Prince Ludwig of Bavaria's wedding in 1810

The original Oktoberfest occurred in Munich in October 1810 as part of the public celebrations of a very special wedding, that of Crown Prince Ludwig (1786 – 1868), later King Ludwig I, and Princess Therese of Saxe Hildburghausen. Although the marriage had naturally been arranged for political purposes, most historians suggest that it turned out to be a very happy one. Anyhow, the citizens of Munich were invited to join in the festivities which were held over five days on the fields in front of Munich's gates. There was food and drink, but the main event of that distant festival appeared to be a horse race.

Bräurosl beer tent

By the next year, 1811, the programme was already starting to expand. An agricultural show was added to the horse race, I am assuming with an eye to boosting Bavarian agriculture. In 1816, carnival booths appeared; the main prizes beautiful decorative objects like jewellery. Swings, slides, merry-go-rounds and wheelbarrow races entertained the crowds. In time Munich’s town council took over management of the festival and in 1819, Oktoberfest became a formal and annual event. It was changed to September, I am guessing, because October is a bit too cool and a bit too unreliable, weatherwise.

Since 1850, a “wedding” parade has become a yearly event and an important component of the Oktoberfest. There is nothing quite as awesome as seeing 8,000 Bavarians in traditional costumes walking through the centre of the city. According to Daniel Wroe, real Lederhosen, the traditional Bavarian men's clothing, are still made from deer leather, not the cheaper cow leather. They last a lifetime and are often passed from father to son.

Oktoberfest musicians (Life Magazine)

Improvement followed improvement. In 1880, the electric light made the 400 booths and tents blaze brightly at night. In 1881, booths selling Bavaria’s favourite snack foods opened. Beer was first served in glass mugs in 1892. But the humble beginnings had long been inadequate; by the end of the 19th century, people wanted more sophistication, and much more space. The small booths were expanded into large beer halls and large groups of professional musicians were included in the entertainment. Tree climbing games were no longer the cultural highlight of the festival.

brewery horses on parade

In 1887 the Entry of the Oktoberfest Staff and Breweries began, a vast parade where the breweries competed with  great teams of decorated horses and the Oktoberfest bands marched. This event always took place on the first Saturday of the Oktoberfest and was used to mark the official opening of the festivities. In 1908, the festival built the first roller coaster found on German soil and best of all, in 1913, the huge Bräurosl opened for business. This was the largest Oktoberfest beer tent, holding some 12,000 revellers.

Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese's wedding, 1810 

Only six Munich breweries - Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner and Spaten -were formally sanctioned to serve beer at the festival. But for most people, that is enough. Luckily Oktoberfest beer steins were typically made from heavy glass, with a decorative brewery logo on the side, and big enough to hold a litre of beer! These days, once the beer has been consumed, steins can be purchased in the tents.

Over the decades the festival was occasionally cancelled, because of an epidemic sweeping the city or because German-French warfare had broken out. But mostly the tradition was so entrenched and so loved that it went ahead regardless. Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen would not recognise the Oktoberfest today. The city hopes this year to break both its visitor record of 7.1 million and its beer drinking record of 6.9 million litres.

One litre beer steins

Munich's oldest townhouse, which first opened in 1340, is looking good once again. Visitors can inspect a small permanent exhibition that focuses on beers from Bavaria, including of course a documentary about Oktoberfest. To ensure that the museum is scholarly and not just a commercial excuse for opening yet another beer house, visitors are encouraged to taste the different beers and to eat the traditional foods. This Bier und Oktoberfest Museum, which first opened in 2005, is near Marienplatz.

Arts and Crafts home, Ramsgate

How do we describe Arts and Crafts architecture, a style that was popular in the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras? Certainly it was a statement against the cheap, machine-made uniformity of the industrial revolution. But what did it stand for? The movement advocated truth to materials and traditional craftsmanship, with a preference for medieval or folk tastes. Arts and Crafts architects elected to build in the materials that could be found locally, but they could choose steep roofs, asymmetrical gables, clay tiling, corbelled brick work or any other decorative elements that they enjoyed. In the end, all Arts and Crafts architects wanted their houses to sit comfortably in their surroundings.

