Julia Margaret Cameron at the National Portrait Gallery in London

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RECENTLY I PUBLISHED a book about the highly innovative Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (‘JMC’; 1815-1879). She married a British colonial administrator and lived during the heyday of the British Empire.  In my book, I tried to portray her sympathetically, but I do hint briefly that she was a ‘child of her times’ as far as he attitudes towards the colonised was concerned. Today, the 11th of July 2023, I paid a visit to London’s National Portrait Gallery (‘NPG’) to see how JMC and her works are currently presented.

JMC was a friend of the painter George Frederic Watts. His portrait of her hangs in the NPG. Another portrait by Watts hanging in the gallery depicts the historian and social commentator Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). Nearby in another room, you can see Carlyle as portrayed in a photograph taken by JMC. This photograph is close to JMC’s photograph (see photo above) of Edward John Eyre (1815-1901). As British Governor of Jamaica, this gentleman was responsible for the brutal suppression of a revolt against British rule on the island. Under his command, 1000 homes were burned and 439 people were killed. Although this outraged many in Britain, it was defended by people such as Carlyle. Eyre’s portrait, made whilst he was awaiting trial, was, according to the NPG’s label, crafted by JMC to make him seem as if he was vulnerable and not:

“… a ruthless murderer but a sensitive man of duty.”

Another caption, next to a photograph of JMC by an unknown photographer suggests that her:

“… photographs are admired for their beauty and artistry. They also reflect the values of the Victorian era. Her portrait of Governor Eyre indicates her support for him following his violent suppression of the Morant Bay uprising.”

From what I have just written, you might get the impression that someone who composes the labels in the NPG is disapproving of JMC. Much as I feel that JMC’s apparent support for Eyre (and Carlyle) is not to my 21st century taste, one must remember that Cameron was living in a time when any uprising in the colonies would have been regarded as a dangerous – even apocalyptic – threat to the privileged life that she and her contemporaries enjoyed.

In all fairness to the NPG, they also have on public display one of JMC’s photographs of a less controversial sitter – the scientist Sir John Herschel (1792-1871). JMC met him in South Africa whilst she was convalescing from an illness she caught in India where she was living in 1837. It was Herschel who sparked off JMC’s enduring fascination with photography, which really ‘took off’ when she received her first camera in late 1863. She was then living on the Isle of Wight next door to her friend the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson.

JMC did not confine herself to taking photographs of defenders of colonialism. She made wonderful photographs of anyone she could find – both famous and completely unknown. What distinguished her work from that of her contemporaries is that, by experimenting with techniques in the studio and also in the darkroom, she created photographs that were works of art rather than slavish attempts to record real life accurately. Like great portrait painters, her photographic portraits give the viewer a sense of the sitter’s inner personality as well as his or her physical appearance.

My book is “Between Two Islands: Julia Margaret Cameron and Her Circle”. It is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZFCVLX9/

One at each corner of the square

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NOW FILLED WITH TOURISTS and pigeons, the area which is currently Trafalgar Square was where Royalty kept their hawks between the 13th century and 1534. In that year the Royal Mews, where the hawks were kept, burnt down, and were replaced by stables for the royal horses. The stabling was moved to Buckingham Palace in the reign (1820-1830) of King George IV. In 1826, the clearance of the stables from the area began, and following the plans of John Nash, a new square began to be laid out. Initially named in honour of King William IV, it was later named Trafalgar Square to commemorate Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Nelson’s Column (145 feet tall) was erected in May 1854.

At each of the four corners of the Square there is a stone plinth designed to support a sculpture. At the northeast corner, the plinth supports a statue of King George IV. Major-General Henry Havelock (1795-1857), who was involved in suppressing the First Indian War of Independence, is perched on the southeast plinth. He died of dysentery in Lucknow after relieving Kanpur from a siege. General Sir Charles James Napier (1782-1853) is portrayed sculpturally on the southwest plinth. His mother was the great-granddaughter of King Charles II. As a Major-General in the Bombay Army, he led the British conquest (1843) of the Indian province of Sindh. It is said that on achieving this, Napier reported in Latin “Peccavi”, which means ‘I have sinned.’

