Sulgrave Manor and George Washington's ancestors

The family name of Washington/Wessington survived in Washington Village near Durham. As far back as  King Henry III's battles in 1264, Sir Walter de Wessington’s name was everywhere. This Sir Walter had three sons, Walter, William and John. All three went on to buy, inherit and develop prop­erty, and it was this generation of the family that first accepted the device of stars and stripes (heraldically 2 bars and 3 mullets), in 1346.

I mention this medieval history to show that the Wash­ingtons came from a long line of ennobled men who owned a great deal of real estate and a very substantial income.

 Sulgrave Manor, Northamptonshire. NB British and American flags

Washington Old Hall in Washington village had been the original family home of the Washingtons and was used by them until 1539. 1539 was the year in which Lawrence Washington (1500-83),  Mayor of Northampton and wealthy wool merchant, bought the Priory of St Andrew from the Crown, after Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries. He turned it into Sulgrave Manor! Sulgrave Manor later became famous for having been the home of the ancestors of American first president, George Washington (1732-99).

The rather modest house of six rooms was built of local limestone, with a wide south frontage, a kitchen and buttery, a great hall and above it a Great Chamber and two smaller private chambers. For many visitors, the most interesting part is the The Great Hall with its stone floor and the massive Tudor fireplace. The guide pointed out a special cupboard allocated to salt, and carved with the initials of Lawrence Washington.

Far-flung foundation stones from the Tudor period suggest that the original dwelling was larger than the surviving house, but the rooms described here all survive and can be seen today.

Sulgrave Manor, Great Hall

Lawrence Wash­ington added an entrance porch to the house's south front some time after 1558. Over the doorway, the plaster royal arms and the letters ER, in honour of Henry VIII's daughter Queen Elizabeth I, can still be clearly seen. The doorway spandrels (the spaces between the rectangular boundary and the curved shape) were decorated with the Washington family arms: two bars and three mullets.

Of all of George Washington's ancestors, I am most fond of great-grandfather John Washington (1633-77). He was the first generation to make the dec­ision to emigrate to Virginia, in 1657! As a child John Washington had enrolled in the prestig­ious Chart­er­house School in London, with the written support of King Charles I. Young John's future looked rosy and very well connected. But the Civil War (1642–1651) int­er­­vened and life changed his life, as it did for many well-to-do, pro-royalist English families.

Once he was old enough to travel alone, John Washington spent time out of England, trading in Barbados and using the good connections of a relative there. The Washington family also had links, through marriage, to Sir Edwin Sandys who had led the Virginia Company during the important years of colonisation and trade. John Washington was a young man with a family name sadly identified with the Royalist cause. As he looked for a future, he decided his family connections in overseas trade, Virginia and tobacco looked appealing. 

In 1656 John Washington left England, becoming a master on The Sea Horse, one of many ships largely devoted to the growing tobacco trade. After the young man had been in Virginia for only 18 months, Washington married his new wife late in 1658. For a wedding present, the young couple received 700 handsome acres of land from the new father in law - but that is a story for another time.

Sulgrave Manor, kitchen

The Washingtons had owned Sulgrave Manor 1539-1659 (120 years), and from then on, this famous family no longer had any conn­ect­ion to it. In 1673 the Manor was sold again, this time to Rev Moses Hodges, whose son made alterations to the architecture, adding the north-east wing. The new wing was important because it contained the Great Kitchen and the Oak Parlour, on the ground floor, beneath two sleeping chambers. In fact we can say that each generation made its own changes and by the late C18th, the house had become a farm and part was demolished (except for the porch). The left half was not rebuilt until after WW1.

Sulgrave Manor was eventually restored in 1919 by Sir Reginald Blom­field and formally given to the USA in 1921 to celebrate the special relationship between Britain and the USA. In 1924, the National Society of Colonial Dames of America endowed the Manor House and financed another extension, the west wing, in 1929. The American and British flags still fly in front of the manor house today.

These days the manor offers 3 tours that start at noon (weekends only except for August), each lasting for 1.25 hours in the house. Then visitors are encouraged to stroll around the beautiful gardens, designed in the formal style by Sir Reginald Blomfield; to study of the George Washington Exhibition in the brewhouse; and to have afternoon tea in the buttery.

