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Canon EOS 40D - Tokina AT-X Fisheye 10-17 F3.5-4.5 DX -

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BMW R 1200 CL - Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, August 2002 ... Some people consider a six-day cruise as the perfect vacation. Other's might agree, as long as the days are marked by blurred fence posts and dotted lines instead of palm trees and ocean waves. For them, BMW introduces the perfect alternative to a deck chair - the R 1200 CL.

 

Motorcyclists were taken aback when BMW introduced its first cruiser in 1997, but the R 1200 C quickly rose to become that year's best-selling BMW. The original has since spawned several derivatives including the Phoenix, Euro, Montana and Stiletto. This year, BMW's cruiser forms the basis for the most radical departure yet, the R 1200 CL. With its standard integral hard saddlebags, top box and distinctive handlebar-mounted fairing, the CL represents twin-cylinder luxury-touring at its finest, a completely modern luxury touring-cruiser with a touch of classic BMW.

 

Although based on the R 1200 C, the new CL includes numerous key changes in chassis, drivetrain, equipment and appearance, specifically designed to enhance the R 1200's abilities as a long-distance mount. While it uses the same torquey, 1170cc 61-hp version of BMW's highly successful R259 twin, the CL backs it with a six-speed overdrive transmission. A reworked Telelever increases the bike's rake for more-relaxed high-speed steering, while the fork's wider spacing provides room for the sculpted double-spoke, 16-inch wheel and 150/80 front tire. Similarly, a reinforced Monolever rear suspension controls a matching 15-inch alloy wheel and 170/80 rear tire. As you'd expect, triple disc brakes featuring BMW's latest EVO front brake system and fully integrated ABS bring the bike to a halt at day's end-and set the CL apart from any other luxury cruiser on the market.

 

Yet despite all the chassis changes, it's the new CL's visual statement that represents the bike's biggest break with its cruiser-mates. With its grip-to-grip sweep, the handlebar-mounted fairing evokes classic touring bikes, while the CL's distinctive quad-headlamps give the bike a decidedly avant-garde look - in addition to providing standard-setting illumination. A pair of frame-mounted lowers extends the fairing's wind coverage and provides space for some of the CL's electrics and the optional stereo. The instrument panel is exceptionally clean, surrounded by a matte gray background that matches the kneepads inset in the fairing extensions. The speedometer and tachometer flank a panel of warning lights, capped by the standard analog clock. Integrated mirror/turnsignal pods extend from the fairing to provide further wind protection. Finally, fully integrated, color-matched saddlebags combine with a standard top box to provide a steamer trunk's luggage capacity.

 

The CL's riding position blends elements of both tourer and cruiser, beginning with a reassuringly low, 29.3-inch seat height. The seat itself comprises two parts, a rider portion with an integral lower-back rest, and a taller passenger perch that includes a standard backrest built into the top box. Heated seats, first seen on the K 1200 LT, are also available for the CL to complement the standard heated grips. A broad, flat handlebar places those grips a comfortable reach away, and the CL's floorboards allow the rider to shift position easily without compromising control. Standard cruise control helps melt the miles on long highway stints. A convenient heel/toe shifter makes for effortless gearchanges while adding exactly the right classic touch.

 

The R 1200 CL backs up its cruiser origins with the same superb attention to cosmetics as is shown in the functional details. In addition to the beautifully finished bodywork, the luxury cruiser boasts an assortment of chrome highlights, including valve covers, exhaust system, saddlebag latches and frame panels, with an optional kit to add even more brightwork. Available colors include Pearl Silver Metallic, Capri Blue Metallic and Mojave Brown Metallic, this last with a choice of black or brown saddle (other colors feature black).

 

The R 1200 CL Engine: Gearing For The Long Haul

 

BMW's newest tourer begins with a solid foundation-the 61-hp R 1200 C engine. The original, 1170cc cruiser powerplant blends a broad powerband and instantaneous response with a healthy, 72 lb.-ft. of torque. Like its forebear, the new CL provides its peak torque at 3000 rpm-exactly the kind of power delivery for a touring twin. Motronic MA 2.4 engine management ensures that this Boxer blends this accessible power with long-term reliability and minimal emissions, while at the same time eliminating the choke lever for complete push-button simplicity. Of course, the MoDiTec diagnostic feature makes maintaining the CL every bit as simple as the other members of BMW's stable.

 

While tourers and cruisers place similar demands on their engines, a touring bike typically operates through a wider speed range. Consequently, the R 1200 CL mates this familiar engine to a new, six-speed transmission. The first five gear ratios are similar to the original R 1200's, but the sixth gear provides a significant overdrive, which drops engine speed well under 3000 rpm at 60 mph. This range of gearing means the CL can manage either responsive in-town running or relaxed freeway cruising with equal finesse, and places the luxury cruiser right in the heart of its powerband at touring speeds for simple roll-on passes.

 

In addition, the new transmission has been thoroughly massaged internally, with re-angled gear teeth that provide additional overlap for quieter running. Shifting is likewise improved via a revised internal shift mechanism that produces smoother, more precise gearchanges. Finally, the new transmission design is lighter (approximately 1 kg.), which helps keep the CL's weight down to a respectable 679 lbs. (wet). The improved design of this transmission will be adopted by other Boxer-twins throughout the coming year.

 

The CL Chassis: Wheeled Luggage Never Worked This Well

 

Every bit as unique as the CL's Boxer-twin drivetrain is the bike's chassis, leading off-literally and figuratively-with BMW's standard-setting Telelever front suspension. The CL's setup is identical in concept and function to the R 1200 C's fork, but shares virtually no parts with the previous cruiser's. The tourer's wider, 16-inch front wheel called for wider-set fork tubes, so the top triple clamp, fork bridge, fork tubes and axle have all been revised, and the axle has switched to a full-floating design. The aluminum Telelever itself has been further reworked to provide a slightly more raked appearance, which also creates a more relaxed steering response for improved straight-line stability. The front shock has been re-angled and its spring and damping rates changed to accommodate the new bike's suspension geometry, but is otherwise similar to the original R 1200 C's damper.

 

Similarly, the R 1200 CL's Monolever rear suspension differs in detail, rather than concept, from previous BMW cruisers. Increased reinforcing provides additional strength at the shock mount, while a revised final-drive housing provides mounts for the new rear brake. But the primary rear suspension change is a switch to a shock with travel-related damping, similar to that introduced on the R 1150 GS Adventure. This new shock not only provides for a smoother, more controlled ride but also produces an additional 20mm travel compared to the other cruisers, bringing the rear suspension travel to 4.72 inches.

 

The Telelever and Monolever bolt to a standard R 1200 C front frame that differs only in detail from the original. The rear subframe, however, is completely new, designed to accommodate the extensive luggage system and passenger seating on the R 1200 CL. In addition to the permanently affixed saddlebags, the larger seats, floor boards, top box and new side stand all require new mounting points.

 

All this new hardware rolls on completely restyled double-spoke wheels (16 x 3.5 front/15 x 4.0 rear) that carry wider, higher-profile (80-series) touring tires for an extremely smooth ride. Bolted to these wheels are larger disc brakes (12.0-inch front, 11.2-inch rear), with the latest edition of BMW's standard-setting EVO brakes. A pair of four-piston calipers stop the front wheel, paired with a two-piston unit-adapted from the K 1200 LT-at the rear. In keeping with the bike's touring orientation, the new CL includes BMW's latest, fully integrated ABS, which actuates both front and rear brakes through either the front hand lever or the rear brake pedal.

 

The CL Bodywork: Dressed To The Nines

 

Although all these mechanical changes ensure that the new R 1200 CL works like no other luxury cruiser, it's the bike's styling and bodywork that really set it apart. Beginning with the bike's handlebar-mounted fairing, the CL looks like nothing else on the road, but it's the functional attributes that prove its worth. The broad sweep of the fairing emphasizes its aerodynamic shape, which provides maximum wind protection with a minimum of buffeting. Four headlamps, with their horizontal/vertical orientation, give the CL its unique face and also create the best illumination outside of a baseball stadium (the high-beams are borrowed from the GS).

 

The M-shaped windshield, with its dipped center section, produces exceptional wind protection yet still allows the rider to look over the clear-plastic shield when rain or road dirt obscure the view. Similarly, clear extensions at the fairing's lower edges improve wind protection even further but still allow an unobstructed view forward for maneuvering in extremely close quarters. The turnsignal pods provide further wind coverage, and at the same time the integral mirrors give a clear view to the rear.

 

Complementing the fairing, both visually and functionally, the frame-mounted lowers divert the wind blast around the rider to provide further weather protection. Openings vent warm air from the frame-mounted twin oil-coolers and direct the heat away from the rider. As noted earlier, the lowers also house the electronics for the bike's optional alarm system and cruise control. A pair of 12-volt accessory outlets are standard.

 

Like the K 1200 LT, the new R 1200 CL includes a capacious luggage system as standard, all of it color-matched and designed to accommodate rider and passenger for the long haul. The permanently attached saddlebags include clamshell lids that allow for easy loading and unloading. Chrome bumper strips protect the saddlebags from minor tipover damage. The top box provides additional secure luggage space, or it can be simply unbolted to uncover an attractive aluminum luggage rack. An optional backrest can be bolted on in place of the top box. Of course, saddlebags and top box are lockable and keyed to the ignition switch.

 

Options & Accessories: More Personal Than A Monogram

 

Given BMW's traditional emphasis on touring options and the cruiser owner's typical demands for customization, it's only logical to expect a range of accessories and options for the company's first luxury cruiser. The CL fulfills those expectations with a myriad of options and accessories, beginning with heated or velour-like Soft Touch seats and a low windshield. Electronic and communications options such as an AM/FM/CD stereo, cruise control and onboard communication can make time on the road much more pleasant, whether you're out for an afternoon ride or a cross-country trek - because after all, nobody says you have to be back in six days. Other available electronic features include an anti-theft alarm, which also disables the engine.

 

Accessories designed to personalize the CL even further range from cosmetic to practical, but all adhere to BMW's traditional standards for quality and fit. Chrome accessories include engine-protection and saddlebag - protection hoops. On a practical level, saddlebag and top box liners simplify packing and unpacking. In addition to the backrest, a pair of rear floorboards enhance passenger comfort even more.

 

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Gretna Green is a parish in the southern council area of Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, on the Scottish side of the border between Scotland and England, defined by the small river Sark, which flows into the nearby Solway Firth. It was historically the first village a traveller would come to in Scotland when following the old coaching route from London to Edinburgh. Gretna Green railway station serves both Gretna Green and Gretna. The Quintinshill rail disaster, the worst rail crash in British history, in which over 220 died, occurred near Gretna Green in 1915.

 

Gretna Green sits alongside the main town of Gretna. Both are accessed from the A74(M) motorway.

 

Gretna Green is most famous for weddings. The Clandestine Marriages Act 1753 prevented couples under the age of 21 marrying in England or Wales without their parents' consent. As it was still legal in Scotland to marry without such consent, couples began crossing the border into Scotland to marry.

 

Gretna's "runaway marriages" began in 1754 when Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act came into force in England. Under the Act, if a parent of a person under the age of 21 objected to the minor's marriage, the parent could legally veto the union. The Act tightened the requirements for marrying in England and Wales but did not apply in Scotland, where it was possible for boys to marry at 14 and girls at 12 with or without parental consent (see Marriage in Scotland). It was, however, only in the 1770s, with the construction of a toll road passing through the hitherto obscure village of Graitney, that Gretna Green became the first easily reachable village over the Scottish border.

 

Scottish law allowed for "irregular marriages", meaning that if a declaration was made before two witnesses, almost anybody had the authority to conduct the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests", culminating with Richard Rennison, who performed 5,147 ceremonies. The local blacksmith and his anvil became lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings.

 

Victorian chronicler Robert Smith Surtees described Gretna Green at length in his 1848 New Monthly Magazine serial, The Richest Commoner in England:

 

Few of our readers—none we should think of our fair ones—but at some period or other of their lives, have figured to themselves the features of Gretna Green. Few we should think but have pictured to themselves the chaise stained "with the variations of each soil", the galloping bustle of the hurrying postboys, urging their foaming steeds for the last stage that bears them from Carlisle to the border. It is a place whose very name is typical of brightening prospects. The poet sings of the greenest spot on memory's waste, and surely Gretna Green was the particular spot he had under consideration. Gretna Green! The mind pictures a pretty straggling, half Scotch, half English village, with clean white rails, upon a spacious green, and happy rustics in muffin caps, and high cheek bones, looking out for happier couples to congratulate. Then the legend of the blacksmith who forged the links of love, added interest to the place, and invested the whole with fairy feature.

 

How much better, brighter, more promising, in short, a Gretna Green marriage sounds than a Coldstream or Lamberton toll-bar one! and yet they are equally efficacious. Gretna Green indeed, is as superior in reality as it is in name. It looks as if it were the capital of the God of Love, while the others exhibit the bustling, trading, money-making pursuits of matter-of-fact life. Though we dare say Gretna Green is as unlike what most people fancy, still we question that any have gone away disappointed. It is a pretty south country-looking village, much such as used to exist in the old days of posting and coaching. A hall house converted into an hotel, and the dependents located in the neighbouring cottages. Gretna Hall stands a little apart from the village on the rise of what an Englishman would call a gentle eminence, and a Scotchman a dead flat, and is approached by an avenue of stately trees, while others are plentifully dotted about, one on the east side, bearing a board with the name of the house, the host and high-priest, "Mr. Linton". There is an air of quiet retirement about it that eminently qualifies it for its holy and hospitable purpose.

 

Since 1929, both parties in Scotland have had to be at least 16 years old, but they still may marry without parental consent. Since April 2022 in England and Wales, the minimum age for marriage is now 18 irrespective of parental consent. Of the three forms of irregular marriage that had existed under Scottish law, all but the last were abolished by the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1939, which came in force from 1 July 1940. Prior to this act, any citizen was able to witness a public promise.

 

Gretna's two blacksmiths' shops and countless inns and smallholding became the backdrops for tens of thousands of weddings. Today there are several wedding venues in and around Gretna Green, from former churches to purpose-built chapels. The services at all the venues are always performed over an iconic blacksmith's anvil.

 

In common law, a "Gretna Green marriage" came to mean, in general, a marriage transacted in a jurisdiction that was not the residence of the parties being married, to avoid restrictions or procedures imposed by the parties' home jurisdiction. A notable "Gretna" marriage was the second marriage in 1826 of Edward Gibbon Wakefield to the young heiress Ellen Turner, called the Shrigley abduction (his first marriage was also to an heiress, but the parents wanted to avoid a public scandal). Other towns in which quick, often surreptitious marriages could be obtained came to be known as "Gretna Greens". In the United States, these have included Elkton, Maryland, Reno and, later, Las Vegas.

 

In 1856 Scottish law was changed due to a measure passed in Parliament by Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop to require 21 days' residence for marriage, and a further law change was made in 1940. The residential requirement was lifted in 1977. Other Scottish border villages used for such marriages were Coldstream Bridge, Lamberton, Mordington and Paxton Toll, and Portpatrick for people coming from Ireland.

 

In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, when Lydia Bennet elopes with George Wickham she leaves behind a note stating that their intended destination is Gretna Green, though later they are found cohabitating in London, having not in fact travelled to Scotland.

In Season 3, Episode 5 of the BBC series You Rang, M'Lord?, two of the characters elope to Gretna Green. This then prompts two other characters to elope in a similar manner. However, they are stopped before they reach Scotland.

In Season 6, Episode 20 of the BBC series Waterloo Road, student Jonah Kirby elopes with teacher and Head of Spanish, Francesca 'Cesca' Montoya, to Gretna Green in order to get married.

In Season 2, Episode 7 of the ITV series Downton Abbey, Lady Sybil Crawley tries to elope to Gretna Green with chauffeur Tom Branson.

In Episode 3 of the ITV series Doctor Thorne, adapted from the Anthony Trollope novel of the same name, the character Frank makes a joke about him and Mary running off to marry in Gretna Green.

In Season 5, Episode 6 of the BBC series Poldark, Geoffrey Charles and Cecily Hanson try to flee to Gretna Green.

In Season 1 of the Netflix series Bridgerton, Colin Bridgerton and Marina Thompson plan to run away to Gretna Green for a quick wedding, though the scheme ultimately falls through.

In Half A Sixpence the two main characters (Arthur Kipps and Ann) marry at Gretna Green.

Gretna Green is revealed to be the hometown of the character James Spooner in Season 6 Episode 1 of the podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno.

 

Dumfries and Galloway is one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, located in the western part of the Southern Uplands. It is bordered by East Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, and South Lanarkshire to the north; Scottish Borders to the north-east; the English ceremonial county of Cumbria, the Solway Firth, and the Irish Sea to the south, and the North Channel to the west. The administrative centre and largest settlement is the town of Dumfries. The second largest town is Stranraer, located 76 miles (122 km) to the west of Dumfries on the North Channel coast.

 

Dumfries and Galloway corresponds to the historic shires of Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbrightshire, and Wigtownshire, the last two of which are collectively known as Galloway. The three counties were combined in 1975 to form a single region, with four districts within it. The districts were abolished in 1996, since when Dumfries and Galloway has been a unitary local authority. For lieutenancy purposes, the area is divided into three lieutenancy areas called Dumfries, Wigtown, and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, broadly corresponding to the three historic counties.

 

The Dumfries and Galloway Council region is composed of counties and their sub-areas. From east to west:

 

Dumfriesshire County

the sub-area of Dumfriesshire – Annandale

the sub-area of Dumfriesshire – Eskdale

the sub-area of Dumfriesshire – Nithsdale

Kirkcudbrightshire County

the sub-area of Kirkcudbrightshire – Stewartry (archaically, Desnes)

Wigtownshire County

the sub-area of Wigtownshire – Machars (archaically, Farines)--divided into census areas (civil parish areas)

the sub-area of Wigtownshire – Rhins of Galloway divided into census areas (civil parish areas)

 

The term Dumfries and Galloway has been used since at least the 19th century – by 1911 the three counties had a united sheriffdom under that name. Dumfries and Galloway covers the majority of the western area of the Southern Uplands,[1] it also hosts Scotland's most Southerly point, at the Mull of Galloway in the west of the region.

 

Water systems and transport routes

 

The region has a number of south running water systems which break through the Southern Uplands creating the main road, and rail, arteries north–south through the region and breaking the hills up into a number of ranges.

 

River Cree valley carries the A714 north-westward from Newton Stewart to Girvan and Water of Minnoch valley which lies just west of the Galloway Hills carries a minor road northward through Glentrool village into South Ayrshire. This road leaves the A714 at Bargrennan.

Water of Ken and River Dee form a corridor through the hills called the Glenkens which carries the A713 road from Castle Douglas to Ayr. The Galloway Hills lie to the west of this route through the hills and the Carsphairn and Scaur Hills lie to the east.

River Nith rises between Dalmellington and New Cumnock in Ayrshire and runs east then south down Nithsdale to Dumfries. Nithsdale carries both the A76 road and the rail line from Dumfries to Kilmarnock. It separates the Carsphairn and Scaur Hills from the Lowther Hills which lie east of the Nith.

River Annan combines with Evan Water and the River Clyde to form one of the principal routes into central Scotland from England – through Annandale and Clydesdale – carrying the M74 and the west coast railway line. This gap through the hills separates the Lowthers from the Moffat Hills.

River Esk enters the Solway Firth just south of Gretna having travelled south from Langholm and Eskdalemuir. The A7 travels up Eskdale as far as Langholm and from Langholm carries on up the valley of Ewes Water to Teviothead where it starts to follow the River Teviot to Hawick. Eskdale itself heads north west from Langholm through Bentpath and Eskdalemuir to Ettrick and Selkirk.

 

The A701 branches off the M74 at Beattock, goes through the town of Moffat, climbs to Annanhead above the Devil's Beef Tub (at the source of the River Annan) before passing the source of the River Tweed and carrying on to Edinburgh. Until fairly recent times the ancient route to Edinburgh travelled right up Annandale to the Beef Tub before climbing steeply to Annanhead. The present road ascends northward on a ridge parallel to Annandale but to the west of it which makes for a much easier ascent.

 

From Moffat the A708 heads north east along the valley of Moffat Water (Moffatdale) on its way to Selkirk. Moffatdale separates the Moffat hills (to the north) from the Ettrick hills to the south.

 

There are three National scenic areas within this region.

