Thousands of sea miles and water as metaphor

My love for the sea is so strong that life feels to me only half-lived on land. 1

Images of water and maritime culture are strong themes in Percy Grainger’s art collection. John Harry Grainger, Percy’s father, was an architect and a fine watercolour painter who produced seascapes and maritime scenes for pleasure. The paintings he gifted his son demonstrate an innate understanding of the tensions and energies that combine to create wind-powered sea travel—an interest he passed on to his child. He was his son’s first art teacher. Among Percy Grainger’s juvenilia are numerous paintings and drawings of watercraft.

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John Harry Grainger (1854-1917), French fishing boats entering Boulogne harbour, 1892. Watercolour on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

It is easy to comprehend Grainger’s love of maritime imagery. As a touring concert pianist he spent many thousands of hours at sea, starting his lifetime of sea voyages when he sailed from Australia at the age of 13 to take up his formal studies in music in Frankfurt.

Three years after graduation he was touring South Africa and Australasia with the renowned Australian contralto, Ada Crossley—again, covering many sea miles—and he joined a second tour with her four years later.

Grainger became an obsessive tall ship enthusiast. As a child he experienced the last days of sailing cargo vessels undertaking coastal trade in Australia. He also saw windjammers docking in Melbourne and made sketches of these vessels, as well as their steam-powered competitors.

At 51, Grainger had an opportunity to experience what would have been a dream to lovers of square-rigged ships. He and his wife Ella spent 101 days on a sea voyage to Australia (1933/34) on the Finnish Barque, L’Avenir. It was a profound experience for him, which he recorded in paintings and drawings. He made visual notes of passing ships, landscape profiles from the sea and the minutiae of deck and rigging structures. He later had a scale model of the vessel fabricated.

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Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961), Sail-awning, used to hinder deck tennis quoits falling overboard (mended and kept going by P.G.). L’Avenir, December 1933. Ink on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

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Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961), Pomern, Archibald Russell, Viking, Passat and Ponape, seen from L’Avenir, Port Victoria, S. Australia, January 1934. Watercolour on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Grainger painted and sketched throughout his life. The deftly drawn pen and ink of a two mast sailing vessel in port at Farsund in Norway was executed on Hotel letterhead—another example of Grainger’s habit of visual note making as he travelled.

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Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961), Farsund, 23 August 1913. Ink on letterhead. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

For a man who documented his life with extraordinarily copious notes, there is limited provenance to some of the works in the exhibition Water, marks and countenances: works on paper from the Grainger Museum collection . Little is recorded of the Californian watercolourist, Hugh Nevill-Smith, whose confidently executed seascape is on display.

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Hugh Nevill-Smith, Sailboat on a lake, n.d. Watercolour on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

The crisp etching of Strandvägen and Nordic Museum (in Sweden) signed ‘Knorr’ may have been by a relation of Grainger’s Frankfurt composition lecturer, Iwan Knorr. And whether Grainger met the New Zealand artist, Cranleigh Barton, is unknown. The artist’s watercolour of London Bridge is a spare, luminous image in the impressionist style.

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Cranleigh Harper Barton, London Bridge, n.d. Watercolour on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

By contrast, some of the works are by friends and were gifted to Grainger. Flora M. Pilkington, known for her watercolours of gardens, produced an image of Edvard Greig’s lakeside home, Troldhaugen, in the year of the composer’s death. Eight years later she gave it to Grainger with a note telling him of the difficulties of finding an appropriate view point.

 

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Flora M. Pilkington, Autumn sketch at Troldhaugen, c.1907. Watercolour on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Old junks in Shanghai harbour is by Grainger’s friend and early mentor, Mortimer Menpes. Norman Lindsay’s Little Mermaid and his melange of nudes (in and out of water), boats, castles and sheep dogs, titled Capriccio, are two works from a small group of prints Lindsay gave Grainger. As well as sharing a love of erotica, the two artists were fond of model ships.

 

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Norman Lindsay (1879-1969), The little mermaid, 1934. Etching and aquatint on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

The inclusion of detailed watercolours of Grainger’s experimental music-making machines in the exhibition has a less obvious, yet still pertinent connection with the theme of water— here water is metaphor.

