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A parallel in pictures to the world of Persephone Books.
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10th June 2022
There is something tremendously touching about this painting of a huge family gathering to see the sunset. it is so, well, immediate. Boudin painted it in 1869 and it's the last Trouville picture, though we do recommend it for a holiday. One day. 'Figures on the Beach' is at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
9th June 2022
Monet spent eight weeks in Trouville in 1870 and painted eleven pictures. Here are details of his stay there. This is called Hotel des Roches Noires.
8th June 2022
Another Boudin, even more characterful and fascinating than yesterday's (it's 1881 ie over a decade later).
7th June 2022
The Beach at Trouville 1868 by Boudin. Let's all just take five minutes to imagine we are there (although perhaps minus the steam from the ship).
6th June 2022
Here in the UK everyone is worn out – by endless Jubilee news (we love the Queen, but still...), by Our Leader, by the grey weather, by a hundred days of war, by the little detail on this excellent programme by Cosmo Sheldrake yesterday that in a few years nightingales will have disappeared altogether – how CAN we be allowing this to happen? And so on. However, one of the Persephone team managed to escape to Trouville for a few glorious days last week, so this week on the Post we too shall escape there, if only on our screens. This is Monet in 1870 and (apparently) it hasn't changed much. (For Brits wanting to do the same – it's Eurostar to Paris, then a change of stations and another train. The hotels are cheap and unpretentious but friendly. And the food merveilleux.)
1st June 2022
Vinny Cheese Making by Thomas Hennell (1903-45). 'Vinny Cheese, a Dorset blue cheese, was once made in virtually every farmhouse in the county but by the time Hennell came to make this charmingly well-observed watercolour of a mother and daughter engaged in the time-honoured craft, it had almost died out – and, in fact, disappeared completely after the Second World War' here at the Sim Fine Art site. (The Persephone Post is now on holiday until Monday; the shop is open today and Saturday, then back to normal hours after the Jubilee weekend.)
31st May 2022
Because Thursday and Friday are Bank Holidays in the UK we shall only have time for two paintings from the excellent Sim Fine Arts exhibition here. Here is the first: Requisitioned Country House by Trevor Makinson (1926-92) oil on canvas, signed & dated 1944. From the catalogue: 'Laura Knight was very taken with the young Trevor Makinson when she met him in Malvern during the war, describing him as an "unrepentant adherent of the traditional representational school of British painters" - qualities evident in this remarkable depiction of the young servicemen and women in a requisitioned country house.' Unsurprisingly, the painting has been sold; we are hoping to obtain permission to use it in the Biannually or even on the front of a new Persephone Classic (A House in the Country? Miss Ranskill?). But chapeau to the person who bought this marvellous picture.