1.
John Everett Millais
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Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. A child prodigy, at the age of eleven Millais became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street. Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents generating considerable controversy, by the mid-1850s Millais was moving away from the Pre-Raphaelite style and developing a new and powerful form of realism in his art. His later works were successful, making Millais one of the wealthiest artists of his day. Millaiss personal life has played a significant role in his reputation. His wife Effie was formerly married to the critic John Ruskin, Millais was born in Southampton, England in 1829, of a prominent Jersey-based family. His parents were John William Millais and Emily Mary Millais, most of his early childhood was spent in Jersey, to which he retained a strong devotion throughout his life. The author Thackeray once asked him when England conquered Jersey, the family moved to Dinan in Brittany for a few years in his childhood. His mothers forceful personality was the most powerful influence on his early life and she had a keen interest in art and music, and encouraged her sons artistic bent, promoting the relocating of the family to London to help develop contacts at the Royal Academy of Art. He later said I owe everything to my mother and his prodigious artistic talent won him a place at the Royal Academy schools at the unprecedented age of eleven. While there, he met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti with whom he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in September 1848 in his home on Gower Street. Millaiss Christ in the House of His Parents was highly controversial because of its portrayal of a working class Holy Family labouring in a messy carpentry workshop. Later works were controversial, though less so. Millais achieved popular success with A Huguenot, which depicts a couple about to be separated because of religious conflicts. He repeated this theme in later works. All these early works were painted with great attention to detail, in paintings such as Ophelia Millais created dense and elaborate pictorial surfaces based on the integration of naturalistic elements. This approach has been described as a kind of pictorial eco-system, Mariana is a painting that Millais painted in 1850-51 based on the play Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare and the poem of the same name by Alfred, Lord Tennyson from 1830. In the play, the young Mariana was to be married and this style was promoted by the critic John Ruskin, who had defended the Pre-Raphaelites against their critics
2.
Oil painting
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Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, the choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium, the oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages, Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. In recent years, water miscible oil paint has come to prominence and, to some extent, water-soluble paints contain an emulsifier that allows them to be thinned with water rather than paint thinner, and allows very fast drying times when compared with traditional oils. Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the subject onto the canvas with charcoal or thinned paint, Oil paint is usually mixed with linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits, or other solvents to make the paint thinner, faster or slower-drying. A basic rule of oil paint application is fat over lean and this means that each additional layer of paint should contain more oil than the layer below to allow proper drying. If each additional layer contains less oil, the painting will crack. This rule does not ensure permanence, it is the quality and type of oil leads to a strong. There are many media that can be used with the oil, including cold wax, resins. These aspects of the paint are closely related to the capacity of oil paint. Traditionally, paint was transferred to the surface using paintbrushes. Oil paint remains wet longer than other types of artists materials, enabling the artist to change the color. At times, the painter might even remove a layer of paint. This can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a time while the paint is wet, Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is usually dry to the touch within a span of two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be varnished in six months to a year, art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old
3.
Minneapolis Institute of Art
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The museum receives support from the Park Board Museum Fund, levied by the Hennepin County commissioners. Additional funding is provided by sponsors and museum members. It is one of the largest art museums in the United States, the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts was established in 1883 to bring the arts into the life of the community. This group, made up of business and professional leaders, organized art exhibits throughout the decade, in 1889, the Society, now known as the Minneapolis Institute of Art, moved into its first permanent space, inside the newly built Minneapolis Public Library. The institute received gifts from Clinton Morrison and William Hood Dunwoody, among others, a few days later the institute received a letter from Dunwoody, who got the ball rolling, Put me down for $100,000. A fundraising dinner a few days later brought in $335,500, the new museum, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead and White, opened in 1915. The building came to be recognized as one of the finest examples of the Beaux-Arts architectural style in Minnesota. The art historian Bevis Hillier organized the exhibition Art Deco at the museum, presented from July to September 1971, the building was originally meant to be the first of several sections, but only the front piece built. Several additions have subsequently been built according to plans, including a 1974 addition by Kenzo Tange. An expansion designed by Michael Graves was completed in June 2006, before the latest expansion, just 4 percent of the museums nearly 100,000 objects could be on view at the same time, now that figure is 5 percent. Target Corporation, for which the new wing is named, was the biggest donor, in 2015 the institute rebranded itself, dropping the final s from its name, to become the Minneapolis Institute of Art and encouraging the use of the nickname Mia instead of the acronym MIA. The museum features a collection of approximately 80,000 objects spanning 5,000 years of world history. Its collection includes paintings, photographs, prints & drawings, textiles, architecture, the Asian collection includes Chinese architecture, jades, bronzes, and ceramics. The institute owns the Purcell-Cutts House, just east of Lake of the Isles, the house was designed by Purcell & Elmslie and is a masterpiece of Prairie School architecture. It was donated to the museum by Anson B, cutts Jr. the son of its second owner. The house is available for tours on the weekend of each month. In order to encourage private collecting and assist in the acquisition of important works of art, the groups schedule lectures, symposia, and travel for members. The museum features a series of exhibitions that bring in traveling collections from other museums for display
4.
Minneapolis
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Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County, and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2015, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul anchor the second-largest economic center in the Midwest, after Chicago. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul. It was once the worlds flour milling capital and a hub for timber, the city and surrounding region is the primary business center between Chicago and Seattle, with Minneapolis proper containing Americas fifth-highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies. As an integral link to the economy, Minneapolis is categorized as a global city. Noted for its music and performing arts scenes, Minneapolis is home to both the award-winning Guthrie Theater and the historic First Avenue nightclub. The name Minneapolis is attributed to Charles Hoag, the citys first schoolteacher, who combined mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, and polis, Dakota Sioux had long been the regions sole residents when French explorers arrived around 1680. For a time relations were based on fur trading, gradually more European-American settlers arrived, competing for game and other resources with the Dakota. In the early 19th century, the United States acquired this territory from France, fort Snelling was built in 1819 by the United States Army, and it attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the area. The United States government pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, the Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized present-day Minneapolis as a town in 1856 on the Mississippis west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago. It later joined with the city of St. Anthony in 1872. Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River, forests in northern Minnesota were a valuable resource for the lumber industry, which operated seventeen sawmills on power from the waterfall. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses, including mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes. Due to the hazards of milling, six local sources of artificial limbs were competing in the prosthetics business by the 1890s. The farmers of the Great Plains grew grain that was shipped by rail to the citys thirty-four flour mills, a father of modern milling in America and founder of what became General Mills, Cadwallader C. Some ideas were developed by William Dixon Gray and some acquired through industrial espionage from the Hungarians by William de la Barre, pillsbury Company across the river were barely a step behind, hiring Washburn employees to immediately use the new methods. The hard red spring wheat that grows in Minnesota became valuable, not until later did consumers discover the value in the bran that Minneapolis
5.
The Times
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The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London, England. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, the Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1967 and its news and its editorial comment have in general been carefully coordinated, and have at most times been handled with an earnest sense of responsibility. While the paper has admitted some trivia to its columns, its emphasis has been on important public affairs treated with an eye to the best interests of Britain. To guide this treatment, the editors have for long periods been in touch with 10 Downing Street. In these countries, the newspaper is often referred to as The London Times or The Times of London, although the newspaper is of national scope, in November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in a new font, Times Modern. The Times was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, the Sunday Times remains a broadsheet. The Times had a daily circulation of 446,164 in December 2016, in the same period. An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006 and it has been heavily used by scholars and researchers because of its widespread availability in libraries and its detailed index. A complete historical file of the paper, up to 2010, is online from Gale Cengage Learning. The Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company where he was working went bankrupt because of the complaints of a Jamaican hurricane. Being unemployed, Walter decided to set a new business up and it was in that time when Henry Johnson invented the logography, a new typography that was faster and more precise. Walter bought the patent and to use it, he decided to open a printing house. The first publication of the newspaper The Daily Universal Register in Great Britain was 1 January 1785, unhappy because people always omitted the word Universal, Ellias changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times. In 1803, Walter handed ownership and editorship to his son of the same name, the Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science, literature, and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its life, the profits of The Times were very large. Beginning in 1814, the paper was printed on the new steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig, in 1815, The Times had a circulation of 5,000. Thomas Barnes was appointed editor in 1817
6.
Crimean War
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The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to March 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, the French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense. While the churches eventually worked out their differences and came to an agreement, Nicholas I of Russia, Nicholas issued an ultimatum that the Orthodox subjects of the Empire be placed under his protection. Britain attempted to mediate and arranged a compromise that Nicholas agreed to, when the Ottomans demanded changes, Nicholas refused and prepared for war. Having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia in October 1853. The war started in the Balkans, when Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities, until then under Ottoman suzerainty and now part of modern Romania, led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the advance at Silistra. A separate action on the town of Kars in eastern Anatolia led to a siege. Fearing an Ottoman collapse, France and Britain rushed forces to Gallipoli and they then moved north to Varna in June, arriving just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra. Aside from a skirmish at Köstence, there was little for the allies to do. Karl Marx quipped that there they are, the French doing nothing, after extended preparations, the forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and fought their way to a point south of Sevastopol after a series of successful battles. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, a second counterattack, ordered personally by Nicholas, was defeated by Omar Pasha. The front settled into a siege and led to conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller actions were carried out in the Baltic, the Caucasus, Sevastopol fell after eleven months, and neutral countries began to join the Allied cause. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion from the west if the war continued and this was welcomed by France and Britain, as their subjects were beginning to turn against their governments as the war dragged on. The war was ended by the Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, Russia was forbidden from hosting warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent, Christians there were granted a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute. The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts to use technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways
7.
