Progress

Another day of inconsequential details that seem unusually significant during lockdown: heating system serviced and two separate deliveries, all on time. 

First listen today was an album containing a song I heard on a film soundtrack yesterday.  The song - Cumberland Gap by David Rawlings from his album Poor David's Almanack was better than the film - Guy Ritchie's "The Gentlemen."

Whilst "waiting-in" this morning, I read about two Welsh artists - sister and brother Gwen and Augustus John, who both studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in the 1890s and came to prominence in the following decades. Both are especially known for their stylish portrait painting.

Gwen John's The Artist in Her Room in Paris (1910) is an intimate view of, it is thought, Gwen herself.  There are in fact two versions - one with an open window and bright light and the other with closed curtains.  The first shows the optimistic side of her personality whereas the closed scene is claustrophobic and depressing. She veered between high and low periods in her life especially during her affair with sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Augustus was a more outgoing personality than Gwen and it is said that his lifestyle was as colourful as his painting. He drank a lot, womanised and his creativity diminished as his fame grew. His portrait of The Marchesa Casati (1918-19) shows his Italian lover as a vibrant and challenging character, her vivid red hair contrasting with the stormy Italian landscape of her home.