water: a boy and his dog

Subject:  Boy and Dog Looking Out to Sea

Title:  Unknown

Artist:  D. Gillander

Date:  Unknown, c. mid to late 20^th century

Size: 20″ x 24″

Media:  Paint on canvas

A boy and his dog is a classic theme.  A dog is man’s best friend.  This duo touches the memory and emotions.

I can’t quite remember why this painting clicks in my head.  It seems familiar.  I think it is using the style and colors of an illustrator from the 1960s or 70s.  Maybe it’s Joan Walsh Anglund, b. 1926.

Another possibility might be the illustrator Susan Perl, 1922-1983.

It is not hard to find results for an internet search for, “painting boy dog sea.”  Turns out to be a popular subject, and the styles are quite diverse.  There is also a webpage, wallpaperboat.com/sad-boy-wallpapers.

The oldest one I found is “Outward Bound (The Stay at Homes/Looking Out to Sea),” a story illustration for Ladies’ Home Journal, by Norman Rockwell in October 1927.  According to the Norman Rockwell Museum, “In the summer of 1912, Rockwell spent three months studying painting with Charles Hawthorne in Provinctown, Massachusettes. Hawthorne had studied plein air painting (painting out-of-doors) with William Merritt Chase. In Rockwell’s painterly treatment of the roofs, waves, trees, grass and man’s trousers, we see the influence of Chase’s impressionistic style.” (1)

This painting is signed D. Gillander in the lower right corner.  I am confident that this is not the Canadian artist David Gillanders, b. 1968.  I think the artist could be a local hobbyist, since the painting was purchased at a thrift store for less than $10 and is unframed.

This is a baby blue painting of a boy and his dog at the end of the pier.  They are looking into the distance, into the sea and sky, into the horizon.  Are they longing to leave?  Are they waiting for someone to return?  A young person might stare into the future with wistful hope.  Men sail the wide ocean for fortune and adventure. To test themselves and to make their reputations.  A young person might wish to escape his dull village.  This boy is ready with his sailor’s uniform.

He faces more than water.  The fishing boat is headed away.  It’s nets are poised to capture fish.  On the far distant shore, a building points into the sky.  Is it a lighthouse or a church?  It points up to a single bird in heaven.  Most of this painting is a troubled cloudy sky.

Could this sea bird refer to older paintings of the dove of the Holy Ghost descending to bless the young Son beginning His earthly ministry?  The bird is certainly in the center of the composition.  It flies over the cross-shaped mast of the fishing boat.  These symbols are not unknown to the Christian eye.

The writing on the back of this stretched canvas says, “FLS 1143,” and “HOB $75.”

If you would like to own a custom painting of you and your dog on a dock, it costs $55 from unifury.com.  (2)

Sources:

1. Rockwell’s Outward Bound.  https://prints.nrm.org/detail/281623/rockwell-outward-bound-the-stay-at-homes-looking-out-to-sea-1927
2. Unifury custom art. https://unifury.com/products/dog-2271

animals: blue dragon

Braganza!  Two gold rings around a blue dragon—it’s a royal dish from Portugal.

This dish was purchased at the art museum during a designer showcase.  The shallow bowl is white faience ceramic with two gold rings and a blue coat of arms of Portugal.  It has the marking L & C Lisboa. (1)

The condition is nice, but there are several mistakes from manufacturing.  There are one or two spots of underglaze grit.  The transfer-printing of the dragon’s body has a mark on the body under the wing, which makes it appear to have a hole or a wound.  Transfer-printing on pottery was developed in 1750s. The dish looks good, but is not perfect.

The design features the “Armas Reais,” the coat of arms of the King of Portugal, in a fanciful way. The shield with the coat of arms seems to be shackled to the coils of a dragon. The flying wyvern supports the shield, a crown and the letter C.

A wyvern is the kind of European dragon with two limbs, wings and a long body ending in a barbed tail.  Usually there are two green wyverns, one on each side of the coat of arms of the House of Braganza, which is a symbol of the king of Portugal.  Green was their livery color, and became the national color of the country.  The crest of wyverns was removed in 1910 when Portugal was no longer a monarchy. (2)

Portugal’s coat of arms started with a blue cross on a white shield.  With battle damage the blue stripes became five escutcheons.  They recall the five wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross, or the five wounds of Afonso Henriques.  The spots may represent plates, coins, or merely the nails on the original shield.  After all these years, it’s hard to say.  This coat of arms is called the Quinas, since a quina is group of five things. (3)

Around the cross is a red border with seven castles.  These were added in the 1200s, and possibly are reference to the fall of Muslim strongholds to Christian forces.  Or maybe the heritage of the king at the time.

The crown above the coat of arms has also changed over the years, depending on the monarchy.  The circlet with leaves gained one arch, two, then four arches.  On top is a globe with a cross.  The crown was also removed in 1910, when Portugal became a constitutional republic.

