Dullman Boore's Parlour Piece
An explosion of interest in pre-Titianesque Rubensosity swept the London art market in the late 19th century.
Many artists leapt on the bandwagon, and indeed more than a few painted it.
Fortunes were made, and creative souls found they could move away from their garrets, where they were starving, to damp cellars, where they starved.
All this activity passed Dullman Boore by entirely.
Fixated on capturing beautiful aristocratic ladies in humdrum daily activities, in another world he might have laid the foundation of what was later to become kitchen sink drama, Big Brother, or Reality TV.
However, Boore had a problem.
An inveterate talker, with apparently no filter to his conversations, he found that although all started out well, the ladies he painted moved, as the hours went by, from politeness, to feigning interest in the story of his shoelaces, to sleep and finally, narcolepsy.
Undeterred, Boore painted on.
This picture - Parlour Piece - caught Lady Chatham-Dedly in her armchair.
Initially she was supposed to be using a duster to clean the mantlepiece. This would have been a lightly amusing satire on the class system so prevalent at the time.
Instead, she fell asleep as Boore began to tell again the anecdote of his last camping holiday and his experience with a goat and his morning porridge (he enchantingly called this The Goat Meal Incident).
The final result, it has to be said, is pleasing, but she never paid Boore for it.
It sits today, with other Dullman works, in the Dustee Archives.
These can be found in the cellar of the Silent Gallery in Minor Blarum High Street (open 1pm to 2 minutes past on alternate Thursdays in January, by appointment only, currently closed until 2046 for refurbishment and light arson).
Other Dullman Boore paintings can be seen at
Dullman Boore's Parlour Piece
An explosion of interest in pre-Titianesque Rubensosity swept the London art market in the late 19th century.
Many artists leapt on the bandwagon, and indeed more than a few painted it.
Fortunes were made, and creative souls found they could move away from their garrets, where they were starving, to damp cellars, where they starved.
All this activity passed Dullman Boore by entirely.
Fixated on capturing beautiful aristocratic ladies in humdrum daily activities, in another world he might have laid the foundation of what was later to become kitchen sink drama, Big Brother, or Reality TV.
However, Boore had a problem.
An inveterate talker, with apparently no filter to his conversations, he found that although all started out well, the ladies he painted moved, as the hours went by, from politeness, to feigning interest in the story of his shoelaces, to sleep and finally, narcolepsy.
Undeterred, Boore painted on.
This picture - Parlour Piece - caught Lady Chatham-Dedly in her armchair.
Initially she was supposed to be using a duster to clean the mantlepiece. This would have been a lightly amusing satire on the class system so prevalent at the time.
Instead, she fell asleep as Boore began to tell again the anecdote of his last camping holiday and his experience with a goat and his morning porridge (he enchantingly called this The Goat Meal Incident).
The final result, it has to be said, is pleasing, but she never paid Boore for it.
It sits today, with other Dullman works, in the Dustee Archives.
These can be found in the cellar of the Silent Gallery in Minor Blarum High Street (open 1pm to 2 minutes past on alternate Thursdays in January, by appointment only, currently closed until 2046 for refurbishment and light arson).
Other Dullman Boore paintings can be seen at