I don’t suppose there are many Arts and Crafts homes still standing these days in their original condition. They were very expensive to build and decorate in the late C19th, and even those that were built have been renovated since. But I found one in Country Life magazine (7th July 2010) that does not seem to have been changed. All photo credits belong to Country Life.

In the 1880s, tobacco magnate Sir William Henry Wills needed a seaside holiday home for the family. Ramsgate was an excellent choice; already by the later Victorian era, this east Kent coastal town was a well-known destination for affluent families to 'take the sea air'.

East Court: exterior, gardens and the sea

The house was designed by the very classy architects Ernest George and Harold Peto in 1889. George was so classy that Edwin Lutyens was one of his pupils. And Peto came from the minor nobility himself. After a highly successful career as an architect, Peto became increasingly interested in garden design and was commissioned to build a number of gardens in Edwardian England. In the 1890s, Peto built his own dream home, Iford Manor in Wiltshire, which of course displayed his Arts and crafts approach, especially to garden design.

Strutt and Parker call the home East Court, a magnificent example of an Arts and Crafts House, set high above the sea below. Note that The Architecture of Sir Ernest George and His Partners c1860-1922 gives this grade II-listed house’s name as East Hill.

Externally the house was given striking green slate roof tiles. The design incorporated over-hanging jetties, verandas and oriel windows, details which gave the house a distinctive, Elizabethaneque feel.

The main reception rooms were arranged around an airy reception hall with marble floors and dominated by a stained glass window depicting scenes from the Book of Revelations. A fine, wide oak staircase took the family to a galleried landing.

dining room

There were 6 main rooms accessed off the hall, the principal reception rooms displaying fine panelling and moulded ceilings. Two of these rooms formed a lovely drawing room. The most Arts and Crafts features of the drawing room were the plaster ceilings and the deeply recessed fireplace with ornate carved mantel surrounds. A glazed door opened onto a veranda overlooking the garden and sea. Adjacent to this, the half-panelled dining room was dominated by a wonderful carved wooden mantel surround, with inset marble slips and a matching fitted dresser. Beyond was the former billiard room with a semi-domed ceiling, glazed skylight, carved wooden mantel surround and panelled walls.

reception room

The first floor accommodation was arranged around a galleried landing area with a fireplace to one end. The upstairs rooms were only for the family, so I must confine myself to one comment about this private area - the rooms to the front of the house enjoyed truly wonderful sea views.

As you would expect from a late Victorian Arts and Crafts home, the gardens at East Court were very special. Shrubs, trees, evergreen hedges, brick and flint walls formed the boundaries of the garden. A coach house was added, built in the same distinctive style as the main house, with slate tile hung elevations and multi-pane leaded light windows.

stairs

The house passed to Sir William Wills' niece, Dame Janet Stancomb-Wills, on his death in 1911. Carrying on what seemed to be a family history of benevolence, Dame Janet was a keen supporter of the Antarctic expeditions. Ernest Shackleton became a close personal friend, and often stayed at East Court. Since Dame Janet's death, the house became a children’s home and then a school, however the building retains its architectural integrity and survives largely in its original layout.

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Ernest Gimson 1864-1919 carried on the ideals of  William Morris into next generation, moving to the Cotswolds in 1893. He lived from 1894-1901 at Pinbury Park, leading a second generation of Cotswold Arts and Crafts furniture workshops and showrooms, both on the Cirencester Estate at Sapperton. 

Examine Stoneywell which was built in 1898 in Leicester. Ernest Gimson designed this house for his older brother Sydney Gimson. The house is built on a slope and approached from above, so one walks round the house to get to the front door, which looks out on a very rural landscape. Note the dominant chimney stacks along the south wall.  The original roof, like many of Gimson's houses, was thatched, but a fire just before WW2 meant it had to be re-roofed in Swithland slate.

If the Arts and Crafts movement could be seen as a clear rejection of the excesses of Victorian domestic architecture, Stoneywell represented the movement well. When the National Trust opened Stoneywell to visitors in February 2015, it was possible to see most of the original furniture still in the house eg Gimson's ladder-back chairs and oak bed, plus the Barnsleys' table and dresser. 