Royal Academy of Arts
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The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. The Royal Academy of Arts was founded through an act of King George III on 10 December 1768 with a mission to promote the arts of design in Britain through education and exhibition. Supporters wanted to foster a national school of art and to encourage appreciation, fashionable taste in 18th-century Britain was based on continental and traditional art forms, providing contemporary British artists little opportunity to sell their works. From 1746 the Foundling Hospital, through the efforts of William Hogarth, the success of this venture led to the formation of the Society of Artists of Great Britain and the Free Society of Artists. Both these groups were primarily exhibiting societies, their success was marred by internal factions among the artists. The combined vision of education and exhibition to establish a school of art set the Royal Academy apart from the other exhibiting societies. It provided the foundation upon which the Royal Academy came to dominate the art scene of the 18th and 19th centuries, supplanting the earlier art societies. Sir William Chambers, a prominent architect, used his connections with George III to gain royal patronage and financial support of the Academy, the painter Joshua Reynolds was made its first president. Francis Milner Newton was elected the first secretary, a post he held for two decades until his resignation in 1788, the instrument of foundation, signed by George III on 10 December 1768, named 34 founder members and allowed for a total membership of 40. William Hoare and Johann Zoffany were added to this list later by the King and are known as nominated members, among the founder members were two women, a father and daughter, and two sets of brothers. The Royal Academy was initially housed in cramped quarters in Pall Mall, although in 1771 it was given temporary accommodation for its library and schools in Old Somerset House, then a royal palace. In 1780 it was installed in purpose-built apartments in the first completed wing of New Somerset House, located in the Strand and designed by Chambers, the Academy moved in 1837 to Trafalgar Square, where it occupied the east wing of the recently completed National Gallery. These premises soon proved too small to house both institutions, in 1868,100 years after the Academys foundation, it moved to Burlington House, Piccadilly, where it remains. Burlington House is owned by the British Government, and used rent-free by the Royal Academy, the first Royal Academy exhibition of contemporary art, open to all artists, opened on 25 April 1769 and ran until 27 May 1769. 136 works of art were shown and this exhibition, now known as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, has been staged annually without interruption to the present day. In 1870 the Academy expanded its programme to include a temporary annual loan exhibition of Old Masters. The range and frequency of these exhibitions have grown enormously since that time. Britains first public lectures on art were staged by the Royal Academy, led by Reynolds, the first president, a program included lectures by Dr. William Hunter, John Flaxman, James Barry, Sir John Soane, and J. M. W. Turner
8.
John Ruskin
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John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and his writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin also penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters, the elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society and he also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation. He was hugely influential in the half of the 19th century. After a period of decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability, from the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues, Unto This Last marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, in 1871, he began his monthly letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain, published under the title Fors Clavigera. In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society, as a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today. Ruskin was the child of first cousins. His father, John James Ruskin, was a sherry and wine importer founding partner and de facto manager of Ruskin, Telford. John James was born and brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a mother from Glenluce and his wife, Margaret Cox, née Cock, was the daughter of an aunt on the English side of the family and a publican in Croydon. She had joined the Ruskin household when she became companion to John Jamess mother, John James had hoped to practice law, but was instead articled as a clerk in London. His father, John Thomas Ruskin, described as a grocer, was an inadequate businessman, to save the family from bankruptcy, John James, whose prudence and success were in stark contrast to his father, took on all debts, settling the last of them in 1832. John James and Margaret were engaged in 1809, but opposition to the union from John Thomas, Ruskin was born at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London, south of St Pancras railway station. His childhood was characterised by the influences of his father and mother. John James Ruskin helped to develop his sons Romanticism and they shared a passion for the works of Byron, Shakespeare and especially Walter Scott
9.
Effie Gray
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Euphemia Chalmers Effie Millais, Lady Millais née Gray was the wife of the critic John Ruskin, but she left her husband without the marriage being consummated. She later married his protégé, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais and this famous Victorian love triangle has been dramatised in plays, films and an opera. Effie Gray, initially known by the pet name of Phemy, was born in Perth, Scotland, and lived in Bowerswell and her family knew Ruskins father, who encouraged a match between them. Ruskin wrote the fantasy novel The King of the Golden River for her in 1841, after their marriage in 1848, they travelled to Venice, where Ruskin was researching his book The Stones of Venice. Their different personalities are thrown into relief by their contrasting priorities. For Effie, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise while Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies, in particular, he made a point of drawing the Ca dOro and the Palazzo Ducale, because he feared they would soon be destroyed by the occupying Austrian troops. One of the troops, Lieutenant Charles Paulizza, made friends with Effie and her brother, among others, later claimed that Ruskin was deliberately encouraging the friendship to compromise her, as an excuse to separate. When she met Millais five years later, she was still a virgin and his reasons are unclear, but they involved disgust with some aspect of her body. As she later wrote to her father, He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and, finally this last year he told me his true reason. That he had imagined women were different to what he saw I was. Ruskin confirmed this in his statement to his lawyer during the annulment proceedings, but though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were circumstances in her person which completely checked it. The reason for Ruskins disgust with circumstances in her person is unknown, various suggestions have been made, including revulsion at either her pubic hair, or menstrual blood. While married to Ruskin, she modelled for Millais painting The Order of Release and she then became close to Millais when he accompanied the couple on a trip to Scotland in order to paint Ruskins portrait according to the critics artistic principles. During this time, spent in Brig o Turk in the Trossachs, while working on the portrait of her husband, Millais made many drawings and sketches of her. He also sent humorous cartoons of himself, Effie and Ruskin to friends and she copied some of his works. After their return to London, she left Ruskin, nominally to visit her family and she sent back her wedding ring with a note announcing her intention to file for an annulment. Their youngest son, John Guille Millais, was a bird artist
10.
Irish Wolfhound
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The Irish Wolfhound is a breed of domestic dog, specifically a very large sighthound from Ireland. The name originates from its purpose—wolf hunting with dogs—rather than from its appearance, originally developed from war hounds to one used for hunting and guarding, Irish Wolfhounds can be an imposing sight due to their formidable size. The breed is old, there are suggestions it may have been brought to Ireland as early as 7000 BC. These dogs are mentioned, as cú in Irish laws and in Irish literature which dates from the 5th century or, in the case of the Sagas, from the old Irish period - AD 600-900. The word Cu often became an added respected prefix on the names of warriors as well as denoting that they were worthy of the respect. Ancient woodcuts and writings have placed them in existence as a breed by 273 BC, however, there is indication that huge dogs existed even as early as 279 BC when the Tectosages and Tolistobogii Celts sacked Delphi. Survivors left accounts of the fierce Celts and the dogs who fought with them. Wolfhounds were bred as hunting dogs by the ancients, who called them Cú Faoil, the Irish continued to breed them for this purpose, as well as to guard their homes and protect their stock. During the English Conquest of Ireland, only the nobility were allowed to own Irish Wolfhounds and they were much coveted and were frequently given as gifts to important personages and foreign nobles. Wolfhounds were the companions of the regal, and were housed themselves alongside them, king John of England, in about 1210 presented an Irish hound, Gelert to Llewellyn, a prince of Wales. The poet The Hon William Robert Spencer immortalised this hound in a poem, in his Historie of Ireland completed 1571, Edmund Campion gives a description of the hounds used for hunting the wolves on the Dublin and Wicklow mountains. He says, They are not without wolves and greyhounds to hunt them, bigger of bone, due to their popularity overseas many were exported to European royal houses leaving numbers in Ireland depleted. This led to a declaration by Oliver Cromwell himself being published in Kilkenny on 27 April 1652 to ensure sufficient numbers remained to control the wolf population. References to the Irish wolfhound in the 18th century tell of its size, strength. Writing in 1790, Bewick described it as the largest and most beautiful of the dog kind, about 36 inches high, generally of a white or cinnamon colour, somewhat like the Greyhound but more robust. He said that their aspect was mild, disposition peaceful, the last wolf in Ireland is thought to have been killed at Myshall, Co Carlow in 1786 by a pack of wolfdogs kept by a Mr Watson of Ballydarton. Scotsman Captain George Augustus Graham is responsible with a few other breeders for attempting to reaffirm the breeds existence and this blood is now in my possession. Captain Graham devoted his life to ensuring the survival of the Irish wolfhound, owing to the small numbers of surviving specimens outcrossing was used in the breeding programme
11.
