World War I
World War I known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, it is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, partial mobilisation was approved. General Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; when Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6th. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within four weeks shift forces to the East before Russia could mobilise. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France; when this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day. On 12 August and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe; the Entente and its allies would become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917. In 1915, Italy opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans; the United States remained neutral, although by doing nothing to prevent the Allies from procuring American supplies whilst the Allied blockade prevented the Germans from doing the same the U. S. became an important supplier of war material to the Allies.
After the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the revelation that the Germans were trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U. S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918; the 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent at the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive.
This offensive was successful, but the Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti after being decisively defeated by Italy in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural and social climate of the world; the war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, the United States, It
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark was a British art historian, museum director, broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television, presenting a succession of programmes on the arts during the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the Civilisation series in 1969; the son of rich parents, Clark was introduced to the fine arts at an early age. Among his early influences were the writings of John Ruskin, which instilled in him the belief that everyone should have access to great art. After coming under the influence of the connoisseur and dealer Bernard Berenson, Clark was appointed director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford when he was twenty-seven, three years he was put in charge of Britain's National Gallery, his twelve years there saw the gallery transformed to make it accessible and inviting to a wider public. During the Second World War, when the collection was moved from London for safe keeping, Clark made the building available for a series of daily concerts which proved a celebrated morale booster during the Blitz.
After the war, three years as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, Clark surprised many by accepting the chairmanship of the UK's first commercial television network. Once the service had been launched he agreed to write and present programmes about the arts; these established him as a household name in Britain, he was asked to create the first colour series about the arts, first broadcast in 1969 in Britain and in many countries soon afterwards. Among many honours, Clark was knighted at the unusually young age of thirty-five, three decades was made a life peer shortly before the first transmission of Civilisation. Three decades after his death, Clark was celebrated in an exhibition at Tate Britain in London, prompting a reappraisal of his career by a new generation of critics and historians. Opinions varied about his aesthetic judgment in attributing paintings to old masters, but his skill as a writer and his enthusiasm for popularising the arts were recognised. Both the BBC and the Tate described him in retrospect as one of the most influential figures in British art of the twentieth century.
Clark was born at 32 Grosvenor Square, the only child of Kenneth Mackenzie Clark and his wife, daughter of James McArthur of Manchester. The Clarks were a Scottish family. Clark's great-great-grandfather invented the cotton spool, the Clark Thread Company of Paisley had grown into a substantial business. Kenneth Clark senior worked as a director of the firm and retired in his mid-twenties as a member of the "idle rich", as Clark junior put it: although "many people were richer, there can have been few who were idler"; the Clarks maintained country homes at Sudbourne Hall, at Ardnamurchan and wintered on the French Riviera. Kenneth senior was a gambler, an eccentric and a heavy drinker. Clark had little in common with his father. Alice Clark was shy and distant. An only child not close to his parents, the young Clark had a boyhood, solitary, but he was happy, he recalled that he used to take long walks, talking to himself, a habit he believed stood him in good stead as a broadcaster: "Television is a form of soliloquy".
On a modest scale Clark senior collected pictures, the young Kenneth was allowed to rearrange the collection. He developed a competent talent for drawing, for which he won several prizes as a schoolboy; when he was seven he was taken to an exhibition of Japanese art in London, a formative influence on his artistic tastes. Clark was educated at Wixenford School and, from 1917 to 1922, Winchester College; the latter was known for its intellectual rigour and – to Clark's dismay – enthusiasm for sports, but it encouraged its pupils to develop interests in the arts. The headmaster, Montague Rendall, was a devotee of Italian painting and sculpture, inspired Clark, among many others, to appreciate the works of Giotto, Botticelli and their compatriots; the school library contained the collected writings of John Ruskin, which Clark read avidly, which influenced him for the rest of his life, not only in their artistic judgments but in their progressive political and social beliefs. From Winchester, Clark won a scholarship to Trinity College, where he studied modern history.