 

Nith Estuary: this area follows the River Nith southward from just south of Dumfries into the Solway Firth. Dumfries itself has a rich history going back over 800 years as a Royal Burgh (1186). It is particularly remembered as the place where Robert the Bruce murdered the Red Comyn in 1306 before being crowned King of Scotland – and where Robert Burns spent his last years. His mausoleum is in St Michael's graveyard. Going down the east bank is the village of Glencaple, Caerlaverock Castle, Caerlaverock Wild Fowl Trust, an ancient Roman fort on Ward Law Hill and nearby in Ruthwell is the Ruthwell Cross and the Brow Well where Robert Burns "took the waters" and bathed in the Solway just before his death. On the west bank, there are several walks and cycle routes in Mabie Forest, Kirkconnell Flow for the naturalist, the National Museum of Costume just outside New Abbey and Sweetheart Abbey within the village. Criffel (569 metres) offers the hill walker a reasonably modest walk with views across the Solway to the Lake District. The house of John Paul Jones founder of the American Navy is also open to visitors near Kirkbean.

East Stewartry Coast: this takes in the coast line from Balcary Point eastward across Auchencairn Bay and the Rough Firth past Sandyhills to Mersehead. There are several coastal villages within this area – Auchencairn, Kippford, Colvend, Rockcliffe, and Portling. There is also a round tower at Orchardton and the islands of Hestan Isle and Rough Island can be reached at low tide outside the breeding season for birds. Mersehead is a wildfowl reserve. The area has a number of coastal paths.

Fleet Valley: this area takes in Fleet Bay with its holiday destinations of Auchenlarie, Mossyard Bay, Cardoness, Sandgreen and Carrick Shore. The area also includes the town of Gatehouse of Fleet and the historic villages of Anworth and Girthon – there is a castle at Cardoness in the care of Historic Scotland.

 

The region is known as a stronghold for several rare and protected species of amphibian, such as the Natterjack toad and the Great crested newt. There are also RSPB Nature Reserves at the Mull of Galloway, Wood of Cree (Galloway Forest Park), Ken Dee Marshes (near Loch Ken) and Mereshead (near Dalbeattie on the Solway Firth)

 

There are five 7Stanes mountain biking centres in Dumfries and Galloway at Dalbeattie, Mabie, Ae, Glentrool and Kirroughtree. The Sustrans Route 7 long distance cycle route also runs through the region. There is excellent hill walking in the Moffat Hills, Lowther Hills the Carsphairn and Scaur Hills and Galloway Hills. The Southern Upland Way coast to coast walk passes through Dumfries and Galloway and the 53-mile long Annandale Way travels from the Solway Firth into the Moffat hills near the Devil's Beef Tub. There is also fresh water sailing on Castle Loch at Lochmaben and at various places on Loch Ken Loch Ken also offers waterskiing and wakeboarding. The Solway Firth coastline offers fishing, caravaning and camping, walking and sailing.

 

Dumfries and Galloway is well known for its arts and cultural activities as well as its natural environment.[citation needed]

 

The major festivals include the region-wide Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival, and Spring Fling Open Studios. Other festivals include Big Burns Supper in Dumfries and the Wigtown Book Festival in Wigtown – Scotland's national book town.

 

Places of interest

Galloway and List of Category A listed buildings in Dumfries and Galloway

 

Annandale distillery - Scotch Whisky

Bladnoch Distillery & Visitor Centre - Scotch Whisky

Caerlaverock Castle – Historic Scotland

Caerlaverock NNR (national nature reserve)

WWT Caerlaverock – a reserve of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust

Cardoness Castle

Castle of St John, Stranraer

Corsewall Lighthouse, privately owned

Drumlanrig Castle

HM Factory, Gretna, Eastriggs – site of a munitions factory during World War I

Galloway Forest Park, Forestry and Land Scotland

Galloway Hydro Electric Scheme, Scottish Power

Glenlair – home of 19th century physicist James Clerk Maxwell

Glenluce Abbey

Hallhill Covenanter Martyrs Memorial - near Kirkpatrick Irongray Church.

Isle of Whithorn Castle

Kenmure Castle – a seat of the Clan Gordon

Loch Ken

MacLellan's Castle, Kirkcudbright

Motte of Urr

Mull of Galloway – RSPB/ South Rhins Community Development Trust

Ruthwell Cross

Samye Ling Tibetan Monastery

Southern Upland Way – long distance footpath

Sweetheart Abbey, New Abbey

Threave Castle

 

Prior to 1975, the area that is now Dumfries and Galloway was administered as three separate counties: Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbrightshire, and Wigtownshire. The counties of Scotland originated as sheriffdoms, which were established from the twelfth century, consisting of a group of parishes over which a sheriff had jurisdiction. An elected county council was established for each county in 1890 under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889.

 

The three county councils were abolished in 1975 under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, which established a two-tier structure of local government across Scotland comprising upper-tier regions and lower-tier districts. A region called Dumfries and Galloway was created covering the area of the three counties, which were abolished as administrative areas. The region contained four districts:

 

Annandale and Eskdale, covering the eastern part of Dumfriesshire.

Nithsdale, covering the western part of Dumfriesshire and a small part of Kirkcudbrightshire.

Stewartry, covering most of Kirkcudbrightshire.

Wigtown, covering all of Wigtownshire and a small part of Kirkcudbrightshire.

 

Further local government reform in 1996 under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 saw the area's four districts abolished, with the Dumfries and Galloway Council taking over the functions they had previously performed. The council continues to use the areas of the four abolished districts as committee areas. The four former districts are also used to define the area's three lieutenancy areas, with Nithsdale and Annandale and Eskdale together forming the Dumfries lieutenancy, the Stewartry district corresponding to the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright lieutenancy, and the Wigtown district corresponding to the Wigtown lieutenancy.

 

The council headquarters is at the Council Offices at 113 English Street in Dumfries, which had been built in 1914 as the headquarters for the old Dumfriesshire County Council, previously being called "County Buildings".

 

The first election to the Dumfries and Galloway Regional Council was held in 1974, initially operating as a shadow authority alongside the outgoing authorities until the new system came into force on 16 May 1975. A shadow authority was again elected in 1995 ahead of the reforms which came into force on 1 April 1996. Political control of the council since 1975 has been as follows:

 

Since 2007 the council has been required to designate a leader of the council. The leader may also act as the convener, chairing council meetings, or the council may choose to appoint a different councillor to be convener. Prior to 2007 the council sometimes chose to appoint a leader, and sometimes did not. The leaders since 2007 have been:

Installation Views

Lasting Images

October 14, 2013–January 10, 2014

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

5th Ave at 89th St

New York City

 

Lasting Images brings together a selection of works from the Guggenheim’s collection of global contemporary art, featuring pieces by Simryn Gill, Sheela Gowda, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Mona Hatoum, and Doris Salcedo. These works suggest that truly lasting images—those that are most affecting—rarely convey direct messages. Instead, the pieces in this exhibition use ephemeral materials to define spaces for the viewer that invite open-ended contemplation.

 

Photo: David Heald

 

To learn more, visit www.guggenheim.org/lastingimages.

Subject: Unknown Florist

 

Camera & Glass Info:

 

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Canon 70-200 F/4L USM

No Flash

 

Photo Info:

 

Focal Length : 200mm

Exposure Program: Aperture Priority

Shutter Speed: 1/4000 sec.

Lens Aperture: F/4

ISO Speed : ISO-1600

Exposure Bias: -2 Step

Metering Mode: Pattern

Tripod Used : No / Handheld

 

Location Info:

 

Near Sawai Mansingh Hostipal

Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

When using this photo, please attribute: * Photo by NEC Corporation of America with Creative Commons license.

 

Cloud computing enables businesses to deliver shared, adaptable resources to users with minimal impact to their own infrastructure, while providing the ability for redundancy and high availability that their customers demand. NEC’s cloud solutions and hardware are built with the key stakeholders in mind. End-users, IT administrators, and executive management can look to NEC for a full complement of solutions in private, hybrid or public cloud deployments. Our ecosystem of solutions and products in areas such as Big Data/Analytics, UC as a Service, Software Defined Networking (SDN), and Managed Security Services technologies are uniquely poised to deliver services in demanding day-to-day environments including the cloud.

www.spencerlynnproductions.com

The Spaulding Wilderness Study Area (WSA) is located 18 miles east of Adel, Oregon, in both Lake and Harney counties. Its boundaries are defined by the right-of-way of Oregon State Highway 140 for approximately 3 miles on the southwest, a high standard dirt road on the west and low standard roads on the north, east, and south. The WSA boundary extends up the dead end road to Spaulding Reservoir and around a 320-acre parcel of private land adjacent to this road. All lands adjacent to the WSA are public.

 

The Spaulding WSA contains 69,530 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land and 440 acres of private inholdings. The WSA is 17 miles long from north to south and from three to nine miles wide in a roughly oval shape with a panhandle on the south. The WSA is characterized by rolling sagelands broken by low rimrock and interlaced by a network of intermittent stream drainages. Antelope Butte at the south end of the WSA rises to an elevation of 6,440 feet. Sage Hen Canyon, central to the study area, funnels outward from steep high rimrock to a broad swale near Spaulding Reservoir, which is excluded from the WSA boundary. West of the reservoir the drainage is known as Spaulding Creek. At the south end of Sage Hen Canyon near the eastern WSA boundary is a one-mile series of pools known as The Potholes. These pools hold water after spring run-off well into the summer.

 

The western portion of the WSA is dominated by a 13 mile section of Guano Rim, also called Dougherty Rim, which reaches a height of 900 feet. The rim is incised by seven steep canyons and the major drainage known as Rocky Canyon. Eleven sink lakes are scattered throughout the area above and to the east of Guano Rim. Along the eastern boundary are a large erosion basin and a prominent landmark, Chimney Rock. Vegetation consists generally of sagebrush/bunchgrass communities, with some aspen groves beneath rims, scattered occurrence of mountain mahogany, and juniper growing at the base of some rims. Various shrub species occur in the canyons and among the

 

The WSA was studied under Section 603 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and was included in the Final Oregon Wilderness Environmental Impact Statement filed in February

1990.

 

The WSA has primitive recreation opportunities for hiking, backpacking, camping, natural study, photography, hunting, horseback riding, and sightseeing. Sage Hen Canyon is a rugged and scenic area for hiking and offers opportunities for wildlife observation.

 

www.blm.gov/programs/national-conservation-lands/oregon-w...

Led by the University of Buckingham, this event series included workshops and events around Dickens’s last unfinished novel, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’. These events contributed to an ogoing international project which explores this unfinished work through a reading group and blog developed from a digital re-release of Dickens's original monthly instalments, becoming a crowd-sourced whodunnit inquiry into which character the public believe committed the murder of Edwin Drood.

 

Illustration by Alys Jones | Part 3 of The Drood Enquiry

Handful of photos from my recent shoot with Derby band A World Defined.

 

www.myspace.com/aworlddefined

Azores - São Miguel -

 

Geomorphologically, Ponta Delgada covers a volcanic area composed of two structures: the Picos Region and Sete Cidades Massif. The Picos Region extends from the shadow of the ancient volcano of the Água de Pau Massif (known locally for the lake that rests within its volcanic crater: Lagoa do Fogo) until the area around the Sete Cidades caldera. It is a volcanic axial zone oriented generally in a northwest-southeast direction, essentially defined by several spatter cones and lava flows and predominantly covered by dense vegetation and pasture-lands. Its relief is relatively planar, especially along the northern and southern coasts, where many of the urban communities are located.

'Collaged' silk, floral motif textile brooch. There are about 7, maybe 8 layers altogether. A bit of organza adds a bit of twinkle, and some glass beads define the centre.

  

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- - - - -

"JAYNE COUNTY'S MAD TEA PARTY..SEX! ART! MUSIC!"

A KYMARA 21ST CENTURY THREE DAY HAPPENING

Friday, April 9, 2010 at 8:00pm

Chelsea Hotel

New York, NY

 

www.punkglobe.com/jaynecountyinterview0809.html

jaynecounty.com/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_County

www.myspace.com/jayneisblonde

www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34004014453&ref=ts

  

Description

KYMARA 21ST CENTURY HAPENINGS, "PUNK GLOBE MAGAZINE", THE BLUE ELEPHANT EVENTS AND CAFE HARNEY AND SONS FINE TEA, WARWICK VALLEY WINERY AND DISTILLERY AND STUDIO 54 NY SUPERSTAR PARTY HOST, MIESTORM ALONG WITH MILO ROCK AND KYMARA

 

STARRING THE PREMIERE EXHIBIT OF THE ARTISTIC WORKS OF JAYNE COUNTY!!!!!

 

ALONG WITH THE ART, MUSIC AND FILM OF BILLY NAME, ANTON PERICH, CHRISTOPHER MAKOS, MICK ROCK, PRAIRIE PRINCE,CHRISTOPHER LYNCH, MARY WORONOV, LOUIS WALDON, WALTER STEDING, GAZELLE, GORMAN BECHARD, ERIC DANVILLE, THE FLOYDIAN DEVICE, DAVE STREET AND CO. AMANDA BURNS, MARK LA FALCE, AND MANY MORE MUSICIANS AND ARTISTS...

 

ANNOUNCING THE WORKS OF THE "BILLY NAME ANTE ART SUPERSTARS" JAYNE COUNTY, PRAIRIE PRINCE, RUBY LYNN REYNER, ANTON PERICH, MIESTORM, MILO ROCK, FERNANDO CARPANEDA, IAN COUCH, AND KYMARA

 

JAYNE COUNTY WILL BE PERFORMING LIVE AT CHELSEA HOTEL ALONG WITH HER NEW BAND, "THE WAR HOLES" FEATURING

MILO ROCK, FRANK COLEMAN, BOB TOXIC AND ARENA BOUND. VINTAGE FOOTAGE OF JAYNE COUNTY'S LIVE PERFORMANCE BY THE LEGENDARY ANTON PERICH

 

A FABULOUS ARRAY OF JAYNE COUNTY'S HISTORIC COSTUMES WILL BE ON DISPLAY!

 

FASHION SHOW BY "LIVE FAST" NYC

 

AWARD WINNING FILM "FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS" BY INDIE FILM DIRECTOR GORMAN BECHARD FOLLOWED BY A Q&A ON SUNDAY

 

A PORTION OF OUR PROCEEDS BENEFITS THE LGBT COMMUNITY SERVICES CENTER 208 West 13th Street New York, NY 10011

 

QUESTIONS????COMMENTS?????

CALL KYMARA DIRECTLY AT..

207-286-7399

OR EMAIL KYMARA@KYMARA.COM

 

Biography

 

Born in 1947 as Wayne Rogers, County left her hometown of Dallas, Georgia in 1968 to move to New York City, where she became a regular at the Stonewall Inn and took part in the historic riots. In 1969, County was asked by Warhol superstar and playwright Jackie Curtis to appear in her play Femme Fatale at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, which also starred Patti Smith. In her autobiography, County says of Curtis, "She was my biggest influence, the person who really got me started." After a successful run of Femme Fatale, County wrote her own play World - Birth Of A Nation which she also appeared in, bringing her to the attention of Andy Warhol, who cast her in his own theatrical production Pork. After a run in New York, the play, with the New York cast, was performed in London for a few months. Upon returning to New York, County appeared in another play, Island, by Tony Ingrassia, again with Patti Smith.

Then, in 1972 County got her first band, Queen Elizabeth together, one of the pioneering glam rock bands. Despite being signed to MainMan Management, David Bowie's management firm, no records were ever produced, although the company did spend over $200,000 to film the 1974 stage show "Wayne at the Trucks", no footage of which has ever been released (even in bootleg form). The show featured numerous costume changes and some of County's raunchiest material. The film remains (presumably) in Bowie's vaults, though eight live recordings from this show were released in audio form on the 2006 CD Wayne County At The Trucks on Munster Records. The show is claimed by County to be the major inspiration for Bowie's stage show for the tour supporting his Diamond Dogs album.[1] In particular, County maintains that the song "Queenage Baby" was a prototype for Bowie's song "Rebel Rebel", a claim which is supported by some rock critics.[2][3]

In 1975, with her new band "The Backstreet Boys," Wayne County recorded three tracks for the compilation Max's Kansas City: New York New Wave, which also featured Suicide, Pere Ubu and The Fast. Wayne County and The Backstreet Boys played regularly at CBGBs and at Max's Kansas City, where County was also a DJ. In 1976, she appeared in the film The Blank Generation, directed by Amos Poe and Ivan Kral. The film, the recording and the shows were the beginnings of what came to be known as punk rock, and helped define this movement for a generation of youth.

In 1977, County left New York to return to London, where the English punk scene was just emerging. Here, she formed a new band called Wayne County & the Electric Chairs. County released the EP Electric Chairs 1977, plus a single on Illegal Records. This was followed by her most famous song, "Fuck Off" recorded as a single for Safari Records, with a European tour in support of the records. While in London, County met Derek Jarman who cast her as the character "Lounge Lizard" in the seminal punk film Jubilee, which also starred Adam Ant, Toyah Willcox, Ian Charleson and Jordan. After this The Electric Chairs recorded their first self-titled album, which featured "Eddie and Sheena", and an EP named Blatantly Offensive, which contained "Fuck Off" and "Toilet Love." After touring, they followed this up with another album Storm The Gates Of Heaven. The next album, released in 1979, was Things Your Mother Never Told You which featured several songs based on County's recent experiences in Germany. After it was released, the band broke up and County (along with guitarist Eliot Michaels) returned to the U.S. in 1979. It was at this time that she officially changed her stage name to "Jayne County" and began self-identifying as a woman. The final release by County on Safari Records, Rock and Roll Resurrection (In Concert), a live album recorded in Toronto on New Year's Eve of 1979, was under this new name.

In 1983, County returned to New York where she appeared in the theatrical production Les Girls with Holly Woodlawn and other performers. After this she returned to London for the premiere of City Of Lost Souls and stayed long enough to tour and record another album Private Oyster with Warren Heighway as manager. Her band included members of various UK based rock bands, including Manchester-based guitarists Stuart Clarke, Chris Lynch and Baz Creece on drums. Following widespread media attention she then returned again to the U.S.

In the 1990s many of the earlier recordings were released, such as the early Safari tracks on a CD called Rock & Roll Cleopatra. She recorded the album Goddess Of Wet Dreams in 1993, followed by Deviation in 1995. That same year she appeared in Wigstock: The Movie and released her autobiography Man Enough To Be A Woman.

Since Deviation, several new tracks have surfaced on various compilations and through Jayne's official website. Many of these tracks, both live and studio recordings, were collected on the Ratcage Records release So New York, including collaborations with Lisa Jackson and former Electric Chairs guitarist Eliot Michaels. A thunderous live show (recorded on Jayne's birthday) was released on the 2002 CD Wash Me In The Blood (Of Rock & Roll)- Live at Squeeze Box by Fang Records, and features a duet on "California Sun" by County and former nemesis "Handsome" Dick Manitoba of The Dictators.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

Although the performance increases of jet-powered aircraft introduced towards the end of World War II over their piston-powered ancestors were breathtaking, there were those at the time who believed that much more was possible. As far back as 1943, the British Ministry of Aircraft Production had issued a specification designated "E.24/43" for a supersonic experimental jet aircraft that would be able to achieve 1,600 KPH (1,000 MPH).

 

Beginning in 1946, a design team at English Electric (EE) under W.E.W. "Teddy" Petter began design studies for a supersonic fighter, leading to award of a Ministry of Supply (MoS) contract in 1947 under specification "ER.103" for a design study on an experimental aircraft that could achieve Mach 1.2.

The MoS liked the EE concepts, and in early 1949 awarded the company a contract under specification "F.23/49" for two flying prototypes and one ground-test prototype of the "P.1".

 

The P.1 was defined as a supersonic research aircraft, though the design had provisions for armament and a radar gunsight. It incorporate advanced and unusual design features, such as twin turbojet engines mounted one above the other to reduce aircraft frontal area; and strongly swept wings, with the wingtip edges at a right angle to the fuselage, giving a wing configuration like that of a delta wing with the rear inner corners cut out. The aircraft featured an elliptical intake in the nose.

 

The P.1's performance was so outstanding that the decision was quickly made to proceed on an operational version that would be capable of Mach 2. In fact, the second P.1 prototype featured items such as a bulged belly tank and fit of twin Aden Mark 4 30 millimeter revolver-type cannon, bringing it closer to operational specification.

 

Orders were placed for three "P.1B" prototypes for a production interceptor and the original P.1 was retroactively designated "P.1A". The P.1B featured twin Rolls-Royce Avon afterburning engines and a larger tailfin. An airborne intercept (AI) radar was carried in the air intake shock cone, which was changed from elliptical to circular. The cockpit was raised for a better field of view and the P.1B was armed with two Aden cannon in the upper nose, plus a pack under the cockpit that could either support two De Havilland Blue Jay (later Firestreak) heat-seeking AAMs or 44 Microcell 5 centimeter (2 inch) unguided rockets.