Myrtus
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Myrtus, with the common name myrtle, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Myrtaceae, described by Linnaeus in 1753. Over 600 names have been proposed in the genus, but nearly all have either moved to other genera or been regarded as synonyms. The Myrtus genus has three species recognised today, Myrtus communis — Common myrtle, native to the Mediterranean region in southern Europe, Myrtus nivellei — Saharan myrtle, native to North Africa. Myrtus phyllireaefolia Myrtus communis, the myrtle, is native across the Mediterranean region, Macaronesia, western Asia. The plant is a shrub or small tree, growing to 5 metres tall. The leaf is entire, 3–5 cm long, with a fragrant essential oil, the star-like flower has five petals and sepals, and numerous stamens. The flower is pollinated by insects, the fruit is a round berry containing several seeds, most commonly blue-black in colour. A variety with yellow-amber berries is also present, the seeds are dispersed by birds that eat the berries. Myrtus nivellei, the Saharan myrtle, is endemic to the mountains of the central Sahara Desert and it is found in a restricted range in the Tassili nAjjer Mountains in southern Algeria, and the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad. It occurs in areas of sparse relict woodland at montaine elevations above the central Saharan desert plains. It is a medicinal plant for the Tuareg people. Myrtus communis, the myrtle, is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant for use as a shrub in gardens. It is often used as a plant, with its small leaves shearing cleanly. When trimmed less frequently, it has numerous flowers in late summer and it requires a long hot summer to produce its flowers, and protection from winter frosts. The species and the subspecies M. communis subsp, tarentina have gained the Royal Horticultural Societys Award of Garden Merit. Myrtus communis, the myrtle, is used in the islands of Sardinia. Many Mediterranean pork dishes include Myrtle berries, and roasted baby pig is often stuffed with myrtle sprigs in the belly cavity, the berries, whole or ground, have been used as a pepper substitute. They contribute to the flavor of Mortadella sausage and the related American Bologna sausage
12.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He is known for his works, particularly Vanity Fair. Thackeray, a child, was born in Calcutta, British India. His mother, Anne Becher, was the daughter of Harriet Becher and John Harman Becher. Richmond died in 1815, which caused Anne to send her son to England in 1816, the ship on which he travelled made a short stopover at St. Helena, where the imprisoned Napoleon was pointed out to him. Once in England he was educated at schools in Southampton and Chiswick, and then at Charterhouse School, Thackeray disliked Charterhouse, and parodied it in his fiction as Slaughterhouse. Nevertheless, Thackeray was honoured in the Charterhouse Chapel with a monument after his death, Thackeray then travelled for some time on the continent, visiting Paris and Weimar, where he met Goethe. He returned to England and began to study law at the Middle Temple and he also lost a good part of his fortune in the collapse of two Indian banks. The Thackerays had three children, all girls, Anne Isabella, Jane and Harriet Marian, who married Sir Leslie Stephen, editor, Thackeray now began writing for his life, as he put it, turning to journalism in an effort to support his young family. Between 1837 and 1840 he also reviewed books for The Times and he was also a regular contributor to The Morning Chronicle and The Foreign Quarterly Review. Later, through his connection to the illustrator John Leech, he began writing for the newly created magazine Punch, in which he published The Snob Papers and this work popularised the modern meaning of the word snob. Thackeray was a regular contributor to Punch between 1843 and 1854. Tragedy struck in Thackerays personal life as his wife, Isabella, succumbed to depression after the birth of their third child, in 1840. Finding that he could get no work done at home, he spent more and more time away until September 1840, struck by guilt, he set out with his wife to Ireland. During the crossing she threw herself from a water-closet into the sea and they fled back home after a four-week battle with her mother. From November 1840 to February 1842 Isabella was in and out of professional care and she eventually deteriorated into a permanent state of detachment from reality. Isabella outlived her husband by 30 years, in the end being cared for by a family named Thompson in Leigh-on-Sea at Southend until her death in 1894, after his wifes illness Thackeray became a de facto widower, never establishing another permanent relationship. He did pursue other women, however, in particular Mrs Jane Brookfield, in 1851 Mr Brookfield barred Thackeray from further visits to or correspondence with Jane. Baxter, an American twenty years Thackerays junior whom he met during a tour in New York City in 1852
13.
The Newcomes
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The Newcomes is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1855. The Newcomes was published serially over about two years, as Thackeray himself says in one of the final chapters. The novel shows its origin, it is very long and its events occur over many years. The main part of The Newcomes is set a decade or two after the action of Vanity Fair, and some of the characters in Vanity Fair are mentioned peripherally in The Newcomes, the narrator is Arthur Pendennis, the protagonist of Pendennis. The novel tells the story of Colonel Thomas Newcome, a virtuous, Colonel Newcome goes out to India for decades, then returns to England where Clive meets his cousin Ethel. After years in England, the returns to India for another several years and while he is there, Clive travels Europe. Dozens of background characters appear, fade, and reappear, the colonel and Clive are only the central figures in The Newcomes, the action of which begins before the colonels birth. Over several generations the Newcome family rises into wealth and respectability as bankers, a theme that runs throughout the novel is the practice of marrying for money. Herein we find first use of the word capitalism, as reference an economic system. Religion is another theme, particularly Methodism, truth is never sacrificed to piquancy. Just as the stream of life runs on through these volumes, there are also plenty of Latin, French language, and even Italian language and ancient-Greek phrases — all untranslated. Colonel Newcome came to be an emblem of virtue for a period, for example, in his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt described his uncle, James Dunwoody Bulloch, as a veritable Colonel Newcome. Ethel Barrymore is named after the character in the play,1855 in literature The Newcomes at Project Gutenberg
14.
Noah's Ark
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Noahs Ark is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative by which God spares Noah, his family, and a remnant of all the worlds animals from the flood. According to Genesis, God gave Noah instructions for building the ark, seven days before the deluge, God told Noah to enter the ark with his household and the animals. The story goes on to describe the ark being afloat for 150 days and then coming to rest on the Mountains of Ararat, the story is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the ark appears as Safina Nuh. The Genesis flood narrative is similar to other flood myths from a variety of cultures. The earliest known written flood myth is the Sumerian flood myth found in the Epic of Ziusudra, searches for Noahs Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius to the present day. There is no evidence for a global flood, and despite many expeditions. The challenges associated with housing all living animal types, and even plants, would have made building the ark a practical impossibility. The Hebrew word for the ark, teba, occurs twice in the Bible, in the narrative and in the Book of Exodus. In both cases teba has a connection with salvation from waters, Noah is warned of the coming flood and told to construct the ark. God spells out to Noah the dimensions of the vessel,300 cubits in length,50 cubits in width and 30 cubits in height and it had three internal divisions, a door in the side, and a tsohar, which may be either a roof or a skylight. God instructs Noah to kapar the ark with koper, in Hebrew the first of these words is a formed from the second and, like gopher. Noah is instructed to take on board his wife, his three sons, and his sons wives and he is also to take two of every living thing, and seven pairs of every clean creature and of every bird, together with sufficient food. The story of the flood closely parallels the story of the creation, a cycle of creation, un-creation, the universe as conceived by the ancient Hebrews comprised a flat disk-shaped habitable earth with the heavens above and Sheol, the underworld of the dead, below. These three were surrounded by an ocean of chaos, protected by the firmament, a transparent. Noahs three-deck ark represents this three-level Hebrew cosmos in miniature, the heavens, the earth, there is a consensus among scholars that the Pentateuch was the product of a long and complex process that was not completed until after the Babylonian exile. For well over a century scholars have recognised that the Bibles story of Noahs ark is based on older Mesopotamian models. Because all these stories deal with events that allegedly happened at the dawn of history. But in fact, the myth of the flood that destroys all life only begins to appear in the Old Babylonian period
15.
Gallic rooster
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The Gallic rooster is an unofficial national symbol of France as a nation, as opposed to Marianne representing France as a State, and its values, the Republic. The rooster is also the symbol of the Wallonia region and the French Community of Belgium, during the times of Ancient Rome, Suetonius, in The Twelve Caesars, noticed that, in Latin, rooster and Gauls were homonyms. But a closer review within that religious scheme indicates that Mercury was often portrayed with the cock, a sacred animal among the Continental Celts. The Irish god Lug identified as samildánach led to the identification of Caesars Mercury as Lugus and thus also to the sacred cock. Its association with France dates back from the Middle Age and is due to the play on words in Latin between Gallus, meaning an inhabitant of Gaul, and gallus, meaning rooster, or cockerel, at the roosters crowing, Peter remembered Jesuss words. Its crowing at the dawning of each new morning made it a symbol of the victory of light over darkness. It is also an emblem of the Christians attitude of watchfulness and readiness for the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead. That is why, during the Renaissance, the became a symbol of France as a Catholic state and became a popular Christian image on weathervanes. The popularity of the Gallic rooster as a national personification faded away until its resurgence during the French Revolution, the republican historiography completely modified the traditional perception of the origins of France. Until then, the royal historiography dated the origins of France back to the baptism of Clovis I in 496, the republicans rejected this royalist and Christian origin of the country and trace the origins of France back to the ancient Gaul. Although purely apocryphal, the became the personification of the early inhabitants of France. The Gallic rooster, colloquially named Chanteclair, had been a national emblem ever since, the rooster was featured on the reverse of French 20-franc gold pieces from 1899 to 1914. After World War I it was depicted on countless war memorials, today, it is often used as a national mascot, particularly in sporting events such as football and rugby. The 1998 FIFA World Cup, hosted by France, adopted a rooster named Footix as mascot, the France national rugby league team are known as the Chanteclairs referring to the cockerels song. The popularity of the symbol extends into business, le Coq Sportif, is a French manufacturer of sports equipment using a stylized rooster and the colors of the French tricolour as its logo. Moreover, it is the logo of Pathé, a French-born, another heraldic animal officially used by the French nation was the French Imperial Eagle, symbol of the First and Second French Empire under Napoleon I and Napoleon III. In 1913, the Gallic rooster was adopted as the symbol of Walloon movement and it represents a bold rooster, raising its claws, instead of the crowing rooster that is traditionally depicted in France. This symbol, also known as the Walloon rooster, was adopted as the symbol of Wallonia
16.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
17.