He graduated in 1925 with a second-class honours degree. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Sir David Piper comments that Clark had been expected to gain a first-class degree, but had not applied himself single-mindedly to his historical studies: "his interests had turned conclusively to the study of art". While at Oxford, Clark was impressed by the lectures of Roger Fry, the influential art critic who staged the first Post-Impressionism exhibitions in Britain. Under Fry's influence he developed an understanding of modern French painting the work of Cézanne. Clark attracted the attention of Charles F. Bell, Keeper of the Fine Art Department of the Ashmolean Museum. Bell became a mentor to him and suggested that for his B Litt thesis Clark should write about the Gothic revival in architecture. At that time it was a unfashionable subject. Although Clark's main area of study was the Renaissance, his admiration for Ruskin, the most prominent defender of the neo-Gothic style, drew him to the topic.
He did not complete the thesis
Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan
Hugh Pattison Macmillan, Baron Macmillan, was a Scottish advocate, judge and civil servant. He was born in the son of the Rev Hugh Macmillan DD FRSE and Jane Patison, his father was minister of St Peter's Free Church in Glasgow. The family moved to 70 Union Street in Greenock in 1878. Hugh was educated at Collegiate School, Greenock from 1878 studied at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, he was indentured for three years to the firm Cowan and Clapperton while he studied the Law, in which he distinguished himself by winning the Cunningham Scholarship for Conveyancing in the year 1896. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1897 with a public defence of an assigned Thesis De diversis regulis juris antiqui, became King's Counsel in 1912. For a time he wrote articles on conveyancing for Green's Encyclopedia of Scots Law, was Editor of the quarterly Juridical Review between 1900 and 1907. During the First World War Macmillan served as Assistant Director of Intelligence for the Ministry of Information.
Macmillan suffered an illness, surgery thereon, in 1917, at which time he decided to cease his nascent political career. In October 1922, he was asked by Bonar Law to become the Solicitor-General for Scotland, which he declined because of his political stripe. In 1923 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers were Edward Theodore Salvesen, William Archer Tait, Robert Blyth Greig and Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker. He resigned from the Society in 1931; when the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald was elected in 1924 - the first time the Labour Party had taken power - it had no KCs in Scotland amongst its Parliamentary representation. Macdonald therefore turned to Macmillan, whose reputation at the Bar was considerable, to take the job of Lord Advocate though he was a Conservative, he served as Lord Advocate from February to November 1924, was sworn of the Privy Council on 16 April that year. Macmillan was standing counsel for a vast array of clients, that included the Dominion of Canada from 1928, for the Commonwealth of Australia from 1929.
He chaired in 1924 the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Health, in 1929 the Committee on Finance and Industry, in 1932 the Committee on Income Tax Codification. On 3 February 1930, he was appointed to replace Lord Sumner as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, was created a life peer as Baron Macmillan of Aberfeldy in the County of Perthshire, one of few men to have been appointed a judge in the House of Lords straight from the Bar. Macmillan sat as a Law Lord until 1947 except for a brief period at the outbreak of World War II when he was Minister of Information; however he was soon replaced. The Ministry of Information was located in the Senate House, University of London, the Macmillan Hall there is named after him. Macmillan produced some 152 judgments in the House of Lords, some 77 in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, he held a number of chairmanships, including the Committee on Finance and Industry in 1929-31, the Canadian Royal Commission on Banking and Currency in 1933, the Pilgrim Trust from 1935–52, the Political Honours Committee from 1935–52, the Court of the University of London from 1929–43, the BBC Advisory Council from 1936-46.
He was a member of the Wytham Abbey Trust, founded by Colonel Raymond ffennell. He was elected Trustee of the British Museum, was in 1934 principal proponent and founder of the Stair Society, designed "to encourage the study and advance the knowledge of the history of Scots Law by the publication of original documents and by the reprinting and editing of works of sufficient rarity or importance."Macmillan led, over the course of a decade to 7 August 1925, the effort to create the National Library of Scotland. He provided the 1934 Rede Lecture at Cambridge, the 1934 Maudsley Lecture, the 1935 Henry Sidgwick Memrial Lecture, in 1936 a Broadcast National Lecture; these were bound as Other Things. He was appointed in 1941 to the Professorship of Law at the Royal Academy of Arts, was chosen an Honorary Member by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1948 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, he delivered the Andrew Lang Memorial Lecture, the Commemorative Oration at the University of Glasgow's 500th anniversary in 1951.