 Stoneywell in Leicestershire

The artist Reuven Rubin, From Romania to Israel

Young Reuven Zelicovici  1893-1974 was born in Galati (east Romania) and spent his childhood and adolescence in Falticeni (in Bukovina, north Romania). The family may have been poor, but they certainly had a horse and cart. Thus the lad was able to travel around. He was exposed to 15th and C16th art in the local monasteries and via the icons in the Bucharest Museum. Inspired by the frescoes, which were on the outside of the Bukovina churches as well as inside, Zelicovici adopted a didactic style himself.

Sucevita Monastery, exterior frescoes, Romania

Falticeni was the place where people thought that Zelicovici used the brush with a "godly grace". Yet it was a city with a small population, so I wonder why Falticeni seemed to have attracted a number of national or international celebrities, who were either born or who settled there: writers, theatre artists, painters and scientists. Did Reuven Zelicovici dream of being famous, as he might have been in the more important cities of Bucharest or Iassy?

On leaving Romania in 1912, Zelicovici became Rubin; he studied briefly at Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem. Then he moved for some years to Paris, studying at Ecole des Beaux Arts and Academie Colarossi. Plus he visited Italy. Some naive works from that era survive eg Houses of Tel Aviv 1912 which is in the Israel Museum. In 1916, he returned to Falticeni, missing his family and home town.

Still unsettled, Rubin went in 1920 to New York, where his work was noticed by Alfred Stieglitz. With the support of this important gallery owner, Rubin had his first one-man show at the Anderson Gallery that year, a large and successful exhibition. The painter met a young woman called Esther on the ship going back to Israel; there may have been a large age difference between them because her parents were sceptical about the union. However they married and had children, and were apparently very happy all their life.

In 1922 the Romanian-educated and French-trained Rubin finally settled in Israel and opened his Tel Aviv studio. That same year he exhibited in the first art exhibitions in Jerusalem, when he was 29. A collection of woodcuts entitled the God Seekers was published in 1923 and he painted a startling self portrait 1923. The maritime nature of his home and studio was very clear. As was his professional position in society as an artist.

Rubin, Self portrait, 1923, 
Israel Museum Jerusalem

His 1924 exhibit was the first one-man show in Jerusalem; his 1932 one-man show launched the Tel Aviv Art Museum. He was appointed chairman of the Association of Palestine’s Painters & Sculptors. Perhaps Rubin wasn’t at the very centre of the Bezalel movement, but he was gaining a reputation and influence as an important modern painter.

Although academically trained, Rubin's energetic depiction of a Fisherman 1922 looks naïve. It was a reflection of the artist's admiration for the hard working Arab and Jewish inhabitants of the country. Perhaps he loved their close, harmonious ties to the unspoiled world of nature, on land and sea. The bond between Arabs and Jews, and their animals, was often a motif found in Rubin's works.

Rubin continued to be enchanted with Arab and Jewish fisherman throughout the years. He depicted them on canvas spreading their nets into the waters of the Sea of Galilee, along the shores of the Mediterranean, or proudly displaying their catch with their families by their side. Goldfish Vendor late 1920s, one of his most famous, in the collection of The Jewish Museum in New York. What sets this painting apart from similar fishermen images was the single goldfish that had just been removed from the water and was flopping in the fisherman's hand. It is a typical Rubin work from the in its naïve depiction and style: the rounded forms, the flowing contours and the bright colours.

Rubin, Goldfish Vendor, late 1920s, 
Jewish Museum New York

His paintings from the 1920s were defined by a modern and naive style, portraying the landscape and inhabitants of Israel in quite an emotional manner. Then his style changed during the late 1920s and early 30s, from the naïve to an impressionist style. While other pre-State painters had to either earn their living as teachers, or to paint and live in poverty, Reuven Rubin was able to live entirely from his art. His paintings fetched high prices and were especially popular among wealthy American collectors. In particular there was very high demand for his landscapes paintings: The Orange Pickers, Road to Safed, the Road to Jerusalem, Tiberias and The Galilee.