Lion
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The lion is one of the big cats in the genus Panthera and a member of the family Felidae. The commonly used term African lion collectively denotes the several subspecies in Africa, with some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger. Wild lions currently exist in sub-Saharan Africa and in India, in ancient historic times, their range was in most of Africa, including North Africa, and across Eurasia from Greece and southeastern Europe to India. Lion populations are untenable outside designated reserves and national parks, although the cause of the decline is not fully understood, habitat loss and conflicts with humans are the greatest causes of concern. Within Africa, the West African lion population is particularly endangered, in the wild, males seldom live longer than 10 to 14 years, as injuries sustained from continual fighting with rival males greatly reduce their longevity. In captivity they can more than 20 years. They typically inhabit savanna and grassland, although they may take to bush, Lions are unusually social compared to other cats. A pride of lions consists of related females and offspring and a number of adult males. Groups of female lions typically hunt together, preying mostly on large ungulates, Lions are apex and keystone predators, although they are also expert scavengers obtaining over 50 percent of their food by scavenging as opportunity allows. While lions do not typically hunt humans, some have, sleeping mainly during the day, lions are active primarily at night, although sometimes at twilight. Highly distinctive, the lion is easily recognised by its mane. It has been depicted in sculptures, in paintings, on national flags. Lions have been kept in menageries since the time of the Roman Empire, Zoos are cooperating worldwide in breeding programs for the endangered Asiatic subspecies. The lions name, similar in many Romance languages, is derived from the Latin leo, the Hebrew word לָבִיא may also be related. It was one of the originally described by Linnaeus, who gave it the name Felis leo, in his eighteenth-century work. The lions closest relatives are the species of the genus Panthera, the tiger, the snow leopard, the jaguar. P. leo evolved in Africa between 1 million and 800,000 years ago, before spreading throughout the Holarctic region and it appeared in the fossil record in Europe for the first time 700,000 years ago with the subspecies Panthera leo fossilis at Isernia in Italy. From this lion derived the later cave lion, which appeared about 300,000 years ago, Lions died out in northern Eurasia at the end of the last glaciation, about 10,000 years ago, this may have been secondary to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna
18.
Polar bear
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The polar bear is a carnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is a bear, approximately the same size as the omnivorous Kodiak bear. A boar weighs around 350–700 kg, while a sow is about half that size, although most polar bears are born on land, they spend most of their time on the sea ice. Their scientific name means maritime bear and derives from this fact, Polar bears hunt their preferred food of seals from the edge of sea ice, often living off fat reserves when no sea ice is present. Because of expected habitat loss caused by change, the polar bear is classified as a vulnerable species. For decades, large-scale hunting raised international concern for the future of the species, for thousands of years, the polar bear has been a key figure in the material, spiritual, and cultural life of circumpolar peoples, and polar bears remain important in their cultures. Constantine John Phipps was the first to describe the polar bear as a species in 1774. He chose the scientific name Ursus maritimus, the Latin for maritime bear, the Inuit refer to the animal as nanook. The Yupik also refer to the bear as nanuuk in Siberian Yupik, the bear is umka in the Chukchi language. In Russian, it is usually called бе́лый медве́дь, though a word still in use is ошку́й. In the Norwegian-administered Svalbard archipelago, the bear is referred to as Isbjørn. The polar bear was considered to be in its own genus. The bear family, Ursidae, is thought to have split off from other carnivorans about 38 million years ago, the Ursinae subfamily originated approximately 4.2 million years ago. The oldest known polar bear fossil is a 130,000 to 110, 000-year-old jaw bone, fossils show that between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, the polar bears molar teeth changed significantly from those of the brown bear. Polar bears are thought to have diverged from a population of bears that became isolated during a period of glaciation in the Pleistocene or from the eastern part of Siberia. The evidence from DNA analysis is more complex, the mitochondrial DNA of the polar bear diverged from the brown bear, Ursus arctos, roughly 150,000 years ago. The mtDNA of extinct Irish brown bears is particularly close to polar bears, when the polar bear was originally documented, two subspecies were identified, Ursus maritimus maritimus by Constantine J. Phipps in 1774, and Ursus maritimus marinus by Peter Simon Pallas in 1776. This distinction has since been invalidated, one alleged fossil subspecies has been identified, Ursus maritimus tyrannus became extinct during the Pleistocene
19.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
20.
Turkey (bird)
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The turkey is a large bird in the genus Meleagris, which is native to the Americas. One species, Meleagris gallopavo, is native to the forests of North America, from Mexico, throughout the midwest and eastern United States, the other living species is Meleagris ocellata or the ocellated turkey, native to the forests of the Yucatán Peninsula. Males of both species have a distinctive fleshy wattle or protuberance that hangs from the top of the beak. They are among the largest birds in their ranges, as in many galliformes, the male is larger and much more colorful than the female. Turkeys are classed in the family of Phasianidae in the order of Galliformes. The genus Meleagris is the extant genus in the subfamily Meleagridinae, formerly known as the family Meleagrididae. There are two theories for the derivation of the turkey for this bird, according to Columbia University professor of Romance languages Mario Pei. The name of the North American bird thus became turkey fowl or Indian turkeys, the other theory arises from turkeys coming to England from the Americas via merchant ships from the Middle East where they were domesticated successfully. Again the importers lent the name to the bird, because these merchants were called Turkey merchants as much of the area was part of the Ottoman Empire, hence the name Turkey birds or, soon thereafter, turkeys. In 1550, the English navigator William Strickland, who had introduced the turkey into England, was granted a coat of arms including a turkey-cock in his pride proper, William Shakespeare used the term in Twelfth Night, believed to be written in 1601 or 1602. The lack of context around his usage suggests that the term had widespread reach, in many countries, the names for turkeys have different derivations. Ironically, many of these names incorporate an assumed Indian origin, such as diiq Hindi in Arabian countries, dinde in French, индюшка in Russia, indyk in Poland, and Hindi in Turkey. These are thought to arise from the thought that Christopher Columbus had originally believed that he had reached India rather than the Americas on his voyage, in Portuguese a turkey is a peru, the name is thought to derive from the eponymous country Perú. The anhinga is sometimes called a turkey, from the shape of its tail when the feathers are fully spread for drying. A number of turkeys have been described from fossils, the Meleagridinae are known from the Early Miocene onwards, with the extinct genera Rhegminornis and Proagriocharis. The former is probably a basal turkey, the other a more contemporary bird not very similar to known turkeys, a turkey fossil not assignable to genus but similar to Meleagris is known from the Late Miocene of Westmoreland County, Virginia. In the modern genus Meleagris, a number of species have been described, as turkey fossils are robust and fairly often found. Many of these supposed fossilized species are now considered junior synonyms, one, the well-documented California turkey Meleagris californica, became extinct recently enough to have been hunted by early human settlers
21.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
22.
Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
23.
The Death of Major Peirson
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The Death of Major Peirson,6 January 1781 is a 1783 large oil painting by John Singleton Copley. It depicts the death of Major Francis Peirson at the Battle of Jersey on 6 January 1781, the Battle of Jersey was the last French attempt to seize the island of Jersey, and one of the last battles with invading forces from a foreign nation in the British Isles. Approximately 1,000 French soldiers, commanded by de Rullecourt and they occupied St Helier early on the morning of 6 January. They captured the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, Moses Corbet, in bed, although Corbet surrendered, Peirson, the 24-year-old commander of around 2,000 troops of the British garrison, refused to surrender. As Peirson organised a counter-attack, a French shot killed him, Lieutenant Philippe Dumaresq of the Jersey militia took command of the British forces, which comprised detachments of the 95th Regiment of Foot, 78th Highlanders, and Jersey Militia. The British forces quickly overwhelmed the French, most of whom surrendered, John Boydell, a successful engraver and publisher and Aldermen of the City of London, commissioned Copley to paint a large painting,251.5 centimetres by 365.8 centimetres. The scene looks towards the final French resistance in Royal Square, viewed along what is now Peirson Place, further British reinforcements are visible on the hill at the top left. The statue and some of the buildings depicted still stand, although Peirson was killed in the early stages of the battle, the painting shows Peirson being shot down leading the final charge, giving him a more heroic role and fate. To the left, his black servant Pompey avenges his master by shooting the sniper, Copley modeled the civilians fleeing to the right on his wife, family nurse and children. Peirson became a hero, and the painting drew crowds when it was first exhibited at 28 Haymarket in May 1784. The Tate Gallery purchased the painting in 1864, between 1989 and 2010, a copy appeared on the 10 Jersey pound note, and before that on the 1 pound note
24.
John Singleton Copley
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John Singleton Copley RA was an American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley and he is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects. His portraits were innovative in their tendency to depict artifacts relating to these individuals lives, Copleys mother owned a tobacco shop on Long Wharf. His father was from Limerick, his mother, of the Singletons of County Clare, Letters from John Singleton, Mrs. Copleys father, are in the Copley-Pelham collection. Richard Copley, described as a tobacconist, is said by biographers to have arrived in Boston in ill health and to have gone, about the time of Johns birth, to the West Indies. William H. Whitmore gives his death as of 1748, the year of Mrs. Copleys remarriage, james Bernard Cullen says, Richard Copley was in poor health on his arrival in America and went to the West Indies to improve his failing strength. No contemporary evidence has been located for either year, except for a family tradition that speaks of his precocity in drawing, nothing is known of Copleys schooling or of the other activities of his boyhood. His letters, the earliest of which is dated September 30,1762, in such a household young Copley may have learned to use the paintbrush and the engravers tools. The family lived next to the occupied by japanner Thomas Johnston and his family. His son, Lord Lyndhurst, wrote that he was entirely self taught, variants of this thesis are found almost everywhere in his earlier letters. They suggest that, while Copley was industrious and an executant, he was physically unadventurous and temperamentally inclined toward brooding. He could have seen at least a few paintings and many good prints in the Boston of his youth. The excellence of his own portraits was not accidental or miraculous and it is a remarkable work to have come from so young a hand. No other engraving has been attributed to Copley, such painting would obviously advertise itself anywhere. Without going after business, for his letters do not indicate that he was ever aggressive or pushy, besides painting portraits in oil, doubtless after a formula learned from Peter Pelham, Copley was a pioneer American pastellist. He wrote, on September 30,1762, to the Swiss painter Jean-Étienne Liotard, the requested pastels were duly received and used by Copley in making many portraits in a medium suited to his talent. By this time he had begun to demonstrate his genius for rendering surface textures and capturing emotional immediacy. Copleys fame was established in England by the exhibition, in 1766, of A Boy with a Squirrel, which depicted his half-brother, Henry Pelham, seated at a table and playing with a pet squirrel
25.
