sandr020

Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-1896) built the Kensington studio-house from 1865 on. With the Victorian art market booming, and domestic taste fascin­ating the middle classes, Leight­on needed to demonstrate his importance. After all, he was both president of the Royal Academy and chief exponent of the new Aesth­eticism. Leighton House was to be his link to a special society, so #2 Holland Park Rd needed to be special. Fortunately Leighton was enjoying increasingly high fees for his paint­ings, and he also had family money. Leighton and his arch­itect, George Ait­ch­ison , chose the decorat­ive elements for their aesthetic effect, wherever they came from. The result incorp­or­at­ed styles from Arts and Crafts , Orientalism and Baroque . Adding to the building for years, he end­ed up with one of the most talked-about houses in the country. Around the dome was a super frieze made up of tiny tiles, commis­sioned from artist Walter Crane (1845-1915), who did the work in Venice and then ...

Born in Nymphenburg Castle Munich , Ludwig (1845-1886) was a mem­ber of the Wittelsbach dynasty. He became King Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1864 at 18 when his father died, but alas for the Bavarians, Ludwig had no interest in politics. He became a lonely, isolated man, with no wife and no friends. His diaries suggested this devout Roman Cathol­ic king struggled with his sexual orientation during his adult life. He was either straight, gay, bisexual or celib­ate, worry­ingly eccentric and he built expensive mountain castles. Wagner trained Ludwig's brother  Prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis in his opera Loh­engrin, per­formed for the king's 20th birth­day in Aug 1865 in Hohenschwangau. The opera was well staged with Prince Paul dressed as the hero Lohengrin in silver armour, drawn over the lake by an artificial swan. The King sat alone, enraptured with the music. King Ludwig was possessed by the idea of a holy kingdom by the Grace of God.  Yet he had only two passions in life: cas...

In 1870, the vast area called Rupert's Land was transferred from the Hudson's Bay Company and purchased by the new Dominion of Canada. The sudden shift of authority and resultant uncertainty among the inhabitants of the region erupted into the Red River Rebellion of 1869-70 . It was essential that order be restored by the newly formed federal government in Ottawa. In 1872 a colonel in the Canadian Militia was dispatched into the Northwest on a governmental fact-finding journ­ey. He recommended that a regiment of 550 mounted riflemen be organised to preserve order in the terr­it­ory, and to protect the surveyors and railway builders who were working their way to the Pacific coast. In Ottawa, 1st Prime Minister Sir John Macdonald (1867–73) was soon aware of the viol­ence in the USA’s western plains and did not want these problems repeated in Canada! In May 1873 Macdonald successfully introd­uced a bill to est­ab­lish a police force in the territor­ies: Manitoba, parts of Sask­a...

Over the past 150 years, The Republican Party/Grand Old Party moved from a racially prog­res­s­ive, Northern party.. to one that that domin­ates the South and gets almost no support from non-white vot­ers. These changes are totally counter-intuitive to a non-American historian, so I have examined three historians: Annabelle Quince , Natalie Wolchover  and Tim Stanley . The Whigs formed in opposition to the policies of Democratic Pres­id­ent, Andrew Jack­son (1829–37). The Whigs supported the suprem­acy of the US Congress over the Presidency, and favoured a programme of mod­ernisation, banking and pro­tectionism for manufacturing. It appealed to entrepreneurs, planters, reformers and the growing urban middle class, but not to labourers and farmers. Slavery was only one of many issues in the country’s politics then, usually rel­atively minor. The American South based its econ­omy on the en­slavement of non-whites, and the two major parties, Democrats and Whigs, were willing to let...