Sulgrave Manor, herb gardens

As the Washingtons bought Sulgrave Manor in 1539, the herb gardens have been filled with plants that were known in Tudor times. The gardeners have planted medicinal herbs, herbs used in cooking, and herbs sent back and forward between England and Virginia.

Princes Bridge and the Vaults, Melbourne

There had always been a wooden bridge over the Yarra, since the earliest days of Melbourne’s settlement. But Princes Bridge perm­anently linked Swanston Street to St Kilda Road and thence to the southern suburbs. Built in 1886-88 after an architectural competition, the 112ms bridge was designed by Jenkins, D’Ebro and Grainger on solid bluestone pillars with cast iron decorative and functional elements. Clearly the old wooden bridge could not withstand flooding and it could not handle dense 1880s traffic.

Princess Bridge, over the Yarra River

Because of its position, Princes Bridge was always an important part of Melbourne, used for large, public events. For example a triumphal arch was erected on the bridge, over the river, when the royal couple arrived in 1901 to celebrate the Federation festivities. On the other side of the bridge, the visitor can easily reach the Melb Arts Complex, a post-WW2 cluster of buildings that celebrate music, stage, dance and art.

Everyone in Melbourne has seen the bridge high above the river, but not everyone has seen The Princes Walk Vaults down at water level. The design was very clever. As Victorian Heritage have shown, construction associated with the vaults included the rail connection of the Princes Bridge and Flinders St Railway stations, and the realignment of Yarra Bank Road. The twenty barrel vaulted cells with openings facing the river were constructed of brick and were faced in rough blue stone. The ten supporting piers were capped with granite and the cast iron street lights were designed in a similar fashion to those of Princes Bridge. Even the stairway design had come from Grainger's original design for Princes Bridge.

So just a couple of years after the current Princes Bridge was completed in 1888, Mr A W McKenzie designed vaults that were 5 metres deep, and opened onto the part of the river that had been used by pleasure cruise and ferry op­erators. As far back as the 1890s, McKenzie expected his vaults would be rented by owners of refreshment rooms, boat-builders and cruise companies. The location was perfect – next to and integrated with Melbourne’s most impor­t­ant bridge, at the entrance to the City and right on the water’s edge.

Although I have lived in Melbourne for 90% of my life, and am greatly interested in architectural history, I had never seen The Princes Walk Vaults before. Perhaps they were too sleazy for a nice girl to visit, in the 1960s. That all changed in 2003. Because fewer than half of the vaults were tenanted, they were tran­sfer­red to the State Government’s Federation Square Management and renovated. Now the visitor can find bars and café, architectural offices, a kitchen, boatsheds and bike racks. The bars flow out towards the Yarra River with tables and sun shades.

One of the vaults, now used as a design office

The vaults in 2012, with inside and outside dining at Riverland Bar

Thankfully the vaults are at last listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.

Scottish migrants, warmly welcomed

Roger Hudson traced the experience of forced and voluntary emigration out of Scotland, and into the New World. From 1700-1815, 80-90,000 people left Scot­land for overseas, including 20,000 High­landers and Islanders leaving for North America between 1763-75, and another wave in 1782-3.

At times Highland landlords were dead set against emigration: they wanted people for the collection of kelp, for fishing and to serve in regiments in the Napoleonic wars. It was only after 1815 that migration came to be seen as a safety valve for the Highlands and Islands, particularly after the great potato famine of 1845-56.

Scottish immigrants, bound for the Canadian prairies. Photo: Canadian Pacific Railway Archives

Scotland never suffered the huge mortality that hit Ireland because only 200,000 were affected by poverty and hunger, compared with three million Irish. Thanks to the efficiency of the relief effort, the number of Scottish victims had dropped to 70,000 by 1848.

But by then landlords became quite brutal.  They could see little improvement to the economy as a result of the relief works they had instigated; they calculated that the closing down of the Central Board of Management for Highland Relief would reduce the support they would have to pay to hungary families. There was much talk of "chronic Celtic Laziness", backed by dubious racial theorising and a fear that continued relief would merely perpetuate dependence. Profits made from black cattle were down, while sheep farming was up. Several large estates were virtually insolvent and the trustees running them, in far-off Edinburgh and Glasgow, were responsible in law for a rigorous adherence to the bottom line. 