Jersey
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Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is a Crown dependency of the United Kingdom, ruled by the Crown in right of Jersey, off the coast of Normandy, France. Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy, whose dukes went on to become kings of England from 1066. After Normandy was lost by the kings of England in the 13th century, and the ducal title surrendered to France, Jersey, Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial, legal and judicial systems, and the power of self-determination. The Lieutenant Governor on the island is the representative of the Queen. The island of Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands, although the bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey are often referred to collectively as the Channel Islands, the Channel Islands are not a constitutional or political unit. Jersey has a relationship to the Crown from the other Crown dependencies of Guernsey. It is not part of the United Kingdom, and has an identity separate from that of the UK. The definition of United Kingdom in the British Nationality Act 1981 is interpreted as including the UK, Jersey is not fully part of the European Union but has a special relationship with it, notably being treated as within the European Community for the purposes of free trade in goods. The name Caesarea has been used as the Latin name for Jersey since William Camdens Britannia, the Latin name Caesarea was also applied to the colony of New Jersey as Nova Caesarea. Andium, Agna and Augia were used in antiquity, scholars variously surmise that Jersey and Jèrri derive from jarð or jarl, or perhaps a personal name, Geirr. The ending -ey denotes an island, Jersey history is influenced by its strategic location between the northern coast of France and the southern coast of England, the islands recorded history extends over a thousand years. La Cotte de St Brelade is a Palaeolithic site inhabited before rising sea levels transformed Jersey into an island, Jersey was a centre of Neolithic activity, as demonstrated by the concentration of dolmens. Evidence of Bronze Age and early Iron Age settlements can be found in locations around the island. In June 2012 it was announced what could be Europes largest hoard of Iron Age coins had been found in Grouville by two persons using metal detectors, the hoard may be worth up to £10 M. People had been searching for treasure for 30 years. It was reported that the hoard weighed about three quarters of a tonne and could contain up to 50,000 Roman and Celtic coins, in 2012 the same two men had found 60 Iron Age coins in the same area. Jersey was part of Neustria with the same Gallo-Frankish population as the continental mainland, Jersey was invaded by Vikings in the 9th century. In 933 it was annexed to the future Duchy of Normandy, together with the other Channel Islands, Cotentin and Avranchin, by William Longsword, count of Rouen and it became one of the Norman Islands
26.
Battle of Jersey
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The Battle of Jersey was an attempt by French forces to invade Jersey and remove the threat the island posed to French and American shipping in the Anglo-French War. Jersey provided a base for British privateers, and France, engaged in the war as an ally of the United States and its commander, Baron Philippe de Rullecourt, died of wounds sustained in the fighting. The battle is remembered for the death of the British officer Major Peirson. Large numbers of privateers operated out of the island, causing chaos amongst French merchant shipping, Jersey privateers even operated off the coast of America. The French government decided to neutralize this threat, aware of the military importance of Jersey, the British government had ordered that the island be heavily fortified. King George III granted approval and funding on 5 July 1778, perhaps four towers had been completed by the time of the Battle of Jersey, none where the French would land. Gun batteries, forts and redoubts already existed around the coast, all adult males had for centuries been required by law to serve in the Jersey Militia which in 1780 comprised some 3,000 men in five regiments, including artillery and dragoons. Regular army units—the entire 95th Regiment of Foot, five each of the 83rd Regiment of Foot and 78th Seaforth Highlanders. A total force amounted to about 6,250 troops of all types were available on the island, a naval force, the Jersey Squadron, was also based in the island, but was on a cruise against the Dutch at the time of the invasion. On 1 May 1779, during the Anglo-French War a French force under the command of the French born Prince of Nassau-Siegen attempted a landing at St Ouens Bay. Early that morning lookouts sighted five large vessels and a number of boats some three leagues off the coast, proceeding towards the coast to effect a landing. Guns on the cutters and small craft supporting the landing fired grapeshot at the defenders on the coast, the defenders were able to prevent the landing, suffering only a few men wounded when a cannon burst. The French vessels withdrew, first holding off a league from the coast before leaving the area entirely, De Rullecourt was an adventurer and a colonel in the French Army. King Louis XVI had promised de Rullecourt the rank of General and the Cordon rouge as soon as he had control of the town of Saint Helier, officially the expedition was a private affair. However, funding, equipment, transport and troops were provided by the French government, in order to conceal their involvement, the government went so far as to order the desertion of several hundred regular troops to De Rullecourts forces. On 5 January 1781 the expedition set out from Granville, consisting of some 2,000 soldiers in four divisions, there was a storm which scattered some ships and only 1,200 initially made it to Jersey. Jersey still celebrated 6 January as Old Christmas Night, and the French landed undetected, the 800 men of the first division landed at La Rocque, Grouville, on the south east coast and passed close by the guards without being noticed. A French officer even said that he had slept beneath the guards, the guards were subsequently put on trial, where it was found they had abandoned their post to go drinking
27.
Titian
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Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, known in English as Titian /ˈtɪʃən/, was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno, during his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, during the course of his long life, Titians artistic manner changed drastically, but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his pieces, their loose brushwork. The exact date of Titians birth is uncertain, when he was an old man he claimed in a letter to Philip II, King of Spain, to have been born in 1474, but this seems most unlikely. Other writers contemporary to his old age give figures that would equate to birthdates between 1473 and after 1482 and he was the son of Gregorio Vecelli and his wife Lucia. His father was superintendent of the castle of Pieve di Cadore, Gregorio was also a distinguished councilor and soldier. Many relatives, including Titians grandfather, were notaries, and the family of four were well-established in the area, at the age of about ten to twelve he and his brother Francesco were sent to an uncle in Venice to find an apprenticeship with a painter. At that time the Bellinis, especially Giovanni, were the artists in the city. There Titian found a group of men about his own age, among them Giovanni Palma da Serinalta, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano Luciani. Francesco Vecellio, his brother, later became a painter of some note in Venice. A fresco of Hercules on the Morosini Palace is said to have one of Titians earliest works. Others were the Bellini-esque so-called Gypsy Madonna in Vienna, and the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth, now in the Accademia, a Man with a Quilted Sleeve is an early portrait, painted around 1509 and described by Giorgio Vasari in 1568. Scholars long believed it depicted Ludovico Ariosto, but now think it is of Gerolamo Barbarigo, Rembrandt borrowed the composition for his self-portraits. Titian joined Giorgione as an assistant, but many contemporary critics found his work more impressive—for example in exterior frescoes that they did for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Their relationship evidently contained a significant element of rivalry, distinguishing between their work at this period remains a subject of scholarly controversy. A substantial number of attributions have moved from Giorgione to Titian in the 20th century, one of the earliest known Titian works, Christ Carrying the Cross in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, depicting the Ecce Homo scene, was long regarded as by Giorgione. In 1507–1508 Giorgione was commissioned by the state to create frescoes on the re-erected Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some fragments of paintings remain, probably by Giorgione
28.
JSTOR
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JSTOR is a digital library founded in 1995. Originally containing digitized back issues of journals, it now also includes books and primary sources. It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals, more than 8,000 institutions in more than 160 countries have access to JSTOR, most access is by subscription, but some older public domain content is freely available to anyone. William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, JSTOR originally was conceived as a solution to one of the problems faced by libraries, especially research and university libraries, due to the increasing number of academic journals in existence. Most libraries found it prohibitively expensive in terms of cost and space to maintain a collection of journals. By digitizing many journal titles, JSTOR allowed libraries to outsource the storage of journals with the confidence that they would remain available long-term, online access and full-text search ability improved access dramatically. Bowen initially considered using CD-ROMs for distribution, JSTOR was initiated in 1995 at seven different library sites, and originally encompassed ten economics and history journals. JSTOR access improved based on feedback from its sites. Special software was put in place to make pictures and graphs clear, with the success of this limited project, Bowen and Kevin Guthrie, then-president of JSTOR, wanted to expand the number of participating journals. They met with representatives of the Royal Society of London and an agreement was made to digitize the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society dating from its beginning in 1665, the work of adding these volumes to JSTOR was completed by December 2000. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded JSTOR initially, until January 2009 JSTOR operated as an independent, self-sustaining nonprofit organization with offices in New York City and in Ann Arbor, Michigan. JSTOR content is provided by more than 900 publishers, the database contains more than 1,900 journal titles, in more than 50 disciplines. Each object is identified by an integer value, starting at 1. In addition to the site, the JSTOR labs group operates an open service that allows access to the contents of the archives for the purposes of corpus analysis at its Data for Research service. This site offers a facility with graphical indication of the article coverage. Users may create focused sets of articles and then request a dataset containing word and n-gram frequencies and they are notified when the dataset is ready and may download it in either XML or CSV formats. The service does not offer full-text, although academics may request that from JSTOR, JSTOR Plant Science is available in addition to the main site. The materials on JSTOR Plant Science are contributed through the Global Plants Initiative and are only to JSTOR
29.