Rubin, Ramparts of Jerusalem, 1924, 
Sotheby's

Was Rubin specifically attempting to create an indigenous style of art? Perhaps the modernising, Israelifying tradition had always been with the early Jewish settler-artists of Israel, from the early Bezalel School in Jerusalem (founded in 1906). Certainly these young artists were eager to find a new artistic language through which their unique experience could be expressed. But eventually the young Bezalel artists rebelled against their academic teachers and went to Paris in the 1920s. Reuven Rubin was one of the most important artists who reacted against Bezalel’s classic Western orientation. Instead of 19th century Orientalism, Rubin and his colleagues drew everyday visions of the Near East in a modernistic style.

It was said that Rubin’s paintings in the 1920s-1930s era retained a naive style reminiscent of Henri Rousseau. Rousseau's innocence matched the need to return to basics, because Rubin felt his generation were exiles returning to their ancient land, rediscovering its landscape and remodelling its culture. Rubin might have incorporated Rousseau's influence but I think he was even more impressed with Cezanne.

Rubin, Safed in the Galillee, 1927, 
Sotheby's

Rubin’s paintings focused on the landscape and life of Israel, but they were not fantastical. His landscape paintings in particular paid special detail to a spiritual, translucent light. It was clear that he had a great devotion to his people, his country and his religion. He may have been Romanian educated and French trained in art, but he became the distinctively Israeli artist!

Rubin put forward two of the losing designs for a national flag, just before Israel became a state in 1948. And he served as Israel's first ambassador to Romania, from 1948-1950. This was totally appropriate for the young man who had left his parents and homeland back in 1912.

In Bialik St Tel Aviv, see that some of the old houses, combining European and Middle Eastern tastes, have been restored. Reuven and Esther lived here and were friendly with Jascha Haifetz, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Edward G. Robinson, Ira Gershwin etc who dropped in on them, either in Tel Aviv or on their New York visits. Their Rechov Bialik home and studio has since became The Rubin Museum.

That studio is left just as it was on the day Rubin died in 1973, at the age of 81. Canvases being worked upon still lean on two easels. Everywhere pots and vases remain, filled with brushes. Mounds of hardened oil paints cover the palettes. Rubin had bequeathed his home and a selection of paintings to the city of Tel Aviv a month before his death.

This article was first written as a guest post for The Romanian Way

Rubin’s Tel Aviv house, now a museum

Genetic Health Courts in Germany 1933-9

The science of eugenics in the early 20th century was based on a simple principle: If the most disabled citizens in society were not prevented from reproducing their genetic flaws in the next generation, society as a whole would be heavily burdened. This might sound bizarre to modern ears, but in societies where “national health” was allowed to take total precedence over “individual health”, it seemed perfectly acceptable.

A eugenic utopia in the Inter-War period was thought of as providing a very healthy environment for society, maximising the possibility of desirable genetic qualities and minimising the possibility of undesirable genetic qualities. If a eugenically sound society could be achieved, improvement of the social environment would be both inevitable and admirable. And the society would save a fortune in health care costs, at least for those people who needed to be cared for in asylums.

Such a utopia was desired in more than one country. I'll cite just two examples. By the 1930s, more than half the states in the USA had passed laws that authorised the sterilisation of "inmates of mental institutions, persons convicted more than one of sex crimes, those doomed to be feeble-minded by 10 tests, morally degenerate persons and epileptics." Sweden also had eugenics-based legislation enacted in 1934, primarily to prevent mental illness and disease in the general community. It is estimated that c60,000 Swedes were sterilised under the 1934 law, before the law was eventually overturned well after WW2.

But it was German race hygiene that had a more radical vision of a eugenic utopia than other countries, largely because the pre-1933 political climate in Germany was already hospitable to such ideas. Dr Franzblau noted that even before Hitler came to power, there were 23 chairs of racial hygiene in German Universities.
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The assumption of power by the Nazis in 1933 made the implementation of eugenic legislation even better accepted. The new German legislation said: “Any person suffering from a hereditary disease may be rendered incapable of procreation by means of surgical sterilisation, if the experience of medical science shows that it is highly probable that his descendants would suffer from some serious physical or mental hereditary defect”.

The poster asked: Who would want to be responsible for these three handicapped children?

At no stage was the German policy anti-natal. The Nazi government paid for top quality research, designed and delivered public education campaigns, and introduced laws that aimed at eliminating alcohol, tobacco and syphilis from young couples. A vast public health scheme was developed and clinics were created to deal with the problems of child and maternal health. Abortion was banned. Getting married and having children wasn't just tolerated; it became a national duty for the racially fit.