The fourth plinth on the northwest corner of the Square was destined to have a statue of King William IV. Because of insufficient funds, the king’s statue was never made, and the plinth remained empty until 1999 when the Royal Society of Arts (‘RSA’) conceived the idea of using the plinth to display a series of artworks by contemporary artists. Three artists displayed works between 1999 and 2001 on what is now known as The Fourth Plinth. Since 2005, under the supervision of London’s Lord mayors, a series of artworks by different creators have been displayed on the Fourth Plinth. Currently (since September 2022), the plinth (see photograph) displays a sculpture, “Antelope”, by Samson Kambalu. Recently, I heard this highly intelligent artist speak at a conference. His work on the plinth, based on a photograph taken in 1914, portrays the Baptist preacher and pan-Africanist John Chilembwe and the European missionary John Chorley. As the website www.london.gov.uk explained:

“The photograph was taken in 1914 at the opening of Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland, now Malawi. Chilembwe has his hat on, defying the colonial rule that forbade Africans from wearing hats in front of white people. A year later, he led an uprising against colonial rule.  Chilembwe was killed and his church was destroyed by the colonial police.

On the plinth, Chilembwe is larger than life, while Chorley is life-size. By increasing his scale, the artist elevates Chilembwe and his story, revealing the hidden narratives of underrepresented peoples in the history of the British Empire in Africa, and beyond.”

Kambalu’s piece is a powerful work of art, and its message of resisting colonialism, makes stark contrast to the exploits of the other people portrayed on the Square’s plinths.

Golden eagle over Grosvenor Square

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I LIKE SEEING SCULPTURE in open air locations. For example, I have enjoyed the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the garden containing works by Henry Moore (near Much Hadham), Barbara Hepworth’s Garden in St Ives (Cornwall), and the annual Frieze sculpture shows in Regents Park. Until the end of August 2023, the Waddington Custot Gallery is exhibiting several large metal sculptures by Bernar Venet (born 1941 in France). Yesterday, the 8th of July 2023, we visited Grosvenor Square where these artworks are on display alfresco. Although they are not the most exciting sculptures I have ever seen, they looked good amongst the trees and lawns of the square.

The west side of Grosvenor Square is occupied by a large building that was until recently (2018) the Embassy of the USA. Constructed in 1960, it was designed by the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961). The structural engineering firm responsible for the edifice was FJ Samuely, which was founded by the Austrian-born Felix James Samuely (1902-1959), who fled to Britain in 1933 to escape the Nazi persecution. When he died, Frank Newby (1926-2001) became the firm’s senior partner. It was he who supervised the structural aspects of the realisation of Saarinen’s project in Grosvenor Square. One of Frank’s colleagues was my uncle Sven Rindl (1921-2007), who joined Samuely in 1954 and later became a director. It was my uncle who played an important role in creating the former embassy’s distinctive appearance when viewed from Grosvenor Square.

Just beneath the top of the centre of the façade of the embassy that faces Grosvenor Square, there is an enormous sculpture of an eagle. Gold coloured, this huge (35 feet wingspan) symbolic creature was created by the Polish-born sculptor Theodore Roszac (1907-1981). What few people know about this very visible open-air sculpture is that it has remained firmly attached to Saarinen’s building for well over 60 years thanks to my uncle Sven. For, it was my uncle who designed the eagle’s tethering to the building.

When we went to Grosvenor Square yesterday, the first thing I did was to see if the eagle was still in place. It was, and as I have just discovered, it is likely to remain there because the building is subject to a statutory conservation order. In contrast, the sculptures by Vernet, part of the Mayfair Sculpture Trail (www.bondstreet.co.uk/articles/art-in-mayfair-sculpture-trail-2023), will be removed by the 29th of August 2023.

PS: Did you know that the Duke of Westminster leased the land on which the Embassy stands to the Americans for one golden peppercorn per year in gratitude for what the USA did to help Britain in WW2?

The Kensington gravel pits

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JOHN LINNELL (1792-1882) painted the Kensington gravel pits in about 1811. The picture hangs in London’s Tate Britain These pits lay alongside Bayswater Road and Notting Hill Gate. They provided gravel for building projects in England and as far away as Imperial Russia.

Today, the pits no longer exist. They have been built over, but street names such as St Petersburg Place and Moscow Road commemorate the fortunes made by selling gravel from these pits to Russia.

You can discover more about this and much more about Paddington and Kensington and points further west in my book “BEYOND MARYLEBONE AND MAYFAIR: EXPLORING WEST LONDON” (see https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0B7CR679W/

A French milestone in Suffolk

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The town of Eye in Suffolk is twinned with Pouzauges in France. There is a French milestone from the region of France is in the centre of Eye.

