Shops

A trip into Rochdale for a bit of shopping this morning.  The new retail development is pretty much finished but, due to the lockdown, only the Marks and Spencer food department was open.  Who knows how the other retailers and leisure business will come out of the current crisis?

Whilst driving down there, I listened for the first time to an album by Eli "Paperboy" Reed - 99 Cent Dreams (2019). Terrific stuff for anyone who likes blues/soul music, with some very catchy songs, similar to 1960s Motown. My favourite track was News You Can Use.

Far less upbeat is the painting The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis Davis (1793).  This depicts the immediate aftermath of the assassination of French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, stabbed in his bath by a moderate republican, Charlotte Corday, who was outraged by Marat's "Terror," which saw the beheading of hundreds of royalists and other perceived enemies of the revolution.  Corday was arrested immediately and after a swift "trial," she too was executed by the guillotine four days later.

The painting was a conscious piece of propaganda by David, another enthusiastic republican.  It shows Marat in his bath (he took many baths to relieve the pain of illnesses) and the frugal furniture he used - a packing case for a desk. These items were displayed as Marat's corpse lay in state in a former church.  At the foot of the packing case, the painting is dated "l'an deux" - or Year Two, of the republican calendar.

I like the composition of the painting, in a portrait orientation, with the top half of the canvas a simple, sombre background, with just a hint of the field of gold used in medieval religious paintings