Isabella (Millais painting)
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It was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849, and is now in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. It depicts the moment at which Isabellas brothers realise that there is a romance between the two people, and plot to murder Lorenzo so they can marry Isabella to a wealthy nobleman. Isabella, wearing grey at the right, is being handed a blood orange on a plate by the doomed Lorenzo. A cut blood orange is symbolic of the neck of someone who has just been decapitated, one of her brothers violently kicks a frightened dog while cracking a nut. Millais and his colleague William Holman Hunt had both produced drawings illustrating episodes from the poem, but only Millais worked his up into a full painting, both drawings used distorted perspective and angular poses characteristic of medieval art, by which the Pre-Raphaelites were influenced. Millais also draws on the precedent of William Hogarths satirical depictions of an arranged marriage Marriage à-la-mode, the painting is structured with deliberately distorted perspective, elongating the right hand side of the table and flattening the figures ranged along it. Millais also carefully characterises each figure with equal precision, another distinctive Pre-Raphaelite feature is the inclusion of images and patterns within the image as a whole. Each of the plates has a distorted picture glazed into its surface, the base of the bench on which Isabella sits contains a carving depicting a kneeling figure under which appear the letters PRB. In 2012, British art curator Carol Jacobi discovered several likely intentional sexual symbolisms in the painting and they were all on or near the character in the front left, who is stretching out his leg and using a nutcracker. The shadow on the table near his crotch area, his leg, Jacobi said, The shadow is clearly phallic, and it also references the sex act, with the salt tipped into the shadow. She also argued that it would have been deliberate, but did not know what the intention with it was. However, she stated that it was not a Freudian slip, or a hypocritical, the imagery of masturbation and the anxieties around it and being unable to control yourself sexually would have been well known. Birmingham Museums & Art Gallerys Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource Several studies pencil on paper for Isabella painting
30.
Christ in the House of His Parents
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Christ in the House of His Parents is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting the Holy Family in Saint Josephs carpentry workshop. The painting was controversial when first exhibited, prompting many negative reviews. It catapulted the previously obscure Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to notoriety and was a contributor to the debate about Realism in the arts. It is currently housed in the Tate Britain in London, the painting depicts the young Jesus assisting Joseph in his workshop. Joseph is making a door, which is laid upon his carpentry work-table, Jesus has cut his hand on an exposed nail, symbolizing the stigmata and foreshadowing Jesus crucifixion. As his grandmother, Anne, removes the nail with a pair of pincers, his mother, Mary, offers her cheek for a kiss. A young boy, who would later be known as John the Baptist, brings in water to wash the wound, an assistant of Josephs, who represents Jesus future Apostles and chroniclers observes these events. In the background of the various objects are used to further symbolize the theological significance of the subject. A ladder, referring to Jacobs Ladder, leans against the wall. Other carpentry implements refer to the Holy Trinity, Millais likely used Albrecht Dürers print Melancholia I as a source for this imagery, along with quattrocento works. The sheep in the sheepfold seen through the door represent the future Christian flock and it has been suggested that Millais was influenced by John Rogers Herberts painting Our Saviour Subject to His Parents at Nazareth. He may also have drawn on a painting depicting Jesus helping Joseph in his workshop, the painting was immensely controversial when first exhibited because of its realistic depiction of a carpentry workshop, especially the dirt and detritus on the floor. This was in dramatic contrast to the portrayal of Jesus, his family. Charles Dickens accused Millais of portraying Mary as an alcoholic who looks. so hideous in her ugliness that and she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England. Critics also objected to the portrayal of Jesus, one complaining that it was painful to see the youthful Saviour depicted as a red-headed Jew boy. Dickens described him as a wry-necked, blubbering red-headed boy in a bed-gown, other critics suggested that the characters displayed signs of rickets and other disease associated with slum conditions. Because of the controversy, Queen Victoria asked for the painting to be taken to Buckingham Palace so that she could view it in private and this was entitled A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids. The effect of the comments was to make the Pre-Raphaelite movement famous
31.
Ferdinand Lured by Ariel
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Ferdinand Lured by Ariel is a painting by John Everett Millais which depicts an episode from Act I, Scene II of Shakespeares play The Tempest. It illustrates Ferdinands lines Where should this music be and he is listening to Ariel singing the lyric Full fathom five thy father lies. Ariel is tipping Ferdinands hat from his head, while Ferdinand holds on to its string, Ferdinand looks straight at Ariel, but the latter is invisible to him. The painting was Millais first attempt at the plein air Pre-Raphaelite style and he wrote to his close friend and Pre-Raphaelite colleague Holman Hunt that he had painted a ridiculously elaborate landscape. Referring to Hunts belief in devotion to detail he wrote that you find it very minute. To paint it as it ought to be would take me a month a weed — as it is, I have done every blade of grass and he painted the face of Ferdinand from another Pre-Raphaelite, Frederic George Stephens. The clothing and the pose are derived from plate 6 of Camille Bonnards Costumes Historiques, the supernatural green bats were the last additions to the composition. Their grotesque poses put off the patron who had undertaken to buy it. They adopt the poses of see, hear, speak no evil, the invisibility of Ariel and the bats is suggested by their semi-merger with the green background. The connection with natural camouflage is implied by the presence of the green lizards hiding in front of the clump in the right foreground. The painting was bought by the collector Richard Ellison, and later entered the collection of Roger Makins, the Atheneaum stated that it was better in the painting than Millais controversial previous exhibit Christ in the House of His Parents, but more senseless in the conception. The Art Journal identified a considerable vein of eccentricity in the portrayal of Ariel as a hideous green gnome, the Times condemned it as a deplorable example of perverted taste. In 1998, when it seemed as though the painting might leave Britain to be sold in the USA, the columnist Kevin Myers, wrote that he would put my foot through it with violent joy
32.
Mariana (Millais)
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Mariana is an 1851 oil-on-wood painting by John Everett Millais. The image is based on the solitary Mariana from William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, in the play, Mariana was to be married, but was rejected when her dowry was lost in a shipwreck. The painting is regarded as an example of Millais precision, attention to detail, raphael was one of the Renaissance painters that the Brotherhood admired, which is where the name of their group came from. The PRB wanted to create paintings that provided a moral lesson in the tradition of Raphael’s Renaissance paintings. However, that not mean that the PRB only painted religious images. Oftentimes the PRB artists used images to create a narrative. Sometimes they even used contemporary literature as inspiration for their paintings, many of their paintings include a large amount of details, which allow the viewer to “read” the painting. Since the PRB artists wanted viewers to read their paintings, they included so many details that the paintings became a narrative, Millais used Tennyson’s poetry to create a narrative for their paintings and he wanted to allow the viewer to read the entire poem through their painting. Although the artist can only show one scene from the poem, the Millais included details, the viewers at the time would have been familiar with Tennyson’s poetry. Thus, they would be able to read the paintings very easily, John Millais was also a founding member of the PRB. He was born into a wealthy family and from a very young age his artistic talent was recognized. Millais was two years younger than Hunt but that did not dampen their friendship at all, at the age of 11, he was admitted into the Academy and exhibited several works there over a period of years. Millais married Effie Chalmers in 1855, Millais is known for Christ in the House of His Parents, and one of the paintings that Millais is most famous for is Bubbles. Later in his career, Millais made a name for himself as a painter of portrait, Millais’ Mariana also used Tennyson’s poetry as a starting point for his painting. This painting is packed with details that help the viewer to read the narrative of the work along with Tennyson’s poetry and it is all about waiting and the passage of time, which Millais shows by the arched-back pose of the woman. The pose makes it seem like she has been sitting too long, the rolled up embroidery on the table also gives the viewer a clue as to how long Mariana has been working on it while waiting for her lover to arrive. In the painting Mariana, Millais included many details that relate directly to Tennyson’s poetry, in the poem, Tennyson wrote, “When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, and glanced athwart the glooming flats”. Although there is not a curtain in Millais’ painting, this line is similar to the scene that is presented outside of the window, the viewer perceives an ominous feeling, just like the dark storm that Tennyson alludes to in the line above
33.
The Return of the Dove to the Ark
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The Return of the Dove to the Ark is a painting by Sir John Everett Millais, completed in 1851. It is now displayed in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the painting portrays a scene from the Bible. Two of Noahs daughters-in-law nurture the dove that has returned to the Ark bearing an olive branch, the Return of the Dove to the Ark was first put on public display at the Royal Academy in 1851. It was praised by John Ruskin and Théophile Gautier, among others and it passed to the Ashmolean as part of the Combe Bequest in 1893
34.
A Huguenot
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A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomews Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge is a painting by John Everett Millais. The long title is abbreviated to A Huguenot or A Huguenot on St Bartholomews Day. It depicts a pair of lovers in an embrace. The familiar subject is given a dramatic twist because the embrace is in fact an attempt by the girl to get her beloved to wear a white armband, the young man gently pulls the armband off with the same hand with which he embraces the girl. The incident refers to the St. Bartholomews Day massacre in 1572 when French Protestants were massacred in Paris, a small number of Protestants escaped from the city by wearing white armbands. Millais had initially planned simply to depict lovers, but had been persuaded by his Pre-Raphaelite colleague William Holman Hunt that the subject was too trite. After seeing Giacomo Meyerbeers opera Les Huguenots, which tells the story of the massacre, in the opera the character Valentine also attempts unsuccessfully to get her lover Raoul to wear the armband. The choice of a pro-Protestant subject was also significant because the Pre-Raphaelites had previously been attacked for their sympathies to the Oxford Movement. Some of the flowers depicted in the scene may have been chosen because of the contemporary interest in the language of flowers. The blue Canterbury Bells at the left, for example, can stand for faith, the painting was exhibited with Ophelia in 1852, and helped to change attitudes towards the Pre-Raphaelites. Tom Taylor wrote a positive review in Punch. The painting was reproduced as an engraving, which became Millaiss first major popular success, as a result Millais went on to produce a number of other paintings on similar subjects
35.