 

The initial P.1B prototype performed its first flight on 4 April 1957 and the type entered RAF service as EE Lightning F.1. RAF Number 74 Squadron at Coltishall was the first full service unit, with the pilots acquiring familiarization with the type during late 1960 and the squadron declared operational in 1961.

 

However, while the Lightning was developed further into more and more advanced versions. Its concept was also the basis for another research aircraft that would also be developed into a high performance interceptor: the P.6/1, which later became the “Levin” fighter.

 

P.6 encompassed a total of four different layouts for a Mach 2+ research aircraft, tendering to ER.134T from 1952. P.6/1 was the most conservative design and it relied heavily on existing (and already proven) P.1 Lightning components, primarily the aerodynamic surfaces. The most obvious difference was a new fuselage of circular diameter, housing a single Rolls Royce RB.106 engine.

 

The RB.106 was a two-shaft design with two axial flow compressors each driven by its own single stage turbine and reheat. It was of similar size to the Rolls-Royce Avon, but it produced about twice the thrust at 21,750 lbf (96.7 kN) in the initial version. The two-shaft layout was relatively advanced for the era; the single-shaft de Havilland Gyron matched it in power terms, while the two-spool Bristol Olympus was much less powerful at the then-current state of development. Apart from being expected to power other British aircraft such as those competing for Operational Requirement F.155, it was also selected to be the powerplant for the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow and led to the Orenda Iroquois engine, which even reach 30.000 lbf (130 kN).

 

The P.6/1 was eventually chosen by the MoS for further development because it was regarded as the least risky and costly alternative. Beyond its test bed role for the RB.106 the P.6/1 was also seen as a potential basis for a supersonic strategic air-to-ground missile (similar to the massive Soviet AS-3 ‘Kangaroo’ cruise missile) and the starting point for an operational interceptor that would be less complex than the Lightning, but with a comparable if not improved performance but a better range.

 

In 1955 English Electric received a go ahead for two P.6/1 research aircraft prototypes. Despite a superficial similarity to the Lightning, the P.6/1’s internal structure was very different. The air duct, for instance, was bifurcated and led around on both sides of the cockpit tub and the front wheel well instead of below it. Further down, the duct ran below the wing main spar and directly fed the RB.106.

The rear fuselage was area-ruled, the main landing gear retracted, just like the Lightning’s, outwards into the wings, while the front wheel retracted backwards into a well that was placed further aft than on the Lightning. The upper fuselage behind the main wings spar carried fuel tanks, more fuel was carried in wing tanks.

 

Both research machines were ready in 1958 and immediately started with aerodynamic and material tests for the MoS, reaching top speeds of Mach 2.5 and altitudes of 60.000 ft. and more.

In parallel, work on the fighter version, now called “Levin”, had started. The airframe was basically the same as the P.6/1’s. Biggest visible changes were a wider air intake with a bigger central shock cone (primarily for a radar dish), a shorter afterburner section and an enlarged fin with area increased by 15% that had become necessary in order to compensate instability through the new nose layout and the potential carriage of external ordnance, esp. under the fuselage. This bigger fin was taken over to the Lightning F.3 that also initially suffered from longitudal instability due to the new Red Top missiles.

 

The Levin carried armament and avionics similar to the Lightning, including the Ferranti-developed AI.23 monopulse radar. The aircraft was to be fully integrated into a new automatic intercept system developed by Ferranti, Elliot, and BAC. It would have turned the fighters into something like a "manned missile" and greatly simplified intercepts.

 

Anyway, the Levin’s weapon arrangement was slightly different from the Lightning: the Levin’s armament comprised theoretically a mix of up to four 30mm Aden cannons and/or up to four of the new Red Top AAMs, or alternatively the older Firestreak. The guns were mounted in the upper nose flanks (similar to the early Lightning arrangement, but set further back), right under the cockpit hatch, while a pair of AAMs was carried on wing tip launch rails. Two more AAMs could be carried on pylons under the lower front fuselage, similar to the Lightning’s standard configuration, even though there was no interchangeable module. Since this four-missile arrangement would not allow any cannon to be carried anymore and caused excessive drag, the typical payload was limited to two Aden cannons and the single pair of wing-tip missiles.

 

Despite its proven Lightning ancestry, the development of the Levin went through various troubles. While the RB.106 worked fine in the research P.6/1, it took until 1962 that a fully reliable variant for the interceptor could be cleared for service. Meanwhile the Lightning had already evolved into the F.3 variant and political discussions circled around the end of manned military aircraft. To make matters even worse, the RAF refused to buy the completely automatic intercept system, despite the fact that it had been fully engineered at a cost of 1.4 million pounds and trialed in one of the P.1Bs.

 

Eventually, the Levin F.1 finally entered service in 1964, together with the Lightning F.3. While the Lightning was rather seen as a point defense interceptor, due to the type’s limited range: If a Lightning F.3 missed its target on its first pass, it almost never had enough fuel to make a second attempt without topping off from a tanker, which would give an intruder plenty of time to get to its target and then depart… The Lightning’s flight endurance was less than 2 hours (in the F.2A, other variants even less), and it was hoped that the Levin had more potential through a longer range. Anyway, in service, the Levin’s range in clean configuration was only about 8% better than the Lightning’s. The Levin F.1’s flight endurance was about 2 ½ hours – an improvement, but not as substantial as expected.

 

In order to improve the range on both fighters, English Electric developed a new, stiffened wing for the carriage of a pair of jettisonable overwing ferry tanks with a capacity of 1,182 liters (312 US gallons / 260 Imperial gallons, so-called “Overburgers”). The new wing also featured a kinked leading edge, providing better low-speed handling. From mid 1965 onwards, all Levins were directly produced in this F.2 standard, and during regular overhauls the simpler F.1 machines were successively updated. The Lightning introduced the kinked wing with the F.3A variant and it was later introduced with the F.2A and F.6A variants.

 

Levin production comprised 21 original F.1 airframes, plus 34 F.2 fighters, and production was stopped in 1967. A trainer version was not produced, the Lightning trainers were deemed sufficient for conversion since the Levin and the Lightning shared similar handling characteristics.

The Levin served only with RAF 29 and 65 Squadron, the latter re-instated in 1970 as a dedicated fighter squadron. When in November 1984 the Tornado squadrons began to form, the Levin was gradually phased out and replaced until April 1987 by the Tornado F.3.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length w/o pitot: 51 ft 5 in (15,70 m), 55 ft 8 in (16.99 m) overall

Wingspan incl. wingtip launch rails: 34 ft 9 in (10.54 m)

Height: 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)

Wing area: 474.5 ft² (44.08 m²)

Empty weight: 8937 kg (lb)

Loaded weight: 13,570 kg (29,915)

Max. takeoff weight: 15,210 kg (33,530 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1× Rolls-Royce RB.106-10S afterburning turbojet,

rated at 20,000 lbf (89 kN) dry and 26,000 lbf (116 kN) with afterburning

 

Performance:

Maximum speed:

- 1,150 km/h (620 kn, 715 mph, Mach 0.94) at sea level

- 2,230 km/h (1.202 kn, 1,386 mph, Mach 2.1;), clean with 2× Red Top AAMs at high altitude

- Mach 2.4 absolute top speed in clean configuration at 50.000 ft.

Range: 1,650 km (890 nmi, 1,025 mi) on internal fuel

Combat radius: 500 km (312 mi); clean, with a pair of wing tip Red Top AAMs

Ferry range: 1,270 mi (1.100 NM/ 2.040 km) with overwing tanks

Service ceiling: 16,760 m (55,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 136.7 m/s (27,000 ft/min)

Wing loading: 76 lb/ft² (370 kg/m²)

Thrust/weight: 0.78

Takeoff roll: 950 m (3,120 ft)

Landing roll: 700 m (2,300 ft)

 

Armament:

2× 30 mm (1.18 in) ADEN cannons with 120 RPG in the upper front fuselage

2× wing tip hardpoints for mounting air-to-air missiles (2 Red Top of Firestreak AAMs)

2× overwing pylon stations for 260 gal ferry tanks

Optional, but rarely used: 2× hardpoints under the front fuselage for mounting air-to-air missiles

(2 Red Top of Firestreak AAMs)

  

The kit and its assembly:

Another contribution to the Cold War GB at whatifmodelers.com, and the realization of a project I had on the agenda for long. The EE P.6/1 was a real project for a Mach 2+ research aircraft, as described above, but it never went off the drawing board. Its engine, the RB.106, also never saw the light of day, even though its later career as the Canadian Orenda Iroquois for the stillborn CF-105.

 

Building this aircraft as a model appears simple, because it’s a classic Lightning (actually a F.1 with the un-kinked wing and the small fin), just with a single engine and a rather tubular fuselage. But creating this is not easy at all…

 

I did not want to replicate the original P.6/1, but rather a service aircraft based on the research aircraft. Therefore I used parts from a Lightning F.6 (a vintage NOVO/Frog kit). For the fuselage I settled for a Su-17, from a MasterCraft kit. The kit’s selling point was its small price tag and the fuselage construction: the VG mechanism is hidden under a separate spine piece, and I wanted to transplant the Lightning’s spine and cockpit frame, so I thought that this would make things easier.

 

Nope.

 

Putting the parts from the VERY different kits/aircraft together was a major surgery feat, with several multiple PSR sessions on the fuselage, the air intake section (opened and fitted with both an internal splitter and a bulkhead to the cockpit section), the wings, the stabilizers, the fin… This model deserves the title “kitbash” like no other, because no major sections had ever been intended to be glued together, and in the intended position!

 

The landing gear was more or less taken OOB, but the main struts had to be elongated by 2mm – somehow the model turned out to be a low-riding tail sitter! The cockpit interior was improvised, too, consisting of a Su-17 cockpit tub, a scratched dashboard and a Martin Baker ejection seat from an Italeri Bae Hawk trainer.

 

Since most of the fuselage surface consists of various materials (styrene and two kinds of putty), I did not dare to engrave panel lines – after all the PSR work almost any surface detail was gone. I rather went for a graphic solution (see below). Some antennae and air scoops were added, though.

 

The overwing tanks come OOB from the NOVO kit, as well as the Red Top missiles, which ended up on improvised wing tip launch rails, based on design sketches for Lightning derivatives with this layout.

 

Colors and markings:

There are several “classic” RAF options, but I settled for a low-viz Eighties livery taken from BAC Lightnings. There’s a surprising variety of styles, and my version is a mix of several real world aircraft.

 

I settled for Dark Sea Grey upper surfaces (Modelmaster Authentic) with a high waterline, a fuselage completely in Medium Sea Grey (Humbrol 165 – had to be applied twice because the first tin I used was obviously old and the paint ended up in a tone not unlike PRU Blue!) and Light aircraft Grey underwing surfaces (Humbrol 166). The leading edges under the wings are Dark Sea Grey, too.

 

The cockpit interior was painted in dark grey (Humbrol 32 with some dry-brushing), while the landing gear is Aluminum (Humbrol 56).

 

Once the basic painting was done I had to deal with the missing panel lines on the fuselage and those raised lines that were sanded away during the building process. I decided to simulate these with a soft pencil, after the whole kit was buffed with a soft cotton cloth and some grinded graphite. This way, the remaining raised panel lines were emphasized, and from these the rest was drawn up. A ruler and masking tape were used as guidance for straight lines, and this worked better than expected, with good results.

 

As a next step, the newly created panels were highlighted with dry-brushed lighter tones of the basic paints (FS 36492 and WWII Italian Blue Grey from Modelmaster, and Humbrol 126), more for a dramatic than a weathered effect. The gun ports and the exhaust section were painted with Modelmaster Metallizer (Titanium and Magnesium).

 

The decals come from several Xtradecal aftermarket sheets, including a dedicated Lightning stencils sheet, another Lightning sheet with various squadron markings and a sheet for RAF Tornado ADVs.

The code number “XS970” was earmarked to a TSR.2, AFAIK, but since it was never used on a service aircraft it would be a good option for the Levin.

 

The kit received a coat of matt acrylic varnish from the rattle can – jn this case the finish was intended to bear a slight shine.

  

This was a project with LOTS of effort, but you hardly recognize it – it’s a single engine Lightning, so what? But welding the Lightning and Su-17 parts together for something that comes close to the P.6/1 necessitated LOTS of body work and improvisation, carving it from wood would probably have been the next complicated option. Except for the surprisingly long tail I am very happy with the result, despite the model’s shaggy origins, and the low-viz livery suits the sleek aircraft IMHO very well.

A shot from the 2013 annual Defined Movement Dance photo session.

Join/like my facebook page! www.facebook.com/45surfHerosJourneyMythology?ref=hl

 

Nikon D800E Photos of a Gorgeous Blond Bikini Model Goddess in Gold 45 Revolver Swimsuit with wavy-blond hair and pretty blue eyes! Pretty, pretty smile! A tall, thin, fit, classic California beach babe! Please share the exalted goddess with your friends.

 

Here is some epic video I shot at the same time as the stills with the Sony Alpha NEX 6 camera with the 50 mm F/1.8 prime lens for nex6 e mount cameras bracketed to my Nikon D800E (cool bokeh!):

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uUXm05lv_o (Sony NEX-6 with F/1.8 50mm Prime Nice Bokeh!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqVXRPAN0MQ (Sony NEX-6 with F/1.8 50mm Prime Nice Bokeh!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrAZEcBZxUQ (Nikon D800E with 70-200mm F/2.8 Nikkor LEns)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9phCXhm-bg (Sony NEX-6 with F/1.8 50mm Prime Nice Bokeh!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsQcSnPd2Uk (Sony NEX-6 with F/1.8 50mm Prime Nice Bokeh!)

 

With the black 45surf surfboard! It gets hot in the sand in the sun! Wearing a leather Buffalo Nickel Cowboy Hat! :)

 

Combine the shallow-depth-of-field with Sony NEX-6's latest face-tracking auto focus, and you can see how the moving video keeps the model's pretty blue eyes in focus, while blurring the background! The Sony Alpha NEX 6 has much better bokeh than the cameras I have been using! :)

 

She was tall, thin, fit, toned, defined, and beautiful!

 

Modeling the Gold 45 Revolver(TM) Gold'N'Virtue(TM) American Flag Bikini! Stars & Stripes Forever! :)

 

Nikon D800E Photographs of a Beautiful Sandy-Blonde/Brunette Swimsuit Bikini Model shot with the new Nikon D800 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens with the B W 77mm XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer with Multi-Resistant Nano Coating filter. I always, always shoot with a CP filter--even on cloudy days!

 

Shot in both RAW & JPEG, but all these photos are RAWs finished in Lightroom 4 ! :)

 

May the HJM Goddesses guide, inspire, and exalt ye along yer heroic artistic journey!

 

Modeling the black & gold "Gold 45 Revolver" Gold'N'Virtue swimsuits with the main equation to Moving Dimensions Theory on the swimsuits: dx4/dt=ic. Yes I have a Ph.D. in physics! :) You can read more about my research and Hero's Journey Physics here:

herosjourneyphysics.wordpress.com/ MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic--the foundational equation of all time and motion which is on all the shirts and swimsuits. Every photon that hits my Nikon D800e's sensor does it by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!

 

Reading some of the Great Books of Hero's Journey Mythology! Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Melville's Moby Dick, and Shakespeare's Hamlet!

 

All the Best on Your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (1867-1943), artist, was born on 8 April 1867 at Duneed, Victoria, fourth of five children of Charles Henry Streeton, schoolteacher, and his wife Mary, née Johnson, whom Charles had met on his voyage from England in 1854 and married in 1857 on his appointment to Queenscliff. The family moved to Melbourne in 1874 when Charles joined the administrative staff of the Education Department. They settled at Richmond and Arthur attended the Punt Road State School until 1880 when he became a junior clerk in the office of Rolfe & Co., importers, of Bourke Street.

As a child Arthur liked to draw and sketch in water-colour. He enrolled in night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria School of Design in 1882-87 and in 1886 his skill at sketching led to his being apprenticed as a lithographer to Charles Troedel & Co., of Collins Street. Streeton's first independently published black-and-white work, 'His First Snake', appeared in the Australasian Sketcher of 24 January 1889. He had no formal instruction in painting; his earliest extant oils date from 1884 and at this stage he was largely self-taught; he used such manuals as William Morris Hunt's Talks About Art (1877) which urged the emulation of plein air French painters Jean Millet and Camille Corot. Inspired by his reading, Streeton wrote to the compiler of Hunt's book for photographs of Corot's work.

In the summer of 1886 Streeton met Tom Roberts at Mentone. Seeing his work 'full of light and air', Roberts asked him to join a painting group which included Frederick McCubbin and Louis Abrahams. In their company Streeton continued to work on the problems of light and heat and space and distance which had already absorbed him. With the sale of 'Settler's Camp' and 'Pastoral', both exhibited with the Victorian Artists' Society in 1888, he was able to paint full time: for the next two years he worked at Box Hill and Heidelberg with his artist friends who now included Charles Conder, and also in the city where he did portraits and studies of the Yarra River and its bridges. A camp established at an old house at Eaglemont, overlooking the Yarra valley near Heidelberg, became the focus of their artistic fellowship. Streeton and Conder supplemented their income by giving painting lessons to young women; at weekends artists and students visited to paint and picnic beneath the pines.

On 17 August 1889 the Heidelberg painters opened their 9 x 5 (inches) Exhibition of Impressions at Buxton's Art Gallery, Melbourne. The exhibition was a statement of rebellion by young artists, influenced by international trends, against the prevailing academic tradition of Victorian painting. The 182 exhibits included forty by Streeton. Mostly painted on cedar cigar-box lids and hung among silks, they were Impressionist in the direct manner of painting and the study of momentary effects, while retaining the plein-airist tonal use of colour. The catalogue stated: 'An effect is only momentary: so an impressionist tries to find his place … So in these works, it has been the object of the artists to render faithfully, and thus obtain first records of effects widely differing, and often of very fleeting character'. The exhibition won popular success, but provoked critical scorn, expressed most virulently by the influential Argus critic James Smith. Streeton, Roberts and Conder responded in a letter to the Argus, asserting: 'Any form of nature which moves us strongly by its beauty, whether strong or vague in its drawing, defined or undefinite in its light, rare or ordinary in its colour, is worthy of our best efforts'.

The camp broke up in January 1890; three months later Conder left Australia for Paris, taking with him Streeton's 'Golden Summer' (1889) which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1891, and hung on the line and awarded an honorable mention at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, Paris, in 1892. Streeton, whose 'Still Glides the Stream and Shall for Ever Glide' (1890) had been acquired by the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, moved to Sydney. Julian Ashton saw him then as 'a slim, debonair young man … with a little gold pointed beard and fair complexion', who, when he was not painting, 'was quoting Keats and Shelley'. Streeton lived at 'Curlew Camp', Little Sirius Cove, Mosman, with Roberts and other impecunious artists, and painted a variety of harbour views, Coogee beach scenes, art-nouveau-inspired nudes and in 1893 two urban masterpieces, 'Circular Quay' and 'The Railway Station'. With Roberts he opened a teaching studio in Pitt Street.

In 1891 Streeton wrote to Roberts of his yearning to 'try something entirely new': 'to translate some of the great hidden poetry' of the immense, elemental outback. He travelled inland in New South Wales and painted directly in front of his subject, striving to capture—as he told Roberts—the 'great, gold plains', the 'hot, trying winds' and the 'slow, immense summer'. The paintings of this period, including 'Fire's On' (1891), are heroic landscapes which successfully balance bravura technique with real inspiration and feeling. His Hawkesbury River series (1896) is remarkable for the rendering of light, heat and distance. On the recommendation of John Mather the National Gallery of Victoria bought one, 'The Purple Noon's Transparent Might', shown at Streeton's first one-man Melbourne exhibition in December 1896.

After this success Streeton sailed for England, spending five months painting in Cairo en route. The early years in London were hard; he had few friends and felt none of the intuitive affinity with the English landscape that had inspired his Australian paintings. Homesick and nostalgic for his youth, he seems also to have suffered a time of artistic confusion. There was little interest in his work and little success at the major exhibiting venues, the Royal Academy and the New English Art Club. In 1906-07 he spent a year in Australia and had considerable acclaim with sales of his English and recent Australian work. G. W. Marshall-Hall and (Sir) Walter Baldwin Spencer were early patrons who became friends.

