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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Visiting Guy Von Sturmer
Going to visit Guy also means that I go looking at books in 2nd hand bookshops in Devonport. Cyril Beaumont: The Diaghilev Ballet in London (revised edition, 1945, with illustrations) was the avowed purpose, I had noticed it last time I was there, but there was Virginia Woolf's Books & Portraits, 1977, with Angelvca Garnett's dustwrapper, both at Hard to Find -- & Evergreen had Clive Bell's An account of French Painting, 1931, with 27 references to Poussin in the index..
Tucked inside is a postcard, pristine condition, from the British Museum.The Nativity, Add Mss.35312, f.42. French, XV Cent. inscribed on the blank verso 'With love from Jonathan. Christmas 1931'. The scene enclosed in numerous fine tendrils & some fleshier foliage is properly an adoration of the Christ child by his parents, angels and shepherds. There is an ox lying down, looking up at the Christ child, with right forefoot tucked under him, like a dog; an alert ass head and shoulders; two adoring angels, one in green, the other with blue & white wings; behind them St Joseph hands joined in prayer beneath his chin; & out the back three shepherds in brown clothes, one hooded. A gold glory shines down on them all. Under a rustic wooden shelter, with holes in the roof, the Virgin, wearing a fine blue mantle, is seated on a vermillion drapery, praying over the child in a manger, that is a wicker basket of sorts. Behind all these, there is a distance of gently sloping hills a few trees & a castle.
Guy poured me a latte-sized cup of tea. The day was fine and the light in his study area was good for the photos I wanted to take. The best of them, with some words about Guy's painting is on http://Tony_Green.typepad.com
In Takapuna, the North Shore Hospice op shop had a copy of the autobiograpohy of Grace Moore at irresistible op shop price. Grace Moore was the singing star of a movie of 1934, which popularised operatic singing, One Night of Love. Her record of the title song [on the A side] and Ciribiribim [definitely B-side I decided when I found a copy in a junk shop recently] were popular & broadcast frequently in Britain well into the 1940s. I remember hearing it in 1940 during WWII while I was evacuated from London & immediately declaring that when I grew up I was going to marry Grace Moore. It was the sound of the voice that so impressed me then. I certainly didn't know she was older than my mother. I was certainly out of luck as far as marrying her went. I could not have anticipated that she would die in a plane crash in 1947.
The book is a rich mine of gossip about stars of the opera and of Hollywood. Dipping into it there is Grace Moore with her light lyric soprano in a concert with the great heroic tenor voice of Giovanni Martinelli, dining out with Cole Porter and with Gloria Swanson in Paris, studying Louise with Charpentier & telling us about Fanny Heldy who was -- I never knew this, listening to her on records with Fernand Annseau! -- opera singer & jockey. She must have been an unusually thin singer.
Tucked inside is a postcard, pristine condition, from the British Museum.The Nativity, Add Mss.35312, f.42. French, XV Cent. inscribed on the blank verso 'With love from Jonathan. Christmas 1931'. The scene enclosed in numerous fine tendrils & some fleshier foliage is properly an adoration of the Christ child by his parents, angels and shepherds. There is an ox lying down, looking up at the Christ child, with right forefoot tucked under him, like a dog; an alert ass head and shoulders; two adoring angels, one in green, the other with blue & white wings; behind them St Joseph hands joined in prayer beneath his chin; & out the back three shepherds in brown clothes, one hooded. A gold glory shines down on them all. Under a rustic wooden shelter, with holes in the roof, the Virgin, wearing a fine blue mantle, is seated on a vermillion drapery, praying over the child in a manger, that is a wicker basket of sorts. Behind all these, there is a distance of gently sloping hills a few trees & a castle.
Guy poured me a latte-sized cup of tea. The day was fine and the light in his study area was good for the photos I wanted to take. The best of them, with some words about Guy's painting is on http://Tony_Green.typepad.com
In Takapuna, the North Shore Hospice op shop had a copy of the autobiograpohy of Grace Moore at irresistible op shop price. Grace Moore was the singing star of a movie of 1934, which popularised operatic singing, One Night of Love. Her record of the title song [on the A side] and Ciribiribim [definitely B-side I decided when I found a copy in a junk shop recently] were popular & broadcast frequently in Britain well into the 1940s. I remember hearing it in 1940 during WWII while I was evacuated from London & immediately declaring that when I grew up I was going to marry Grace Moore. It was the sound of the voice that so impressed me then. I certainly didn't know she was older than my mother. I was certainly out of luck as far as marrying her went. I could not have anticipated that she would die in a plane crash in 1947.
The book is a rich mine of gossip about stars of the opera and of Hollywood. Dipping into it there is Grace Moore with her light lyric soprano in a concert with the great heroic tenor voice of Giovanni Martinelli, dining out with Cole Porter and with Gloria Swanson in Paris, studying Louise with Charpentier & telling us about Fanny Heldy who was -- I never knew this, listening to her on records with Fernand Annseau! -- opera singer & jockey. She must have been an unusually thin singer.
Posted by: Tony Green / 4:22 PM 