The wyvern’s tail coils around the letter C.  I can’t be sure, but my guess is C is for Carlos.  Dom Carlos I was king from 1889 to 1908, when he was assassinated. He was of the House of Braganza-Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

I only found one similar plate for sale online. It is listed at $104.06, plus shipping.   The date is listed as late 19^th or early 20^th century, which matches to the reign of Carlos.  It also says, “Similar examples are part of the collection of the Palácio da Pena – Pena Palace, Sintra, Portugal.” (4)

In this blank expanse, a blue wyvern, flying with crown and shield, has a wound, which I think is appropriate to King Carlos I, whose bankrupt reign ended with five shots by a sharpshooter.

 

 

Notes:

1. The backside marking says, “L & C LISBOA, FAIANÇA FINA, FABRICA D’ALCANTARA,” which translates as L & C Lisbon, Fine Faience, of Alcantara Factory.  Alcântara is a parish of Lisbon.

2. https://victorpicarra.wordpress.com/tag/portugal/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Portugal
4. https://www.etsy.com/listing/683189005/antique-alcantara-factory-lisbon?ref=shop_home_active_27

People: Stone Cold Hunter

Scene:  Maitrakanyaka rides a horse to go hunting

Artist:  Unknown

Date:  Recent replica of an A.D. 8th Century stone temple carving

Size:  7.5 inches high and 23 inches long, without frame.  I believe the original is three or four times this size.

Materials: originally Cambodian sandstone

Origin:  Buddhist temple carving from Borobudur, a Mahayana Buddhist Temple in Central Java, Indonesia

Location of panel 114:  Borobudur Temple, first gallery, lower wall series, East wall.

Carved in stone, the Buddhist traditions about Maitrakanyaka are shown in fifteen panels, 106 to 120.  This one is Panel 114.  [Impatient readers may skip to the final paragraph now.]

The label on the back of this piece identifies the rider as Maitrakanyaka, but researchers claim Panels 113-120 are, “not identified.” [1.]

The story of Maitrakanyaka begins with his father Maitra’s friends predicting the only way the child will survive is with a feminine name, literally, “daughter of Maitra,” so he will not die at sea.  The father, a merchant, dies on an ocean voyage.  After Maitrakanyaka grows up, his mother doesn’t want to lose her son, so she says at first his father was a shopkeeper, then a perfume merchant and a goldsmith.  In each of these trades, he is very successful, and donates four large gifts to charity, in the amounts of 4, 8, 16 and 32 units of money.  [Panel 106.]

To eliminate the competition, the other tradesmen inform him that to really follow his father’s footsteps, he must become a traveling merchant.  His mother begs him to stay, grasping his feet.  In anger, Maitrakanyaka kicks his mother’s head and leaves. [Panel 107.]

His voyage is cut short, when a sea monster wrecks his ship.  (An alternate version says his companions blame him for no wind and throw him overboard.)  [Panel 108.]  Maitrakanyaka is washed ashore and meets four heavenly nymphs.  He spends years enjoying their pleasure, and then succumbing to wanderlust.  [Panels 109-111.] This happens four times, as he meets 4, 8, 16 and then 32 nymphs.

One day he wanders into an iron town and meets a tall man tortured with a flaming iron wheel on his head.  [Panel 112.]

“Who are you?” asks Maitrakanyaka.

“A man who has mistreated his mother,” comes the answer.

Suddenly a voice is heard, “Those who are bound, are free, and those who are free are now bound.”  The iron wheel leaped onto Maitrakanyaka’s head.

“How long is my punishment?” he asks.  The answer:  66,000 years.

“Who will be punished after me?”

“One who has committed the same sin as yourself, ” says the man.

In pain but with compassion, Maitrakanyaka declares, “I am willing to wear this wheel forever on my head for the sake of my fellow creatures.  May there never come another who has committed such sin.”

The wheel immediately lifts from his head and floats above him.  At this moment the Bodhisattva Maitrakanyaka dies and is born again into heaven.

In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva like Maitrakanyaka is a person who seeks awakening and enlightenment with compassion for all beings.  It is someone on the way to Buddhahood.  I am probably not very accurate in these descriptions of someone else’s religion, but I hope you get a taste of it.

 

These stories in these panels are from the Divyāvadāna (divine tales), and are a kind of literature called avadana (former lives of virtue).   The Borobudur Temple has thousands of bas-relief panels illustrating these legends.

In 1917 A. Foucher [2.] wrote about the temple sculptures: “While their chisels could only moderately carve the fine Cambodian sandstone into rather shallow pictures, the artists of Java, not disheartened by the coarse grain of the volcanic stone furnished by their island, have drawn from it veritable high-reliefs of an astounding depth.  Their figures, in spite of the effeminate softness of their lines, are rightly celebrated for the justness of their proportions, the naturalness of their movements and the diversity of their postures.  Above all, they exhibit a knowledge of foreshortening…” [3.]

If you read his essay describing the panels, you’ll encounter questing princes, genii, a magic ring, kings, jewels, monks and nuns.  Foucher also suspects that the artists included extra scenes to fill wall space.

“Not only are the characteristic episodes thus drowned in a dull, monotonous flood of pictures without movement, but even in each picture the principal motif is often submerged under a veritable debauch of accessories and details.  The only excuse here for the artists is to be found in the form of the frame, which is at least three times as wide as it is high.  Consequently there is no great personage whose cortege is not spread out to form a wallcovering, sometimes over several rows….

