Reading about Nora Heysen is very humbling: why on earth hadn't she been firmly on our radar before? Because, presumably, we are insular, narrow-minded and far too Euro-centric. Her work is amazing and, apart from her work, she is fascinating because of her relationship with her painter father (which was complicated) and because of her relationship to feminism (which was straightforward). For anyone as ignorant as we are/were, read this good piece about her by Joanna Mendelssohn here. Nora Heysen spent a few months in London, this is London Breakfast 1935. It's so much our kind of painting: the domestic detail, the atmosphere, the overtones of Piero della Francesca (the blue) and Vermeer (the interior), oh it's fascinating. There are more details about this wonderful painting here (it's in the National Gallery of Australia), for example that it was painted in Duke Street in Kensington and shows Nora Heysen's friend Evie Stokes.

Happy New Year to all readers of the Persephone Post, well as happy as you can make it. Reading is really what is getting us through 'all this' and we hope so much that our 139 books do contribute to our readers' happiness and welfare. This week on the Post: the Australian painter Nora Heysen (1911-2003). This is a 1933 self portrait.

The first Christmas card, 1843. Happy happy Christmas to all readers of the Post. We shall be back on January 4th. Meanwhile, happy happy reading.

George Cruikshank did a series of Christmas drawings during the 1840s, they can all be found on Spitalfields Life here. This is Christmas Eve. (The details are interesting and some have not changed at all eg the fireplace and the mirror over the mantelpiece. The fire is obviously blazingly hot, which is why there is a fire screen.)

One hundred years before the Regency and another anonymous but fascinating painting: White's Chocolate House in London in 1708. It's rather hard to believe that there was really this freedom to chat and to mingle but how wonderful if true. 'London’s three top chocolate houses were White’s, which was known as “the most fashionable hell in London”, and Ozinda’s, both on St James’ Street, as well as the Cocoa Tree on Pall Mall, which opened in 1693. Inside, the houses were decadently decorated with dark wooden interiors and elegant furniture, complete with waiters, reminiscent of the Viennese coffee houses' (here).

Christmas on the Persephone Post this week is seen through the lens of Regency England  (there is a reason for this which will become apparent during 2021). A detail from this marvellous painting is on our Home Page wishing our readers Happy Christmas. It is by an anonymous artist but what a great painting, it really makes you feel that you are there. And of course travelling was a huge undertaking in those days so that some of these people, for example the woman at the far side of the table on the left leaning across to her left, won't have seen some of their relations or friends for many, many months. Alas, two hundred years later and what's new?

Casablanca (1942). What is there to say? Maybe Christmas will pass in a delicious haze if we  all simply watch The Apartment and Casablanca back to back. And when the screen palls, settle down with a Dorothy Whipple. Next week on the Post: Christmas paintings.