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Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961), “Hills and dales” air-blown-reeds tone-tool no.2 (snowshoe), October 1951. Watercolour, ink and graphite on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

The last musical adventure of Grainger’s life was his experimental ‘Free Music’. He likened the new sonic forms he was generating to the movement of water. His vision was of a music unconstrained by western conventions of pitch and rhythm. Gone would be the incremental movements of melody, harmony and rhythm. The sounds in his head were of gliding tones or Glissandi, and irregular rhythms: multiple voices threading through each other like the lapping of waves breaking on the side of a moving boat.

My impression is that this world of tonal freedom was suggested to me by wave movements in the sea that I first observed as a young child at Brighton, Victoria, and Albert Park, Melbourne.2

By Brian Allison

Exhibitions Coordinator, Special Collections and Grainger Museum

Footnotes:

  1. Percy Grainger to Douglas Charles (D.C.) Parker, 28 August, 1916
  2. Percy Grainger, ‘Free Music 1938’, in Gillies and Clunies Ross, Grainger on Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999

A Medieval Beetle in the Rare Books Collection

Eight-legged flying beetle with antlers While much is known about the cultural depiction of beetles in the Classical period and during the Renaissance, much less is known about the cultural representation and meaning of beetles during the Middle Ages. This may be beginning to change with the contemporary digitisation of illuminated manuscripts, books and artworks, and the development of online translators, translations and dictionaries, which are providing new methodologies for analysis and interpretation.

Recently I came across a drawing of an eight-legged flying beetle with antlers in the Baillieu Library’s Hortus Sanitatis (1491)[1], or Garden of Health, which I was able to compare with digitised copies located in other international collections[2]. The beetle is categorised in the section ‘Tractatus De Avibus’ (Treatise on Birds) and is displayed alongside other fantastic drawings like that of a man lying naked in a field being attacked by hornets and that of a myrmecoleon or ant-lion.

A man being attacked by hornetsOn close inspection the drawing in the Hortus appears to be a rudimentary sketch of the European stag beetle (Lucanus cervus). Stag beetles are named after their large antler-like mandibles. Only the males possess these horns and use them to joust with other males in territorial disputes. Stag beetles live in forests, woodlands, hedges and gardens, but they are currently listed as a protected species in the United Kingdom and are thought to have disappeared from certain parts of Western Europe on account of environmental changes and habitat destruction.

A myrmecoleon or ant-lionBy modern standards the beetle-drawing in the Hortus is anatomically incorrect in a number of respects. The beetle has no antennae. It lacks a meso-thorax. It has eight legs rather than six, which technically makes it an arachnid, and its feet are cloven rather than clawed or hooked with tarsi. Having noted these anatomical errors, the stag beetle is identifiable with regards to its brown colouring, spectacular antlers, and general shape. Together with the accompanying textual description, it offers invaluable insights into how Europeans thought about insects towards the end of the Middle Ages:

‘A flying beetle is similar in style to the cricket. They fly towards night and make a waspish noise. He has long horns that are medicinal, [and] those horns be bright and branched like teeth. The head may be taken off yet it [moves not] long without the body. The body without the head [moves] but not so long as the head’[5].

Text describing the stag beetleChristopher Harrington

PhD candidate

School of Communication

University of Melbourne

Interested in finding out more?

Read about the Baillieu Library’s copy of Hortus Sanitatis in the University of Melbourne Collections magazine.

Browse the digitised version online

Endnotes

[1] Hortus sanitatis. [Mainz : Jacob Meydenbach, 23 June 1491].  UniM Bail SpC/RB MTC/20 Incunabula

[2] These include the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, one of the world’s pre-eminent science and technology libraries.

[3] Lister, Martin. Historiae Animalum Angliae. Londini : Apud Joh. Martyn Regiæ societatis typographum, 1678.  Digital version available at http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/nat_hist/id/22115.

[4] Merian, Maria Sibylla. Metamorphasibus Insectorum Surinamensium. Tot Amsterdam, Voor den auteur…, als ook by Gerarde Valck, [1705].  Digital version available at http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/nat_hist/id/1049.

[5] Hortus sanitatis.

Full page image from the 'Tractacus de Avibus'

“Single men from Scotland keenly sought”

“Single men from Scotland are keenly sought” writes James Butchart to his father on his arrival in Port Phillip, where he expects his exercise of the three virtues, “patience, prudence and perseverance”, will enable him to thrive. (James Butchart, Melbourne, to father, 15 February 1842, 1990.0083.00005). Recently digitised correspondence reveals the journey of one man from migration to establishment in Victoria. Correspondence to family and friends trace James, aged just 19, from his voyage from Fifeshire, Scotland to Melbourne, where over the course of a decade as he worked his way through various pastoral occupations in Port Phillip.

