The History Girls: Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style by Catherine Hokin

“Every object which you pass from your hand must carry an outspoken mark of individuality, beauty and most exact execution.” Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Glasgow is having a bit of a do this year to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of architect, designer and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the city’s favourite…

via The History Girls: Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style by Catherine Hokin

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English Utopia in the Art of Helen Allingham | A R T L▼R K

On the 28th of September 1926, Victorian water-colourist and illustrator Helen Allingham, born Helen M. E. Paterson, died in Haslemere, Surrey, England. Her career “was circumscribed by, relied upo…

Source: English Utopia in the Art of Helen Allingham | A R T L▼R K

24 arrestingly beautiful portraits from the turn of the 20th century

These remarkably contemporary-looking portraits, taken more than a century ago, are the work of F. Holland Day, the son of a wealthy Boston merchant. Day cofounded the publishing firm of Copeland and Day in 1893, and was a significant patron of artists and collector of…

Source: 24 arrestingly beautiful portraits from the turn of the 20th century

Markino returns: alone in this world

The recent Christmas post I did about Yoshio Markino, the Japanese artist who lived in Chelsea, reminded me that there were still some images I hadn’t used in a post, even though I wrote four…

Source: Markino returns: alone in this world

The East London Group Rediscovered | Spitalfields Life

The Arches, Mare St by Albert Turpin

When I first published David Buckman‘s introduction to his book From Bow To Biennale in these pages in 2012, The East London Group – one of the major artistic movements to come out of the East End in the last century – was almost forgotten.Four years and several exhibitions later, the East London Group is rediscovered and an enlarged and revised edition of David Buckman’s essential ground-breaking book is newly published.

How is it that one of the most innovative, commercially successful, and – in its time – hugely publicized British art groups of the twentieth century became neglected?  That was the case until…

Source: The East London Group Rediscovered | Spitalfields Life

My father, Oscar Wilde.

This is a fascinating article about the two sons of Oscar Wilde, Cyril and Vyvyan.

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Vyvyan Holland Wilde

Unconventional, scandalous, witty, generous, brilliant, these are just a few adjectives that may suit a man of such genius and personality like Oscar Wilde, a man who knew both the triumph and adoration of people and the brutal disaster at the end of his life. Whenever I think about the swirl of events that characterized his life of man and artist, I can’t help but think about his children. What kind of father was Oscar Wilde? What did it mean growing under the shadow of such a giant of his times?

Constance Wilde and Cyril

Oscar Wilde had two sons: Cyril (1885-1915) and Vyvyan (1886-1967). Many of my curiosities were satisfied by Vyvyan, who wrote : “Son of Oscar Wilde”. As far as we know, the boys had a marvelous early childhood. They grew up at the Wildes’ fashionable home in Tite Street, Chelsea. As their…

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Mr Menpes I presume

The Library Time Machine

Mortimer Luddington Menpes is having a bit of a renaissance in his home country. This year there were two exhibitions devoted to his work in Adelaide, the city of his birth. We contributed some images to one of them, and they sent us a copy of the book of the exhibition, which is where most of this week’s pictures come from. My colleague Tim and I also got an invitation to the private view. But it was a bit far to go, which was a shame. It would have been good to see the place Menpes came from. He was born in Port Adelaide in 1855 and came to England when he was 20. Although he lived the greatest part of his life in the UK there was always something of the outsider about Mr Menpes and he never lost an Australian artist’s feeling for light and colour.

“Dolce far…

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First Night Design | Katherine Mansfield 1888-1923 | Quotes

In my opinion, New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield was one of the greatest exponents of the short story. I devoured her work as a teenager and promptly tried to write just like her. Reader, I did not succeed! I am sad, now, that I threw these efforts away. Who knows what I might not have been able to do with them now. (Don’t answer that!)

Portrait of Katherine Mansfield (1918) by Anne Estelle Rice [Wikimedia]

“A. [Rice] came early and began the great painting — me in that red, brick red frock with flowers everywhere. It’s awfully interesting, even now. I painted her in my way as she painted me in hers: her eyes … little blue flowers plucked this morning.”

“Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.”

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.” 

[Wikimedia]

“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”

“The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody’s fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”

“I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.”

“I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it – to live – to expand – to breathe in it – to rejoice – to share it. To give and to be asked for Love.”

The Garden Party and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

Related articles

• Katherine Mansfield
• Katherine Mansfield House
• Katherine Mansfield Society
• Katherine Mansfield quotes on GoodReads

Take care and keep laughing!