There was undoubtedly coercion, with the many families in rent arrears being offered a choice of a free passage or eviction from their crofts. Between 1841-61 the population of the West Coast above Ardnamurchan and the Inner and Outer Hebrides went down by a third: Lewis, North and South Uist, Barra, Tiree, Mull and Skye lost most. Destitute families didn't have many choices. 

Scottish Immigrants in BC Canada, 1927. Photo: Simon Fraser U 

When families were starving, it was difficult to differentiate between those who were forced to emigrate and those who left rel­at­ively voluntarily i.e looking for a decent life for their children.  But by the 1830s, some countries were actively recruiting Scots. Australia, for example, had a new policy of systematic colonisation, whereby proceeds from colonial land sales were used to subsidise passages on government chartered ships for selected emigrants, whose eligibility was deter­mined by government recruitment agents. 5,200 Scottish emigrants were recruited under the government bounty programme between 1837-40. Most of them came from the west highlands.

260 young Hebrideans set sail in 1923, in search of a new and better life. They left Stornoway harbour in the Isle of Lewis on the Canadian Pacific ship, the Metagama. Within the year 800 other young people will have left the Isle of Lewis, and many from South Uist, too. Life was tough in the Hebrides, once the brief boom following the end of WW1 was over.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad Company had actively promoted Canada as a destination for immigrants, ever since it had been allocated 25 million acres between Winnipeg and the Rockies. It needed a steady flow of Scotsmen and women to open up this vast area. Canadian agents stood on railway stations across Northern Europe, handing out fliers to potential recruits. A peak in Scot­tish immigration was reached in the 1920s, with 363,000 leaving for the US and Canada in that decade, and hundreds of thousands going to England as well.

So why are we so keen to turn ships of refugees and asylum seekers back to where they came from? Nations like Australia and Canada could easily accept hundreds of thousands of starving or oppressed refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan or Syria!

Displaced persons in Europe became productive and vital citizens in Australia by the 1950s. Warragamba Dam scheme. Photo: NSW Migration Heritage Centre 

I have three possible reasons. Firstly Scottish refugees were white, Christian and hard working. We were familiar with these people, and we wanted to help them. The refugees who try to escape their homelands today are not white, not Christian and their nations had no history within the British Empire. 

Secondly Australia, Canada and other recipient countries were once under-populated, developing rapidly and needed a pioneering work­force. Today these countries see themselves as overcrowded (at least in the main cities), fully developed and have no enormous infra­structure projects in process or on the drawing boards.

Australian governments enthusiastically paid the transport costs, housing and employment expenses of European settlers after WW2; in return, the new citizens worked for two years on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Warragamba Dam or Prospect Reservoir. But those days have long gone - the Snowy Mountain Scheme finished in 1974.

Thirdly there is a question of racism. At the 1937 Evian Refugee Confer­ence in France, Australia's Minister of Trade & Customs Mr TW White noted "as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one". The French delegate stated that France had reached the extreme point of saturation reg­arding admission of refugees, a view repeated by most other representatives. Those gentlemen were actually debating whether European Jews should be given a safe haven or not, but the level of political debate in Australia does not seem to have changed since 1937. 

Princely 1930s furniture in India

I was very impressed by a triple-mirrored dressing table dating back to the early 1930s and belonging to the 7th Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan. It was a very expensive object in 1930, but that was no problem. As a 1937 cover story in Time magazine reminded readers, this Indian prince was the richest man in the world then, with a fortune of $2 billion. As an autonomous state, His Exalted Highness was the absolute ruler of 16 million people in Hyderabad; he established his own bank and issued his own currency - the Hyderabadi rupee. The Nizam was a very generous man with a strong connection the British Empire, especially during the First World War.

mahogany dressing table, c1930

Apparently the Nizam of Hyderabad presented the dresser as gift to one of his 7 wives or 42 concubines. Wonderfully detailed portraits of the Nizam in regal Indian dress were enamelled on each and every dresser piece; presumably this was to remind the lucky lady of her benefactor, each morning and evening as she performed her toilette.

This important custom-made mahogany dressing table was a rectangular chest with a serpentine panelled top with banded inlay. It lifted to allow the placement of two scallop shaded electric lights. The central bevelled dressing mirror had a swing illuminated mirror on each side. There was a quarter-round glass tray on either side. The vanity surface was detailed with varied storage and hidden drawers, the base housing a bank of three drawers on the right, the left with actual top drawer and two faux drawers that open as a door with a hidden latch to reveal a key lock safe, the whole rising on six acanthus carved legs on short block feet. When opened, the dressing table was 60”/153 cm high.

