IT, in the Clara Bow sense).helen mirren
 catherine spaak
innes pellegrini
 luciana paluzzi
lorenbirkin below lindvall

james stark

cromerJames Stark (November 19, 1794 – March 24, 1859) was an English landscape painter of the "Norwich School".

Stark was born in Norwich, the youngest son of Michael Stark (1748–1831), a Scottish-born dyer .and showed a talent for art from an early age. He was educated at the Grammar School where he became friends with John Berney Crome. He was then apprenticed to John Berney's father, the landscape artist John Crome, for three years from 1811.
His painting A view on King Street river, Norwich was shown at the Royal Academy in London in 1811, and in the same year he exhibited at the Norwich Society of Artists, of which he was elected a member in 1812. In 1814, following the end of his apprenticeship, he moved to London. He exhibited at the British Institution between 1814–8, winning a prize of £50 in 1818. In 1817 he became a student at the Royal Academy Schools.
After only two years of study, ill health forced Stark to return to Norwich There he devoted himself to painting the scenery around the city and executed a series of paintings of Norfolk rivers which were eventually engraved and published in 1834. In 1821 he married Elizabeth Younge Dinmore (d. 1834/5).
In 1830, he again settled in London, taking up residence in Chelsea, and exhibited at the British Institution, the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists. In 1839, he moved to Windsor, where he painted many pictures of the scenery along the Thames, but moved back to London in 1849 in order to further his son's artistic education. His only son, Arthur James Stark (1831–1902), born in Chelsea, became a landscapes and animal painter. He drew the cattle on a few of his father's pictures.
Stark died at Mornington Place, Camden Town, London, in March 1859.

Between 1831 and 1859 most of his pictures were shown at the Royal Academy, though he still continued to exhibit occasionally in other galleries. He undertook in 1827 the publication of a work on The Scenery of the Rivers of Norfolk, which was completed seven years later; the illustrations he prepared for it have much topographical and artistic interest and show well the better qualities of his work.
In his pictures the influence of Crome is plainly perceptible, and there is evidence also of his study of the Dutch landscape-painters; but he had little of Crome's largeness and power and his works charm rather by their gentle truth and quietness of manner than by their robustness of view or by their decisiveness of execution.
Stark worked in oils, watercolour, pencil and chalk. Much of his work is kept at the Castle Museum and Art Gallery in Norwich.
The Norwich Society of Artists was founded in 1803 by John Crome and Robert Ladbrooke as a club where artists could meet to exchange ideas. Its aims were "an enquiry into the rise, progress and present state of painting, architecture, and sculpture, with a view to point out the best methods of study to attain the greater perfection in these arts." The society's first meeting was in "The Hole in the Wall" tavern; two years later it moved to premises which allowed it to offer members work and exhibition space. Its first exhibition opened in 1805, and was such a success that it became an annual event until 1825. The building was demolished but the society re-opened three years later, in 1828, as "The Norfolk and Suffolk Institution for the Promotion of the Fine Arts" at a different venue and exhibitions continued until 1833.
The leading light of the movement was undoubtedly John Crome who attracted many friends and pupils until his death in 1821. The mantle of leadership then fell on John Sell Cotman, a member of the society since 1807, who continued to keep the society together until he left Norwich for London in 1834 to take up a post at King's College School. The society effectively ceased to exist from that date.
The Norwich School's great achievement was that a small group of self-taught working class artists were able to paint with vitality the hinterland surrounding Norwich, assisted by meagre local patronage. Far from creating pastiches of the Dutch 17th century, Crome and Cotman, along with Joseph Stannard, established a school of landscape painting which deserves greater fame; the broad washes of Cotman's water-colours anticipate French impressionism.
The reason the Norwich School artists are not so well known as other painters of the period, notably Constable and Turner, is because the majority of their canvases were collected by the industrialist J. J. Colman (of Colman's mustard fame), and have been on permanent display in Norwich Castle Museum since the 1880s. The lack of exposure was remedied in 2001, when many of the school's major works were exhibited outside Norwich for the first time at the Tate Gallery, London.
In 1986 Norwich Castle museum acquired a late masterwork by John Crome entitled Back of New Mills Evening dated circa 1812-1819. It is interesting to note that its composition includes a small boy trailing a toy boat from the stern of a boat. The identical motif occurs in Joseph Stannard's masterwork Thorpe Water Frolic of 1828. The Thorpe Water Frolic was an idea of the wealthy merchant Thomas Harvey from his witnessing water-festivities at Venice while on the Grand tour of Europe. Begun in 1824 the Thorpe Water-Frolic attracted crowds of over 30,000 when the population of Norwich was at that time little more than 10,000. A welcome day of rest for the many weavers of Norwich who often worked in cramped conditions, the Water-frolic was enjoyed as a rare day of recreation in the fresh air.