More than that, it was emphasised that sterilisation should be seen as national liberation, not as an individual punishment. Advertising campaigns stressed that responsible young couples would naturally want to avoid bringing damaged babies into the world who would cost the state a fortune to sustain.

The German law clearly applied to each and every individual in the entire German population, presumably including members of the Nazi Party and the Hitler Youth! Thus its scope was much larger than the compulsory American sterilisation laws, which were most often applied only to inmates in psychiatric hospitals or prisons. And German practice differed from Swedish practice where, under Swedish law, no sterilisation would be carried out without the consent of the patient, or his/her parents.

There was another important difference. In Germany every undergraduate medical student was taught from films of feeble-minded, drooling and crippled children, and shown many films of sterilisation procedures. This was to familiarise them and involve them in the process, even before their medical careers started. In the USA and Sweden, only specialist practitioners were involved in the decision-making and in the surgical procedures.

Child candidates for compulsory sterilisation, waiting for the court's decision, 1934

A Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring via sterilisation became a German statute in July 1933. It demanded the compulsory sterilisation of any citizen who, in the opinion of a court, suffered from a list of specific disorders: congenital mental deficiency, schizophrenia, manic-depression, hereditary blindness or deafness, severe alcoholism, Huntington’s Chorea or hereditary physical deformities including epilepsy.

As the numbers of potential candidates for sterilisation grew and grew, it was feared that the ordinary court system would be clogged up with sterilisation cases. So a separate, dedicated court was established, to hurry cases through without the hassles of needing a qualified judge, trained lawyers and properly empanelled juries. Instead 200 Genetic Health Courts were established across Germany, with doctors inspecting the medical evidence and giving the final verdict. In total, these Genetic Health Courts ordered the compulsory sterilisation of just under 400,000 German children, teenagers and adults by the time war broke out in late 1939.

If the court decided that the person in question was to be sterilised, the decision could be appealed to a Higher Genetic Health Court where doctors and not judges also made all legally binding decisions. If the appeal failed, the sterilisation was to be carried out, with "the use of force being permissible".

One later amendment (1935) was very telling; it fined physicians who did not report patients who the doctors KNEW would qualify for sterilisation under the law. Teachers and kindergarten staff were encouraged to report their pupils for sterilisation, but were not fined if they failed to do so.

The UK tv series on Nazi Doctors (Oct 2009) reported three main outcomes, albeit unintended, that blighted The Genetic Health Courts programme:

1. The post-operative mortality and morbidity rates were higher than expected and were largely not reported. Bachrach recorded that as many as 5,000 patients died as a result of the surgery, most of them women.

2. The post-operative damage to the patients’ psychological health was much greater. This was true for all patients, of course. It was even more so for otherwise perfectly healthy people who would have loved to have had children, but were sterilised for a trivial reason eg distorted toes. Recently I saw the evidence given by elderly men and women who, sterilised in the 1930s, had been grief stricken all their lives.

3. The reputation of doctors was accidentally destroyed. They changed from being seen as healers to being seen as policemen, judges and punishment-inflicters. Families no longer trusted their own doctors, if and when their children became ill with ordinary childhood diseases.

I personally would add another important outcome. Even within the moral context of the 1930s science of eugenics, terrible decisions were made by the Genetic Health Courts. Either knowledge of genetics was not yet adequate, or it was adequate but political policy-makers overrode the medical decisions. Many people were forcibly sterilised for conditions that we (now) know are not genetically based. And as the programme didn’t continue for enough decades, I also wonder if the geneticists had any idea about how recessive genes could skip generations.

Read Susan Bachrach “In the Name of Public Health: Nazi Racial Hygiene”, in New England Journal of Medicine, 29th July 2004. And see Science and the Swastika 2001,  an analysis of science and morality during the Third Reich, especially (for the purpose of this post) the practice of eugenics and euthanasia.

Jewish Dutch architecture in Suriname

A newly restored C18th synagogue from Suriname is a treasure that has been transported to Israel & installed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The museum’s new wing, dedicated to Jewish Art and Life, was reopened to the public in July 2010. Here visitors can view the lovely South American synagogue interior, alongside synagogue interiors from Italy, Germany and India - a pilgrimage of Jewish ritual traditions from around the world, all in one day.