He was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1924 and was awarded the GCVO in 1937. He would earn the distinction of LLD from his two alma matres, Edinburgh on 17 July 1924. Again in 1931 at the University of London, again in 1932 at the University of St. Andrews. In North America, he was awarded LLDs from McGill University, Queen's University at Kingston, Dalhousie University and Columbia University, a DCL from Case Western Reserve University, as well as being inducted into the Order of the Coif, he was unanimously elected 13 May 1924 the first Honorary Bencher of Inner Temple. He was elected honorary member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, of the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers, he married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Katherine Grace Marshall, on 27 July 1901. His autobiography, A Man of Law's Tale, was published in 1952. Corporation of the City of Glasgow v Stirli
Eric Kennington
Eric Henri Kennington was an English sculptor and illustrator, an official war artist in both World Wars. As a war artist, Kennington specialised in depictions of the daily hardships endured by soldiers and airmen. In the inter-war years he worked on portraits and a number of book illustrations; the most notable of his book illustrations were for T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Kennington was a gifted sculptor, best known for his 24th East Surrey Division War Memorial in Battersea Park, for his work on the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and for the tomb effigy of Lawrence at Wareham in Dorset. Kennington was born in Chelsea, the second son of the well-known genre and portrait painter, Thomas Benjamin Kennington, a founder member of the New English Art Club, he was educated at the Lambeth School of Art. Kennington first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1908. At the International Society in April 1914 Kennington exhibited a series of paintings and drawings of costermongers which sold well and allowed him to set up a studio off Kensington High Street in London.
At the start of World War I, Kennington enlisted with the 13th Battalion London Regiment on 6 August 1914. He was wounded in January 1915 and evacuated back to England. Kennington was injured while attempting to clear a friend's jammed rifle and he lost one toe and was fortunate not to lose a foot due to infection, he spent four months in hospital before being discharged as unfit in June 1915. During his convalescence, he spent six months painting The Kensingtons at Laventie, a group portrait of his own infantry platoon, Platoon No 7,'C' Company. Kennington himself is the figure third from the left; when exhibited in the spring of 1916, its portrayal of exhausted soldiers caused a sensation. Painted in reverse on glass, the painting is now in the Imperial War Museum and was praised for its technical virtuosity, iconic colour scheme, its "stately presentation of human endurance, of the quiet heroism of the rank and file". Kennington visited the Somme in December 1916 as a semi-official artist visitor before, back in London, producing six lithographs under the title Making Soldiers for the Ministry of Information's Britain's Efforts and Ideals portfolio of images which were exhibited in Britain and abroad and were sold as prints to raise money for the war effort.
In May 1917 he accepted an official war artist commission from the Department of Information. Kennington was commissioned to spend a month on the Western Front but he applied for numerous extensions and spent seven and a half months in France. Kennington was based at the Third Army Headquarters and would spend time at the front lines near Villers-Faucon. During this tour, his friend William Rothenstein was appointed as a war artist and they worked together at Montigny Farm and at Devise on the Somme, where they came under shell-fire. Kennington spent most of his time painting portraits, which he was happy to do, but became concerned about his lack of access to the front line and that the official censor was removing the names of his portrait subjects. Although Kennington was among the first of the official war artists Britain sent to France, he was not afforded anything like the status and facilities that the others, in particular William Orpen and Muirhead Bone enjoyed. Whereas Kennington was working for neither salary nor expenses and had no official car or staff, Orpen was given the rank of major, had his own military aide, a car and driver, plus, at his own expense, a batman and assistant to accompany him.