Returning to London, Streeton married Esther Leonora Clench, a Canadian violinist, on 11 January 1908 in the Marylebone register office. Apart from a visit home in 1913-14, he spent the years before World War I based in London whence he sent works for exhibition in Australia. During this period Streeton's art began to win recognition in England, France and at the international exhibitions held in the United States of America. His wife's extensive social contacts helped with commissions and Streeton's formerly rather reclusive personality had to respond to de rigueur 'country-house' weekends.

On 24 April 1915 Streeton enlisted as a private in the Australian Army Medical Corps and was posted to Wandsworth where he worked as an orderly for the next two years. Commissioned honorary lieutenant and appointed official war artist in 1918, he spent two periods in France documenting the Western Front for the Commonwealth government. In contrast to the Middle East paintings of George Lambert, Streeton concentrated on the landscape of war; his paintings show the desolation of the terrain, but none of the tragedy or drama of human suffering. As throughout his career, landscape views rather than figure-painting remained the core of his art. In July 1919 at the Alpine Club, London, he showed a series of war paintings entitled 'With Australians on the Somme'. His best water-colours recall his early work in their immediacy and delicate portrayal of light.

After the war Streeton and his family visited Australia. In 1922 they returned to London, via St Mary's, Ontario, Canada, where Nora Streeton's mother lived. Streeton's paintings of Canada were exhibited at the Montross Gallery, New York, in January 1923, but they aroused little interest in spite of a warm press reception. That year he returned to Victoria where he bought a home at Toorak and built a cottage at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges. He made painting trips to many Australian sites and in 1928 was awarded the Wynne prize for landscape for 'Afternoon Light: the Goulburn Valley'.

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Nikon D800E Photos of Pretty Blonde Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess with a black 45surf surfboard! A classic goddess! A classic California Surf Goddess--the archetypal blond hair beach babe with pretty blue eyes!

 

Here is some epic video I shot of the gorgeous goddess at the same time as the stills with the Sony Alpha A7R camera with the 50 mm F/1.8 prime lens for nex6 e mount cameras bracketed to my Nikon D800E (cool bokeh!):

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKP_NKztszc

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCO6zo-KCI4

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5pfFV-XWE

 

The blue-eyed goddess was modeling the gold 45 revolver gold'n'virtue bikini with the famous golden gun/colt 45 revolver from my favorite film--Sergio Leone's and Clint Eastwood's "Fistful of Dollars!"

 

Combine the shallow-depth-of-field with Sony NEX-6's latest face-tracking auto focus, and you can see how the moving video keeps the model's pretty blue eyes in focus, while blurring the background! The Sony Alpha NEX 6 has much better bokeh than the cameras I have been using! :)

 

She was tall, thin, fit, toned, defined, and beautiful!

 

Modeling the Gold 45 Revolver(TM) Gold'N'Virtue(TM) Bikini! On the barrel of the Gold 45 Revolver is the first word of Homer's Iliad! "RAGE: Sing O Goddess the Rage of Achilles!"

 

Nikon D800E Photographs of a Beautiful Sandy-Blonde/Brunette Swimsuit Bikini Model shot with the Nikon D800E and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens with a CP--the B W 77mm XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer with Multi-Resistant Nano Coating, all on the amazing Nikon D800E Camera.

 

Shot in both RAW & JPEG, but all these photos are RAWs finished in Lightroom 5 ! :)

 

All the Gold'N'Virtue bikinis and 45surf clothes have the main equation to Moving Dimensions Theory on the swimsuits: dx4/dt=ic. Yes I have a Ph.D. in physics! :) You can read more about my research and Hero's Journey Physics here:

herosjourneyphysics.wordpress.com/ MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic--the foundational equation of all time and motion which is on all the shirts and swimsuits. Every photon that hits my Nikon D800e's sensor does it by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!

 

May the Hero's Journey Mythology Goddess inspire you (as they have inspired me!) along your own artistic journey! Love, love, love the 70-200mm F/2.8 Lens! :)

 

All the Best on Your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

 

Pretty Fitness Agency Model Modeling Gold'N'Virtue Johnny Ranger McCoy Gold 45 Revolver Swimsuits & More!

 

A Gold 45 Goddess exalts the archetypal form of Athena--the Greek Goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy, heroic endeavour, handicrafts and reason. A Gold 45 Goddess embodies 45SURF's motto "Virtus, Honoris, et Actio Pro Veritas, Amor, et Bellus, (Strength, Honor, and Action for Truth, Love, and Beauty," and she stands ready to inspire and guide you along your epic, heroic journey into art and mythology. It is Athena who descends to call Telemachus to Adventure in the first book of Homer's Odyssey--to man up, find news of his true father Odysseus, and rid his home of the false suitors, and too, it is Athena who descends in the first book of Homer's Iliad, to calm the Rage of Achilles who is about to draw his sword so as to slay his commander who just seized Achilles' prize, thusly robbing Achilles of his Honor--the higher prize Achilles fought for. And now Athena descends once again, assuming the form of a Gold 45 Goddess, to inspire you along your epic journey of heroic endeavour. And like Helen of Troy, a Gold 45 Goddess is worth fighting a ten year war for.

Nikon D800 E Photos of Beautiful Swimsuit Brunette Bikini Model Goddess with Pretty Brown Eyes!

 

A tall, thin, fit goddess on a most beautiful sunny/cloudy/sunny/coudy (it changed seven times!) The weather could not make up its mind that splendid AM in Malibu!

 

I was also shooting some video with the Sony A99 SLT and Panasonic TMK900 camcorder of the Goddess modeling the Gold'N'Virtue Gold 45 Revolver swimsuit which can be seen here:

 

youtu.be/9hjcFoSXAMg

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZVlCZV48k

 

Be sure to watch the goddess video in Full 1080P! She was modeling all seven of the Gold'N'Virtue Gold 45 Revolver swimsuit bikini designs! More photos to come!

 

The epic photos were shot with my favorite lens the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom on the amazing Nikon D800E Camera!

 

With the black 45SURF surfboard!

 

ll the Gold'N'Virtue bikinis have the main equation to Moving Dimensions Theory on the swimsuits: dx4/dt=ic. Yes I have a Ph.D. in physics! :) You can read more about my research and Hero's Journey Physics here:

herosjourneyphysics.wordpress.com/ MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic--the foundational equation of all time and motion which is on all the shirts and swimsuits. Every photon that hits my Nikon D800e's sensor does it by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!

 

May the Hero's Journey Mythology Goddess inspire you (as they have inspired me!) along your own artistic journey! Love, love, love the 70-200mm F/2.8 Lens! :)

 

All the Best on Your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy! Wearin' the Gold 45 Revolver ballcap ! :)

   

Historic notes from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage's website:

 

"Present day Killara Railway Station is located on the North Shore line.

 

"The ‘North Shore’ of Sydney can be defined as a relatively narrow strip of land extending from Milson’s Point to Waitara, a distance of approximately 20km.

 

"In 1887, tenders were called for construction of a branch line extending south from Hornsby to the North Shore. The 16.8km section between Hornsby and St. Leonard’s was opened on 1 January 1890. Stations provided at the opening of the line included Chatswood and St. Leonard’s. A single line was constructed at the time. The line between St. Leonard’s and Milson’s Point (the terminus at the edge of the harbour) was completed 1 May 1893.

 

"Killara Railway Station was opened between Lindfield and Gordon on 10 July 1899.

 

"A single line was built from the outset, with the single platform constructed on the Down side of the line, in such a way that it could easily be modified to become part of an island platform arrangement when duplication was carried out. A temporary timber building was provided initially, but a standard island platform type brick building was built in 1906 in anticipation of the future duplication.

 

"In 1909, duplication had been completed between Hornsby and St. Leonard’s, including through Killara Station. At Killara during the duplication, the original single platform was replaced by a new island platform with the new Down main line running behind (western side) of the brick station building, which had been provided in 1906.

 

"A signal frame was placed at the Milson’s Point-end of the building and a footbridge spanned both tracks, allowing access to the platforms by a set of stairs.

 

"Electrification of the North Shore line had been completed by 1928, including through Killara Railway Station. During the electrification and the installation of automatic signalling, the signal frame was removed. An extension of the awning then allowed weather protection for customers at the booking office window. In addition, a number of timber overbridges and underbridges were replaced by brick or steel structures.

 

"With the general upgrade of Sydney Trains stations in recent years, some changes have been carried out at Killara, although the 1909 station building remains."

Six in the world, and only four of them are the Edition. Koenigsegg's masterpieces are such a beauty to behold, combining the meticulous art of carbon fiber weaves to create a record-breaking piece of engineering. And to make things better, there is only one RHD CCXR made by them, and this is it.

How special is that?

Rainy day at the BMW M Tour event in Half Moon Bay. I was pleasantly surprised at how sharp the 17-85mm was.

Photo © Tristan Savatier - All Rights Reserved - License this photo on www.loupiote.com/3911824344

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Didgeridoo Meditation at the Center Camp Cafe

 

Photo taken at the Burning Man 2009 festival (Black Rock Desert, Nevada).

 

If you like this photo, follow me on instagram (tristan_sf) and don't hesitate to leave a comment or email me.

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IMG_3652-2-1

Rubens Peale with a Geranium

 

West Building, Main Floor—Gallery 60A

 

•Date: 1801

•Medium: Oil on Canvas

•Dimensions:

oOverall: 71.4 × 61 cm (28⅛ × 24 in.)

oFramed: 89.5 × 79.7 × 5.6 cm (35¼ × 31⅜ × 2 3/16 in.)

•Credit Line: Patrons’ Permanent Fund

•Accession Number: 1985.59.1

•Artists/Makers:

oArtist: Rembrandt Peale, American, 1778-1860

 

Overview

 

Charles Willson Peale christened most of his seventeen children after famous artists and scientists; however, there is little consistency between the sons’ and daughters’ namesakes and their adult careers. While Rembrandt Peale did become a painter and the portraitist of this work, Rubens Peale, who sat for this likeness at the age of seventeen, was a botanist.

 

Painted in Philadelphia, the work could be described as a double portrait because the geranium, reputed to be the first specimen of this exotic plant ever grown in the New World, is as lovingly portrayed as the painter’s brother is. The Peale family often collaborated in their endeavors, and here Rembrandt commemorated his brother’s horticultural triumph. Rembrandt’s own skill is evident in the clearly defined pools of light on Rubens’ cheeks. In a phenomenon familiar to all, his glasses focus the beams passing through them, thereby forming the brighter disks of light under his eyes.

 

Rubens Peale with a Geranium is a supreme example of the unaffected naturalism which typified the artist’s early maturity. Combining firm, clear drawing, carefully modulated color, and an intense devotion to detail, twenty-three-year-old Rembrandt Peale produced an eloquent expression of his family’s philosophical orientation.

 

Inscription

 

•Lower Right: Rem Peale / 1801

 

Provenance

 

The artist; James Claypoole Copper, Philadelphia;[1] Mary Jane Peale [1827-1902], Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the daughter of the sitter, Rubens Peale;[2] her nephew, Albert Charles Peale [1849-1914], Washington, D.C.;[3] his cousin, Jessie Sellers Colton [Mrs. Sabin Woolworth Colton, Jr., 1855-1932], Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania;[4] her daughter, Mildred Colton [Mrs. Robert P.] Esty [1883-1977], Ardmore, Pennsylvania;[5] sold to Lawrence A. Fleischman, Detroit, Michigan;[6] (Kennedy Galleries, New York); purchased by Pauline E. [Mrs. Norman B.] Woolworth;[7] (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 5 December 1985, lot 42); purchased through (Kennedy Galleries, New York) by NGA.

 

[1]Rebecca Irwin Graff, Genealogy of the Claypoole Family of Philadelphia, 1893: 79, which does not record Copper’s life dates.

[2]Copper’s gift of the portrait to Rubens’ Peale’s daughter Mary Jane Peale in 1854 is discussed in the NGA systematic catalogue. For Mary Jane Peale’s dates, see the genealogy of the Peale Family in Charles H. Elam, ed., The Peale Family: Three Generations of American Artists, Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, 1967: 10, and Lillian B. Miller, In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860, Exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1992: 231. For information that she lived in Pottsville, see Carol Eaton Hevner, “Rembrandt Peale’s portraits of his brother Rubens”, Antiques 130 (November): 1012.

[3]Mary Jane Peale bequeathed the portrait to her nephew Albert Charles Peale, the son of her brother Charles Willson Peale (1821-1871) and Harriet Friel Peale; for his dates see Charles Coleman Sellers, “Peale Genealogy,” manuscript, Peale Papers Office, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., and The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 21: 255-56. Albert Peale was one of the executors of Mary Jane Peale’s estate.

[4]The painting belonged to Jessie Sellers Colton by 1923, when she lent it to the exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A label formerly on the painting (in NGA curatorial files) gives her name and address, and states that she was the great-niece of Rubens Peale. For her dates see Charles Coleman Sellers, “Peale Genealogy,” manuscript, Peale Papers Office, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

[5]Mrs. Esty owned the portrait when it was reproduced in Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peale, Later Life (1790-1827), Philadelphia, 1947: 2:opp. 147, fig. 12, and lent it in 1955 to the exhibition at Pennsylvania State University. For her birth date see Charles Coleman Sellers, “Peale Genealogy,” manuscript, Peale Papers Office, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; her date of death is recorded in Social Register Association, Social Register, Summer 1978, New York, 1978: 92:98.

[6]Fleischman confirmed his ownership of the portrait in his letter of 19 December 1985 to NGA (in NGA curatorial files).

[7]Mrs. Woolworth was the owner by 1963, when she lent the painting to the exhibition American Art from American Collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Associated Names

 

•Colton, Jessie Sellers

•Copper, James Claypoole

•Esty, Mildred Colton

•Fleischman, Lawrence A.

•Kennedy Galleries

•Kennedy Galleries

•Peale, Albert Charles

•Peale, Mary Jane

•Sotheby’s

•Woolworth, Pauline E.

 

Exhibition History

 

•1923—Exhibition of Portraits by Charles Willson Peale and James Peale and Rembrandt Peale, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1923, no. 73.

•1955—Pennsylvania Painters, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; The Toledo Museum of Art, 1955-1956, no. 11.

•1960—The Fabulous Peale Family, Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1960, no. 74.

•1963—American Art from American Collections, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1963, no. 185.

•1965—The Peale Family and Peale’s Baltimore Museum, 1814-1830, The Peale Museum, Baltimore, 1965, no. 16.

•1967—The Peale Family: Three Generations of American Artists, The Detroit Institute of Arts; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, 1967, no. 139.

•1970—19th Century America: Paintings and Sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970, no. 2, repro.

•1970—The American Painting Collection of Mrs. Norman B. Woolworth, Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, 1970, no. 87, repro.

•1976—The Eye of Thomas Jefferson, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1976, no. 600, repro.

•1980—The Woolworth Collection: American Paintings, Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, 1980, checklist no. 2.

•1981—Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life, 1801-1939, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa; The Oakland Museum; Baltimore Museum of Art; National Academy of Design, New York, 1981-1982, checklist no. 112 (repro. in cat. by W. Gerdts).

•1983—A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting 1760-1910, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Grand Palais, Paris, 1983-1984, no. 11, repro.

•1989—Raphaelle Peale Still Lifes, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,; The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1988-1989, fig. 56.

•1992—In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1992-1993, fig. 22, pl. 4.

•1996—The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy 1770-1870, Philadelphia Museum of Art; M. H. De Young Memorial Museum; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1996-1997, no. 162, pl. 16 and frontispiece.

•1999—America: The New World in 19th-Century Painting, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, 1999, no. 18, repro.

•2003—Jefferson’s America & Napoleon’s France: An Exhibition for the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial, New Orleans Museum of Art, 2003, no. 136, repro.

•2011—The Great American Hall of Wonders: Art, Science, and Invention in the Nineteenth Century, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2011-2012, fig. 102.

•2015—Audubon to Warhol: The Art of the American Still Life, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Phoenix Art Museum, 2015-2016, (shown only in Philadelphia).

 

Bibliography

 

•1947—Sellers, Charles Coleman. Charles Willson Peale. Vol. 2: Later Life (1790-1827). Philadelphia, 1947: fig. 12, opp. 147.

•1956—Rendezvous for Taste: Peale’s Baltimore Museum, 1814-1830. Exh. cat. Peale Museum, Baltimore, 1956: repro. 2, 28, no. 82 (not exhibited).

•1965—Feld, Stuart P. “‘Loan Collection,’ 1965.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 23, no. 8 (April 1965): 283, repro.

•1971—Gerdts, William H., and Russell Burke. American Still-Life Painting. New York, 1971: 36, repro. 34, fig. 2-12.

•1976—Adams, William Howard, ed. The Eye of Thomas Jefferson. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1976: 346, no. 600, repro.

•1976—From Seed to Flower: Philadelphia, 1681-1876; A Horticultural Point of View. Exh. cat. Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Philadelphia, 1976: 24, repro. 27.

•1977—Levene, John R. Clinical Refraction and Visual Science. London, 1977: 171-172.

•1981—Gerdts, William H. Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life 1801-1939. Columbia, Missouri, 1981: 3, color pl. 3, 62-63.

•1983—Miller, Lillian B., Sidney Hart, and David C. Ward, eds. The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family. Vol. 2: Charles Willson Peale: The Artist as Museum Keeper, 1791-1810. New Haven, 1988: 1047 n.4, 1096, 1098 n.15, 1241 n.2, pl. 6.

•1984—Foshay, Ella. Reflections of Nature: Flowers in American Art. Exh. cat. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1984: 32-34, repro.

•1985—Hevner, Carol Eaton. Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860: A Life in the Arts. With a biographical essay by Lillian B. Miller. Exh. cat. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1985: 20, 21 fig. 5, 103 n. 8.

•1986—Hevner, Carol Eaton. “Rembrandt Peale’s Portraits of His Brother Rubens.” Antiques 130 (November 1986): 1010-1013.

•1986—Hevner, Carol Eaton. “Rubens Peale with a Geranium by Rembrandt Peale.” In Art at Auction: The Year at Sotheby’s 1985-86. New York, 1986: 114-116, fig. 1 (color).

•1987—Hevner, Carol Eaton. “The Cover.” Journal of the American Medical Association 257, no. 15 (17 April 1987): 1996 and color repro., cover.

•1988—Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 66, no. 10, color repro.

•1988—Wilmerding, John. “America’s Young Masters: Raphaelle, Rembrandt, and Rubens.” In Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. Raphaelle Peale Still Lifes. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Washington, D.C., 1988: 72-93.

•1991—Gingold, Diane J., and Elizabeth A.C. Weil. The Corporate Patron. New York, 1991: 136-137, color repro.

•1991—Kopper, Philip. America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 292, color repro.

•1992—American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 256, repro.

•1992—Hevner, Carol Eaton. “The Paintings of Rembrandt Peale: Character and Conventions.” In Miller, Lillian B. In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860. Exh. cat. National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1992: 255, 57-60, fig. 22, 160, color pl. 4, 243.

•1992—National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 222, repro.

•1994—Craven, Wayne. American Art: History and Culture. New York, 1994: 155, color fig. 11.3.

•1996—Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin. American Paintings Before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum. London, 1996: no. 597, repro.

•1996—Miller, Lillian B., ed. The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870. Exh. cat. Trust for Museum Exhibitions and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1996: repro. 35, 51-52, 309.

•1996—Miller, Lillian B. “The Peale Legacy: The Art of an American Family, 1770-1870.” American Art Review 8, no. 6 (1996): repro. 141.

•1997—Follensbee, Billie J.A. “Rubens Peale’s Spectacles: An Optical Illusion?” Survey of Ophthalmology 41, no. 5 (March-April 1997): 417-424, repro.

•1997—Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York, 1997: 106-107, fig. 69.

•1998—Torchia, Robert Wilson, with Deborah Chotner and Ellen G. Miles. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1998: 48-57, color repro.

•2002—Solti, Carol. “Rembrandt Peale’s Rubens Peale with a Geranium: A Possible Source in David Teniers the Younger.” American Art Journal 33, nos. 1 and 2 (2002): 4-19, fig. 1.

•2004—Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 332-333, no. 267, color repro.

•2013—Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London, 2013: 407.

•2015—“Art for the Nation: The Story of the Patrons’ Permanent Fund.” National Gallery of Art Bulletin, no. 53 (Fall 2015): 2, repro.

•2019—Wallach, Alan. “‘A Distasteful, Indelicate Subject’.” American Art 33, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 29, 30, color fig. 2.