“That is not all:  the sculptors have made it, as it were, a point of honour not to leave vacant any part of the surface at their disposal….they go so far as to fill the space beneath the seats with [various items and]….animals of all kinds, cleverly sketched, indeed from life, with the single exception of the horses, which are mediocre.”  [3.]

The artists are able to portray types of characters in the stories, but not individual likenesses.   In other words, Foucher thinks they all look the same.

Is it weird for me to be quoting an European scholar while listening to “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” music?  Well, I hope I’m not too blinded by my Western ethos.

This panel shows Maitrakanyaka hunting while riding a horse.  A group of guards with swords and arrows escort him.  He is carved on the temple wall to illustrate a virtuous life to the faithful.  If you visit the thousand-year-old Borobudur Buddhist Temple in Java, you will see that the lower level narrative pictures like this give rise to more iconic figures on the higher levels.

Sources:

1.  Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas, By John Miksic, Tuttle Publishing 1990, 2017  https://books.google.com/books?id=jwzQAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
2. Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher (1865–1952) was a French scholar who identified the Buddha image as having Greek or Roman origins. Wikipedia
3. Buddhist Art in Java, 5. Maitrakanyaka’s Story, 1917 public domain text by A. Foucher, translated by L.A. Thomas and F.W. Thomas as part of ‘The Beginnings of Buddhist Art,’ re-edited with photographs by Anandajoti Bhikkhu in 2013.

https://www.photodharma.net/Indonesia/06-Divyavadana-Level-1/06-Divyavadana-Level-1-Maitrakanyakas-Storyboard.htm

Charles In Charge, or Not

Not  a coin, not a medallion—what is it?  It caught my eye at the thrift store.  It’s sort of bubblegum colored, but made out of a hard resin.

Solving a mystery is fun.  The first clue is the writing around the edge: Latin, which translates, “Charles – the second – of God – a favorite – Sovereign – Britain – France – and Ireland – King – Sure – Defender.”

This is the Great Seal of the Realm.  At least one side of it.  I always imagined kingly documents were sealed with something the size of a signet ring.  This is more than five inches across.  Apparently some seals were this big, put inside a box that dangled from the document.

Pennsylvania only wishes they had one of these.  Their charter was given by King Charles II to William Penn in 1681.  That document used to have a seal like this, but green.  They lost it.  [1]

Looking at the beautiful artwork, we see Charles II himself:

“The King on horseback …, his head uncovered, …, his hair flowing over his shoulders and back. The King is clad in armour with a cloak fastened over his right shoulder and flying behind his back, and is riding with single curb rein; in his right hand is a straight sword …, his foot spurred and placed in the stirrup. The horse is rearing and is harnessed with bridle, saddle, saddle-cloth, and a strap passing round the whole length of its body; from behind the saddle fall three straps across the flanks of the horse hanging almost perpendicularly towards the ground.” [2]

Where is he going?  The bridge below the horse is London Bridge, after it was “falling down,” but before the 1666 Great Fire of London.  The scene shows London past the River Thames from Southwark.  The big buildings are churches. Under the stallion’s belly is “old” St. Paul’s Cathedral before it was destroyed in the fire.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre would have appeared on the near shore under his foot, except it had been closed by the Puritans along with all the other theatres.

Charles II (sort of) became king when his father Charles I was executed after the English Civil War.

In 1649, Scotland proclaimed him king, but England was led by Oliver Cromwell.  Charles II was defeated by Cromwell in 1651, and fled to Europe for 9 years.

After Cromwell died, Charles II returned to England on his 30th birthday 29 May 1660, and became king.  He tried to enact religious freedoms, i.e. tolerate the Catholics.

He was known as the Merry Monarch for the hedonism of his court.  The country returned to normal after Cromwell’s Puritan rule.  He had no children–except 12 illegitimate children by seven mistresses.  Princess Diana is descended from two of his illegitimate sons, and Prince William could become the first monarch descended from Charles II.

He was nicknamed “Old Rowley,” after one of his stallions.

Earl John Wilmot said,

 “We have a pretty witty king,

Whose word no man relies on,

He never said a foolish thing,

And never did a wise one”

Charles II responded, “That’s true, for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers.”

During his reign:

1660  Restoration (of monarchy from restrictive Puritan republic.)  Also, Restoration Comedies were cynical, bawdy and sharp plays.

1665  Great Plague of London

1666  Great Fire of London

1681  Gave land to Wm. Penn to pay a debt.  That became Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Charles II was a contemporary of scientists Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, and of architect Sir Christopher Wren.  [3]

His seal half-way looked like this reproduction. There would have been a design on the other side too.  This replica was probably made by The British Museum Cast Service in the 1970s.  Very detailed for a fake piece of history!

 

Sources:

1  http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1681-1776/pennsylvania-charter.html

2  SOURCE: Public Records Office. United Kingdom.  http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1681-1776/pennsylvania-charter.html

3  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England