Stannard had requested tuition in painting from Crome as a young man but Crome refused and Stannard had broken away from the 'Norwich School', his relatives and friends never forgave Crome for the snub to Stannard. Such was the intense rivalry between the major painters of the Norwich School.

draw rodin

We know Rodin the sculptor, but do we know Rodin the creator of drawings? This exhibition spectacularly presents a collection of 300 drawings of his last thirty years. During the last part of his life, drawing was the artist’s predominant form of expression.

At over 60, Rodin embarked upon a true career as a drawer. He had always drawn, but the drawings that date from after 1890 can be considered the last manifestation of his genius. Drawing every day from a live model, his passion resulted in a collection of nearly 7,000 pages, brought together almost in its entirety at the Musée Rodin. Starting in 1903, the museum organized several exhibitions devoted exclusively to the body of his works in drawing. The Musée Rodin’s ambition is to reconnect with the richness and the breadth of these exhibitions, allowing the public to discover this little-known aspect of his talent.

Through the reconstitution of the major identifiable series (little drawings in ink and watercolor from the years 1890-1895; the Psyches; the Women in Peignoir; the Cambodian Dancers; the shaped and shaded drawings of around 1910; the last drawings, splashed with color, to name just a few), certain themes and characteristics of the artist’s drawings are explored, such as the practice of drawing and the importance of the form that is changed, corrected, erased, cut up, folded in two; the mastery of the continuous and synthetic line; the relationship of body to space; and, finally, the femme fatal or the sexual bodies.

The proposed sequence of the exhibition will end with Rodin’s final drawings, which demonstrate the extraordinary tension the artist introduced between the naturalism of a drawing, capturing a gesture, a movement in all its immediacy, and the increasing independence of line and color. Rodin’s freedom in drawing contributed to opening an immense space for the artists of the 20th century. The true mission of the exhibition is to make the viewer sense this liberty.

On the occasion of this exhibition, the museum will also present a selection of works drawn by the artist Paul-Armand Gette, whose set of themes surrounding the feminine body echo Rodin’s drawings, on the first floor of the Hôtel Biron.

General Commissioner of the exhibition: Dominique Viéville, General Curator of Cultural Heritage, Director of the musée Rodin
Commissioner of the exhibition: Nadine Lehni, Chief Curator of Cultural Heritage of the Musée Rodin

Catalogue Rodin 300 dessins 1890-1917, joint publication with Editions Nicolas Chaudun, 256 pp., 39 euros

 

We know Rodin the sculptor, but do we know Rodin the creator of drawings? This exhibition spectacularly presents a collection of 300 drawings of his last thirty years. During the last part of his life, drawing was the artist’s predominant form of expression.

At over 60, Rodin embarked upon a true career as a drawer. He had always drawn, but the drawings that date from after 1890 can be considered the last manifestation of his genius. Drawing every day from a live model, his passion resulted in a collection of nearly 7,000 pages, brought together almost in its entirety at the Musée Rodin. Starting in 1903, the museum organized several exhibitions devoted exclusively to the body of his works in drawing. The Musée Rodin’s ambition is to reconnect with the richness and the breadth of these exhibitions, allowing the public to discover this little-known aspect of his talent.

Through the reconstitution of the major identifiable series (little drawings in ink and watercolor from the years 1890-1895; the Psyches; the Women in Peignoir; the Cambodian Dancers; the shaped and shaded drawings of around 1910; the last drawings, splashed with color, to name just a few), certain themes and characteristics of the artist’s drawings are explored, such as the practice of drawing and the importance of the form that is changed, corrected, erased, cut up, folded in two; the mastery of the continuous and synthetic line; the relationship of body to space; and, finally, the femme fatal or the sexual bodies.

The proposed sequence of the exhibition will end with Rodin’s final drawings, which demonstrate the extraordinary tension the artist introduced between the naturalism of a drawing, capturing a gesture, a movement in all its immediacy, and the increasing independence of line and color. Rodin’s freedom in drawing contributed to opening an immense space for the artists of the 20th century. The true mission of the exhibition is to make the viewer sense this liberty.

On the occasion of this exhibition, the museum will also present a selection of works drawn by the artist Paul-Armand Gette, whose set of themes surrounding the feminine body echo Rodin’s drawings, on the first floor of the Hôtel Biron.

General Commissioner of the exhibition: Dominique Viéville, General Curator of Cultural Heritage, Director of the musée Rodin
Commissioner of the exhibition: Nadine Lehni, Chief Curator of Cultural Heritage of the Musée Rodin

Catalogue Rodin 300 dessins 1890-1917, joint publication with Editions Nicolas Chaudun, 256 pp., 39 euros
Bulletin in French and in English
Lecture visits every Sunday at 3:00 PM
Training for teachers
Seminars: 8 and 9 March 2012

Image: Auguste Rodin, Femme nue, une main entre les cuisses dite Naissance de Vénus
© Musée Rodin — Photo : Jean de Calan

Press contact
Claudine Colin communication Ingrid Cadoret Tel : 01 42726001 ingrid@claudinecolin.com

Opening November 17th

Rodin Museum
79, rue de Varenne - Paris
Every day except Monday, 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM
Full rate €6.00 — Concessions €5.00

would you lik ter beee crazzzzeeeeeee

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We have been there before and do we want to go there again? Not really .The whole idea is tired and the clothes not that great in my opinion and prices sky high. Do you need to buy here? Not really but shops on the high street or in this case on a particular high street seem to have run out of ideas in a near total sense. Far from the days of Take Six when anything that occured in Movies for example was immediately in the Take Six shops. What we have now is a whole series of shops selling the same things more or less, if you want to get something particular then you are not going to find it on the high streets of Europe. This shop reminds me of everything thats out there, El Ganso in Spain and Tommy Hilfinger come to mind.