But why did Jews flock to Suriname in South America in the first place?  And why did they not move into Cuba, Bermuda, Jamaica or Curacao as we saw in Caribbean Jewish Communities just a few months ago?

Neve Shalom Synagogue in Paramaribo - exterior and interior

Suriname’s first European community emigrated from the Netherlands in the mid-17th century. It was then that the Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin, who had eventually ended up in the Netherlands after the Iberian expulsions, immigrated to Dutch Guiana/Suriname. In fact the Jews were among the country’s earliest European settlers.

Some historical records refer an early, wooden synagogue in Suriname that was built in the 17th century in Thorarica, Suriname's first Capital. Certainly the numbers were there: there were 92 Portuguese Jewish families and 12 German Jewish families in the colony, giving 570 persons who had holdings of 40+ plantations. However nothing remains of Thorarica township today.

Thorarica's Jewish community eventually moved to Jodensavanne, a settlement on the Suriname River, 50 km south of the capital Paramaribo. Later another, more organised group migrated to Suriname and headed straight for the Jodensavanne area. A third group arrived in 1664, after their expulsion from Brasil. Jodensavanne (Dutch for Jewish Savanna) was specifically established as an autonomous Jewish territory, dedicated to sugar-cane plantations.

The Jodensavanne community really did acquire great internal autonomy. The Congregation Beracha ve Shalom/Blessings and Peace was founded, building a wooden synagogue for itself in the years 1665-71. A second synagogue, made of imported bricks, was constructed in 1685.  This community became the heart and soul of the entire colony of Suriname.

Sadly Jodensavanne declined during the mid C18th, and most of the Jewish community moved to Paramaribo. In any case, the remnants of the colony were destroyed by fires in 1832. All that survives today is the beautiful Jodensavanne grave yard with its European-imported marble grave stones; they are a silent witness to the wealth and success of a once-impressive colony.

Jodensavanne graveyard

In the newer capital city of Paramaribo, the original wooden Neve Shalom Synagogue building was constructed in 1719 by Ashkenazi Jews. But circumstances changed and, like in other New World cities, the synagogue had to be enlarged to its current size in the mid 1830s. This building is the only active synagogue today in the country, serving the entire Jewish community (now only 300 people). Suriname itself is small. The smallest independent country in South America has a total population of only 480,000 people.

Within a very short time, the local Sephardic community wanted their own synagogue and built Tzedek v' Shalom Synagogue. Tzedek v’ Shalom, built in 1736 in Paramaribo, was typical of Spanish and Portuguese synagogues in the New World. According to Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, this Suriname synagogue was directly inspired by the Esnoga, the famous Portuguese synagogue of Amsterdam.

Tzedek v Shalom Synagogue exterior, still in Paramaribo

Tzedek v Shalom’s architecture sensibly integrated traditional European design with local architectural features such as a simple, symmetrical structure; white walls and large windows that open the interior to natural light; and a sand-covered floor. Impressive brass chandeliers, sourced from the Netherlands, hung from the ceiling.

Tzedek v Shalom Synagogue interior, moved from Paramaribo to Jerusalem

Nearly one third of the population of Suriname emigrated back to the Netherlands in the era just before independence was declared in 1975. Apparently Suriname citizens feared that the new country would fare worse under independence than it did as distant Netherlandish colony, but it was very damaging to those who remained.

The Jewish community also lost the heart and soul of its membership in these couple of years. The two Paramaribo synagogues continued functioning but, finally, the Ashkenazi and Sephardic congregations merged in 1999. Tzedek v’ Shalom ceased to function as a place of worship and the space was rented out. The synagogue’s interior, along with its original ceremonial objects and furnishings, were transferred to Jerusalem’s Israel Museum in 1999, where it has now been restored to its original beauty.

Suriname (in green) on the north coast of South America

Two references worth pursuing. "The Synagogues of Surinam" by Gunter Bohm, in the Journal of Jewish Art, Vol 6, 1979. And "Way South of the Border" in Tablet Magazine, 8th Dec 2014.