                                    mirrors and wings closed into a kneehole desk

This piece of furniture was metamorphic, but not in the sense used in an earlier post - it couldn't be turned upside down and a step ladder pulled out from under its legs, for example. But it did have two separate functions. When the mirrors were closed and the side trays tucked inside, the object looked like a normal mahogany kneehole desk i.e with space underneath for the person’s legs. There were Chippendale style carved bracket feet and banks of pedestals fitted with lockable faux drawers to the left that concealed a safe. The drawers to the right were fitted with ormolu chased swan neck handles.

The interior completely fitted with a 30 piece Art Deco sterling silver and cut glass vanity set, hallmarked and stamped for Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co Ltd, 1930, each piece finely enamelled with a Royal portrait medallion showing images of the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad. The set comprised brushes, bottles with hinged lids and interior stoppers, hand mirror, jars, scissors, nail buffer fitted in a cut dish, files and an 8-day clock. Each squared bottle was etched on the corners with the moon and star symbol.

silver and glass vanity set, Art Deco, with princely portraits

The fine arts world expected the dressing table to be considered an important treasure for the people of India, perhaps symbolising the grandeur of India's royal past.

Two auction houses listed this magnificent piece of furniture in the last few years. So I have to ask if the same object sold twice within a very short time, by the Austin Auction Company in Texas in 2010 and by Butchoff Antiques in London in 2011. If so, why was the dressing table valued at only £12,600/USA $20,000 by the Americans, yet it was valued at £175,000/USA $ 277,000 by the British less than one year later.

7th Nizam of Hyderabad, Time Magazine, 1937

Bauhaus at the Barbican 2012

The Bauhaus: Art as Life exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre (May-August 2012) was set up to feature a comprehensive display of the school's archit­ecture, paint­ing, sculpture, ceramics, design, film, photography, textiles and theatre art. This is exactly what you would have expect­ed from an art and design academy set up in Germany in 1919. No art form was omit­ted; no well known designer was excluded. The curators of course tried to select and include important works from the Bauhaus stars who I loved the most: Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kand­insky, Paul Klee and Hannes Meyer. And they also included the people who became even more famous in the USA post-1933 than they had been in Germany: Josef and Anni Albers, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, Gunta Stölzl and Marianne Brandt.

But we have all seen the Bauhaus’ theatre costumes, its cafeteria stools and its silver teapots in the past. So what did the Barbican’s Bauhaus: Art as Life exhibition add to world knowledge?

Ned Hercock (History Today June 2012) cited Gropius’ vision of Europe’s future, and it was this vision that set a clear direction for post-WW1 industrial design in Germany. Gropius established a utopian art school specifically as a response to the economic situation following the destructive tragedy of World War One. War, peace, national recon­struction, economic growth and modern design education were his goals, not smart wall hangings and innovative teapots.

Marianne Brandt, silver-ebony tea service. Bauhaus design, 1924. 

The Bauhaus political content was legible even in the most ordinary of the school’s internal documents. The look of the printed text that emerged from Bauhaus proclaimed its values and aspirations: democratic, egalitarian and internationalist.

So only by reading Gropius’ a] original 1919 manifesto and b] his instructions to the masters can we see how his functionalism was to be expressed. It was this community of teachers, artists and designers whose fulfilled Gropius' dream and made Bauhaus the most celebrated art and design academy in the world (until 1933).

Did Gropius succeed with his own Bauhaus Retrospective, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1938? Herbert Bayer created a bulletin called "Bauhaus 1919-1928", illustrated with 16 black and white photographs. The exhibition gave the first comprehensive review of the first decade of Bauhaus’ development under Gropius. In 1938, I think Americans were prepared to learn about modern design education, but were not very interested in war, national recon­struction, egalitarianism and internationalism. So Gropius' goals for the New York exhibition were only half met.

Did the Barbican succeed with the Bauhaus: Art as Life Exhibition in 2012? Yes, I think enough time has elapsed to allow viewers to consider Gropius’ philosophical and ideological priorities with admiration and cool analysis. Modern European viewers probably found Gropius’ views neither politically radical nor austerely modern.

Josef Albers, oak and lacquered nesting tables. Bauhaus design, 1927.