  

From American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II:

 

1985.59.1

 

Rubens Peale with a Geranium

 

•1801

•Oil on Canvas, 71.4 × 61 (28 Vs × 24)

•Patrons’ Permanent Fund

•Inscriptions:

oAt Lower Right: Rem Peale / 1801

 

Technical Notes:

 

The tacking margins of the mediumweight plain-weave fabric support have been trimmed. The painting has been lined with a heavier weight plain-weave fabric that appears to be a prepared artist’s canvas; its white ground layer is visible on the reverse of the lining.1 The ground layer is creamy white and of medium thickness. Infrared reflectography revealed limited underdrawing in the right hand and the flowerpot. The paint was applied as a smooth, thin, fluid-to-dry paste, generally wet-into-wet, with some low impasto in the highlights. X-radiography reveals slight changes in the sitter’s neckwear. A small ruffle that was painted below the fabric around the sitter’s neck has been covered with addition to that fabric, and by the black waistcoat. Infrared reflectography reveals changes in the geranium leaves and shows that the entire rim of the flowerpot was painted before it was covered by the lower leaf.

 

There is moderate abrasion, which reveals the ground in some areas. There are also scattered pinpoint old flake losses, and occasional other repaired losses, including one measuring approximately i cm by 0.5 cm in the right side of the lens that is on the viewer’s right, and a slightly smaller loss outside and to the right of the frame around the same lens. The varnish is slightly discolored.

 

Provenance:

 

The artist; James Claypoole Copper, Philadelphia;2 Mary Jane Peale [1827-1902], Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the daughter of the sitter, Rubens Peale;3 her nephew, Albert Charles Peale [1849-1914], Washington, D.C.;4 his cousin, Jessie Sellers Colton [Mrs. Sabin Woolworth Colton, Jr., 1855-1932], Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania;5 her daughter, Mildred Colton [Mrs. Robert P.] Esty [1883-1977], Ardmore, Pennsylvania;6 sold to Lawrence A. Fleischman, Detroit, Michigan;7 (Kennedy Galleries, New York); purchased by Pauline E. [Mrs. Norman B.] Woolworth;8 (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 5 December 1985, no. 42).

 

Exhibited:

 

Exhibition of Portraits by Charles Willson Peale and James Peale and Rembrandt Peale, PAFA, 1923, no. 73. Pennsylvania Painters, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, 1955-1956, no. 11. The Fabulous Peale Family, Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1960, no. 74.9 American Art from American Collections, MM A, 1963, no. 185. The Peale Family and Peale’s Baltimore Museum, 1814-1830, PM, 1965, no. 16. The Peale Family: Three Generations of American Artists, DÍA; MWPI, 1967, no. 139. 19th Century America: Paintings and Sculpture, MM A, 1970, no. 2. The American Painting Collection of Mrs. Norman B. Woolworth, Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, 1970, no. 87. The Eye of Thomas Jefferson, NGA, 1976, no. 600. Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa; Oakland Museum; BMA; NAD, 1981-1982, checklist no. 112. A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting 1760-1910, MFA; CGA; Grand Palais, Paris, 1983-1984, no. 11. Raphaelle Peale Still Lifes, NGA; PAFA, 1988-1989, no cat. no. In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, ijj8-i86o, NPG, 1992-1993, no cat. no. The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870, PMA; FAMSF; CGA, 1996-1997, no. 162.10

 

This portrait of seventeen-year-old Rubens Peale by his older brother Rembrandt Peale is among the finest portraits in the history of American art. Rembrandt Peale painted the portrait with exceptional care and precision, observing his brother so closely that the viewer feels emotionally as well as physically close to him. Rubens, seated at a table, leans slightly to his right and looks downward. He seems to be preoccupied and not looking through his silver-framed glasses. Next to him on the table is a tall, somewhat leggy geranium with green leaves and small red flowers, in a terra-cotta pot. Rubens’ left hand, resting on the table, holds a second pair of glasses, while his right hand, crossing his left, rests on the rim of the flowerpot, two fingers touching the soil. Rembrandt’s sensitivity toward his sibling seems to be mirrored in Rubens’ care for the plant, characterized by this gentle, nurturing gesture. Rembrandt also emphasizes the sense of touch over sight, since Rubens is not looking at the plant. Rembrandt has also carefully represented the direction of light, which falls from the upper left onto Rubens and the plant, perhaps signaling the depiction of a specific time and place.

 

Rubens Peale (1784-1865) was the ninth of eleven children of artist and naturalist Charles Willson Peale and his first wife Rachel. Six of their eleven children did not survive to adulthood, and Rachel herself died in 1790, when Rubens was a child. He was the younger brother of Raphaelle, Rembrandt, and Angelica Kauffmann Peale, and the older brother of Sophonisba Angusciola Peale. Rubens was small for his age, with poor eyesight, as he later described himself:

 

I was very delicate in health and our family phycian [sic] Dr. Hutchins required that I should be kept out of the sun as much as possible…. I was not permitted to playin the streets with the other boys…. I remember perfectly well of chasing my sister Sophonisba (now Mrs. Coleman Sellers) about the room with a paper mask on, and was so small that I ran under the tea table without touching it, or stooping in the least degree…. I made but little progress at school for my sight was so imperfect that I had to have a spelling book of clean print and white paper (at that date a very rare article) and seated as near the window as possible to see to read.11

 

Rubens’ restricted life soon changed for the better:

 

“One day when I returned from school I was informed that our family Phycian [sic] was dead, at this inteligence I was so much pleased that I danced about the room with joy. … I then went into the garden and took the watering pot and watered my flowers which I was forbid to do, and after that time I gradually increased in strength & health.”12

 

From an early age, Rubens had remarkable success at raising both plants and animals. Once, when his favorite bird, a painted bunting, was missing, he learned that his father’s friend, Timothy Matlack, had found the lost pet. Matlack refused to return it to Rubens until Rubens could convince him that it was his. “I told him that if the bird was mine, it would come to me to be corressed [sic], we entered the room together, at once the bird flew to me and lit on my sholder and wanted to feed out of my mouth and remained with me as long as we were in the room, he then acknoledged the bird belonged to me and give it up with much reluctance.”13

 

Rembrandt Peale probably painted his brother’s portrait sometime during the first six or seven months of 1801. At that time Rembrandt was eagerly seeking portrait commissions and also was attempting to get a patronage job in the administration of President Thomas Jefferson. Later, from midsummer until the end of that year, Rembrandt was preoccupied with his father’s extraordinary project to exhume and restore two almost complete mastodon skeletons found in upstate New York. One of the skeletons was ready for viewing at the museum on Christmas eve, 1801.14 Sometime within the next few years, Rembrandt gave the portrait to James Claypoole Copper, a member of the extended Peale family. Copper was the son of Norris Copper and Elizabeth Claypoole Copper; Elizabeth’s sister Mary was the wife of Rembrandt’s uncle, James Peale. In 1797 Copper’s widowed mother married Timothy Matlack (see the entry for 1947.17.10, p. 72, for the Gallery’s portrait of Matlack, which is attributed to Rembrandt Peale).15 Rembrandt Peale painted Copper’s portrait in about 1806 (private collection).10 Charles Willson Peale described him in 1809 to Rembrandt as “your friend Copper.”17 Copper managed Charles Willson Peale’s estate after Peale’s death in 1827.

 

Important information about the portrait comes from Rubens’ daughter Mary Jane Peale, to whom Copper gave the painting in 1854, when she was twenty-seven years old. When she recorded the gift in her diary on 20 April, she gave the history of the painting as she knew it, explaining why the geranium was significant and also why Peale was shown with two pairs of glasses. Since Rubens and Rembrandt Peale, Mary Jane’s father and uncle, were both living when Copper gave her the portrait, her comments carry considerable weight:

 

I called at Mr Coppers—he presented me with a very beautiful portrait of Father when about [age left blank] he is represented with a flower-pot in his hand containing a Waterloo geranium—when it was first introduced & considered very wonderful—a very fine specimen. It was first painted without spectacles & then to make it more perfect it was painted with spectacles on the eyes as he always wore them & then the others were left in order not to mar the picture. When it was painted Uncle Rembrant who painted the picture lived at the head of Mulberry Court. After the picture was finished it was placed in the window filling up the space of the lower sash—presently Father’s pet Dog a large mastiff—came running in to hunt Father & seeing him (as he thought) rushed towards it & would have bounded on him had not the family prevented it. This pleased them all very much. Mr. Copper was a very dear friend of Uncle Rembrants & always admired this picture very much so when Uncle went to Europe he presented this picture to Mr. Copper as something very good—so now before Mr. Copper died he wished to present it to Father’s daughter.18

 

Copper wrote Mary Jane on 28 April about the gift:

 

Dear Miss Peale It gives me much pleasure to acknowlege the receipt of a very pleasing note from the daughter of one of my old friends. I have necessarily delayed sending the portrait of your father until to day—I have looked at it many and many a time, with recollections of old times, of a mixed character, both of pleasure and regret, the natural result of the discontinuance of old habits and old associations. May your course through life, my dear young lady, leave you few causes of regret, and a great many thoughts of times well and happily spent. I request to be remembered most kindly to your good father & mother.19

 

At an unknown date Mary Jane Peale annotated the letter, repeating much of the information that she had written in her diary, but adding some important comments:

 

This letter was received by me from Mr. James G Copper. The Picture when painted was presented to him … He kept it during his life and when an old man sent for me, because he wanted to see if he liked me, and if he did he was going to give me the picture, so I suppose he liked me because he sent it. uncle Rembrant put on it a new back & cleaned it for me. It was painted on account of the Geranium which was the first one in this country. It was first painted without the glasses on but in the hand—they thought it would look better with them on, and they were painted—but uncle Rembrandt who painted it thought it would spoil the painting of the hand to take the others out, so they did not…. The geranium is a little withered in the painting room.20

 

Mary Jane Peale repeated and refined these stories in the 1880s. When she included the information in her “List of Pictures I Own, 1884,” she referred to the plant as “the Scarlet Geranium which was the first brought to this country.” She said that the painting “always belonged to Mr Copper.”21 The following year she repeated much of the information in her “List of Pictures I Own; 1885.”22 And in 1901 she again described the painting, this time in a codicil to her will, in which she stated that Peale had painted the portrait for Copper.23

 

In the portrait, Rubens and the geranium command equal attention. The plant becomes a significant means of characterizing the young man. Despite being named after the seventeenth-century painter Peter Paul Rubens, Rubens Peale by 1801 had demonstrated his skills as a naturalist rather than as an artist. Singled out by his father as a future museum proprietor, Rubens Peale later managed the Peale museums in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. In retrospect, he remembered how in 1793, not yet ten years old, he was entrusted with the care of unusual plants: “My Father received from France a number of subjects of Natural History in exchange for those he had sent, consisting of Birds, Reptáis, Insects & Seeds, amongst the latter was a paper of the Red Tomato & Okra. I planted them in potts, and had them growing, supposing them to be flowers, a french gentleman from St. Domingo recognized the Tomato as a favourite fruit of his. I gave the balance of these seeds to Mr. McMahon & Landreth, they soon introduced them in to the Phila, market.”24 His concern for his plants is reflected in letters he wrote to his family after he and Rembrandt left Philadelphia for New York in March 1802. Writing to his father on 2 April, he commented, “I hope my Plants are not negleckted.”25 On 19 April, he wrote his sister Sophonisba: “I think it is about time to take out the plants but I cannot judge for we left Summer in Philadelphia and brought winter along with us.”20

 

Mary Jane Peale’s comments about the geranium, when combined with information about the history of these plants in America, suggests that the painting may depict a new variety. In 1854 she described the plant as “a Waterloo geranium—when it was first introduced & considered very wonderful—a very fine specimen” and in 1884 as “the Scarlet Geranium which was the first brought to this country.” She also wrote that the portrait was “painted on account of the Geranium which was the first one in this country.” Is this a documented horticultural “first”?

 

Geraniums were first imported from South Africa to Europe in the early eighteenth century. The plants were introduced to North American horticulture in the mid-1700s. As tropical plants they required greenhouse, or hothouse, care in colder climates. In 1760 English horticulturist Peter Collinson wrote to his friend John Bartram in Philadelphia: “I am pleased thou will build a green-house. I will send thee seeds of Geraniums to furnish it. They have a charming variety, and make a pretty show in a green-house; but contrive and make a stove in it, to give heat in severe weather.”27 To distinguish this type of geranium from the other plants of the Geraniaceae family that were native to Europe or North America, French botanist Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle established the genus Pelargonium in 1787.28 Geraniums became increasingly popular in America in the early nineteenth century. Philadelphia horticulturalist Bernard McMahon listed Pelargonium geraniums in his American Gardener’s Calendar; adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States (1806), explaining that “the Genus of Geranium, as constituted by Linnaeus, having become unwieldy by modern discoveries, has been divided into three genera.” He described details of their hothouse care and included instructions for growing seeds and cuttings.29 By 1808, Thomas Jefferson was growing Pelargonium geraniums in the White House.30

 

The plant in the portrait appears specifically to be a variety of Pelargonium inquinans, whose botanical features include velvety branches, softly textured leaves of five to seven lobes, scarlet flowers with five petals, and a long column of stamens. Its name inquinans (Latin for “staining”) is said to derive from the fact that its leaves turn a rusty or light brown color after they have been touched.31 The plant in the painting appears to have the characteristic brownish red tint on the edges of the lowest leaf.32 This scarlet-flowered geranium was first grown in England in the early lyoos.33 An engraving of the plant published in Hortus Elthamensis (London, 1732), an account by J. J. Dillenius of the gardens of Dr. James Sherard at Eltham, near London, is very similar to the plant in Peale’s painting.34

 

Philadelphian William Logan apparently ordered seeds of the plant among the vegetable and flower seeds that he acquired in 1768 from James Gordon’s nursery in London.35 In 1806 Bernard McMahon listed Pelargonium inquinans in his American Gardener’s Calendar, giving the plant’s English name as “scarlet-flowered geranium.”36 By this time, however, P. inquinans was already becoming rare, probably because it was the stock plant from which new varieties were produced. A London writer commented that P. inquinansy or “Stainingleaved Crane’s bill,” a “very old Geranium, once very common, is now a scarce plant. There are several fine scarlets under the title of the Nosegay Geraniums, that resemble this species, and are sometimes confounded with it, but upon comparison will be found to differ materially.”37 Years later, American horticulturalist Joseph Breck confirmed this, identifying P. inquinans as “probably the original of the Scarlet varieties.”38

 

Mary Jane Peale’s claim for the plant as “the first brought to this country” thus seems to refer not to the geranium in general but rather to a particular variety, perhaps of P. inquinans, that became known as the “Waterloo” geranium. In 1834 the “Waterloo geranium” was listed by horticulturalist Robert Buist among forty-nine varieties of the plant.39 Presumably the naming of the plant postdates the Battle of Waterloo (1815) and somehow relates to it.

 

While the geranium in the painting serves to define Rubens’ interests, and perhaps was intended as the subject of the painting, the two pairs of eyeglasses are critical in characterizing Rubens’ physical state. His poor eyesight was already apparent in early childhood, when it was identified as nearsightedness. Rembrandt later described Rubens’ difficulties:

 

A younger brother was so near-sighted, that I have seen him drawing, with pencils of his own manufacture—small sticks burnt in the candle and dipped in its grease—looking sometimes with his left eye, and then turning to look with his right eye, the end of his nose was blackened with his greasy charcoal. He was slow in his progress at school…. At ten years of age, he only knew two letters, o and i, never having distinctly seen any others, because his master, holding the book at a distance to suit his own eye, his pupil could see nothing but a blurred line—and only learned by rote.40

 

One day, a chance use of lenses made for an elderly person showed that Rubens was farsighted, a rare condition for a child but one that normally occurs in the elderly.41 Rubens described the correction to his eyesight in his “Memorandum’s”: “My sight has always been very bad and it was not untill I was about 10 or 12 years of age, that I could procure any glasses that aided my sight. I had to put the book or paper so close to my face that my nose would frequently touch the book. It was always thought that I required concave glasses and every degree of concavity was tried in vain, at last I happened to take a large burning-glass and placed it to my eye and to my great astonishment I saw at a distance every thing distinctly.”42 He wrote that after this discovery, “My father then went with me to Mr. Chs. [John] M’Alister’s store in Chesnut near 2d. st. He had no spectacles of so high a power, & he then set in a frame glasses of 4 ½ inch focus, with these spectacles I could see to read and even to read the signs across the street. This surprised him very much, he had never met with such a case before, (strange to say I still continue to use the glasses of the same focus ever since.) It was not until this discovery was made, that I could read a newspaper or other small print.”43

 

This story was later confirmed by Rembrandt Peale:

 

No concave glasses afforded him the least relief; but at Mr. M’Allister’s, the optician, my father being in consultation on his case, there lay on the counter several pairs of spectacles, which had just been tried by a lady ninety years old. Taking up one of these and putting it on, he exclaimed in wild ecstasy, that he could see across the street—”There’s a man!—there’s a woman!—there’s a dog!” These glasses were double convex of four and a half inch focus, and enabled him rapidly to advance in his studies. He has continued to use them, of the same strength, to the present time, being seventy years old—putting them on the first thing in the morning, and taking them off the last thing at night. In London in 1802, he was present at a lecture on optics, by Professor Walker, who declared he had never known another instance of a shortsighted person requiring strong magnifying glasses.44

 

Rubens’ need for magnification, rather than for concave glasses, was also noted by John Isaac Hawkins, an Englishman who had come to the United States in the 17905 and settled in Philadelphia by 1799. An engineer and prolific inventor, Hawkins worked closely with Charles Willson Peale, inventing the physiognotrace for his museum and the polygraph that Thomas Jefferson used to make copies of his correspondence.45 Hawkins took an interest in the problem of Rubens’ eyesight. In 1826, after he had returned to England, he described Rubens’ case in a published paper that he illustrated with an engraving of a design for trifocals. “I knew twenty-five years ago a very extraordinary exception to the use of concave glasses for nearsighted eyes, in a young man in Philadelphia; he tried concaves without any benefit, but accidentally taking up a pair of strong magnifiers, he found that he could see well through them, and continued the use of strong magnifiers with great advantage.”46

 

Evidence in the painting itself suggests that Mary Jane Peale was correct in stating that Rubens was first painted with only one pair of glasses, those in his hand. When Rembrandt added the second pair, she said, he did not remove the spectacles from Rubens’ hand because he did not want to “spoil the painting.” The artist has indicated clearly that the pair of glasses that Rubens holds has the strong magnifying lenses that he needed : The sidebar that is folded behind the glasses can be seen through the lenses, which have enlarged the image. (Because the sidebar is folded at its center joint, the loop at the end of the sidebar can also be seen, between the two lenses.)47 The power of these lenses is also indicated by the curve of their surface. A reflection of the studio window is visible in the lower corner of the lens that is farther from Rubens’ hand. By contrast, the glasses that Rubens is wearing do not enlarge his eyes, which suggests that they are not of high magnification. In fact, they seem to be carefully placed so that they do not interrupt the outline of his eyes. Instead only the flesh of his cheeks is visible through them. Rembrandt’s slightly later portrait of Rubens (NPG), painted in 1807, offers a helpful comparison. There, Rembrandt clearly represented Rubens wearing lenses with strong magnification. They quite noticeably enlarge the inner corner of Rubens’ left eye and the outer area of his right eye.48

 

Since two early portraits of Rubens by his brother Raphaelle Peale do not show him with glasses,49 only one other early portrait provides helpful evidence on the question of which glasses are original to the painting. The portrait of Rubens that Charles Willson Peale included in his painting Exhumation of the Mastodon (1805-1808, PM) depicts Rubens wearing glasses that appear to be of the same shape as those he is holding in the Gallery’s portrait.50 This type of frame, with large lenses and a wide bridge, was commercially available by 1801.51 In contrast, the glasses that Rubens wears, with a narrow bridge, were apparently less common.52 They are similar in shape to glasses made for the Peales and their acquaintances by John McAllister, the man that Rubens credited with assembling his first successful pair of glasses. The spectacles that McAllister made for Thomas Jefferson in 1806 (Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc., Charlottesville) are similar in their narrow bridge, although the shape of the lenses is different.53 The pair that Charles Willson Peale is wearing on his forehead in his self-portrait of about 1804 (PAFA) is also similar, as is the pair that Rubens wears in Rembrandt’s 1807 portrait of him.