Seeing this reminded me of the three months that I attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School in Chicago in late 1963. Every morning before classes began, we used to play a card game called “Mille Bornes” (i.e., ‘1000 milestones’). The game was vaguely educational in that it taught the players a few words of French. We were all obsessed with playing it. When I left the school to return to England, the class clubbed together and bought me a set of “Mille Borne” cards as a farewell gift. although my fellow students at the Lab School were about two years older than me, they made me feel very welcome and were extremely friendly towards me. The same was the case for my class teacher, Ms Alice Flickinger, and the sports teacher, Mr Patlak.

When religious art was frowned upon

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WE OFTEN VISIT the Tate Britain art gallery on London’s Millbank, usually to see special temporary exhibitions. Rarely, if ever, do we spend time looking at the Tate’s permanent collection. However, today, the 6th of July 2023, we met some friends who wanted to see the recently re-hung paintings in the permanent collection. The paintings are arranged in rooms in chronological order. Each artwork has an interestingly informative label, which describes the social conditions of the era in which it was created and other points about it.

The first room of the series of galleries is dedicated to works created just before, during, and after the (Protestant) Reformation in 16th century England. I found it to be most interesting.  The radical rejection of Roman Catholic religious practices involved, amongst many other things, a profound disapproval of the artistic portrayal of religious subjects. A consequence of this was that artists switched from painting religious scenes to portraiture. Just as people love being portrayed in photographs today, those who could afford it in the 16th century were pleased to have themselves immortalised in well-executed paintings. What I had never realised before was that the Reformation unwittingly gave birth to the long tradition of British portrait painting. Maybe, most people know this already, but it was news to me.

The gallery dedicated to the Reformation era has many fine portraits, by artists both known and unknown. However, one of the paintings hanging amongst the portraits is a religious scene, “An Allegory of Man”, by an unknown artist. Painted in about 1596, it would have been a highly controversial subject given the Protestant aesthetics prevailing at that time.

Although the temporary exhibitions at the Tate Britain are usually well worth viewing, the permanent collection deserves many a visit, as we discovered today.

A battle and a window in Essex

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IN THE YEAR 991 AD, the Anglo-Saxons fought a battle with Viking invaders in Maldon (Essex). The Vikings, who often raided for looting and plundering rather than conquest, won. Rather than continue to struggle with the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred the Unready was advised by the Archbishop of Canterbury to pay them off. He paid the Vikings an enormous sum of money, which satisfied them.

Recently, we visited the church of St Mary the Virgin in Maldon. It stands on a small hill that overlooks the mudflats and rivulets of the Chelmer River where the battle was fought. In its north wall there is a striking, colourful modern stained-glass window. Designed by Mark Angus, it was installed in 1991to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Maldon. It is a great addition to an otherwise unremarkable church.

The first and only Queen of Haiti

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UNTIL FEBRUARY 2022, only very few people with specialised knowledge of history would have been able to point out the house in which Marie-Louise Christophe lived in London between 1821 and 1824. Now, there is a plaque on the house in Marylebone’s Welbeck Street that marks the house in which she resided. And by now, you might well be wondering why anyone might want to know.

Marie-Louise (1778-1851) was born into a free black family, which ran a hotel, in St Dominique (which is now Haiti). In 1793, she married Henri Christophe (1767-1820), who had been one of her father’s slaves before he had earned enough in tips to purchase his freedom. After several years of revolution, in which Henri Christophe was an important freedom fighter, Haiti gained independence from France in 1804. In 1811, Henri was crowned the King of Haiti and the following year, Marie-Louise was given the title of Queen of Haiti. After the death of her husband in 1820 and the assassination of her two sons, she fled from Haiti along with her daughters. Their escape was assisted by the British, and they settled first in Blackheath, where they were hosted by the Anti-Slavery activist (abolitionist) Thomas Clarkson. After several changes of address, the Queen and her daughters settled in number 49 Welbeck Street.

According to the British press of the time, she and her daughters were popular with British people in all the social echelons. In 1824, they left London for Europe. Marie-Louise died in Rome, where she is buried. She never returned to Haiti. It was only in February 2022 that the Nubian Jak Community Trust were able to put up the commemorative plaque which you can see on number 49 Welbeck Street. It correctly describes Marie-Louise as “First and Only Queen of Haiti.”