Gladioli – like the sunflower they are enormous. Our friend and preface writer Charles Lock wrote yesterday to say: ‘The inventor of the allotment seems to have been Moritz Schreber in c. 1850 (incidentally, it was his son Daniel who was Freud’s patient ). In German the word is Schrebergarten, intended for those living in apartments ie. most of the urban population of Europe apart from the English. Railway lines created many waste spaces around the allotment/Schrebergarten and this was an  obvious use.’ Here in Bath the allotments are on the western edge of the city between a park and ‘the Buildings’ and, amazingly, have never been built on.

Sunflowers are a must on any self-respecting allotment and this is the largest ever – as comparison, there is a ‘normal’ sized one to the right of the picture (and another huge one on the left).

The allotment. A magic word. Do they exist worldwide? Our interest was first sparked by a 1988 book about them by David Crouch and Colin Ward. Since then we have often ‘followed’ them ie. visited. Now our friend and inspiration Jane Brocket has acquired one (cf. Instagram here). But someone asks  ‘is an allotment like a plot in a community garden?’ which shows they are not ubiquitous. In essence, an allotment is a small patch of meadow/garden which, miraculously, has been saved from the claws of the local council or property developers, where people grow vegetables. (The size of an allotment has been carefully tailored so that, in theory, you can feed a family of four with fruit and vegetables all year round.) You often see them beside the railway line. Jane’s is hidden away in central Cambridge. And there are marvellous allotments in London, for example in Highgate (off a road called Fitzroy Park). But our very favourite are in Bath, two minutes from the Royal Crescent but unknown to tourists. These allotments are unusual in being officially open access – many are locked and you need a key to go in, but in Bath you can walk in through a gate behind the road that runs to the west of the magnificent Crescent, which is called Marlborough Buildings. In this photograph you can see that the Buildings enjoy a fascinating and ever-changing view of the allotments.

And finally this heavenly painting by Laura Knight. It was sold a few years ago at Sotheby’s, details here. On the Cliffs is c. 1917 and, as the Sotheby’s catalogue says (referring to all Laura Knight’s Cornwall paintings of this period): ‘the days painting in the summer sun were idyllic but it is noticeable that there are no men in these cliff-top pictures as most were across the ocean facing the horrors of war. In her paintings of the Cornish coast Laura Knight defiantly celebrated the glorious British shoreline which although threatened by invasion by enemy forces remained impenetrable. The majestic rocks that these two women have scrambled across to watch the setting sun have a silent, eternal monumentality whilst the silver light mirrored by the ocean suggests the hope of the future.’

Another Frenchman, but of course on the day when a new prime minister signals that he will do everything in his power to tear us away from the Europe of which, at the moment, we are so proudly and so happily a part, it cheers us up a tiny bit to look at this: Alfred Victor Fournier (1872-1924) painted La Plage in 1909 and we salute him. (We have had this on the Post before, and it is all over the web in numerous different reproductions for sale, but it it so lovely that no apologies are necessary.)

Boudin, Monet’s mentor and friend (Madame Boudin is on the right in Monday’s painting) was the painter of beach scenes par excellence and of Trouville in particular. This is dated 1881.

A great favourite which has surely been on the Post before: a wonderful evocation of the carefree seaside but painted in 1914 and therefore, in retrospect, we cannot help but impose a historical context and the mood becomes not so carefree. It’s Joseph Southall’s Along the Shore.