sandr020

Giacomo Lorandi wrote of the pro-inoculation career of Theodore Tronchin in France and the anti-Tronchin response, to be followed by the anti-vaccination movement in Britain and the USA. Swiss physician Théodore Tronchin's (1709–1781) clinic att­racted patients from everywhere and his reputation, esp­ecially for ground-breaking research on the prevention of smallpox through inoculation, grew. The Duke of Orleans, Louis-Philippe I (1725-85), summoned him to Paris to treat his children. His success in saving the children sparked interest in inoculation among the Parisian ar­istocracy and his rise to fame meant inocul­ation became wide­spread. Tronchin’s work involved a tiny amounts of the smallpox virus taken from the pustule of a person afflicted with the dis­ease; it was injected into the superficial layers of the skin to induce immunity. Tronchin was a major advocate of a healthy lifestyle and phys­ical well being. He devoted time to the sick, listening to their symptoms; he sug...

Ellis Island  is a small is­l­and in New York Harbour located in the up­per bay near the New Jer­sey coast. By the time Samuel Ellis became the island's private owner in the 1770s, Ellis Island developed into a harbour fort, ammun­ition and ordinance depot, and finally an immigration station. When the British occupied New York City during the Rev­ol­utionary War (1775–83), its large naval fleet sailed freely into New York Harbour. The Continental Congress voted for independence in 1776. The Federal government eventually purchased Ellis Island from NY State in 1808. When the government realised its strategic value in defending against British invas­ion, they built a series of coastal fortificat­ions in New York Harbour. This was even before they knew about the War of 1812 between the USA, the UK and their respective allies. But the fort was not needed in the 1812 War and served only as an ammunit­ion storage. They built a parapet for 3 tiers of circular guns, plus two earthworks f...

Harold Freedman (1915–99) was born in Melbourne and educated at Melbourne Technical Col­lege. Starting his long career in 1936, he worked in all public arts: port­raits, war propaganda, polit­ic­al car­toons, graphic design, ad­vertising, illust­ration, children’s books and large-scale murals. Harold Freedman: Artist for the People was at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 2017. Freed­­man’s designation as a people’s artist was seen in his democr­atic teaching style, his well-known murals, and his serv­ice as an Official War Artist in WW2. But whereas Christopher Allen (The Australian, May 2017) and blogger Black Mark thought the work was insensitive to modern art styles, Ballarat curator Julie McLaren believed the work was access­ible, democratic and full of honour for the WW2 soldiers. In WW2, Freedman enlisted and became a war artist attached to the Royal Austral­ian Air Force Histor­ical War Records Sec­tion. He worked during 1944-5, in Bor­neo, Noemfoor and around Australia. F...

For the 2017 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces, the National Gallery of Victoria/NGV put on a fine exhibition called Van Gogh and the Seas­ons . This exhibition featured works lent by intern­ational museums, and attracted a huge number of Australian visitors. This year the NGV, in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art New York , is presenting MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemp­or­ary Art as the 2018 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces ex­hib­it­ion. From 9th June–7th Oct 2018, the exhibition is providing a unique survey of the Mus­eum’s iconic collection. The key works are arranged ch­ronol­ogically into 8 them­atic sections, tracing the development of art and design from late-C19th urban and industrial transformation, until the global present. MoMA is dedicated to championing innovative modern and contemporary art. The Museum opened in Manhattan in 1929, with the plan to be­come the greatest modern art museum in the world. This is seen in its inter-disciplinary collection of c20...

When a large parliamentary building was required in Berlin, the Reichstag building was proposed and debated. The fights bet­ween Otto von Bis­marck and Reichstag mem­bers delayed construction so an architectural contest was held. The winner, Frank­furt arch­itect Paul Wallot , was asked to design a building in the Italian High Renaissance style that would feat­ure a very large dome. In June 1884 the foundation stone for the building was laid and ten years later, the build­ing was complete. Located on Platz der Republik, along the Spree River just north of Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag had four 40-meters-high towers. After it opened in 1894, the Reichstag building housed the German Parl­iament . But in Feb 1933, the dome was ruined along with the rest of the building in a fire. Despite there being lit­tle evidence to blame anyone in particular, it was blamed on the Communists. The remains and the dome were further demolished with the bombings of Berlin through WW2 and the eventual l...