Blackpool's pleasure palaces: late Victorian summer fun

Blackpool Lanc had 3 pleasure piers. North Pier 1863 was famous for its theatre, top-class shows, shops and amusements. The North Pier facade was restored to its Victorian splendour. Central Pier 1865, also renovated, had its famous Big Wheel, amusement arcades and shops. I suspect most art history blogs do that too. People who are lecturing during the day ...use their best material for blogging in the evening :). South (Victoria) Pier 1893 was always recognised for its circus marquee style front and a theatre inside. The three piers clearly tried to incorporate everything Victorian Blackpool meant to eager holiday makers: splendid architecture, great views of the beaches and ocean, and a family friendly atmosphere that would not exhaust families’ savings.

South aka Victoria Pier, 1894

Blackpool says it was the first town in the country to go electric. In fact the tramway opened for business in 1885 and is one of the oldest electric tramways in the world. But the stretch of Promenade between the North and South piers didn’t come to be called the Golden Mile until the final pleasure pier was built in 1893. By then fair-ground operators, fortune-tellers, snack sellers and cold drink stall owners set up in the front gardens of boarding houses, to take advantage of the passing holiday trade. Those entrepreneurial types who knocked down their garden fences and expanded to the street did really well. Now the Golden Mile includes cabarets, amusement arcades, Coral Island, cafes and the Sea Life Centre. But golden? I don’t think so.

Why did Blackpool become so important in late Victorian times? After all the town only had a permanent population of 35,000 by the 1890s, although in each summer season it attracted 250,000 holidaymakers from all over the north.

Like all the bigger resorts, and especially those which catered for the growing working-class holiday market of late Victorian Britain, Blackpool required pleasure palaces. The palaces combined music-hall, variety and dancing with an interesting mix of programmes that included zoos, opera houses, theatres, aquaria, Venetian canals, winter gardens and exhibitions. Blackpool needed this extraordinary mixture of indoor-outdoor entertainment to be dressy but not too highbrow, profitable but not so expensive that working families could not afford a fortnight of fun each summer.

Winter Gardens ballroom

So the first major complex to be built was The Winter Gardens, happily facing the sea. It was a large entertainment complex in the centre of town that was purpose-built for different summer holiday activities. The original specifications asked for a glazed promenade, concert pavilion with 2,500 seats, a library, reading room, picture gallery, ante rooms, provision for open air concerts in the grounds, conservatories, aviaries, croquet lawns and an open air skating rink. The ballroom alone was spectacular, having a barrel-vaulted ceiling, chandeliers and ornate balconies, and the floor was 34 x 13m in size. This enormous project opened in July 1878.

A new book that was first published in 2009 is well worth reading. Winter Gardens Blackpool: The Most Magnificent Palace of Amusement in the World, by Vanessa Toulmin, examined the architectural styles of this amazing building. She described, right down to the tiles, gilding and chandeliers, the ballroom, the opera house and the incredible Spanish Hall, made entirely from plaster.

Tower

The second resort facility to be built was Blackpool Tower. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, this famous English tourist attraction was opened to the public in May 1894. The Tower Circus was immediately given a home at the base of the tower, as discussed so evocatively in The Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian. Both the tower and the circus remain as popular now as they did in 1894.

Frank Matcham (1854-1920) and the two young men he helped to train in architecture were responsible for 200+ of the theatres and variety palaces that popped up all over Britain between 1890 and the outbreak of World War One in 1914. My favourites were His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen, the King's Theatre in Glasgow, the Grand Opera House in Belfast, the London Palladium and Royal Hall Kursaal in Harrogate. But none was quite as famous and as elaborate as the Blackpool tower ballroom, as we shall see.

Grand Theatre, exterior and interior

Matcham already had a presence in this city, having designed Blackpool’s Grand Theatre which was built in 1893-4. The interior was rather special since it was Matcham's first theatre to use the cantilever design to support the tiers. This innovation reduced the need for the usual pillars, providing much better views of the stage from all parts of the theatre hall. Despite many attempts to raze the Grand Theatre to the ground since World War Two, the Grand re-opened in March 1981 as a theatre, to stage Old Vic performances.