Butchart was enthusiastic about life in Australia, trying to convince his father to migrate “For the meanest servant in this country would turn up his nose at the style of living which thousands of respectable people are obliged to adopt in the old country”. (James Butchart, Smeaton Hill, to George, 1 February 1845, 1990.0083.00015). Appealing to his sisters Cecilia and Isabella in May 1846 he writes “if you come we will very soon attain independency which I am afraid we never could do in Scotland as things go now” and “I do not suppose there is any place in the world where you can get all the necessaries of life cheaper than you can in Melbourne”.

Butchart worked hard, finding employment in various pastoral capacities until he acquired land for himself and entered into a stock and station agency partnership, Kaye & Butchart. He also ran a successful business in Bourke Street enabling him to build a mansion in Mornington and retire. He died there on 11 Nov. 1869, aged 47.

To access James Butchart’s correspondence use the search term “Butchart” in UMA’s online Digitised Items Catalogue

The James Butchart Collection was digitised through the Russell and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Fund.

Ballooning, steam and Victorian fantasies

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The month of May marks the 150th anniversary of The Great Exhibition of 1851 that took place in Hyde Park, London from 1 May to 11 October. The Victorian-era Great Exhibitions were platforms that launched countless inventions. The newly developed ‘cast plate glass,’ for example, made possible the construction, to a design by Joseph Paxton, of the very building that housed the exhibition, dubbed ‘The Crystal Palace.’ Paxton, also a gardener of renown, based the Crystal Palace on a greenhouse he designed for the recently discovered giant Victoria amazonica waterlily. The Crystal Palace embodied both the Victorian imagination and the greatest offerings of industrial manufacturing. Another new technique promoted at the Exhibition – steel plate engraving – resulted in prints which commemorate the event.

(Above) Samuel Read, The Crystal Palace international exhibition of 1851, (c.1851), etching and engraving, gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

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Joseph Paxton, The Crystal Palace and Park, 1854, engraving,  Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959. Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

 

At this time the industrial revolution was buoyed both by balloon ascensions and the marvel of steam power. Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1838 ushering in a distinctive era of art and culture. Manufacturing was not the only thing to be transformed; this was also a time of lofty ambitions and wafting imaginations.

The first manned hot air balloon ascension had taken place in the previous century at the Palace of Versailles in 1783. Jean-Pierre Blanchard’s flight to cross the English Channel soon followed in 1785. Blanchard’s balloon was propelled by the balloonist flapping a pair of oars back and forth, which can be seen depicted in the distant background of the stipple engraving by William Birch. In literature, Jules Verne’s popular novel Five weeks in a balloon (1863) expanded the ambitions of the adventurous to every cloud, mountain and ocean. The Victorians saw in the balloon a vehicle for turning an inflated idea into an innovation. It is interesting note that the first model of propelled balloon was designed by Australian aviator David Bland and was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

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William Birch after Thomas Rowlandson, Dover Castle, 1789, stipple engraving,  Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

Another vehicle traversing the sky was the airship. These curious leviathans of the air enabled improved travel, and they began taking over the skies of London during the World Wars. Scotland’s Forth Bridge, itself a monument to the wonder of Victorian engineering, in Lumsden’s etching, is partnered by airships and also the steam train, both elevated into the stratosphere.

 

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 Ernest Stephen Lumsden, Forth Bridge, (1940-46), etching, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

The individual who dramatically advanced transport on land was engineer George Stephenson, who enabled the public to travel by steam locomotive for the first time in 1825. The invention of the railways evolved, surprisingly, alongside the sewing machine, which transformed the textile industry and factory work. One memento in the Print Collection capturing these historic developments is an unusual transport souvenir. This piece of textile immortalises Stephenson and his innovations through the medium of machine embroidery; the image was probably adapted from an engraved image.

Unknown artist, Robert Stephenson and rocket locomotive, (19th century), Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959. Baillieu Library Print Collection, Uinveristy of Melbourne.

Unknown artist, Robert Stephenson and rocket locomotive, (19th century), Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959. Baillieu Library Print Collection, Uinveristy of Melbourne.

