Professor Hedgehog's Journal

The Deacon Also Paints

Posted on 18/03/2020 by carolinemmurray

The Flowers Gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum (currently closed, alas, because of COVID-19) is one of my favourite places – I can’t get enough of the botanical paintings, the glorious jumble of blooms which you would never find (even in these ‘fly-in-your-flowers-from-around-the-world’ times) flowering at the same time in nature. I’ve just come across a new name (for me, which of course counts for nothing) in the gallery: the sadly short-lived Abraham Mignon (1640–79). Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, Cambridge, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged Abraham Mignon, flower painting, still life, Utrecht | 5 Comments

Epiphanius Evesham

Posted on 07/03/2020 by carolinemmurray

Being very definitely an on-trend kind of person, I am self-isolating at home at the moment. This is mostly because my friends and colleagues are none too keen on meeting up with my coughing, snivelling, snotty self. No, I don’t have a fever, or difficulty breathing, merely(!) the only cold I’ve caught so far this season. I blame London in general, though specific vectors may have been the Tube, Tate Britain, or the invisible aura of germ-pool which the grand-daughters bring back from nursery. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged @cbnewham, C. J. Sansom, Epiphanius Evesham, https://www.parishchurches.org, Memorial sculpture, Richard Rich, Robert Bolt, Thomas More | 3 Comments

Fede Galizia

Posted on 26/02/2020 by carolinemmurray

One of the perks of my part-time employment is that my job description includes an injunction to open the mail, which regularly contains interesting Stuff, not least the beautifully designed and printed catalogues of auction houses trying to tempt us with their wares. (Other perks include trying to pretend I am trotting purposefully (as opposed to walking slowly and self-indulgently) through gallery after gallery of the most wonderful art imaginable, outside visitor hours …) Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, Italy, Museums and Galleries, Natural history | Tagged Fede Galizia, Jan Breughel, Milan, paintings, Pople Paul IV, still life | 2 Comments

In Ghent

Posted on 22/02/2020 by carolinemmurray

Him Indoors and I are partial to the Flemish Primitives (and indeed to the Flemish in general), so the opportunity of the current exhibition in Ghent, ‘Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution’, offering ‘the largest Jan van Eyck exhibition ever’ and containing ten of his twenty-odd works known to survive, was not to be missed, but time/work constraints meant that we had to fit it into a short jaunt at an unpromising time of the year, weatherwise. So, with fingers crossed, we set off on Thursday to Ghent (Gand, Gent, Gaunt – John of Gaunt was born in St Bavo’s abbey; scurrilous rumour had it that his father was a local butcher rather than Edward III), via Eurostar to Brussels. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged Flemish Primitives, Ghent, Jan van Eyck, MSK, St Bavo's cathedral | 1 Comment

Plant of the Month: February 2020

Posted on 20/02/2020 by carolinemmurray

Looking back, I discover that I have never written a ‘Plant of the Month’ piece about clematis, which is very odd, given that they are my favourite plants and by far my worst botanical extravagance. At the present count, I have twenty-two in my garden (which is very small, in spite of the way I go on about it) and three of them are currently flowering their heads off. Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Gardens, History, Natural history | Tagged clematis, gardens, plantofthemonth | 5 Comments

Sir Thomas Gresham and His College

Posted on 13/02/2020 by carolinemmurray

I had for some time been meaning to find out more about Sir Thomas Gresham, but, when embarking on this quest, was diverted almost immediately by the discovery that the first substantial biography of him was written by John William Burgon (1813–88), of whom you may have heard (even if you weren’t aware of it) in the context of his two memorable lines: ‘Match me such marvel, save in eastern clime, / A rose-red city half as old as time’. Burgon had been born in Smyrna (Izmir), where his father was a member of the Levant Company, though the family returned to London the following year. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, History, London, Museums and Galleries | Tagged Antwerp, cloth trade, Gresham College, J.W. Burgon, London, Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham | 2 Comments

The Man in the Moone

Posted on 07/02/2020 by carolinemmurray

What is the oldest published work of science fiction? This is not a question to put to me, as science fiction is a genre to which I am not greatly drawn. There’s H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury, and that other guy who, it turns out, shares my birthday, and John Wyndham, who I used quite to like in my youth, and some others … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bibliography, Biography, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged flight to the moon, Francis Godwin, geese, James I, science fiction, seventeenth century | 2 Comments

The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

Posted on 02/02/2020 by carolinemmurray

I have long been attracted by the above-named beast, which I came across for the first time in my previous existence, when skim-reading John Bell’s two-volume work of 1763, Travels from St Petersburg in Russia, to Diverse Parts of Asia. John Bell (1691–1780) was a Scots physician who managed to get a letter of recommendation to the court of Peter the Great in St Petersburg. Arriving in July 1714, within a year he was on his way to Persia, as part of a diplomatic mission to the emperor of Persia, the ‘Grand Sophy’. After over three years of travel, on his return to court he inveigled himself on to another diplomatic expedition, this time as far as China. Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Exploration, History, Natural history | Tagged Hans Sloane, Henry Lee, Odoric of Pordenone, Sigismund von Herberstein, Sir John Mandeville, vegetable lamb of Tartary, zoophyte | 6 Comments

The Naming of Plants

Posted on 23/01/2020 by carolinemmurray

Richard Chandler Alexander Prior (1809–1902) does not (yet) appear in the pages of the ODNB, though his day may come. He knew and corresponded with many of the great scientists of the nineteenth century; he was a physician whose health did not allow him to practice, but who was fit enough to undertake long and probably uncomfortable journeys in pursuit of botany; in mid-life he changed his name to inherit a fortune; and he published on ancient Danish ballads, croquet and the names of British plants. Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliography, Biography, Botany, Cambridge, Gardens, History, Natural history, Printing and Publishing | Tagged botany, English plants, Linnaean system, nomenclature, taxonomics | 2 Comments

Art and Spectacle

Posted on 12/01/2020 by carolinemmurray

… is the subtitle of the current exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery on the art collections of George IV, of whom I wrote, some time ago and in another place: ‘But the mystery of the Prince’s character – childish, petulant, egocentric, dissolute spendthrift, versus generous, intellectual, aesthetically aware patron of the arts and frustrated king-in-waiting – remains.’ (I’ve just read a review of Stella Tillyard‘s new(ish) book on the king, subtitled ‘King in Waiting’, which sounds good, assuming you can get past the startlingly hideous cover.) Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, History, London, Museums and Galleries | Tagged George IV, Guinevere Glasfurd, Queen Caroline, Sir Thomas Lawrence, the Queen's Gallery, Waterloo Chamber, Windsor Castle | 1 Comment