British newspaper reviews in 2012 tended to focus examining Bauhaus through the personal lives of its young community. There was plenty of material in the Barbican Exhibition to examine teaching exercises that Bauhaus students had to share, experiments with materials in the craft studios, musical and drama performances, sports, parties and students’ life in the residential facilities. I imagine that having lots and lots of undergraduate-aged students in an academy, far away from their parents, led to heaps of fun. But for me, the ideological elements of the Bauhaus experience were more important.

Evian Conference on refugees, July 1938. What a disgrace!

A Conference on German and Austrian Jewish refugees was held in Évian-les-Bains in July 1938. Parliamentary delegates from 32 countries and from relief organisations, met in the southern French spa-town for discussions.

Most countries sent a high level member of Parliament, usually the foreign minister. President Roosevelt announced before the conference that no country would be expected to alter its laws, so the USA was not represented by any minister. However Roosevelt DID ask a friend of his to pop in to the conference, if he was available. It wouldn’t have helped in any case. The Wagner-Rogers bill, presented to save the lives of 20,000 Jewish refugee children, was not supported by the American Senate in 1939 and 1940.

Speeches were made at Evian. Photo credit US Holocaust Museum

The Australian delegate to the Evian Conference was the Minister for Customs, Colonel Tom White, whose speech which has become notorious as representing the negative attitudes taken by most delegates at the conference. He said: “Under the circumstances Australia cannot do more. Undue privileges cannot be given to one particular class of non-British subjects without injustice to others. It will no doubt be appreciated also that, as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.”

New Zealand's delegate described Evian as "a modern wailing wall." The French, Belgian and Dutch representatives said that their countries had already reached "the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees".  Canada's delegate, the foreign minister, insisted that Canada's high unemployment precluded the admission of great numbers of refugees. About the refugees, he said, "none is too many."

The nations of the world, especially the New World, could have saved lives at Évian, but they offered little more than token gestures. Australia set a quota of 8,000. Our practice was marginally more generous than our rhetoric, and eventually we took in a dismal 10,000. Compare this with other dismal quotas: Canada 8,000, Britain 65,000 and the USA 190,000.

Australia was a large and very thinly populated country which obviously could have accepted many more refugees, had the political will been there. By contrast, the only nations at Evian who set larger quotas were the poorer nations: Argentina took 50,000, Paraguay 20,000, Chile 14,000, Bolivia 12,000 and Cuba 4,500. Even then, not all these quotas were actually filled because emigration became impossible after September 1939 when war broke out. But the hero of the conference was a tiny country that was willing to open its doors and let Jewish settlers in - the Dominican Republic.

Australians DID criticise the Evian outcome. Sydney Morning Herald wrote: “There cannot but be disappointment with the negative nature of the speech made by the Australian minister. It is a truism that the Commonwealth has no racial problem and no desire to import one. On the other hand it prides itself on being a democracy with a strong tradition of tolerance, and any undue suggestion of racial intolerance constitutes a betrayal of our cherished traditions.”

So what were the results of the Conference? Firstly the conference decided to establish an Inter-governmental Committee on Refugees, which was to continue to research the refugee problem. What research, one asks, was there yet to be done in late 1938?

Secondly there were half a million Jews in central European who could have been saved, if the international community had been prepared to act firmly, even as late as the beginning of 1939. The conference ensured that these families were locked into Nazi Germany and Austria, and would never escape alive.

Even after the ministers and their staff left Evian, there were still a couple of opportunities to save young families. Woolly Days blog tells of how The SS St Louis set sail from Hamburg in May 1939, with its cargo of 900 refugees for Havana. Cuba had already issued visas in advance, but by the time the boat landed in Havana, the government had changed its mind and refused to allow the refugees to land. The boat then drifted off Florida waters before it became obvious US authorities were not going to allow it to land either. The captain was forced to set sail back for Hamburg.

Memorial stone to the Evian Conference, Brooklyn NY

These deaths remain a dark stain on the collective conscience of the western democracies. Thankfully a  permanent Holocaust Memorial Park was officially completed and dedicated in 1997 by Mayor Rudolph Giulianni of New York. I don't think the engraved historical narrative is accurate but at least we can be proud that one of the granite markers memorialises the shocking events at Evian.