 

McAllister was a Scottish-born Philadelphia merchant and manufacturer who came to Philadelphia from New York in 1781. He opened a business selling canes and walking sticks, and by 1788 was a manufacturer of these and related merchandise. In 1796 he moved into a new shop at 48 Chestnut

Street, near Second Street. He was not an optician and until 1815 did not make spectacles; instead he imported and sold the frames, using lenses made elsewhere. It is believed that he first sold spectacles in 1799; his first advertisement for them appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser in October 1800, at the beginning of his three-year partnership with John Matthews.54 With the exception of this partnership, McAllister’s business was at 48 Chestnut Street until his death in 1830. The earliest written evidence that he supplied spectacles for Charles Willson Peale is from 1806, when he made glasses for Peale and his brother James that were specially designed for miniature painting.55

 

One modern explanation for the two pairs of glasses was offered by Dr. John R. Levene, an optometrist. Noting that the lenses of the spectacles in Rubens’ hand are larger, and the bridge wider, than those of the pair he is wearing, Levene proposed that Rubens may have worn the pair in his hand lower down on his nose “for reading or close work purposes.” When both were worn at the same time, the combination could have created the effect of bifocals.56 Levene, however, was unaware of Mary Jane Peale’s accounts.57 Having read her statements, art historian John Wilmerding more recently noted a lack of physical evidence in the painting that would support her idea that the second pair of glasses was added. X-radiography revealed no measurable changes in the paint surface or reworking of the area. Wilmerding added that “these spectacles seem so integral and central to the entire effect and meaning of the painting that they must have been part of the intention and composition from the start.”58

 

Physical evidence is of limited help in solving the question. Close study of the painting did not reveal a reserved space for the glasses or for the reflected light on his cheeks, indicating that Peale did not set aside an area for the glasses when he painted the face. Examination of the surface of the painting revealed instead that the glasses were painted over the brushwork of the lower eyelids. However, this would be the case whether or not the glasses were intended to be there from the beginning, since they could have been painted at the final stage. Billie Follensbee has suggested that there is additional evidence that Mary Jane Peale’s narrative is accurate: the nature of the reflected pools of light on Rubens’ cheeks and the lack of distortion of his eyes as seen through the lenses. These pools of reflected light, which would indicate strong lenses, could easily have been added to a completed portrait. Repainting the eyes to indicate the magnification of the lenses would have been more difficult.59 In showing only the flesh of Rubens’ cheeks through the lenses, Rembrandt would not have had to alter the painting.

 

When would the glasses have been added? Presumably before Rembrandt Peale gave the painting to James Claypoole Copper. Mary Jane Peale wrote in 1854 that “Mr. Copper … always admired this picture very much so when Uncle went to Europe he presented this picture to Mr. Copper as something very good.”60 In her annotation of his letter, she modified this statement, saying that “The Picture when painted was presented to him.”61 If her comments are accurate, the gift could have been made before Rembrandt Peale’s first voyage abroad in 1802, when he and Rubens took the mastodon skeleton, with other natural history objects and some portraits, to England for exhibition.62 Rembrandt could also have given Copper the portrait before his trip to Europe in 1808, by which time he had painted his second portrait of Rubens, who in that portrait is seen wearing his glasses.63

 

The initial absence of the pair of spectacles reinforces Mary Jane Peale’s comment that the painting was done primarily to represent the geranium. “The geranium,” as she wrote in her annotation of Copper’s letter, “is a little withered in the painting room.” The sitter’s glance away from the plant places the emphasis on his gesture, touching the rim of the pot, as if to test the moistness of the soil. He is not looking at the plant, and his gesture does not need the sense of sight to confirm the information it receives. One could imagine that Rubens Peale was eager to take the withered geranium out of his brother’s painting room and return it to his own care.

 

EGM

 

Notes

 

1.Mary Jane Peale wrote that after the painting was given to her in 1854, her uncle Rembrandt Peale “put on it a new back & cleaned it for me”; undated annotation on letter from James Glaypoole Copper to Mary Jane Peale, 28 April 1854, AAA.

2.The date of Copper’s acquisition of the painting is unknown. Mary Jane Peale believed that he owned it almost from the time it was painted. In 1854 she wrote that “when Uncle [Rembrandt Peale] went to Europe,” he gave the portrait to Copper. In an undated annotation to Copper’s letter (28 April 1854, AAA), she wrote that “the Picture when Painted was presented to him.” Later, in her will, she said that it was “painted for him by Mr. Rembrandt Peale.” On Copper, see Graff 1893, 79, 101-102, which does not record his life dates. His parents were married in 1774.

3.For Mary Jane Peale’s dates, see the genealogy of the Peale Family in Elam 1967,10, and Miller 1992, 231. For information that she lived in Pottsville, see Hevner, “Rembrandt” 1986,1012.

4.Mary Jane Peale bequeathed the portrait to her nephew Albert Charles Peale, the son of her brother Charles Willson Peale and Harriet Friel Peale; see her will dated 27 June 1901 and the second codicil dated 6 September 1901, Register of Wills, Courthouse, Pottsville, Pennsylvania. (The will is signed and dated 1900, but is referred to in codicils as dated 1901; that date is more likely, given the date of the codicüs.) Albert Peale was one of the executors of Mary Jane Peale’s estate. For his dates, see Charles Coleman Sellers, “Peale Genealogy,” MS, Peale Papers Office, NPG; also, NCAB 1893-, 21:255-256.

5.The painting belonged to Jessie Sellers Colton by 1923, when she lent it to the exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A label formerly on the painting (in NGA curatorial files) gives her name and address, and states that she was the great-niece of Rubens Peale. For her dates, see Sellers, “Peale Genealogy.”

6.Mrs. Esty owned the portrait when it was reproduced in Sellers 1947 (opp. 147, fig. 12) and lent it in 1955 to the exhibition at Pennsylvania State University. For her birth date see Sellers, “Peale Genealogy”; her date of death is recorded in Social Register Association 1978, 98.

7.Fleischman confirmed his ownership of the portrait in a letter of 19 December 1985 to the Gallery (in NGA curatorial files).

8.Mrs. Woolworth was the owner by 1963, when she lent the painting to the exhibition American Art from American Collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

9.“Fabulous” 1960, 76-77, fig. 74, “loaned by a private collector.”

10.This work has been identified in the past as having been exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1807 and at the Peale Museum in 1808. Peale included “No. 15 Rubens Peale by Rembrandt” in a sketch of the proposed arrangement for the academy in 1807 (Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 1047 and note 4; Hevner, “Rembrandt” 1986, 1011-1012). He wrote to Rembrandt in 1808 that he was exhibiting “Your Portrait of … Rubens” at the museum (Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 1096, 1098n.15; Hevner, “Rembrandt” 1986, 1012). More recently, however, Hevner noted that she believes that in both cases the portrait exhibited was probably the portrait of Rubens that Rembrandt painted in 1807 (NPG); note dated 20 December 1989 (in NPG curatorial files).

11.Rubens Peale, “Memorandum’s of Rubens Peale and the events of his life &c,” Peale-Sellers Papers, APS; see Miller 1980, fiche VIIB/1A2-G9, 5-6 (pagination added by the editors). Peale’s “Memorandum’s” are a rough chronology of events, beginning with his childhood. While he occasionally gives specific dates, they appear to be approximate. For example, he wrote that he sailed to England “early in the year 1801,” when in fact this voyage occurred in the summer of 1802. Family physician Dr. James Hutchinson was also professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and secretary of the American Philosophical Society; Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 1911.1.

12.Peale, “Memorandum’s,” 6-7.

13.Peale, “Memorandum’s,” 5.

14.For his activities in this period, see Miller, Hart,

1.and Ward 1988, 350-379; and Miller 1992, 47-54.

15.Graff 1893, 79.

16.Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 1241n. 2.

17.Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 1235; the letter is dated 28 October 1809.

18.Diary of Mary Jane Peale, 1854, Peale-Sellers Papers, APS; partially quoted in Hevner 1987,1996; and Follensbee 1997, 420.

19.Letter from James Claypoole Copper to Mary Jane Peale, 28 April 1854, AAA. The letter was written from 260 Marshall Street, which was Copper’s Philadelphia residence; see McElroy 1854,102.

20.Undated annotation by Mary Jane Peale on letter to her from James Claypoole Copper, 28 April 1854, AAA.

21.Mary Jane Peale, “List of Pictures I Own, 1884,” n.p., no. 34, Peale-Sellers Papers, APS. She added that “I have left it to Albert, in my will.” The portrait is also included in her “List of Pictures owned by Mary J. Peale & where they are,” 1883, Peale-Sellers Papers, APS, as “lo. Father when nineteen with Geranium by Rem Peale/’ located “at home.”

22.Mary Jane Peale, “List of Pictures I Own; 1885,” no. 24, Peale-Sellers Papers, APS (courtesy of Billie Follensbee, who located the document). The list has an annotation, “Rubens Peale,” in the left margin, which was crossed out. Below it was written “Albert Peale.” These notations seem to reflect Mary Jane Peak’s ideas about the recipient of the future bequest.

23.Will dated 27 June 1901, with second codicil dated 6 September 1901, Register of Wills, Court House, Pottsville, Pennsylvania. In the codicil she wrote: “The portrait of Father with the Geranium, the first brought to this country, and painted on account of the plant which shews [sic] that it was in the studio being a little withered. It was at first painted without the spectacles and afterwards put on. given to me by Mr. Copper, painted for him by Mr. Rembrandt Peale.” An undated draft of her will states: “I give to my niece Fannie Carrier the miniature of my Father by Miss Anna Peale afterwards Mrs. Duncan, unless Rubens would prefer it to the portrait of my Father with the Geranium given me by Mr. Copper for whom it was painted,” and “The picture of my Father painted by Uncle Rembrandt for Mr. Copper & given me by him I give to Albert” (Peale-Sellers Papers, APS). A “Last Will and Testament, 1883” that has occasionally been cited as in NGA curatorial files is in fact a partial photocopy of the 1901 will and codicil.

24.Peale, “Memorandum’s,” n. David Landreth came to Philadelphia in 1781 and established the city’s first nursery and seed business in 1784. He was probably Bernard McMahon’s first employer after McMahon arrived in the United States from Ireland in 1796. McMahon established his own business in Philadelphia in 1802; Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 1976, 22.

25.Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 421-422.

26.Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 427.

27.Darlington 1849, 224-225, letter of 15 September 1760; Hedrick 1950, 88; Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 1976, 24.

28.For example, Thomas Jefferson asked John Bartram, Jr., to include two American geraniums, Geranium maculatum and Geranium gibbosum, in a group of American plants that were sent to him in Paris in 1786; see Jefferson to John Bartram, Jr., 27 January 1786 (Boyd 1954, 228-230). The first, known as wild geranium or spotted crane’s bill, has rose-purple flowers and deeply divided leaves, while the second is a shrubby plant with deep greenish yellow flowers. See Betts 1944, 109-110; Betts and Perkins 1971, 57; Bailey 1900-1902, 2: 640; Clark 1988, 92. On the history and botanical features of geraniums and pelargoniums, see Bailey 1900-1902, 3:1257-1264; Van der Walt and Vorster 1977-1981; Everett 1981, 5: 1462-1465, 8: 2527; and Clark 1988,15-21, 93.

29.McMahon 1806, 83, 160, 355, 419, 444, 615, 618.

30.Adams 1976, 346, no. 600, written by Charles Coleman Sellers; see also 351 for botanical notes on Pelargonium. In December 1808 Margaret Bayard Smith asked Jefferson if he would give her the geranium that he kept in the White House, when he left Washington; he did this at the end of his second term the following spring; see Betts 1944, 382-383.

31.Van der Walt and Vorster 1977-1981, 1:23 and color repro. opp. 23.

32.Some writers believed that the name came about because the plant produced a red stain. Henry Andrews (1805, 2:n.p.) described the source as “the stems, which are beset with glands containing a red juice, which rubbed on paper stains it; from whence its specific title of Inquinans.”

33.Hobhouse 1992, 115; it was grown by Henry Compton (1632-1713), bishop of London, in his garden at Fulham Palace.

34.Dillenius 1732,151-152, and pi. cxxv, opp. 151, titled Geranium Afric. arborescent, Malvae folio pingui, flor e coccíneo Pein. The plate is reproduced in Bailey 1900-1902, 3: 1257, fig. 1698; see also 3: 1261-1262. See also Clark 1988,15.

35.Hobhouse 1992, 269, states that this order included inquinans but gives no source for this information.

36.McMahon 1806, 618.

37.Andrews 1805, 2:n.p.

38.Breck 1866, 310.

39.Buist 1834, no. The only indication of its color is the fact that the list is arranged by color of the flowers, from lightest to darkest, with this variety as number thirty-two out of forty-nine.

40.Peale, “Painter’s Eyes” 1856,164.

41.The first specialist to discuss Rubens’ eyesight in relation to this portrait was Dr. John R. Levene, a professor of optometry; see Levene 1977, 171-173. Opthalmologist Charles E. Letocha, M.D., of York, Pennsylvania, identified Peale’s condition to the Gallery staff in a letter of 4 February 1986 and subsequent correspondence (in NGA curatorial files). See also Letocha 1987, 476 (reference courtesy of Billie J. A. Follensbee). The most recent study of this portrait in relation to Peale’s eyesight and need for glasses is Follensbee 1997.

42.Peale, “Memorandum’s,” 7. A burning-glass is a converging lens used to focus the sun’s rays on an object so as to produce heat or combustion.

43.Peale, “Memorandum’s,” 7-8.

44.Peale, “Painter’s Eyes,” 1856,164-165.

45.On Hawkins, see Levene 1977, 166-189; and Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988.

46.Hawkins 1827, 39I-392J ne identified the “young man” as Rubens Peale. The reference is quoted in Levene 1977, 171, where Hawkins’ illustration, an engraving of his trifocals, is reproduced on 184, as figure 7.1.

47.The folded sidebar is commented on by Levene 1977, 172; and Wilmerding, “Young Masters” 1988, 86.

48.The portrait bears two inscribed dates, 1807 and 1821; the earlier date was not visible until the painting was cleaned in 1989 after it was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. The painting was therefore incorrectly dated in Hevner, “Rembrandt” 1986, 1012, and is correctly dated in Hevner 1992, 260, fig. 124.

49.The first shows Rubens dressed as the mascot of McPherson’s Blues (c. 1795, private collection; illustrated in Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, color pi. 2, opp. 344); the second is a profile watercolor (c. 1805, NMAA;Miles 1994, ii2, repro.). Among later portraits, Anna Claypoole Peale’s miniature of 1822 (Bolton-Smith 1976,255, no. 212, repro.) and Mary Jane Peale’s portrait of 1855 ( Elam 1967, 138, no. 223, repro. 116) show him with glasses, while Rembrandt Peal’s portrait of 1834 ( Wadsworth Athenaeum) does not (Hevner 1985,76-77, no. 23, repro.).

50.On this painting, see Miller 1981, 47-68.

51.Numerous examples can be found in collections that document the history of eyeglasses; see Poulet 1978, 1: 142-144,148-150, 2: 217.

52.They appear less frequently in collections of eyeglasses. W. Poulet (1978, 1 : 155) illustrates as B 1077 a similar pair of frames with extendable sidebars, c. 1800 (they are not exactly the same, since they have rectangular lenses).

53.On these glasses, see the letter of John McAllister to Thomas Jefferson, 14 November 1806, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress (transcript in NGA curatorial files, provided by Dr. Charles E. Letocha); Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 1006-1008, and note 1. Jefferson’s glasses are illustrated in Stein 1993,430.

54.Information on McAllister is from Danzenbaker 1968,1-4; correspondence of Dr. Charles E. Letocha, 4 February and 24 February 1986 (in NGA curatorial files); Letocha 1987,476; and research notes compiled by Deborah Jean Warner, curator, Physical Sciences Collections, NMAH.

55.John McAllister to Thomas Jefferson, 14 November 1806, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress (transcript in NGA curatorial files, provided by Charles Letocha). McAllister’s bank books for 1796-1797, 1800-1801, and 1807-1809 (Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware) were checked for references to members of the Peale family, but none was found.

56.Levene 1977,172.

57.Follensbee 1997,58.

58.Wilmerding, “Young Masters” 1988, 85.

59.Follensbee 1997, 420-421.

60.Diary of Mary Jane Peale, 1854, Peale-Sellers Papers, APS.

61.Undated annotation by Mary Jane Peale on letter to her from James Claypoole Copper, 28 April 1854, AAA.

62.See Miller, Hart, and Ward 1988, 419-474, 485-603 (correspondence between Charles Willson Peale and his sons from January until their return in November 1803, interspersed with other Peale correspondence), 624n.2 (noting their return). See also Miller 1992, 57-71. Lillian Miller (1992, 58-59) suggests that Rembrandt took the painting to London in 1802, intending it as the pendant to his similarly sized self-portrait with the mammoth tooth, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803. Carol Hevner (1992, 255, citing Graves 1905-1906, 6:87) indicates that the second portrait that Rembrandt exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803 was a “Portrait in Chalk,” which does not describe the portrait of Rubens.

63.See note 10 above for discussion of the possible exhibition of the portrait at the PAFA in 1807 and at the PM in 1808.

 

References

 

•1947—Sellers: fig. 12, opp. 147.

•1956—Rendezvous: 2 repro., 28, no. 82 (not exhibited).

•1965—Feld 1283, repro.

•1971—Gerdts and Burke: 36, repro. 34, figs. 2-12.

•1976—Adams: 346, no. 600, repro.

•1976—Pennsylvania Horticultural Society: 24, repro. 27.

•1977—Levene: 171-172.

•1981—Gerdts: 3, color pl. 3, 62-63.

•1984—Foshay: 32-34, repro.

•1985—Hevner: 20, 21 fig. 5, 103n. 8.

•1986—Hevner, “Rembrandt”: 1010-1013, color repro.

•1986—Hevner, “Rubens”: 114-116, fig. 1 (color).

•1987—Hevner: 1996 and color repro., cover.

•1988—Miller, Hart, and Ward: 1047n. 4, 1096, 1098n. 15, 1241n. 2, color pl. 6, between 344 and 345.

•1988—Wilmerding, American Masterpieces: 66, no. 10; 67, color repro.

•1988—Wilmerding, “Young Masters”: 72-93.

•1992—Hevner: 255.

•1992—Miller: 57-60, fig. 22, 160, color pi. 4, 243.

•1992—NGA: 256, repro.

•1996—Miller: 35 (repro), 51-52, 309.

•1997—Follensbee: 417-424, repro.

Rip Define

 

This is a creative commons image, which you may freely use by linking to this page. Please respect the photographer and his work.

 

[This is a set of 9 photos] The Church of the Cross is an historic church in Bluffton, Beaufort County, South Carolina, overlooking the May River. It is in Carpenter Gothic style. Made of unfinished cypress wood it is constructed with the board and batten pattern of vertical strips of wood along the surfaces. Constructed in a cruciform design, the church has four clearly defined facades. The front, or east facade, has a pointed-arch doorway flanked by a mullioned lancet window on each side, the arched portion using a palmetto design; these windows have shutters, a feature used throughout the church. Above the door is a 3-part lancet window with smaller trefoil-shaped windows on either side. The same door and window styles are used throughout. On the north facade is an open belltower that does not rise much in height. Photos of the apse (west facade) did not turn out.

 

Construction began in 1854, and the church was consecrated in 1857. The interior has exposed timbers of pine, rose tinted glass and pink plaster, which enhances the soft light. The architect was Edward Brickell White (1806-1882) of Charleston, South Carolina.

 

info on the church: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Cross

thechurchofthecross.net/

 

info on the architect: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Brickell_White

 

Church of the Cross was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 29, 1975 with ID 75001686. The nomination form is located at

www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707022/S108177...

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

 

The Spaulding Wilderness Study Area (WSA) is located 18 miles east of Adel, Oregon, in both Lake and Harney counties. Its boundaries are defined by the right-of-way of Oregon State Highway 140 for approximately 3 miles on the southwest, a high standard dirt road on the west and low standard roads on the north, east, and south. The WSA boundary extends up the dead end road to Spaulding Reservoir and around a 320-acre parcel of private land adjacent to this road. All lands adjacent to the WSA are public.

 

The Spaulding WSA contains 69,530 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land and 440 acres of private inholdings. The WSA is 17 miles long from north to south and from three to nine miles wide in a roughly oval shape with a panhandle on the south. The WSA is characterized by rolling sagelands broken by low rimrock and interlaced by a network of intermittent stream drainages. Antelope Butte at the south end of the WSA rises to an elevation of 6,440 feet. Sage Hen Canyon, central to the study area, funnels outward from steep high rimrock to a broad swale near Spaulding Reservoir, which is excluded from the WSA boundary. West of the reservoir the drainage is known as Spaulding Creek. At the south end of Sage Hen Canyon near the eastern WSA boundary is a one-mile series of pools known as The Potholes. These pools hold water after spring run-off well into the summer.