Ophelia (painting)
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Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed between 1851 and 1852. It is held in the Tate Britain in London and it depicts Ophelia, a character from William Shakespeares play Hamlet, singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark. The work was not highly regarded when first exhibited at the Royal Academy, the painting depicts Ophelia singing while floating in a river just before she drowns. The scene is described in Act IV, Scene VII of Hamlet in a speech by Queen Gertrude, the episode depicted is not seen onstage, but exists only in Gertrudes description. Ophelia has fallen into the river from a tree overhanging it and she lies in the water singing songs, as if unaware of her danger. Her clothes, trapping air, have allowed her to stay afloat. But eventually, her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pulld the poor wretch from her melodious lay down to muddy death, Ophelias death has been praised as one of the most poetically written death scenes in literature. Ophelias pose—her open arms and upwards gaze—also resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs, the painting is known for its depiction of the detailed flora of the river and the riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a natural ecosystem. Despite its nominal Danish setting, the landscape has come to be seen as quintessentially English, Ophelia was painted along the banks of the Hogsmill River in Surrey, near Tolworth, Greater London. Millais close colleague William Holman Hunt was at the working on his The Hireling Shepherd nearby. The flowers shown floating on the river were chosen to correspond with Shakespeares description of Ophelias garland and they also reflect the Victorian interest in the language of flowers, according to which each flower carries a symbolic meaning. The prominent red poppy—not mentioned by Shakespeares description of the scene—represents sleep, at an early stage in the paintings creation, Millais painted a water vole—which an assistant had fished out of the Hogsmill—paddling next to Ophelia. In December 1851, he showed the painting to Holman Hunts relatives. He recorded in his diary, Hunts uncle and aunt came, the male relation, when invited to guess at it, eagerly pronounced it to be a hare. Perceiving by our smiles that he had made a mistake, a rabbit was then hazarded, after which I have a faint recollection of a dog or a cat being mentioned. Millais painted the water out of the final picture, although a rough sketch of it still exists in an upper corner of the canvas hidden by its frame. In keeping with the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which he was a member, Millais used bright colours, gave high attention to detail, also, Millais utilizes bright, intense colours in the landscape to make the pale Ophelia contrast with the nature behind her. All this is evident in the attention to detail in the brush and trees around Ophelia, the contouring of her face
36.
The Order of Release
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The Order of Release,1746 is a painting by John Everett Millais exhibited in 1853. It is notable for marking the beginnings of Millaiss move away from the highly detailed Pre-Raphaelitism of his early years, Effie Gray, who later left her husband for the artist, modelled for the principal figure. The painting depicts the wife of a rebel Scottish soldier, who has been imprisoned after the Jacobite rising of 1745 and she holds her child, showing the order to a guard, while her husband embraces her. The subject is simply that of a wife, with child in her arms, coming with an order of release for her husband, the colouring, the textural execution, are marvellous. The dark, generalised background is a departure from the detailed backgrounds of earlier works such as Ophelia. However, the portrayal of tense relationships disrupted by historical dramas was a continuation of the theme of A Huguenot, while working on the painting, Millais fell in love with Effie, the wife of his principal supporter, the critic John Ruskin. A study for the painting has a drawing of her head on one side, the title of the painting was adopted for the book The Order of Release by William Milbourne James about the love triangle, and also of a radio play about it broadcast in 1998. The painting of the picture is dramatised onstage in the play Mrs Ruskin by Kim Morrissey, the Order of Release at The Victorian Web
37.
John Ruskin (painting)
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John Ruskin is a painting of the leading Victorian art critic John Ruskin. It was painted by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais during 1853–54, John Ruskin was an early advocate of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists and part of their success was due to his efforts. The painting depicts Ruskin in front of a waterfall in Glenfinlas, Ruskin and Millais spent the summer of 1853 together at Glenfinlas in the Trossachs. Ruskin was especially interested in the formations and undertook his own studies of these. The painting of Ruskin was started at Glenfinlas, during which the details of the landscape were painted, the last stages of work on the painting were undertaken in Millais studio in London. By that time Ruskins wife Effie had fallen in love with Millais and she left Ruskin and sued him for an annulment of the marriage. She and Millais were married the following year, Millais found it very difficult to be in the same room as Ruskin when he was completing the work in London, calling it the most hateful task I have ever had to perform. As soon as the portrait was finished he broke off contact with Ruskin, Ruskin himself temporarily moved the portrait so that his father would not see it, since he was concerned that he would damage or destroy it. The painting was given by Ruskin to his friend Henry Wentworth Acland in 1871 and it was passed down through his family until it was sold at Christies in 1965. The purchaser retained the painting until their death in 2012 and it was accepted by the British Government in lieu of inheritance tax in 2013 and permanently allocated to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford to which it had been on loan since 2012. The painting has been exhibited several times, including exhibitions on the Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain in London in 1984 and it is valued at £7.0 million
38.
The Rescue (painting)
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The Rescue is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting a fireman rescuing three children from a house fire, with their mother receiving them back into her arms. Millais witnessed the death of a fireman in the course of a rescue, the fire brigade had only recently been transformed from private businesses dedicated to the protection of property to a public institution charged to protect life first. Millais sought to create the effects of light and smoke by using a sheet of coloured glass. This emphasis on fleeting effects of colour and light was a new departure in his art, the painting is also notable for its startling transitions of colour, particularly the dramatic effect by which the sleeve of the mothers nightgown changes from slatey blue to pale pink. This led to much comment at the time. Robyn Cooper argues that criticism of the painting arose from the fact that it depicted a virile working class man rescuing middle class children. The mothers opened arms seem to greet this strong new man as much as her children, the rescue on the National Gallery of Victorias website
39.
Autumn Leaves (painting)
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Autumn Leaves is a painting by John Everett Millais exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856. It was described by the critic John Ruskin as the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight, Millais wife Effie wrote that he had intended to create a picture that was full of beauty and without a subject. The picture depicts four girls in the collecting and raking together fallen leaves in a garden. They are making a bonfire, but the fire itself is invisible, the two girls on the left, modelled on Millais sisters-in-law Alice and Sophy Gray, are portrayed in middle-class clothing of the era, the two on the right are in rougher, working class clothing. The painting has been seen as one of the earliest influences on the development of the aesthetic movement, the painting has typically been interpreted as a representation of the transience of youth and beauty, a common theme in Millais art. Malcolm Warner argues that Millais was influenced by the poetry of Tennyson, Warner suggests that lines from Tennysons song Tears, Idle Tears in The Princess may have influenced him, Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, the apple held by the youngest girl at the right may allude to the loss of childhood innocence implied by reference to original sin and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. After a positive review from F. G, stephens, Millais wrote to him that he had intended the picture to awaken by its solemnity the deepest religious reflection. I chose the subject of burning leaves as most calculated to produce this feeling
40.
The Blind Girl
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The Blind Girl is a painting by John Everett Millais which depicts two itinerant beggars, presumed to be sisters, one of whom is a blind musician, her concertina on her lap. They are resting by the roadside after a rainstorm, before travelling to the town of Winchelsea, the painting has been interpreted as an allegory of the senses, contrasting the experiences of the blind and sighted sisters. Some critics have interpreted the rainbow in Biblical terms, as the sign of Gods covenant described in Genesis 9,16, when the painting was first exhibited in 1856 it was pointed out to Millais that in double rainbows the inner rainbow inverts the order of the colours. Millais had originally painted the colours in the order in both rainbows. He altered it for scientific accuracy, a tortoiseshell butterfly rests on the blind girls shawl, implying that she is holding herself extremely still. The sheet around her neck is captioned Pity the Blind, birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, The Blind Girl Sympathy and Vividness in Millais The Blind Girl
41.
A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford
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A Dream of the Past, Sir Isumbras at the Ford is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting a medieval knight helping two young peasant children over a swollen river. The children are carrying heavy burdens of wood for winter fuel, though the title refers to the medieval poem Sir Isumbras, the painting does not illustrate a scene from the original text. However Millaiss friend, the writer Tom Taylor, wrote verse in a pastiche of the original poem and this was included in the original exhibition catalogue. The background of the painting is based closely on a medieval bridge which stood in Bridge of Earn. Some of the houses can also be seen, though the tower house or castle to the left is imaginary. When first exhibited the painting was controversial, and was attacked by many critics. Most notably, Millaiss former supporter John Ruskin declared it to be a catastrophe, the painting was also satirised in a print by Frederic Sandys, entitled A Nightmare, in which Millais himself was represented as the knight. His fellow Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt were caricatured as the children, the original poem describes an arrogant knight who is humbled by misfortune in his youth, a story derived from the Book of Job and the legend of Saint Eustace. The subject depicted by Millais portrays the elderly, now humble and it was described by Frederic George Stephens as follows, Sir Isumbras at the Ford was the subject of the picture Millais made his leading work in the year 1857. It represented an ancient knight, all clad in golden armour, the face of this warrior was one of those pictorial victories which can derive their success from nothing less than inspiration. The sun was setting beyond the forest that gathered about the rivers margin, the theme of the Christian Chivalry was a topical one at the time, discussed by Ruskin himself and other authors such as Charles Kingsley, who saw it as a means to overcome class division. It is comparable to the hymn Good King Wenceslas, written in the same decade, Millais was also probably influenced by Albrecht Dürers print, The Knight, Death and the Devil. Critical commentary on the painting when it was first exhibited was largely hostile, with critics finding the horse over-large and ugly. Ruskin was extremely savage, condemning the picture for making errors in pictorial grammar by portraying the foreground as lighter than the more exposed hills in the background and he insisted that Millais had suffered not just a fall—but catastrophe. In response, Millais attempted to repaint parts of the picture before he sent it to another exhibition in Liverpool, the repainted version won a prize at the Liverpool exhibition. Millais altered the picture again in the 1880s, adding decoration to the reins, despite its early bad reception, the painting became quite influential, inspiring a number of other images of chivalric knights. This tradition continued well into the 20th century, some of John Tenniels work for the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll has been sourced to paintings, The White Knight echoes Millaiss Sir Isumbras at the Ford. Lot Notes for A Dream of the Past, Sir Isumbras at the Ford,1856, oil on panel
42.