Even after nearly 70 years, Michael Danby MP (Federal Member Melbourne Ports) reminded us to ask ourselves how was it that so few Jewish adults and children were able to escape while so many were left to die. Via a combination of good luck, desperation and the unpredictable generosity of others, only a small fragment of the doomed Jewish population of Europe was able to escape in time and find refuge in other countries, including Australia. Australians need to be honest about our past and we also need to be honest about the tragedy of refugees in the current era.

American Realism pre-WW1: Ashcan School

In 2009 I saw a very special exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery. Called American Impressionism and Realism: A Landmark Exhibition from the Met, it was organised by the curator of American paintings and sculpture at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dr Barbara Weinberg. I was fortunate to see 71 of the Met’s American works, all painted just before or soon after the turn-of-the-century.

I was already familiar with American impressionists like Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase, but the realists John Sloan and William Glackens were less familiar. Queensland Art Gallery saw its task as examining how proponents of two turn-of-the-century schools responded to modern life. Everyone says that these paintings were infused with light and colour, but the QAG believed they were also infused with meaning.

But what was the meaning? And could non-American audiences tap into the artists’ intentions?

William Glackens, Chez Mouquin, 1905, The Chicago Art Institute

Mark Pennings concentrated on the Ashcan group of Realist artists, most of whom lived in New York where they held their first exhibition in 1908. Their depictions of lower class life in the city’s dilapidated neighbourhoods caused an immediate sensation. Critics claimed the work was vulgar, done by a revolutionary gang. And critics received the gritty photographic journalism of Jacob Riis, in his book How The Other Half Lives (1890), even more harshly. It is ironic that Riis’ book was a best seller.

Pennings certainly believed these American artists were radical but he believed they were also “robust patriots and advocates of a cultural nationalism” that would convey the overwhelming power of a newly industrialised America. Certainly this was the ideal time in American history to be displaying a passion for the modern world. The expansion of oil corporations, railways and banking institutions made for mega-wealthy families, a passion for electricity, a high standard of living for at least half the population, exuberant live entertainment and utopian optimism.

In such a boom period, it was not surprising that 24 million migrants landed in the USA in the decades before WW1 broke out in 1914, most of them disembarking in New York.

There was also a dark side to American life which the artists responded to with sensitivity. Rampant and uncontrolled capitalism left workers in appalling sweatshops, with exploitative salaries, dodgy working conditions and crowded sleeping spaces. And as most of the Ashcan artists seemed to have worked as newspaper illustrators, their art reflected their interests. Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks and Everett Shinn were used to depicting events in the urban environment to meet a story deadline - quickly, in detail and with accuracy. George Bellows, Edward Hopper and others joined very quickly.

These artists, newspapers and photographers suggested that American popular culture could help to forge a sense of unity across the nation. Migrants, unpaid workers and exploited women could embrace and share in America’s great democratic tradition via vaudeville, street trams, train subways, high rise buildings, moving pictures and piano rolls.

Furthermore the Ashcan artists wanted to capture the new spirit of American confidence. New York’s highrise buildings started to appear in paintings. Splendid trams were shown, picking up residents in the city streets. Citizens were depicted crowding into music halls, loving the entertainment. Or sitting in beautiful parks, enjoying the sunshine. Office girls wore perky hats. The cityscapes in particular reflect aspects of modern life, at work and at leisure. In 1905, William Glackens painted the New York restaurant, Chez Mouquin, posing Jeanne Louise Mouquin with another restaurant owner, Robert Moore of the Cafe Francis. Both were beautifully dressed and bejewelled.

George Bellows, Polo Crowd, 1910.

Contemporary critics may have claimed the Ashcan artists' work was vulgar. But views change and now images of normal, sporty life are particularly popular. In December 1999, Bill Gates bought George Bellows' painting Polo Crowd 1910 for $27.5 million!

There were two interesting comparisons to make at the Brisbane exhibition. Firstly how did the American Realists differ from the earlier American Impressionists? The Ashcan school seemed to be more vigorous, colourful, direct and masculine than the Impressionists who had down their paintings slightly earlier. Although Snow in New York  1902 wasn’t particularly beautiful, Robert Henri believed it was important to show New York’s brownstones as they really were. The newly fallen snow was broken up by horse and cart tracks and was surrounded on both sides by dark buildings. People were busy fulfilling their daily responsibilities. Clearly the Realists wanted to show modernist, robust and essentially American art.