Kennington could be aggressive and irritable and at times complained bitterly about his situation, claiming he must have been the cheapest artist employed by the Government and that "Bone had a commission and Orpen had a damned good time". During his time in France, Kennington produced 170 charcoal and watercolours before returning to London in March 1918. Whilst in France in 1918, Kennington was admitted to a Casualty Clearing Station at Tincourt-Boucly to be treated for trench fever. There he made a number of sketches and drawings of men injured during the bombardment that preceded the German 1918 Spring Offensive; some of these drawings became the basis of Wounded. Throughout June and July 1918 an exhibition of Kennington's work, "The British Soldier", was held in London and received great reviews and some public acclaim. Despite this, Kennington was unhappy in his dealings with Department of Information concerning the censoring of his paintings, he resigned his war artist commission with the British.
In November 1918 Kennington was commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Scheme to depict Canadian troops in Europe. That month he returned to France as a temporary first lieutenant attached to the 16th Battalion, CEF; the eight months Kennington spent in Germany and France, working for the Canadians, resulted in some seventy drawings. At an exhibition of his war art in London, Kennington met T. E. Lawrence who became a great influence on him. Kennington spent the first half of 1921 travelling through Egypt, Syria and Palestine drawing portraits of Arab subjects; these were displayed at an exhibition in October 1921 and some of the drawings were used as illustrations for Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, for which Kennington worked as the art editor. Years in 1935, Kennington was to serve as one of the six pallbearers at Lawrence's funeral. In 1922 Kennington began to experiment with stone carving and soon undertook his first public commission, the War Memorial to the 24th Division in Battersea Park
Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Information, headed by the Minister of Information, was a United Kingdom government department created at the end of the First World War and again during the Second World War. Located in Senate House at the University of London during the 1940s, it was the central government department responsible for publicity and propaganda. In the Great War, several different agencies had been responsible for propaganda, except for a brief period when there had been a Department of Information and a Ministry of Information. Colour key: Conservative Liberal The Ministry of Information was formed on 4 September 1939, the day after Britain's declaration of war, the first Minister was sworn into Office on 5 September 1939; the Ministry's function was "To promote the national case to the public at home and abroad in time of war" by issuing "National Propaganda" and controlling news and information. It was responsible for censorship, issuing official news, home publicity and overseas publicity in Allied and neutral countries.
These functions were matched by a responsibility for monitoring public opinion through a network of Regional Information Offices. Responsibility for publicity in enemy territories was organised by Department EH. Secret planning for a Ministry of Information had started in October 1935 under the auspices of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Draft proposals were accepted on 27 July 1936 and Sir Stephen Tallents was appointed as Director General Designate. Tallents drew together a small group of planners from existing government departments, public bodies and specialist outside organisations; the MOI's planners sought to combine experience gained during the First World War with new communications technology. Their work reflected an increasing concern that a future war would exert huge strain on the civilian population and a belief that government propaganda would be needed to maintain morale; however it was hindered by competing visions for the Ministry, a requirement for secrecy which disrupted the making of key appointments, the reluctance of many government departments to give up their public relations divisions to central control.
The shadow Ministry of Information came into being between 26 September and 3 October 1938 after the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland heightened international tensions. The seventy one officials who were assembled in temporary accommodation had responsibility for censoring press reports surrounding the Munich Agreement; the week-long experiment was not regarded as a success. Instead it highlighted the extent to which questions over appointments, links to the media and the relationship with other government departments had been left unresolved; the confusion had been made worse by tensions between the shadow MOI and the Foreign Office News Department. This tension spilled over into the Committee for Imperial Defence which considered proposals to abandon plans for the Ministry of Information. Tallents left his post as Director General Designate on 2 January 1939. Planning efforts would increase again after Nazi troops moved into Prague on 15 March 1939; the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain publicly announced his government's intentions for the MOI in a parliamentary speech on 15 June 1939.
Home Office officials were given until 31 December 1939 to complete their plans. The Ministry of Information was formed on 4 September 1939, the day after Britain's declaration of war, Lord Macmillan was sworn in as its first Minister on 5 September 1939; the MOI's headquarters were housed within the University of London's Senate House and would remain in place until the end of the war. The MOI was organised in four groups. A "Press Relations" group was responsible for both the issue of censorship. A "Publicity Users" group was responsible for propaganda policy. A "Publicity Producers" group was responsible for production; these were overseen by a "Intelligence" group responsible for administration. This structure had only been finalised in May–June 1940 and senior officials were unsure about their responsibilities; the press reacted negatively to the MOI. Initial confusion between the MOI and service departments led to accusations that the MOI was delaying access to the news, a newspaper campaign against censorship was started.