 

The western portion of the WSA is dominated by a 13 mile section of Guano Rim, also called Dougherty Rim, which reaches a height of 900 feet. The rim is incised by seven steep canyons and the major drainage known as Rocky Canyon. Eleven sink lakes are scattered throughout the area above and to the east of Guano Rim. Along the eastern boundary are a large erosion basin and a prominent landmark, Chimney Rock. Vegetation consists generally of sagebrush/bunchgrass communities, with some aspen groves beneath rims, scattered occurrence of mountain mahogany, and juniper growing at the base of some rims. Various shrub species occur in the canyons and among the

 

The WSA was studied under Section 603 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and was included in the Final Oregon Wilderness Environmental Impact Statement filed in February

1990.

 

The WSA has primitive recreation opportunities for hiking, backpacking, camping, natural study, photography, hunting, horseback riding, and sightseeing. Sage Hen Canyon is a rugged and scenic area for hiking and offers opportunities for wildlife observation.

 

www.blm.gov/programs/national-conservation-lands/oregon-w...

Our Daily Challenge - "Dream"

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I strongly believe that success, however one personally defines it, derives wholly from the intense passion and drive they invest in achieving it. Similarly, one's quality of life is a direct result of their expectations of life and how they work toward fulfilling those expectations.

 

Put concisely, your life satisfaction is up to you -- you are the sole factor in deciding whether you're happy with your life. Valerie seemingly realizes this, and invests her entire being into her craft. Pictured above, she collapses to the floor in an exhausted heap of passion, energy, soul, and genuine love of what she does and those who help her do it.

 

The intensity with which she sang and played the plethora of keyboards scattered around the stage was breathtaking -- and insanely inspiring! She enjoyed every second up there on stage, put every available calorie into the performance, and coaxed every single atom within her into a single, focused rhythm.

 

Her drive and passion has put her in exactly the place she wants to be. It's amazing what people can do when they have the willingness to go out there and do it!

Yajur, with Neha Didi, admiring nature.

 

Just loved how the moment came.

 

Loads of love

 

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Crowd of Hindu devotees gather on main bath day, at the Kumbh Mela 2013 festival near Allahabad (India).

 

Looks amazing when viewed in high-resolution.

 

Millions of Hindu devotees gather at the Sangam. The Triveni Sangam is the confluence of the Yamuna and the Ganga (Ganges) rivers, and this is the holiest place to take the ritual baths during the Kumbh Mela.

 

This was the morning of Kumbh Maha Snan or main bathing day, also called Mauni Amavasya, which is the the most auspicious morning for taking the holy bath in the Ganges river.

 

Kumbh Mela is the largest festival on Earth, taking place once every 12 years, with more than 50 million Hindu pilgrims gathering to pray and bathe in the holy Ganges river.

 

For more photos and info about the Kumbh Mela festival, read the album description.

 

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Hallelujah Mountains

 

•Location Information

oLocation: Pandora

oResidents: Mountain Banshee; Na’vi; Great Leonopteryx (possibly)

•Behind the Scenes:

oFirst Appearance: Avatar

 

The Hallelujah Mountains (Na’vi name: Ayram alusìng meaning “Floating Mountains”) are floating islands that circulate slowly in the magnetic currents like icebergs at sea, scraping against each other and the towering mesa-like mountains of the region. On Pandora, huge outcroppings of unobtanium rip loose from the surface and float in the magnetic vortices due to the Meissner Effect.

 

Physical Description

 

They are overgrown with foliage at the top and straggly beards of vines hang down beneath the mountains like the roots of air-ferns. Their sides are sheer cliffs. Waterfalls, originating on the mesa-like tops, stream down the sides and disperse into spray at the bottoms, like upside-down geysers. The mist then condenses on other floating mountains and flows over the side and disperses, renewing the process. The local peaks and mesas actually project above the level of the craggy undersides of the few floating mountains Jake Sully can see, so it seems obvious that collisions are inevitable.

 

It is also the place that Norm Spellman wants to visit the most on Pandora—his wish is fulfilled when Grace Augustine decides to move her avatar program operation to the region when she realizes Jake is being manipulated by Quaritch. Most human detection instruments are useless amidst the large magnetic fields. The mountains float like clouds among the fixed mountains and swirling cloud structures. When they are in clear sunlight they cast distinct shadows on the land below.

 

In Na’vi Culture

 

The mountains are home to several clans, including Ni’awve and the Tipani. The latter reside in the settlement of Vayaha Village. In 2154 the Omaticaya fled to the mountains, seeking sanctuary at the Tree of Souls. The tree is one of the most sacred sites on Pandora.

 

The Hallelujah Mountains are also where mountain banshees choose to roost. This location atop the 2,600m high Mons Veritatis makes the final challenge on the path to becoming a Na’vi hunter (known as Iknimaya) even more difficult and dangerous, as the route taken to the top of the mountains is treacherous. One wrong move will send a candidate plummeting to his or her death. The danger of wild mountain banshees is also present. The local Tipani also refer to the entire region around their village as Iknimaya.

 

Behind the Scenes

 

The mountains also bear a similar appearance to the Chinese Huang Shan Mountains. James Cameron said that it was the Huang Shan mountains that inspired him to create the Hallelujah Mountains, which would explain the similar appearance. On January 25, 2010 in China, hundreds of locals in ethnic Tujia costumes “officially” renamed the Qiankunzhu mountains after the Hallelujah Mountains as a tribute to Avatar.

  

Sacred Sites

 

The Hallelujah Mountains: Fragile Giants

 

For humans, the Hallelujah Mountains are a stunning vista, a true wonder of the natural world. For the Na’vi, they are so much more.

 

It’s hard to imagine. And trust us: pictures don’t do it justice.

 

Whole mountains lifted from the earth like children’s balloons. Billions of tons of rock floating in the air as though hung there deliberately—some the size of boulders, and some miles across. The Hallelujah Mountains are one of the definitive natural wonders of Pandora, objects of surreal delight for every human lucky enough to see them.

 

As enduring as they are in both fact and imagination, the truth is that the mountains perform a delicate balancing act within the region’s geology and ecology. Most significantly, they represent a cherished, essential part of Na’vi spiritual life. From their role in the iknimaya to the mysteries of Eywa herself, the mountains are a prime sacred site, offering a fascinating glimpse into indigenous belief.

 

But first, an answer to the question you’re all thinking.

 

Yes, They Really Float. But How?

 

Admittedly, it took some digging for RDA geologists to figure it out—literally. The intense magnetic fields covering Pandora—and clustering in this region in particular—were common knowledge during early exploration of the moon, and it was assumed they had something to do with how the mountains stayed in place. But it wasn’t until unobtanium was excavated that a full picture started to come together.

 

What we know is that, thanks to the superconductive properties of the unobtanium deposits within, each mountain is surrounded by its own magnetic field that effectively keeps the mass in place, as though fenced in. And conforming to the rules of a fence, the mountains can actually shift position within their boundaries—their occasional collisions inspired the Na’vi to nickname them “Thundering Mountains.”

 

The Eywa Theory

 

The alternate point of view belongs to the Na’vi. There is nothing unsolved in the Na’vi ontology: everything that exists does so within the system of interconnectedness controlled by Eywa. And by Na’vi accounts, the mountains were lifted as a part of Eywa’s plan. This puts things lightly; really, the Na’vi regard the mountains as one of the greatest symbols of Eywa’s organizing abilities. As we know, it’s extremely unlikely for a mountain to float. Isn’t the fact that these do prove that a higher power made it so?

 

One natural condition that gives the “sacred plan” idea credence is the interplay between life on the ground and life on the mountains, and how, depending how you look at it, the mountains almost need to be floating in order to sustain this interplay. Which brings us to one interplay in particular, which has risen to mythic levels on Pandora: that of the mainland Na’vi with the mountain banshee.

 

A Deadly Rite of Passage

A defining characteristic of the Na’vi is the ability to form neural links with some of the animal life of Pandora. And there is no bond more central to clan life—or that more captures the Na’vi imagination—than the one forged with the mountain banshee.

 

But this bond has to be earned. And that means a dangerous rite of passage called the iknimaya. When a young Omatikaya Na’vi comes of age, he or she may choose to make a long and treacherous solo climb up the vines connecting the floating mountains to the banshee rookeries found in the high peaks. There, the heart of the challenge begins. A banshee never relents to Na’vi bonding advances without resistance, and so the Na’vi only gets one chance; it will end either in free-fall or the banshee leaving its mountain habitat to nest near its rider, who now wears the title Ikran Makto—“Banshee Rider.”

 

Seeing the Mountains All Over Again

 

Obviously, the best way to feel the monumental power of the Hallelujah Mountains (and the other ranges of floating mountains on Pandora, such as the one hovering over the Mo’ara Valley) is to see them in person, in the way that the power of the Grand Canyon or the gorges of the Yangtze River can only be experienced when you’re really there. Like the Grand Canyon, the mountains are picturesque, often the first thing people think of when they think of Pandoran landscape. We love to look at the mountains—but to really see them, and all that they signify, you have to put them in perspective. Imagine if the Grand Canyon, in addition to being beautiful, defined how you entered into adulthood, in effect giving you your identity among friends and family. Imagine if the Grand Canyon represented an emblem of a spiritual force guiding every gesture of every day of your life—that its very existence was a spectacular visual proof of that force and its will. Do this, and you will have the briefest glimpse of what the mountains mean to the Na’vi, deeply and personally, and why we must do what we can to understand, respect, and celebrate them. When you consider the wonders of our two explored galaxies, they are literally irreplaceable.

Zama, Japan – When Army Sgt. Jery L. Hernandezpilier stepped off the tour bus and onto Nissan's Zama Operations Center, he expected to see a few concept cars and a maybe a compact rolling lazily off an assembly line.

 

It didn't take long for Hernandezpilier and his fellow Soldiers from U.S. Army Japan's motor pool in Camp Zama who joined the June 18, 2015, tour to realize that their hosts had a special way to show their distinguished guests in uniform what their corporate motto, “The power comes from the inside,” defines the Nissan community.

 

“This was more than your typical tour of an assembly line,” said Hernandezpilier, a power generation equipment repairer for Headquarters & Headquarters Company USARJ. “Nissan didn't just showcase their machines. It introduced to the very people who build these machines.”

 

Shuji Narazaki, manager of Nissan's human resources division, welcomed his honored guests with an introduction of four of the company's finest technicians.

 

“These young men before you will represent Japan in the 2015 WorldSkills Olympics in Brazil,” said Narazaki to the small but lively crowd of Soldiers and cameras. “Today they will demonstrate their craftsmanship as they prepare to compete on the world stage.”

 

According to its official website, the WorldSkills Olympics stands as the largest professional conference in world history. Thousands of technicians hailing from more than 50 countries converge in one city every two years to compete in one of dozens of career specialties from manufacturing and mobile robotics to hairdressing and graphic design. In August, four of Nissan's young professionals will join Team Japan as they pursue bronze, silver and (preferably) gold medals through their engineering expertise.

 

After watching a brief video summarizing Nissan's achievements in previous WorldSkills Olympics, the hosts divided their guests into three groups and led them to one of three rooms. There, the troops witnessed firsthand the stellar speed and pinpoint precision exemplified by these automotive savants.

 

“Never in all my years working in and around vehicles have I seen a single person disassemble an entire engine, diagnose the problem, fix it and reassemble the engine in 45 minutes,” recalled Hernandezpilier, a native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. “Amazing still is the fact that this man is not yet old enough to legally drink [alcohol] in the U.S. His skills and knowledge showed us that youth and inexperience are not always related.”

 

While Shintaro Matsumoto manipulated the engine with the speed of a NASCAR pit crew, his companions – Shogo Abe, Mizuki Tatsuno, Daiki Wada – toiled in separate rooms with their unique projects.

 

“[Abe] was busy designing a complex part with finite resources using a CAD (Computer Based Design Program) while [Tatsuna and Wada] were busy building an assembly line that would soon produce [Abe's] design,” said Hernandezpilier. “Their speed and precision brought shock and awe to our group.”

 

Standing alongside Hernandezpilier and his motor pool companions was Army Command Sgt. Maj. Rosalba Dumont-Carrion, command sergeant major of U.S. Army Garrison Japan. As she admired Nissan's prodigies, Dumont-Carrion could also sense where Nissan's philosophy and the Army values intersected.

 

“Nissan and the Army cherish commitment and uphold integrity,” said Dumont-Carrion, a native of Apopka, Fla. “We both respect those who serve us with honor and award them with limitless opportunities to grow in their profession thanks to a diverse career plan that spans several decades.”

 

After shaking hands, posing for group photos and wishing one another the very best in their career endeavors, the tour guides led their American guests to the Nissan Heritage Museum. A narrow hallway partially disguised as a modest warehouse entrance unveiled an eclectic collection of Nissan's diverse line of vehicles dating as far back as the 1930s.

 

“The site almost brought a tear to my eye,” said Hernandezpilier. “It’s hard to imagine how much time and talent was required to build, maintain and restore these vehicles … Fair Ladies, Skylines, [Datsun] Roadsters … It's a dream come true.”

 

Ayaro Eguchi, the group's tour guide, explained that a majority of the the more than 350 cars, trucks, vans and even race cars were donated by private owners or collectors, and approximately 70 percent of them remain in operable condition. A 1935 Datsun Roadster pulling up to the tour group punctuated her point.

 

“Nissan is a brand that has literally made its way to every major road in the world,” said Dumont-Carrion. “The Japanese people have every right to showcase this achievement. The fact that Nissan personally invited us to see this speaks volumes of their respect for the U.S. Army.”

 

As the Soldiers and Department of Defense civilians bade farewell and boarded the Nissan tour bus bound for Camp Zama, Hernandezpilier and Dumont-Carrion reflected on the long-term impact of their visit.

 

“It was a beautiful experience,” said Hernandezpilier. “We got exclusive access to Japan's master craftsmen who have inspired me to master my craft.”

 

“I cannot be more proud of my fellow Soldiers as they show our gracious hosts what it means to be a professional in the United States Army, said Dumont-Carrion. “The heart of the Army lies with its Soldiers and families, and here at Nissan, I saw the same relationship between the company and its community.”

 

Photos and story by Sgt. John L Carkeet IV, U.S. Army Japan

Jeremy taking the christmas stockings concept a little too litteraly

Nikon D800E photos Beautiful Brunette Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess with Wavy/Curly Hair and Piercing Blue Eyes!

 

Love shooting video with the D800E:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yo5_BEC6lU

 

A kiss at the beginning of this video? www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N_RHLo3KCo

 

She was tall, thin, tan, and fit, modeling the 45surf gold 45 revolver bikini and hoodies too!

 

Well, my Nikon SB-700 Flash died, but it was still an awesome shoot! Love the nataral light of a cloudy December AM in Malibu!

 

Shot with the Nikon D800 E and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens.

 

May the Goddess inspire you along your epic Hero's Journey!

 

The D800E was great for catching her curly/wavy brown hair blowing on the autumn sea breeze!

 

Great bokeh & shallow depth of field with the full frame D800E DSLR & 70-200mm VR2 Nikkor, on both the stills and video! :)

 

She's with a major agency and kinda a famous model. :)

 

With the black 45surf surfboard!

 

Goddess! :)

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Oldtimer Grand Prix Schwanenstadt Austria (c) 2014 Bernhard Egger :: eu-moto images 1869 ccx

Nikon D800E Photos of a Gorgeous Blond Bikini Model Goddess in Gold 45 Revolver Swimsuit with wavy-blond hair and pretty blue eyes! Pretty, pretty smile! A tall, thin, fit, classic California beach babe! Please share the exalted goddess with your friends.

 

Here is some epic video I shot at the same time as the stills with the Sony Alpha NEX 6 camera with the 50 mm F/1.8 prime lens for nex6 e mount cameras bracketed to my Nikon D800E (cool bokeh!):

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqVXRPAN0MQ (Sony NEX-6 with F/1.8 50mm Prime Nice Bokeh!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrAZEcBZxUQ (Nikon D800E with 70-200mm F/2.8 Nikkor LEns)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9phCXhm-bg (Sony NEX-6 with F/1.8 50mm Prime Nice Bokeh!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsQcSnPd2Uk (Sony NEX-6 with F/1.8 50mm Prime Nice Bokeh!)

 

With the black 45surf surfboard! It gets hot in the sand in the sun! Wearing a leather Buffalo Nickel Cowboy Hat! :)

 

Combine the shallow-depth-of-field with Sony NEX-6's latest face-tracking auto focus, and you can see how the moving video keeps the model's pretty blue eyes in focus, while blurring the background! The Sony Alpha NEX 6 has much better bokeh than the cameras I have been using! :)

 

She was tall, thin, fit, toned, defined, and beautiful!

 

Modeling the Gold 45 Revolver(TM) Gold'N'Virtue(TM) American Flag Bikini! Stars & Stripes Forever! :)

 

Nikon D800E Photographs of a Beautiful Sandy-Blonde/Brunette Swimsuit Bikini Model shot with the new Nikon D800 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens with the B+W 77mm XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer with Multi-Resistant Nano Coating filter. I always, always shoot with a CP filter--even on cloudy days!

 

Shot in both RAW & JPEG, but all these photos are RAWs finished in Lightroom 4 ! :)

 

May the HJM Goddesses guide, inspire, and exalt ye along yer heroic artistic journey!

 

Modeling the black & gold "Gold 45 Revolver" Gold'N'Virtue swimsuits with the main equation to Moving Dimensions Theory on the swimsuits: dx4/dt=ic. Yes I have a Ph.D. in physics! :) You can read more about my research and Hero's Journey Physics here:

herosjourneyphysics.wordpress.com/ MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic--the foundational equation of all time and motion which is on all the shirts and swimsuits. Every photon that hits my Nikon D800e's sensor does it by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!

 

Reading some of the Great Books of Hero's Journey Mythology! Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Melville's Moby Dick, and Shakespeare's Hamlet!

 

All the Best on Your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

Kindle 2 Unbox

Badami formerly known as Vatapi, is a town and headquarters of a taluk by the same name, in the Bagalkot district of Karnataka, India. It was the regal capital of the Badami Chalukyas from 540 to 757 AD. It is famous for its rock cut structural temples. It is located in a ravine at the foot of a rugged, red sandstone outcrop that surrounds Agastya lake. Badami has been selected as one of the heritage cities for HRIDAY - Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana scheme of Government of India.

 

HISTORY

- Dravidian architecture - Badami Chalukyas

- Hindu temple architecture - Badami Chalukya architecture

- Political history of medieval Karnataka - Badami Chalukyas

- Architecture of Karnataka - Badami Chalukya architecture

- Chalukyas of Badami

 

PRE-HISTORIC

Badami is surrounded by many pre-historic places including Khyad area of Badami, Hiregudda, Sidlaphadi and Kutkankeri (Junjunpadi, Shigipadi and Anipadi), there we can see the rock shelters megalithic burial sites and paintings.

 

BADAMI CHALUKYAS AND OTHER DYNASTIES

MYTHOLOGY

The Puranic story says the wicked asura Vatapi was killed by sage Agastya (as per Agastya-Vatapi story), the area in which the incident happened so named as Vatapi. At Aihole there was a merchant guild known as Ayyavole Ainuravaru lived in the area have reformed. As per scholar Dr. D. P. Dikshit, the first Chalukya king was Jayasimha (a feudatory lord in the Kadamba dynasty), who in 500 AD established the Chalukya kingdom. His grandson Pulakeshin Ibuilt a fort at Vatapi.

 

BADAMI CHALUKYAS

It was founded in 540 AD by Pulakeshin I (535-566 AD), an early ruler of the Chalukyas. His sons Kirtivarma I (567-598 AD) and his brother Mangalesha (598-610 AD) constructed the cave temples.Kirtivarma I strengthened Vatapi and had three sons Pulakeshin II, Vishnuvardhana and Buddhavarasa, who at his death were minors, thus making them ineligible to rule, so Kirtivarma I's brother Mangalesha took the throne and tried to establish rule, only to be killed by Pulakeshin II who ruled between 610 A.D to 642 A.D. Vatapi was the capital of the Early Chalukyas, who ruled much of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Few parts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh between the 6th and 8th centuries. The greatest among them was Pulakeshin II (610-642 AD) who defeated many kings including the Pallavas of Kanchipuram.

 

The rock-cut Badami Cave Temples were sculpted mostly between the 6th and 8th centuries. The four cave temples represent the secular nature of the rulers then, with tolerance and a religious following that inclines towards Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. cave 1 is devoted to Shiva, and Caves 2 and 3 are dedicated to Vishnu, whereas cave 4 displays reliefs of Jain Tirthankaras. Deep caverns with carved images of the various incarnations of Hindu gods are strewn across the area, under boulders and in the red sandstone. From an architectural and archaeological perspective, they provide critical evidence of the early styles and stages of the southern Indian architecture.