The Vale of Rest
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The Vale of Rest is a painting by John Everett Millais. The painting is of a graveyard, as night is coming on, beyond the graveyard wall there is a low chapel with a bell. In the foreground of the scene, there are two nuns – the heads of the two nuns are level and symmetrical and they are Roman Catholic nuns, one of the nuns holds a rosary, and one of the nuns is digging a grave. Her forearm and body strain under the weight of a shovelful of earth, the other, overseeing the work, turns with a look of apprehension and anguish. Art critic Tom Lubbock said of the painting, Graves, mistress and servant, a power relationship, maybe some deeper emotional bondage. Its a picture that pulls out all the stops, the painting is one of those satirised in Florence Claxtons watercolour The Choice of Paris – an idyll
43.
The Black Brunswicker
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The Black Brunswicker is a painting by John Everett Millais. The painting was exhibited with the plural title The Black Brunswickers. The painting depicts a Brunswicker about to depart for battle and his sweetheart, wearing a ballgown, restrains him, trying to push the door closed, while he pulls it open. This suggests that the scene is inspired by the Duchess of Richmonds ball on 15 June 1815 and it is connected with the Brunswick Cavalry at Waterloo. They were nearly annihilated but performed prodigies of valour. I have it all in my minds eye and feel confident that it will be a prodigious success, the costume and incident are so powerful that I am astonished it has never been touched upon before. Russell was quite struck with it, and he is the best man for knowing the public taste, nothing could be kinder than his interest, and he is to set about getting all the information that is required. The same letter states that he intends it to be a pendant to The Huguenot, Millaiss first major success. Originally Millais intended the two paintings to be more similar than they are by repeating the motif of the armband used in the earlier painting. He wanted the soldier to be wearing a black crepe mourning armband, the armband idea was quickly dropped as it does not appear in any extant preparatory drawings. As the critic of The Times surmised, her reluctance is due in part to an admiration for this great conquerer. The artwork took a three months to paint. Millais is reported to have particularly close attention to the correctness of the Brunswickers uniform. Kate Perugini, the daughter of Charles Dickens, was used as a model for the woman seen in the picture, the male model was an anonymous soldier who died shortly afterwards. The two models never actually met, Millais son says that they both posed with wooden props. He clasped a lay-figure to his breast, while the fair lady leant on the bosom of a man of wood and it was also bought for the highest price Millais had ever received from dealer and publisher Ernest Gambart—100 guineas. He sold it on to the well-known Pre-Raphaelite collector Thomas Plint, later, in 1898, William Hesketh Lever purchased the work for his private collection. The painting followed a period of lack of success for Millais. It was engraved in mezzotint by T. L. Atkinson in 1864, Millais also painted two watercolour copies of the composition
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Esther (Millais painting)
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Esther is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting the central character from the Biblical Book of Esther. It is from Millaiss Aesthetic phase, when he was influenced by the work of Frederic Leighton, the painting depicts Esther, the Jewish wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus, as she prepares to enter the presence of her husband. As she is uninvited, she risks death, but does so to him of a plot against the Jews. Millais borrowed the Yellow Jacket, a given to General Gordon by the Chinese emperor after his defeat of the Taiping rebellion. In order to create a culturally unspecific effect, he turned it inside out, Millais creates a dramatic visual effect by vivid contrasts of colours, setting the deep blue of the curtain against the yellow dress and the white columns. The minimising of the aspect of the scene is also in line with the Aestheticist approach of the artists he is imitating and challenging. Esther is depicted adjusting pearls in her hair, as she prepares to place her crown on her head and this gesture is derived from paintings by Titian, whose techniques of colouring Millais imitates, along with the modelling of the face and the characteristic Titian blonde hair. This also compares with the lush red locks of Millaiss earlier picture The Bridesmaid and with some contemporary works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Vanessa (Millais painting)
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Vanessa is a painting by John Everett Millais in Sudley House, Liverpool. It is a portrait depicting Jonathan Swifts correspondent Esther Vanhomrigh. Vanessa represents a departure in Millaiss art because he abandons fully for the first time the detailed finish that was still to be seen in Waking and Sleeping. Esther Vanhomrigh is known as Swifts Vanessa because of the name he gave her when he published their correspondence. No actual image of Esther Vanhomrigh exists and she is holding a letter, presumably written to or from Swift. Millais also painted a piece depicting Stella. The painting is part of the 18th century revival in British art at this time, when a renewed interest in the brushwork of Reynolds and Gainsborough was emerging
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Victory O Lord!
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Victory O Lord. is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting Moses, Aaron and Hur during the Battle of Rephidim against the Amalekites. Along with his landscape Chill October it represented a turning point in Millaiss career. The painting illustrates a passage in the Book of Exodus, chapter 17, Moses holds the Rod of God in his right hand. And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek, so Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed, and Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Millais depicts the going down of the sun, when the three patriarchs watch the final moments of the battle, Moses is in the middle while Aaron and Hur hold up his arms to ensure victory. Aaron, in red, is on the right, the battle below is indicated by the arrow at the bottom right. Millais worked on the painting over many years, scraping and repainting the surface, stephens commented that the painting depicted the conflict between the unyielding and steadfast willpower of Moses, and the physical and emotional exhaustion of his companions. He also praised the painting of the aged flesh of the figures
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The Boyhood of Raleigh
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The Boyhood of Raleigh is a painting by John Everett Millais, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1871. It came to epitomise the culture of imperialism in late Victorian Britain and in British popular culture up to the mid-twentieth century. The painting depicts the young, wide-eyed Sir Walter Raleigh and his sitting on the beach by the Devonshire coast. He is listening to a story of life on the seas, the painting was influenced by an essay written by James Anthony Froude on Englands Forgotten Worthies, which described the lives of Elizabethan seafarers. It was also influenced by a contemporaneous biography of Raleigh. Millais travelled to Budleigh Salterton to paint the location, millaiss sons Everett and George modelled for the boys. The sailor was a professional model, Millais friend and biographer, the critic Marion Spielmann, stated that he was intended to be Genoese. He also argues that the sailor is pointing south towards the Spanish main, the painting has been parodied many times in political cartoons. In 1928 David Low published a cartoon showing the Earl of Birkenhead, Stanley Baldwin, in 1993 the Sunday Telegraph ran The Boyhood of Hurd and Major. Former Prime Minister Heath - whose hobby had been yachting - had taken Britain into the EEC during his premiership, the two elder statesmen described themselves as pro-European but opposed to British membership of the Single Currency. Elements of the picture appear on the cover of the Talk Talk album Its My Life, the painting is also reproduced in part on the cover of the 1982 single Almost With You/Life Speeds Up by The Church
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The North-West Passage
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The North-West Passage is a painting by John Everett Millais. It depicts a sailor sitting at a desk, with his daughter seated in a stool beside him. He stares out at the viewer, while she reads from a log-book, on the desk is a large chart depicting complex passageways between incompletely charted islands. Millais exhibited the painting with the subtitle It might be done and England should do it, the title and subtitle refer to the repeated failure of British expeditions to find the northwest passage, a navigable passageway around the north of the American continent. These expeditions became synonymous with failure, adversity and death, with men, the search for the northwest passage had been undertaken repeatedly since the voyages of Henry Hudson in the early 17th century. The most significant attempt was the 1845 expedition led by John Franklin and these later expeditions were also unable to navigate a route between Canada and the Arctic. Millais had the idea for the painting when a new expedition to explore the passage, Millais was keen to use Edward John Trelawny as the model for the figure of his old sailor. He had met him at the funeral of their mutual friend John Leech, Millais wife Effie Gray persuaded Trelawny to sit for the picture by agreeing to attend a Turkish bath he was promoting at the time. The female figure was a model, Mrs Ellis, who was later used in another painting. The right side of the painting originally depicted two of the grandchildren, who were modelled by John and Alice Millais, two of Millais own children. They were shown looking at a globe of the world, but after Millais completed the painting, he became unhappy with the figures of the children, thinking that they distracted the eye from the main figure. He cut out section of the painting and replaced it with a screen. The chart depicted in the painting is of the northern coast of Canada and it was designed by Edward Augustus Inglefield and printed in 1854. Millais may have intended to suggest that the old man was a veteran of one of McClures expeditions. When he saw the painting at the Royal Academy exhibition, Trelawny, who was teetotal, was outraged by the fact that Millais had included a glass of grog and a lemon. However, he decided that Millais Scottish wife Effie was probably to blame because the Scotch are a nation of sots. The painting was first shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1874 and it was then shown at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1876. When Tate bought the painting for 4,000 guineas there was apparently a huge cheer because it meant that it would part of the national collection which Tate was planning
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The Ruling Passion
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The Ruling Passion, sometimes called The Ornithologist, is a painting by John Everett Millais which was shown at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1885. The painting shows an old man lying on a chaise-longue and he is showing a stuffed bird, a king bird of paradise, to a group of children and a woman. The older girl on the left of the picture is holding a resplendent quetzal, the attitude of the children ranges from the enthralled interest of the youngest two to the comparative indifference, almost boredom, of the oldest girl. The work was inspired by a visit that Millais and his son John Guille Millais paid to the ornithologist John Gould shortly before his death in 1881, on the way home, Millais said to his son Thats a fine subject, a very fine subject. I shall paint it when I have time, the painting was well received – the influential critic Ruskin said that it was one of only three things worth looking at in the R. A. exhibition. Victorianweb. org, Knowledge and Family in Millaiss The Ruling Passion