Leon Black, Chairman and chief executive of Apollo Global Man­agement, was apparently inspired in his love of art by his mother and his aunt, Manhattan art deal­er Grace Borgenicht Brandt. Leon’s purchase of Norwegian Edvard Munch ’s (1863-1944) painting called The Scream reached a record for an auctioned piece of art when it was sold at Soth­eby's New York in May 2012 for a world record $120 million. This ex­press­ion­ist piece was one of four vers­ions of The Scream created between 1893 and 1910, three of which are held in Oslo museums in Norway. The four known versions were 1] 1893 tempera paint on cardboard; 2] 1893 crayon on cardboard; e] 1895 pastel on cardboard that billionaire Leon Black bought at auction; and 4] tempera paint on hard cardboard, c1910. Edvard Munch’s 1895 version of The Scream of Nature Wikimedia Impressive, even though I know nothing about Scandinavian art and even less about meteorology.  But it was the sky and not the price that has been a bone of cont...

The Tartan Weaving Mill on The Royal Mile in Edinburgh covers 5 storeys inside, with an exhibition that shows the whole process involved in tartan production: shearing sheep, working looms, making a kilt and being photographed kitted out. So I already knew that tartan   was not described in Scotland until the C16th . In 1538, James V ordered a tartan hunting out­fit for himself and his men: they wore trews/close-fitting trousers and stockings of a warm stuff of divers colours call­ed tartan. A plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours, of much finer and lighter stuff than their hose, with blue flat caps on their heads. Thus the belted plaid appears to have become a loose garment made up of 5 metres of double tartan. Highland looms could only weave a maximum width of 75 cms so lengths had to be sewn together down their long edge to make the plaid. Such outfits were practical for riding and led to the aristocratic fashion for tartan trews. The trews wer...

Let us start with whist. The  history of Whist can be traced at least to the early C16th in England (as mentioned in a pub­lish­ed sermon by Bishop Latimer in 1529) and through succeeding centuries under different names. Whist maintained its pop­ularity as a fashionable amusement, but it was not until 1742 that Edmond Hoyles’ famous Short Treatise on Whist appeared. In 1834 Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1804-70) invented the first sig­nal where partners defending against a contract could play particular cards to give a coded meaning, to guide each other. After ret­irement in 1857, Cavendish devoted himself to playing world class whist at the Port­land Club in London . In fact the first game of Duplicate Whist was pl­ayed in London that year, under Cav­end­ish’s dir­ec­t­ion.      Two beautifully dressed couples playing bridge c1900 The USA progressed in parallel with Britain in extending Duplicate. A dup­licate whist game was played privately in Chicago in 1880 ...

Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands etc had booming colonial empires, often after long and brutal struggles against local citizens. By the late 19th century, Germany also wanted colonies. We need to start with Germany's unification in 1871. Although the German Empire went on to become a European colonial power unt­il the end of WW1, it might be difficult for the modern historian to see how colonial power entered pub­lic cons­ciousness. Certainly not from Otto von Bismarck and the politicians in the Reichstag who felt they had enough  problems to deal with, inside the new German nation. However it must be noted that there were many geog­raphical assoc­iat­ions and colonial societ­ies in Germany. And there were many German citizens who moved to the colonies, temporarily or for the long term: missionaries, civil serv­ants, military people, settl­ers and merch­ants. In 1884 Bismarck reluctantly changed his mind. In order to protect trade, to safeguard raw materials and ex­p...

As you can tell from my old posts, I've long been interested in Leipzig’s musical connections . Now let us summarise the details published in Discover Leipzig and then focus on the historic Bose House -museum. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was active in Leipzig’s musical life from 1723 on. He was responsible for the services and special cer­emonies at the churches of St Nicholas and St Thom­as . And, as the city's Director Musices, he was also charged with the organ­is­ation of a wide range of secular events. He directed an association of pro­f­essional performers and musically active students. Many of his major compositions were written in Leipzig, including annual cycles of choral cantatas, St John and St Matthew Passions, Christmas Oratorio, Art of the Fugue and his Mass in B Minor. Since the C19th no end of effort has been put into the study and interp­ret­ation of Bach's works in Leipzig, and several instit­ut­ions, societies and competitions have been establishe...

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...