Monthly Archives: November 2012

St Edward the Confessor

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Edward dies, and his soul is received into heaven, attended by St John and St Peter. (image 63, page 29r)
From Life of St Edward the Confessor by Matthew Paris c. 1250
Manuscript
University of Cambridge

Cures at King Edward’s tomb. (image 71, page 33r)
From Life of St Edward the Confessor by Matthew Paris c. 1250
Manuscript
University of Cambridge

One of the Treasures of the University of Cambridge Library Collection is the only copy of an illustrated Anglo-Norman verse Life of St Edward the Confessor, written in England probably in the later 1230s or early 1240s and, as preserved in a manuscript, executed c. 1250-60
There is strong evidence that Matthew Paris (d. 1259) was in fact the author

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Baking a Batch of Ships

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William Charles (1776-1820), John Bull Making a New Batch of Ships To Send To the Lakes, 1814. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012-in process

The American caricaturist William Charles drew several prints around the War of 1812. This satire focuses on King George III attempting to restore lost ships after battles on the Great Lakes in 1813 and 1814. Charles was clearly aware of his British contemporaries Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, and George Cruikshank, who each drew satires using the image of a politician as baker. Here are a few other caricatures with the same iconography.

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Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), High Fun for John Bull or the Republicans Put to their Last Shift, 1798. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895. Graphic Arts Collection GC112

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Bargue Study of a Seated Man

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This little study of a seated man by Charles Bargue (1826/7-1883) has some interesting tonal decisions.


The values are carefully grouped and controlled. In the left side of the jacket, for instance, he didn’t overdefine the modeling on the light side, allowing all those light tones to group together into a larger shape.

The darks are also grouped, so that the face in shadow joins at the chin with the dark shirt-front, and the knuckles link up with the blue cloth and the legs into a bigger unit.

The study is also a great example of the “windmill principle,” a tonal scheme where the figure/ground relationship includes all four basic possibilities:
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