Other commentators pointed to the ministry's large staff and satirised it as ineffective and out of touch. The MOI's first publicity campaign misfired with a poster bearing the message "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution, Will Bring Us Victory" criticised for appearing class-bound; these factors led to political scrutiny and resulted in the removal of the Press Relations Group on 9 October 1939 and an announcement on 25 October 1939 that the MOI's staff was to be cut by a third. Lord Macmillan was replaced as Minister by Sir John Reith on 5 January 1940. Reith sought to improve the MOI's governance, expanded its network of Regional Information Offices and introduced a Home intelligence division, he sought to secure the reintegration of the Press and Censorship Division in the belief that the decision to separate this function had been "obviously and monstrously ridiculous and wrong". These changes were announced by Neville Chamberlain on 24 April 1940 but were not operational until June 1940.
Neville Chamberlain's resignation and replacement by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940 resulted in Reith's s
William Rothenstein
Sir William Rothenstein was an English painter, draughtsman and writer on art. Emerging during the early 1890s, Rothenstein continued to make art right up until his death in the mid-1940s. Though he covered many subjects – ranging from landscapes in France to representations of Jewish synagogues in London – he is best known for his work as a war artist in both world wars, his portraits, his popular memoirs, written in the 1930s. More than two hundred of Rothenstein's portraits of famous people can be found in the National Portrait Gallery collection; the Tate Gallery holds a large collection of his paintings and drawings. Rothenstein served as Principal at the Royal College of Art from 1920 to 1935, he was knighted in 1931 for his services to art. In March 2015'From Bradford to Benares: the Art of Sir William Rothenstein', the first major exhibition of Rothenstein's work for over forty years, opened at Bradford's Cartwright Hall Gallery, touring to the Ben Uri in London that year. William Rothenstein was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire where he was educated at Bradford Grammar School.
His father, emigrated from Germany in 1859 to work in Bradford's burgeoning textile industry. Soon afterwards he married Bertha Dux and they had six children, of which William was the fifth. William's two brothers and Albert, were heavily involved in the arts. Charles, who followed his father into the wool trade, was an important collector – and left his entire collection to Manchester Art Gallery in 1925. Albert was a painter and costume designer. Both brothers changed their surname to Rutherston during the First World War, he married Alice Knewstub in 1899 with whom he had four children: John, Betty and Michael. John Rothenstein gained fame as an art historian and art administrator. Michael Rothenstein was a talented printmaker. Rothenstein left Bradford Grammar School at the age of sixteen to study at the Slade School of Art, where he was taught by Alphonse Legros, the Académie Julian in Paris, where he met and was encouraged by James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
While in Paris he befriended the Anglo-Australian artist Charles Conder, with whom he shared a studio in Montmartre. In 1893 Rothenstein returned to Britain to work on "Oxford Characters" a series of lithographic portraits published in 1896 Other portrait collections by the artist include English Portraits, Twelve Portraits and Contemporaries. In Oxford he met and became a close friend of the caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm, who immortalised him in the short story Enoch Soames. During the 1890s Rothenstein exhibited with the New English Art Club and contributed drawings to The Yellow Book and The Savoy. In 1898-9 he co-founded the Carfax Gallery in St. James' Piccadilly with John Fothergill. During its early years the gallery was associated with such artists as Charles Conder, Philip Wilson Steer, Charles Ricketts and Augustus John, it exhibited the work of Auguste Rodin, whose growing reputation in England owed much to Rothenstein's friendship. Rothenstein's role as artistic manager of the gallery was abandoned in 1901, whereupon the firm came under the management of his close friend Robert Ross.