The contraptions for ballooning, locomotion and manufacture let fly numerous Victorian fantasies which were captured in print media. These often aerial ambitions enabled the Victorians, at the same time, to soar through industrial advancements.

 

Kerrianne Stone (Curator, Prints)

 

A tale of two Luciles and two composers: Grétry père et fille

Celebrated musicians … a collection of portraits (London, 1883; 780.922 FLA)

Early print editions of French music of the 17th and 18th centuries, especially opera, are a collection-strength of Rare Music at The University of Melbourne. One of the composers best represented is André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741–1813; born Liège, Belgium) who was supremely successful in Paris as a composer of opéras comiques and recitative comedies in the decades before the French Revolution. Rare Music has early imprints of fifteen of Grétry’s stage works.

A casual glance at two particular Grétry light operas from the collection can cause confusion. There is A-E-M Grétry’s “comédie” Lucile, first performed in 1769, and Lucile Grétry’s Le mariage d’Antonio of 1786. Lucile is both the fictitious (and eponymous) heroine of Grétry’s comic opera (with libretto by Jean-François Marmontel) and the name his daughter—also a composer—was known by. Her given names were Angélique-Dorothée-Louise. The stories of the fictitious Lucile and the young Lucile Grétry are, in different ways, remarkable.

Opening of Grétry’s Lucile (Paris, 1769; LHD 052)
Opening of Grétry’s Lucile (Paris, 1769; LHD 052)

Fundamental to the fictitious Lucile’s story in the opera is the trope of the swapped baby. [1] When the daughter of a wealthy family, the original baby Lucile, dies in the care of a wet nurse, the servant substitutes her own daughter. With the action set on the substitute Lucile’s wedding day, her humble origins are revealed to her by her birth father (Blaise) and it seems that marriage is now out of the question. By the opera’s end Lucile’s personal qualities transcend her “class” and the happy pair marry after all.

Printed parts for Lucile Grétry’s opera Le marriage d’Antonio (Paris, 1786; LHD 059)
Printed parts for Lucile Grétry’s opera (Paris, 1786; LHD 059)

Lucile Grétry, sadly, was denied the happy ending of her namesake. Her own brief marriage was unsuccessful and she died of tuberculosis at the age of 17.

As a young child Lucile received training in composition both from her father (in counterpoint and declamation) and other musicians. She began Le marriage d’Antonio when she was only 13 years old, writing all the vocal parts and, to accompany, a part for harp and a bass line. Lucile’s choice of the harp is emblematic as “for feminine decency, no instrument could compete with the harp” in Paris at the time. [2] Her father’s contribution to the opera was to arrange the harp part for full orchestra, making theatrical performance possible. He also made some alterations to the ensemble numbers. Le mariage was very well received by critics and audiences and stayed in the repertory for 5 years and 47 performances.

The man behind these two Luciles, A-E-M Grétry, was himself exceptional for his day in his attitude to women. Grétry took only 4 music pupils during his life and 3 were women. Through his copious writings, [3] he championed the creativity of women proclaiming that they could possess genius in any sphere. A musical career was singled out as achievable for many women and one that would offer them a welcome path to independence. Grétry characterised his daughter Lucile as an “image of feminine sensitivity and genius, coupled with a strong will to compose”. [4]

Quartet from Grétry’s Lucile, p. 34 (vocal parts only)
Quartet from Grétry’s Lucile, p. 34 (vocal parts only)

Grétry believed in the centrality of family life, [5] and this was celebrated in the greatest success of his opera Lucile, the quartet from scene 4, “Où peut-on être mieux qu’au sein de sa famille” (Where can one be so happy as with one’s family).  Though suffused with sentimentality, it takes on poignancy in the knowledge that not only Lucile but Grétry’s other two daughters died young from tuberculosis.

 

Jennifer Hill, Music Curator

[1] For a synopsis see Robert Ignatius Letellier, Opera-comique: A sourcebook (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010) p. 368–369.

[2] Jacqueline Letzter and Robert Adelson, Women writing opera: Creativity and controversy in the age of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 49.

[3] See, for example, Grétry’s Mémoires, ou Essais sur la musique, written first as one volume in 1789, then enlarged to three.

[4] Letzter and Adelson, p. 25, 55–56.

[5] David Charlton, “Grétry, André-Ernest-Modeste” in Oxford Music Online, accessed 21 April 2016.

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