China’s old cities were thriving commercial centres, especially in silk production. In the later C13th, during the rule of Kublai Khan , China’s silk industry reached a great level of soph­is­tication. The guilds had established meticulous pay scales, working hours and a pricing system for silk. Silk reached the markets, in Persia and further west, via the long “ Silk Road ”. The road stretched from the western gates of Hsian in China's Chanxi Province, and passed via the southern Gobi Desert until western Turkistan. It then passed via Kashghar to the major trading cities of Samar­kand, Bukhara and Merv. Once the Silk Road crossed the length of Persia/Iran, it divided into two branches; one went tow­ard Azar­baijan, and the other ran through Ham­adan, Baghdad or Mosul, Antioch or Capadoccia, Izmir and Istanbul. Caravanserai of Shah Ab­bas, Isfahan now the Abbasi Hot­el  East-West economic exchanges required big warehouses in the trading cities, linked by camel caravans. Businessmen...

During the Third Reich, of the five complexes planned for the bene­fit of the German working classes under the auspices of the Streng­th Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude or KdF ) leisure movement, only one was ever started. Stretching for 4.8 ks along the north coast of Rügen, an East Ger­man is­land along the Baltic Sea, Prora was built between 1936-9 as part of Adolf Hitler’s KdF. Robert Ley, the lead­­er of the German Labour Front, was responsible for this huge resort project, creating Hit­ler’s dream for a seaside dest­in­ation for working families. Some historians have reported that the building work was done by military con­scripts, prisoners of war, forced labourers and refugees. The com­p­arison with Butlins was apt; the resort was designed to be af­fordable for the average worker, with each of the rooms present­ing a sea view. Prora’s eight identical, stark buildings had identical rooms. Each had attractive waterfront views, two beds, wardrobe and a sink, with com­munal bathro...

A fine show,  The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Monet & Architecture , is running until late July 2018 at the National Gallery London . Until now, most people thought of Claude Monet as a paint­er of landscape, sea and later, gard­ens. But not of architecture. Featuring 75 paintings by Claude Monet (1840-1926) , this innov­ative exhibition spans his long career from the mid-1860s to the public display of his Venice paintings in 1912. As a daring young artist, he exhibited in the Impressionist shows and displayed the bridges and buildings of Paris and suburbs. And later the renowned architecture of Venice and London. Buildings played important roles in Monet’s works. They served as records of locations, identifying a village by The Church at Varengeville, Morning Effect 1882 (San Diego Museum of Art), or a city such as The Doge’s Palace Venice 1908 (Brooklyn Museum) or Cleopatra’s Needle & Charing Cross Brid­­ge London 1899–1901 (Halcyon Gall). Architecture suggested modern...

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was born in Florence and spent his childhood travelling across Europe with his wealthy ex-pat American par­en­ts who followed the changing social seasons. Young Sargent was enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and later, when he was 18, the family moved to Paris. In 1874 he entered the Paris atelier of the stylish French por­trait­ist, Auguste Émile Carolus-Duran , and developed a fluid painting style. It was re­markable for dazzling brush work and bold hand­ling of shimmering light. The young Sargent combined the flam­boyant style of his teacher with his study of old mast­ers like Rembrandt and Velázquez, and he was also influen­ced by the Impressionists. Examine  The Greats: Mast­er­pieces from the National Gall­eries of Scotland catalogue which accompanied the Art Gal­lery of NSW exhibition in 2015-16. It discussed how Sargent became the most fashionable portraitist working on both sides of the Atlantic in late C19th and in Ed...