The Tower Ballroom was also designed by Matcham. Built from 1897 and opened in 1899, it had been commissioned by the Tower Co in response to the very successful Empress Ballroom in Blackpool’s Winter Gardens. This seemed very risky. Blackpool was clearly a firm holiday favourite for sea bathing and for amusements, but how many grand ballrooms could this rather small north-western city accommodate?

Tower Ballroom

Anyhow, by the time The Tower Ballroom was finished, its floor was 120 x 120’ and was made up of thousands of blocks of mahogany, oak and walnut. And there were gorgeous crystal chandeliers. The famous Wurlitzer organ (1929), however, was not installed for decades.

Even more risky to tourism, dancing was not allowed on Sundays; instead, sacred music was played. The ballroom originally had very strict rules to ensure good behaviour so I suppose visitors felt they had better be on their very best behaviour. In 1956 the ballroom was damaged by fire and the dance floor was destroyed. But since the restoration, the Tower Ballroom has been well used and well loved.

Blackpool, marked on the west coast

The Blackpool Lido was also spectacular, but since it wasn’t opened until after WW1, I will leave it till a later article.

Australian Bushfires in Art III

At My Soiree published a very dramatic photo of a fire in Kelowna, British Columbia that burned some 200 homes in 2003. Like all Australians in the south east corner of this continent, I often think about the yearly nightmare of bush fires, even if I don't normally associate Canada with searing heat and dry, destructive winds. Weeks later, Chris' photo is still hauntingly scary.

In Australian Bushfires in Art I, I suggested that the biggest, oldest and most important image of bushfires in Australian art was by John Longstaff. His painting, called Gippsland, Sunday night, 20th Feb 1898 was indeed large (145 x 199 cms) but I should have examined an earlier painting first.

Longstaff, Gippsland, Sunday night, 20th Feb 1898

William Strutt was a British Royal Academy trained artist who moved to Australia and lived in Victoria from 1850 to 1862. He was in Melbourne just in time for the appalling bushfires that swept across the Victorian colony in Feb 1851. The fire was so far reaching that its glow could be seen across the state, even threatening Melbourne. In fact the north wind was so fierce that the thick smoke reached northern Tasmania, turning day into night. The temperature in Melbourne rose to 47 degrees centigrade at 11 am and Melbourne Town was in grave danger of destruction by encircling bush fire. 12 humans, 1,000,000 sheep and thousands of cattle were lost.

Strutt remembered his first experience of a blazing hot, dry Australian summer and made many sketches. Later on he used those sketches to compose the final painting.

After spending some time on the gold fields of Ballarat, Strutt returned to Melbourne in mid-1853 and became actively involved in the city’s cultural life, accepting some significant portrait commissions and joining the Victorian Society of Fine Arts.

Extract from Strutt, Black Thursday, 6th Feb 1851.

Strutt returned to England in 1862 where he continued to work on his sketches, producing at least three major oil paintings reflecting his Australian experiences. None was as significant as Black Thursday, 6th Feb 1851, now one of Australia's most important colonial paintings. It was completed in 1864, a huge size (107 x 343 cm). This complex work showed groups of terrified people and animals fleeing the dense smoke of the advancing fire. In the foreground was an intentional pile of dead animals, skulls and bones! The Age Newspaper wrote in September 1864: 'The proper destination of this really historical picture is the colony itself, where it should be preserved in any public collection as a memorial of a terrible incident in colonial annals”.

Strutt died in Sussex in 1915. Many decades after the painting was completed, it finally did leave Britain and was shipped to the La Trobe Picture Collection in Melbourne.

Which is the finer painting, Strutt or Longstaff? The Strutt image was so crowded with terrorised people and animals, it became a fixed tableau across the wide canvas. It seemed like the artist used the particularly Australian experience of a bushfire to produce an epic European history-drama. Strutt's painting was set in a sandy desert with no fuel for a bushfire to consume.

In the Longstaff painting, the trees dominated the landscape and provided fuel for the fiery inferno. The Longstaff painting seemed more believable, and much more Australian.

Eyre Peninsula South Australia, Jan 2005, photo

In January 2005, the Eyre Peninsula was the scene of a devastating bushfire in which nine people were killed and another 120 hospitalised. The death toll might have been higher, had it not been for the orders to residents to leave their homes and head to the beaches to the east. Even so, it was one of Australia’s worst bushfires since the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983.