Secondly how did Australian artists respond to key artistic modernist developments, as compared to contemporary Americans? Thirty important turn-of-the-century Australian paintings were also included in the exhibition for viewers to compare. Australian audiences were very familiar with Tom Roberts, Charles Conder, Frederick McCubbin and Rupert Bunny, but noone knew if our artists would be similar to their artistic brethren across the Pond.

Robert Henri, Snow in New York, 1902, Nation Gallery Art

For those who missed the exhibition, a well written and well illustrated catalogue called American Impressionism and Realism: A Landmark Exhibition from the Met was published in 2009. The publication features an overview of American Impressionism and Realism by exhibition curator Dr Barbara Weinberg, as well as American artists' biographies. The essay on Australian Impressionism and Australian artists' biographies provided a good analysis of American and Australian cultural affinity and divergence. It also emphasised The Call of Europe.

Le Marais, Paris

During the mid-C13th Charles I of Anjou, brother of King Louis IX, built a splendid palace in the Marais. 100 years later, King Charles V built another splendid palace which served the royal court very well indeed. But it really took until King Henri IV decided to build Place Royale in 1605-1612 that we can see the rise and rise of the Marais as a posh place of residence.

One side of Place des Vosges

Place Royale, the planned square now called Place des Vosges, was inaugurated in 1612 to celebrate the wedding of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. It provided my first model for urban town planning with trees, pre-dating London’s residential squares by quite a long time. Today’s visitors can still see the brick house facades that were part of an integrated and impressive cityscape. Cardinal Richelieu had an equestrian bronze of Louis XIII erected in the centre.

If French nobles once fell over themselves to build their urban mansions in the Marais, why did it end? Because the main French court moved from the Louvre Palace to Versailles in the 1680s, so the nobility moved away from the Marais in order to be closer to Court.

All the aristocratic building programme of the C17th became a distant memory for 19th century Parisians of the 4th arrondissment. At the end of the C19th and even after WW1, millions of Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe moved west. Most went to New York, Chicago, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, London and Manchester, but thousands and thousands settled in the district around the rue des Rosiers. Perhaps they needed kosher food shops and synagogues. Perhaps they were seeking work in the Marais’ factories and retail outlets.

Main synagogue, built in 1913

Jewish bookshops, bakeries, restaurants, clothing shops and schools popped up everywhere. The largest synagogue in the Marais, close to rue des Rosiers, was designed in 1913 by the architect Hector Guimard. This delightful building was blown up by the Nazis during the war, but has since been restored to its pre-war splendour.

When the Germans invaded France in May 1940, 175,000 Jews were living in Paris. The Vichy French collaborated with the Nazis and by the time the Allies liberated Paris in Aug 1944, 50,000 Parisian Jews had been deported & murdered.

Today most Parisien Jews live in the 4th (Marais), 9th, 11th, 13th, 19th and 20th arrondissements.

Note the 4th arrondissement

In 1964, General de Gaulle's Culture Minister Andre Malraux made the Marais the first protected conservation area, a place of special cultural significance. Money poured in for the area’s restoration.

Apart from the delicious kosher restaurants and bakeries, another reminder of the deep Jewish presence in the Marais is the Museum of Jewish Art and History. Opened in Dec 1998 with special music and posters, the museum is dedicated to French Jewish life via the arts, documents and religious artefacts. And not just pre-war Ashkenazim. The Sephardi Jews of the Maghreb (North West Africa) played a very significant role in Paris after WW2, a role that is well reflected in the Museum of Jewish Art and History.

Carnavalet Museum

The main hôtels particuliers/private houses were not pulled down. Instead they became excellent museums eg Picasso Museum is in the old Hôtel Salé and the Paris Historical Museum is in Hôtel Carnavalet. Where possible, the interiors of these private houses were maintained and modernised.

Picasso had amassed an enormous collection of his own work by the time of his death in 1973. So Musée Picasso houses thousands of his own art objects, plus Picasso's own personal art collection of works by Cézanne, Degas, Seurat, Matisse and others. This museum is closed now, for renovations, but will open again next year (2013).