 

The Pallavas under the king Narasimhavarma I seized it in 642 AD & destroyed the vatapi. Pulakeshin II's son Vikramaditya I of Chalukyas drove back Pallavas in 654 AD and led a successful attack on Kanchipuram, the capital of Pallavas. Then Rashtrakutas came to power in Karnataka including Badami around 757 AD and the town lost its importance. Later it was ruled by the Hoysalas.

 

Then it passed on to Vijayanagara empire, The Adil Shahis, Mughal Empire, The Savanur Nawabs (They were vassals of Nizams and Marathas), The Maratha, Hyder Ali. The Britishers made it part of the Bombay Presidency.

 

INSCRIPTIONS

Badami has eighteen inscriptions, among them some inscriptions are important. The first Sanskrit inscription in old Kannada script, on a hillock dates back to 543 CE, from the period of Pulakeshin I (Vallabheswara), the second is the 578 CE cave inscription of Mangalesha in Kannada language and script and the third is the Kappe Arabhatta records, the earliest available Kannada poetry in tripadi (three line) metre. one inscription near the Bhuthanatha temple also has inscriptions dating back to the 12th century in Jain rock-cut temple dedicated to the Tirtankara Adinatha.

 

VATAPI GANAPATI

In the Carnatic music and Hamsadhwani raga the Vatapi Ganapatim Bhaje by the composer Muthuswami Dikshitar. The idol of Vatapi Ganapati brought from Badami by Pallavas, is now in the Uthrapathiswaraswamy Temple, near Thanjavur of Tamil Nadu.

 

In 7th century, Vatapi Ganapati idol was brought from Badami (Vatapi - Chalukya capital) by Pallava who defeated Chalukyas.

 

TOURISM

Landmarks in Badami include cave temples, gateways, forts, inscriptions and sculptures.

 

- A Buddhist cave in a natural setting that can be entered only by crawling on knees.

- The Bhuhtanatha temple, a small shrine, facing the lake, constructed in 5th century.

- Badami Fort situated on top of the hill.

- Many Shivalayas including the Malegatti Shivalaya with 7th century origins.

- The Dattatreya temple.

- The Mallikarjuna temple dating back to the 11th century, built on a star shaped plan.

- a Dargah, a dome of an Islamic place of worship on the south fort side.

- Vista points on top of the North Fort for the view of the ancient town below.

- Temple of Banashankari, a Kuladevata (family deity) for many families, is located near Badami.

- Archaeological museum, that has collection of sculptures from Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal.

 

BADAMI CAVE TEMPLES

The Badami cave temples are a complex of four cave temples located at Badami, a town in the Bagalkot district in the north part of Karnataka, India. They are considered an example of Indian rock-cut architecture, especially Badami Chalukya architecture initiated during the 6th century. Badami was previously known as Vataapi Badami, the capital of the early Chalukya dynasty, who ruled much of Karnataka from middle of the sixth until the middle of the eighth centuries. Badami is situated on the west bank of an artificial lake filled with greenish water dammed by an earthen wall faced with stone steps. Badami is surrounded in the north and south by forts built in later times from the ramparts that crown their summits.

 

The Badami cave temples represent some of the earliest known experimentation of Hindu temple prototypes for later temples in the Indian peninsula. Along with Aihole, states UNESCO, their pioneering designs transformed the Malaprabha river valley into a cradle of Temple Architecture, whose ideas defined the components of later Hindu Temples elsewhere. Caves 1 to 3 feature Hindu themes of Shiva and Vishnu, while Cave 4 features Jain icons. There is also a Buddhist Cave 5 which has been converted into a Hindu temple of Vishnu. Another cave identified in 2013 has a number of carvings of Vishnu and other Hindu deities, and water is seen gushing out through the cave all the time.

 

GEOGRAPHY

The Badami cave temples are located in the Badami town in the north central part of Karnataka, India. The temples are about 110 km northeast from Hubli-Dharwad, the second largest metropolitan area of the state. Malaprabha river is 4.8 km away. Badami, also referred to as Vatapi, Vatapipuri and Vatapinagari in historical texts, and the 6th-century capital of Chalukya dynasty, is at the exit point of the ravine between two steep mountain cliffs. Four cave temples have been excavated in the escarpment of the hill to the south-east of the town above the artificial lake called Agastya Lake created by an earthen dam faced with stone steps. To the west end of this cliff, at its lowest point, is the first cave temple dedicated to Shiva, followed by a cave north east to it dedicated to Vishnu but is at a much higher level. The largest is Cave 3, mostly a Vaishnava cave, is further to the east on the northern face of the hill. The first three caves are dedicated to Hindu gods and goddesses including Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The fourth cave, dedicated to Jainism, is a short distance away.

 

HISTORY OF CAVE TEMPLES

The cave temples, numbered 1 to 4 in the order of their creation, identified in the town of Badami, the capital city of the Chalukya kingdom (also known as Early Chalukyas) are dated from the late 6th century onwards. The exact dating is known only for cave 3 which is a Brahmanical temple dedicated to Vishnu. An inscription found here records the creation of the shrine by Mangalesha in Saka 500 (lunar calendar, spanning 578 to 579 CE). These inscriptions are in Kannada language, and have been the source for dating these rock cave temples to the 6th-century. The Badami caves complex are part of the UNESCO inscribed World Heritage Site under the title "Evolution of Temple Architecture – Aihole-Badami-Pattadakal" in the Malaprabha river valley which is considered a cradle of Temple Architecture, which formed the template for later Hindu temples in the region. The art work in Cave 1 and Cave 2 exhibit the northern Deccan style of 6th- and 7th-century, while those in Cave 3 show a simultaneous co-exhibition of two different ancient Indian artistic traditions – the northern Nagara and the southern Dravida styles. The Cave 3 also shows icons and reliefs in the Vesara style – a creative fusion of ideas from the two styles, as well as some of the earliest surviving historical examples of yantra-chakra motifs and colored fresco paintings in Karnataka. The first three caves feature sculpture of Hindu icons and legends focusing on Shiva and Vishnu, while Cave 4 features Jain icons and themes.

 

TEMPLE CAVES

The Badami cave temples are composed of mainly four caves, all carved out of the soft Badami sandstone on a hill cliff, dated to the late 6th to 7th centuries. The planning of four caves (1 to 4) is simple. The entrance is a verandah (mukha mandapa) with stone columns and brackets, a distinctive feature of these caves, leading to a columned mandapa – main hall (also maha mandapa) and then to the small square shrine (sanctum sanctorum, garbhaghrha) cut deep into the cave. The cave temples are linked by stepped path with intermediate terraces looking over the town and lake. Cave temples are labelled 1–4 in their ascending series even though this numbering does not necessarily reflect the sequence of excavation.

 

The cave temples are dated to 6th to 8th century, with an inscription dated to 579 CE. The inscriptions are in old Kannada script. The architecture includes structures built in Nagara style and Dravidian style which is the first and most persistent architectural idiom to be adopted by the early chalukyas There is also the fifth natural cave temple in Badami – a Buddhist temple, a natural cave, which can be entered kneeling on all fours.

 

CAVE 1

The cave is just about 18 m above the street level on the northwest part of the hill. Access is through series of steps which depict carvings of dwarfish ganas (with "bovine and equine heads") in different postures. The verandah with 21 m length with a width of 20 m in the interior, has four columns all sculpted with reliefs of the god Shiva in different dancing positions and different incarnations. The guardian dwarapalas at the entrance to the cave stand to a height of 1.879 m.

 

The cave portrays the Tandava-dancing Shiva, as Nataraja. The image, (1.5 m tall, has 18 arms, in a form that express the dance positions arranged in a geometric pattern, which Alice Boner states, is a time division symbolizing the cosmic wheel. Some of the arms hold objects while most express mudras (symbolic hand postures). The objects include drums, trident and axe. Some arms also have serpents coiled around them. Shiva has his son Ganesha and the bull Nandi by his side. Adjoining to the Nataraja, a wall depicts the goddess Durga, depicted slaying the buffalo-demon Mahishasura. Elsewhere, the two sons of Shiva, Ganesha and Kartikkeya, the god of war and family deity of the Chalukya dynasty are seen in one of the carved sculptures on the walls of the cave with Kartikkeya riding a peacock.

 

The cave also has carved sculptures of the goddesses Lakshmi and Parvati flanking Harihara, a 2.36 m high sculpture of a fused image that is half Shiva and half Vishnu. To the right, Ardhanarishvara, a composite androgynous form of Shiva and his consort Parvati, is sculpted towards the end of the walls. All the carved sculptures show ornaments worn by them, as well as borders with reliefs of various animals and birds. Lotus design is a common theme. On the ceiling are images of the Vidyadhara couples. Through a cleavage in the back side of the cave is a square sanctuary with more images carved.

 

Other prominent images in the cave are Nandi, the bull, in the sculptural form of Dharmadeva, the god of justice, Bhringi, a devotee of Shiva, a female decorated goddess holding a flat object in her left hand, which are all part of Ardhanarishvara described earlier. The roof in the cave has five carved panels with the central panel depicting the serpent Shesha. The head and bust are well formed and project boldly from the centre of the coil. In another compartment a bass-relief of 0.76 m diameter has carvings of a male and female; the male is Yaksha carrying a sword and the female is Apsara with a flying veil. The succeeding panel has carvings of two small figures; and the panel at the end is carved with lotuses.

 

CAVE 2

Cave 2, facing north, to the west of Cave 3, created in late 6th century AD, is almost same as cave 1 in terms of its layout and dimensions but it is dedicated primarily to Vishnu. Cave is reached by climbing 64 steps from the first cave. The cave entrance is the verandah, divided by four square pillars, which has carvings from its middle section to the top where there are yali brackets with sculptures within them. The cave is adorned with reliefs of guardians. Like the Cave 1, the cave art carved is a pantheon of Hindu divinities.

 

The largest relief in Cave 2 shows Vishnu as Trivikrama – with one foot on Earth and another – directed to the north. Other representations of Vishnu in this cave include Varaha (boar) where he is shown rescuing Bhudevi (symbolism for earth) from the depths of ocean, and Krishna avatars – legends found in Hindu Puranas text such as the Bhagavata Purana. Like other major murti (forms) in this and other Badami caves, the Varaha sculpture is set in a circle, the panel is an upright rectangle, states Alice Boner, whose "height is equal to the octopartite directing circle and sides are aligned to essential geometric ratios, in this case to the second vertical chord of the circle". The doorway is framed by pilasters carrying an entablature with three blocks embellished with gavaksha ornament. The entrance of the cave also has two armed guardians holding flowers rather than weapons. The end walls of the outer verandah is occupied by sculpted panels, to the right, Trivikrama; to the left, Varaha rescuing Bhudevi, with a penitent multi-headed snake (Nag) below. The adjacent side walls and ceiling have traces of colored paintwork, suggesting that the cave used to have fresco paintings. The columns show gods and battle scenes, the churning of cosmic ocean (Samudra Manthan), Gajalakshmi and figures, Brahma, Vishnu asleep on Shesha, illustrations of the birth of Krishna, Krishna's youth, Krishna with gopis and cows.

 

The ceiling of Cave 2 shows a wheel with sixteen fish spokes in a square frame along with swastikas and flying couples. The end bays have a flying couple and Vishnu on Garuda.[8] The main hall in the cave is 10.16 m in width, 7.188 m deep and 3.45 m high and is supported by eight square pillars in two rows. The roof of this hall has panels which have carvings. At the upper end of the wall a frieze runs all along the wall with engravings of episodes from the Krishna or Vishnu legends.

 

The sculptures of Cave 2, like Cave 1, are of the northern Deccan style of 6th-and 7th-century similar to that found in Ellora caves.

 

CAVE 3

The Cave 3 is dedicated to Vishnu, and is the most intricately carved and the biggest. It has well carved giant figures of Trivikrama, Anantasayana, Paravasudeva, Bhuvaraha, Harihara and Narasimha. The theme on which the Cave 3 is carved is primarily Vaishnavite, however the cave also shows Harihara on its southern wall – half Vishnu and half Shiva shown fused as one, making the cave important to Shaivism studies as well. Cave 3, facing north, is 60 steps away from the Cave 2. This cave temple's veranda, 21 m in length with an interior width of 20 m, has been sculpted 15 m deep into the mountain, and an added square shrine at the end extends the cave some 3.7 m further inside. The verandah itself is 2.1 m wide and has four free standing carved pillars separating it from the hall. The cave is 4.6 m high, supported by six pillars each measuring 0.76 m square. Each column and pilaster is carved with wide and deep bases crowned by capitals which are camouflaged by brackets on three sides. Each bracket, except for one bracket, has carvings of standing human figures, under foliage in different postures, of a male and female mythological characters, along with attendant figure of a dwarf. A moulded cornice in the facia, with a dado of blocks below it (generally in 2.1 m lengths), have about thirty compartments carved with series of two fat dwarfs called ganas. The cave shows a Kama scene on one pillar, where a woman and man are in maithuna (erotic) embrace beneath a tree.

 

Cave 3 also shows fresco paintings on the ceiling, but some of these are faded, broken and unclear. These are among the earliest known and surviving evidence of fresco painting in Indian art.[14] The Hindu god Brahma is seen in one of the murals, while the wedding of Shiva and Parvati, attended by various Hindu deities, is the theme of another. There is a lotus medallion on the floor underneath the mural of four armed Brahma. The sculpture is well preserved, and a large number of Vishnu's reliefs including standing Vishnu with 8 arms, Vishnu seated on a hooded serpent called Sesha or Ananta on the eastern side of the verandha, Vishnu as Narasimha (half human – half lion), Varaha fully armed, a boar incarnation of Vishnu in the back wall of the cave, Harihara (a syncretic sculpture of Vishnu and Shiva), and Trivikrama avatars. The back wall also has carvings of Vidhyadaras holding offerings to Varaha, and adjoining this is an inscription dated 579 AD with the name Mangalis inscribed on it. At one end of the pilaster there is a sculpture of the fourth incarnation of Vishnu as Vamana shown with eight arms called Ashtabhuja decorated with various types of weapons. A crescent moon is crafted above his face, crown of Vishnu decorates his head and is flanked by Varaha and two other figures and below on his right is his attendant Garuda. The images in front of Vamana are three figures of Bali and his wife with Shukra, his councilor. Reliefs stand 4 metres tall. The culture and clothing embedded in the sixth century is visible in the art sculpted in this cave. The roof in the verandha has seven panels created by cross beams, each is painted in circular compartments with images of Shiva, Vishnu, Indra, Brahma, Kama and so forth with smaller images of Dikpalas (cardinal guardians) with geometric mosaics filling the gaps at the corners.

 

The front aisle's roof has panels with murals in the center of male and female figurines flying in the clouds; the male figure is yaksha holding a sword and a shield. Decoration of lotus blooms are also seen on the panels. The roof in the hall is divided into nine panels slightly above the level of the ceiling. The central panel here depicts a deva mounted on a ram – conjectured as Agni. Images of Brahma and Varuna are also painted in the central panels while the floating figures are seen in the balance panels.

 

CAVE 4

The Cave 4, to the east of Cave 3, excavated around 650 AD, is located higher than other caves. It is dedicated to revered figures of Jainism and was constructed last among all the caves. It also features detailed carvings and diverse range of motifs. The cave has five bayed entrance with four square columns with brackets and capitals, and to the back of this verandah is a hall with two standalone and two joined pillars. The first aisle is a verandah 9.4 m in length, 2.0 m wide and extends to 4.9 m deep. From the hall, steps lead to the sanctum sanctorum, which is 7.8 m wide extending to a depth of 1.8 m. On the back part of this, Mahavira is represented, sitting on lion throne, flanked by bas-reliefs of attendants with chauri (fans), sardulas and makara's heads. The end walls have Parshvanath (about 2.3 m tall) with his head decorated to represent protection and reverence by a multi-headed cobra, Indrabhuti Gautama covered by four snakes and Bahubali are seen; Bahubali is present to the left of Gautama shown with his lower legs surrounded by snakes along with his daughters Brahmi and Sundari. The sanctum, which is adorned by the image of Mahavira, has pedestal which contains an old Kannada inscription of the 12th century A.D. which registers the death of one Jakkave. Many Jaina Tirthankara images have been engraved in the inner pillars and walls. In addition, there are some idols of Yakshas, Yakshis, Padmavati and other Tirthankaras. Some scholars also assign the cave to the 8th century.

 

CAVE 5

It is a natural cave of small dimensions, undated, is approached by crawling as it has a narrow opening. Inside, there is a carved statue seated over a sculpted throne with reliefs showing people holding chauris (fans), tree, elephants and lions in an attacking mode. The face of this statue was reasonably intact till about 1995, and is now damaged and missing. There are several theories as to who the statue represents.

 

The first theory states that it is a Buddha relief, in a sitting posture. Those holding the chauris are Bodhisattvas flanking the Buddha, states this theory, and that the cave has been converted to a Hindu shrine of Vishnu, in later years, as seen from the white religious markings painted on the face of the Buddha as the 9th incarnation of Vishnu. Shetti suggests that the cave was not converted, but from the start represented a tribute to Mayamoha of the Hindu Puranas, or Buddhavatara Vishnu, its style suggesting it was likely carved in or before 8th century CE.

 

The second theory, found in colonial era texts such as one by John Murray, suggested that the main image carved in the smallest fifth cave is that of Jaina figure.

 

The third theory, by Henry Cousens as well as A. Sundara, and based by local legends, states that the statue is of an ancient king because the statue's photo, when its face was not damaged, lacked Ushnisha lump that typically goes with Buddha's image. Further, the statue has unusual non-Buddha ornaments such as rings for fingers, necklace and chest-band, it wears a Hindu Yajnopavita thread, and its head is stylistically closer to a Jina head than a Buddha head. These features suggest that the statue may be of a king represented with features of various traditions. The date and identity of the main statue in Cave 5, states Bolon, remains enigmatic.

 

OTHER CAVES

In 2013, Manjunath Sullolli reported the discovery of another cave with 27 rock carvings, about 500 metres from the four caves, from which water gushes year round. It depicts Vishnu and other Hindu deities, and features inscription in Devanagari script. The dating of these carvings is unknown.

 

OTHER TEMPLES AT BADAMI

On the north hill, there are three temples, of which Malegitti-Shivalaya is perhaps the oldest temple and also the finest in Badami, and has a Dravidian tower. Out of the two inscriptions found here, one states that Aryaminchi upadhyaya, as the sculptor who got this temple constructed and the other dated 1543 speaks of the erection of a bastion during the Vijayanagara rule. The lower Shivalaya has a Dravidian tower, and only the sanctum remains now.

 

Jambhulinga temple, situated in the town, is presumably the oldest known trikutachala temple in Karnataka. An inscription dated 699 ascribes construction of this temple to Vinayavathi mother of Emperor Vijayaditya.

 

The place also has Agasthya Tirtha, temples of Goddess Yellamma, Mallikarjuna, Datttreya and Virupaksha. Bhuthanatha group of temples are most important in Badami.

 

BADAMI FORT

Badami fort lies east of the Bhuthnatha temple, atop a cliff right opposite the Badami cave temples. The entrance to this temple is right through the Badami museum. It is a steep climb with many view points and dotted with little shrines. The path is laid with neatly cut stone, the same that adores all the architecture around.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name Vatapi has origin in the Vatapi legend of Ramayana relating to Sage Agastya.There were two demon siblings Vatapi and Ilvala. They used to kill all mendicants by tricking them in a peculiar way. The elder Ilvala would turn Vatapi into a ram and would offer its meat to the guest. As soon as the person ate the meat, Ilvala would call out the name of Vatapi. As he had a boon that whomsoever Ilvala calls would return from even the netherland, Vatapi would emerge ripping through the body of the person, thus killing him. Their trick worked until Sage Agastya countered them by digesting Vatapi before Ilvala could call for him, thus ending the life of Vatapi at the hands of Ilvala. Two of the hills in Badami represent the demons Vatapi and Ilvala.

 

It is also believed that name Badami has come from colour of its stone (badam - Almond).

 

CULTURE

The main language is Kannada. The local population wears traditional Indian cotton wear.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Badami is located at 15.92°N 75.68°E. It has an average elevation of 586 metres. It is located at the mouth of a ravine between two rocky hills and surrounds Agastya tirtha water reservoir on the three other sides. The total area of the town is 10.3 square kilometers.

 

It is located 30 kilometers from Bagalkot, 128 kilometers from Bijapur, 132 kilometers from Hubli, 46 kilometers from Aihole, another ancient town, and 589 kilometers from Bangalore, the state capital.

 

WIKIPEDIA

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