Ross left in 1908. Under Clifton the gallery was the home for all three exhibitions of the Camden Town Group, led by Rothenstein's friend and close contemporary Walter Sickert. In 1900 Rothenstein won a silver medal for his painting The Doll's House at the Exposition Universelle; this painting continues to be one of his best-known and critically acclaimed works, was the subject of a recent in-depth study published by the Tate Gallery. The style and subject of Rothenstein's paintings varies, though certain themes reappear, in particular an interest in'weighty' or'essential' subjects tackled in a restrained manner. Good examples include Parting at Morning and Child and Jews Mourning at a Synagogue – all of which are owned by the Tate Gallery. Between 1902 and 1912 Rothenstein lived in Hampstead, where his social circle included such names as H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad and the artist Augustus John. Amongst the young artists to visit Rothenstein in Hampstead were Wyndham Lewis, Mark Gertler and Paul Nash.
During this period Rothenstein worked on a series of important paintings in the predominantly Jewish East End of London, some of which were included in the influential 1906 exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquaries at the Whitechapel Gallery. Another feature of this period are the celebrated interiors he painted, the most famous of, The Browning Readers, now owned by Cartwright Hall gallery, Bradford. Most of Rothenstein's interiors feature members of his family his wife Alice. Reminiscent of Dutch painting, they are similar in style to contemporary works by William Orpen, who became Rothenstein's brother-in-law in 1901, marrying Alice's sister Grace. Other notable interiors include Child, Candlight. Rothenstein maintained a lifelong fascination for Indian sculpture and painting, in 1910 set out on a seminal tour of the subcontinent's major artistic and religious sites; this began with a visit to the ancient Buddhist caves of Ajanta, where he observed Lady Christiana Herringham and Nandalal Bose making watercolour copies of the ancient frescoes
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion". He became popular in his lifetime and remained so after his premature death at the age of 39 in New York City. By he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a "roistering and doomed poet". Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914. An undistinguished pupil, he became a journalist for a short time. Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager, the publication in 1934 of "Light breaks where no sun shines" caught the attention of the literary world. While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara, whom he married in 1937. In 1938 they moved to the Welsh fishing village of Laugharne where from 1949 they settled permanently and brought up their three children. Thomas came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found earning a living as a writer difficult, he began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts.
His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him to the public's attention, he was used by the BBC as a populist voice of the literary scene. Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950s, his readings there brought him a degree of fame, while drinking worsened. His time in America cemented his legend, he went on to record to vinyl such works as A Child's Christmas in Wales. During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma, from which he never recovered, he died on 9 November 1953. His body was returned to Wales, where he was interred at the churchyard of St Martin's in Laugharne on 25 November 1953. Although Thomas wrote in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century, he is noted for his original and ingenious use of words and imagery. His position as one of the great modern poets has been much discussed, he remains popular with the public. Dylan Thomas was born on 27 October 1914 in Swansea, the son of Florence Hannah, a seamstress, David John Thomas, a teacher.
His father had a first-class honours degree in English from University College and ambitions to rise above his position teaching English literature at the local grammar school. Thomas had one sibling, Nancy Marles, eight years his senior; the children spoke only English, though their parents were bilingual in English and Welsh, David Thomas gave Welsh lessons at home. Thomas's father chose the name Dylan, which could be translated as "son of the sea", after Dylan ail Don, a character in The Mabinogion, his middle name, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles. Dylan, pronounced ˈ in Welsh, caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the "dull one"; when he broadcast on Welsh BBC, early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas gave instructions that it should be Dillan; the red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.
His childhood featured regular summer trips to Llanstephan where his maternal relatives were the sixth generation to farm there. His mother's family, the Williamses, lived in such farms as Waunfwlchan, Llwyngwyn and Penycoed; the memory of Fernhill, a dairy farm owned by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem "Fern Hill". Thomas struggled with these throughout his life. Thomas was indulged by his mother and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, he was skilful in gaining attention and sympathy. Thomas' formal education began at Mrs Hole's dame school, a private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home, he described his experience there in Quite Early One Morning: Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime – the pulling of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature.
In October 1925, Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. He was an undistinguished pupil. In his first year one of his poems was published in the school's magazine, before he left he became its editor. During his final school years he began writing poetry in notebooks. In June 1928 Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground. In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later. Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years. In his free time, he join
