The Truth of Imagination

John Ruskin, 1819-1900. Portrait in black and white chalk circa 1857 by George Richmond

Victorian essayist, historian, art theorist, literature and art critic, poet and social reformer. In short, a genius.

“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.” 

vintageanchor:

“Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”
—Gabriel García Márquez

La Belle Dame Sans Merci - painted 1926 by Frank Cadogan Cowper (1877-1958). Based on Keats’ ballad of the same name.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Paul Nash (1889-1946)  Totes Meer (Dead Sea) 

Painted between 1940 and 1941. In the Tate Collection.

Nash, renowned landscape artist, surrealist and artist of both the First and Second World Wars,was inspired by the sight of dumped planes in Oxfordshire and said afterwards:

 ‘The thing looked to me suddenly, like a great inundating sea … the breakers rearing up and crashing on the plain. And then, no: nothing moves, it is not water or even ice, it is something static and dead.’

The Daydream - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Painted in about 1880, this painting is in the collection held by the Victoria & Albert Museum. The sitter is Jane Morris, wife of William. She was at this time having an affair with Rossetti and she sits in the branches of a sycamore holding a honeysuckle blossom - a flower that for the Victorians symbolised the bonds of love.

Rossetti wrote a poem also entitled The Daydream that includes the lines:

She dreams; till now on her forgotten book 
Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.

Painting by John Everett Millais - The Eve of St Agnes 1863

Stanzas XXIII 7 XXIV The Eve of St Agnes by John Keats

 Out went the taper as she hurried in; 
    Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died: 
    She closed the door, she panted, all akin 
    To spirits of the air, and visions wide: 
    No utter’d syllable, or, woe betide! 
    But to her heart, her heart was voluble, 
    Paining with eloquence her balmy side; 
    As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

    A casement high and triple-arch’d there was, 
    All garlanded with carven imag’ries 
    Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
    And diamonded with panes of quaint device, 
    Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, 
    As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings; 
    And in the midst, ‘mong thousand heraldries, 
    And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.

Picturing John Keats - Image or Imagination On my blog over at No Wriggling Out of Writing. Looking at how different artistic portrayals of Keats - from the charcoal sketches by Joseph Severn as Keats lay dying in Rome to Ben Wishaw’s performance in the wonderful film ‘Bright Star’ in 2009 - affect our responses to him. When the images are so varied how do we visualise the real man?

centuriespast:

Artist: Thomas Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910) 
Title: Retrospection 
Date: 1864 

Peabody Art Collection

amanda-awhite:

The Pot of Basil

(cut paper collage)

And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,

  And she forgot the blue above the trees,

And she forgot the dells where waters run,

  And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;

She had no knowledge when the day was done,

  And the new morn she saw not: but in peace

Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,

And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.

(Isabella, or The Pot of Basil - John Keats)

William Blake 1757-1827. Portrait (1807) by Thomas Phillips 

Another beautiful poem about autumn, this time written by Blake, as the leaves here turn and for once the breeze is gentle and feathery clouds move slowly across blue skies.

To Autumn

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain’d 
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit 
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may’st rest, 
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe, 
And all the daughters of the year shall dance! 
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

“The narrow bud opens her beauties to 
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins; 
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and 
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve, 
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing, 
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.

“The spirits of the air live in the smells 
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round 
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.” 
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat, 
Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak 
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

treselegant:

Drinking Coffee and Reading in the Garden

by Edward Killingworth Johnson.

Another Pre-Raphaelite interpretation of ‘Isabella or The Pot of Basil’ by John Keats, this time by John Everett Millais. It was one of his earlier works as a Pre-Raphaelite and was first exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1849.

‘Isabella, or The Pot of Basil’. A painting by pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt from 1868. Hunt was inspired by the poem of the same name written by John Keats in 1818

Charcoal drawing of John Keats by Joseph Severn

John Keats, by William Hilton (c.1822).