Carnavalet Museum is housed in adjoining hôtels particuliers and specialises in Paris’ history. Baron Haussmann may have been heavy-handed when he reorganised Paris in the 1860s, but he made a great decision on behalf of the Municipal Council of Paris. Carnavalet opened to the French public in 1880 and opened to my sons in 110 years later. The boys loved the squillions of street photographs, art works, models and furniture. And because we ate at a different kosher restaurant or bakery every night for a week, my sons now believe the Marais has the best food in the universe.

Restaurants and coffee shops in the Marais

Two other places to visit locally. Of all the people who ever lived in Place des Vosges, Victor Hugo would be the most famous. This literary genius lived in #6 during the 1832–1848 era, now an evocative site for the Victor Hugo House-Museum. And the Salon Frédéric Chopin is a small museum dedicated to the musician's life in Paris. The salon has his paintings, furniture and musical equipment.

For a good look at Place des Vosges in particular, see Melbourne - Our Home By The Bay.

Cutty Sark: Chinese Tea and Australian Wool

The docks brought growing international trade to and from Britain during the C19th, including near Greenwich. Captain John Wills wanted a sailing ship built in 1868, specifically to win the annual race from Shanghai to London’s East India Docks. The Chinese tea tr­ade was already lucrative, but how much more prestigious if a clip­per could bring the freshest tea back to Britain, in the shortest time.

Prestigious and handsome. The construction of the Cutty Sark went ahead with the best materials and the best designers. Teak panelling filled the officers’ cabins and gold was added onto the carvings to highlight the sculptor’s craft.

Perhaps the tea races were wastefully expensive, but the clippers really WERE the fastest commercial sailing ships ever built. Capt Wills wanted his ship, the Cutty Sark, to be the fastest and most famous of all the clippers.

Cutty Sark in Greenwich today. Photo from the National Maritime Museum. 

Cutty Sark was launched on the Scottish Clyde in Nov 1869! Capt Will’s timing was both perfect and risky. The Suez Canal opened in November 1869, enabling ships to use the Mediterranean Sea and the Canal, instead of the long trip around the Cape of Good Hope. But clippers were designed to make best use of the strong trade winds around the African coast route. They could use the shorter route through the canal and Red Sea, but they lost their great advantage.

In any case, fame comes and fame goes. By the mid 1870s, steamships were replacing the old clippers and the last tea shipment left China in 1877.

In December 1877 the ship sailed from London to Sydney, where she took on coal for Shanghai. However, the ship was unable to find any cargo of tea for a return trip to London; the days of the tea race were over. The ship now had to scramble to take different cargoes around the world.

The Cutty Sark in Twinings Tea advertisement

By the early 1880s, Cutty Sark’s tragedy in the Chinese tea business had turned into a delight for Australian wool traders. Australian wool was the finest in the world, and magnificent wool stores, auction houses and customs offices popped up all over Geelong and other Australian wool sites. The wool needed to arrive in Britain in time to be involved in the annual January-February wool sales. Cutty Sark was the fastest and most dominant ship on the Australian wool trade for ten years; life was good.

History repeated itself when steamships eventually began to dominate the wool trade as well. Cutty Sark ceased to be profitable and in 1895 she was sold to a Portuguese firm. The ship traded various cargoes between Portugal, all its colonies and Britain - at least until World War One.

Cutty Sark loading wool in Sydney Harbour 1880s. Photo: National Maritime Museum. 

She was purchased in 1922 by Captain Wilfred Dowman at Falmouth Harbour after undergoing repairs. On Capt Dowman's death in 1938, his widow made a gift of the clipper to the Thames Nautical Training College. For the half century after 1938, Cutty Sark stood in dry dock in Greenwich where she became a famous London landmark and a precious relic from Britain’s maritime history. In 1951, the Festival of Britain  showed how important it was to save this gracious old lady.

The ship had clearly become rather decayed over the decades and new efforts to preserve the Cutty Sark began in 2004. What a catastrophe it was when the ship was accidentally set on fire in 2007. It probably would have been cheaper to build the boat anew, but since much of the historic timber works had already been removed for conservation work, the Cut­ty Sark was once again restored with most of its original fittings.

Master's quarters, restored

How appropriate that the Queen could re-open the Cutty Sark during her Diamond Jubilee Year. The ship was suspended in a metal apparat­us, 3 metres above the dry dock; this relieves stress on her hull. But it also allows visitors UNDER the 1000 tonne ship, to examine the innovative design that made the Cutty Sark one of the fastest vessels afloat in 1869.