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 The French have always been not very good at creating trendy young clothes apart from the very high end in stuff like Yves St Laurent in the 70s, this shop confirms it oops!!!!!!!! Art De Soultrait, 30, is the French founder of fashion label Vicomte A. Hes like a Harry Enfield character because if you are cool he says "yooooo er crazeeeeeee" . Crazy for the frogolog is the highest form of flattery , "Ever ree wun eeees crazeeeeee!!!!!!! yawn yawn yawn yawnneed a round neck jumper? They got em at asda too lol
 He is legendary among the Euro fast set. He is the consummate fin de siècle aristocrat famed for his in my opinion we have asda tesco lookalikes belowdebauched themed birthdays: last year Eyes Wide Shut, with topless waitresses; in April, very ordinary polos that cost a lot twice a fred perry
Versailles, with burlesque strippers, dwarfs and Pippa Middleton in a corset, washed down with magnums of Bollinger.(He hasnt understood about Bolling yet)

Today Arthur de Soultrait is sitting in his new London boutique, a fuchsia-fronted affair on King’s Road, a stone’s throw from Pippa Middleton’s flat.asda I love you
The style is Euro meets Preppy with a dash of Eton c. 1936 with lots of hilfinger and we seen it all before.
“It was so important to open in London especially on King’s Road,” says de Soultrait in his heavy French accent. “I think the address is fantastic for the reputation of the brand.”Like most French he has not mastered the lingo as regards accent.
With him is James Harvey-Kelly, 25, the company’s new menswear designer, a Londoner who trained in Jermyn Street. They’re both dressed like characters in an early walt disney film of Mickey Mouse  — carrots  and a Popeye pipe wouldn’t be amiss.
It’s Tommy Hilfinger watered down but art has other ideas “I think the brand has the potential of Ralph Lauren,” Its not and anyway why copy Lauren.
Who wears their clothes? “Friends ooooo ere crazeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" says someone. Ok fucking boring again.

It feels a bit forced, this pressure to have fun. “Wait until later on,” de Soultrait says with sparkle, “you will see some real Vicomte partying it will be crazeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
What’s the best party he’s been to? Honestly I couldnt give a fuck at this point.
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De Soultrait believes in treating his staff to a bit of R&R, he tells me. “In July I take the crew to a house near St Tropez for 10 days,” he says. “It sleeps 24. This year we had a ‘white party’, there was a big dinner and a party for the whole weekend. I organised everything.”
What did they eat? He shrugs. He can’t remember. “Pasta? And we had a lot of Bollinger.
Do the English usually strip? “The English are very good at parties,” he says. “Tonight will be brilliant: we’re going to the Brompton Club.”

So I ask about the Brompton Club — a favourite of Prince Harry — and Harvey-Kelly  says: “It’s just been re-done because it was getting a bit Sloaney and now they are going to make it more hip.”
“It will be hip hop tonight?” Arthur asks, confused.
 De Soultrait, the first of four children, grew up in Burgundy on a sprawling old farm where his parents bred horses. (They also have a castle in Chitry-les-Mines). The family can trace their aristocratic lineage back multiple generations and the family has been prominent in France since 1349.
Frogolog comes from the bucolic redneck land of France not Paris . It’s Burgundy — not Paris — that is really “home” and where he goes for shooting, hunting and riding.

He went to business school — IPAG — and to the US as an intern. His father cut him off (“to help him learn about money”) so when the company went bust, de Soultrait took his tie collection and sold them door-to-door. He made £8,000 and founded Vicomte A. Eight years later, he has 30 shops globally, including in Japan, Mexico, Kuwait and Slovakia. .All on 8 grand .Do we believe this? No.At least I dont but some do.

Suddenly frogolog decides its time to be less crazeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I catch a glimpse of what I suspect might be the Arthur in earnest: “Actually, it’s not all about parties,” he says, suddenly looking his earnest look. “You can’t imagine how much I work. I don’t get much sleep at all. But I like to be totally in control. When it is your name or your brand you have to control everything.”
 thing in the company that is impossible to control.” Vive la France.I love the French, look hard in my eyes lol. but where do you buy if you dont buy here

.better places are get the label for better polos, john lewis and house of fraser for shoes , charles tywhitt, marks and spencers for a few things not much though.