Olivia de Havilland won a Best Actress Oscar for the 1949 film "The Heiress," an adaptation of Henry James's novel "Washington Square," which focuses on Catherine Sloper, a rich woman in 19th century New York who is being romanced by a relatively poor young man played by the then amazingly handsome Montgomery Clift. Catherine's father believes that Morris is only interested in her wealth. Morris proposes to her, leading to dramatic and mysterious consequences for both...

 

During the 19th century:

 

Ever since that horrendous night when Catherine's dreams had crashed into tiny bits because of Morris' failure to come to take her away for their planned elopement, she had been as reclusive as possible. As she never left the house, her father, Dr. Sloper, and Aunt Penniman were the only people she saw.

 

Catherine forbade them both to talk to her about Morris, who never contacted her after that fateful night. She wished that her heart could simply turn to ice. Instead, it felt as if it were filled with shards of glass. Even the thought of Morris name caused her to feel a jagged piece of glass puncture her heart, renewing her humiliation and shame.

 

"One day," Catherine thought, "I shan't care for him. I shall be completely indifferent. If only that day could be now!'

 

Dr. Sloper, while ignorant of the aborted elopement even though he knew that the couple no longer saw each other, was concerned about the grim mood that Catherine radiated. Thus, he encouraged Catherine to attend dinner and concert with some of their society friends. She knew that he thought that doing so might make her cheerful.

 

Yet, standing in their friends' luxurious mansion only reaffirmed Catherine's feelings of being abandoned, rejected, tossed aside. As everyone else cheerfully made small talk, Catherine felt more and more alienated. Thus, she drifted off into the dining room before the others in order to calm herself.

 

"I shall forget you, Morris. Perhaps if I forgive myself for having been so stupid to think that a dashing young man could love such a drab, plain girl like me, I shall be closer to removing you from my heart. But is the only way to do that be to accept my father's view of me as an unlovable ugly duckling? I must figure this out. Somehow, I shall heal from the wounds each of you has inflicted on me....If only I knew how..."

 

TO BE CONTINUED

*****You might want to enlarge the photo to see more clearly the bow at Catherine's waist

 

Véra Székély 1919-1994 Janvry

Espace écarté Space removed 1985

Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Palais de Tokyo)

 

UNDERSTAND THE CONTEMPORARY CONCEPTUAL ART (4) THE ART OF THE TOP EYE. A SMALL HISTORY OF PATHOLOGY.

 

"Look at our art, we have the aesthetics of our ethics: a cry in the desert."

Jean DUCHE. The Shield of Athena The West, its history, its destiny 1983

 

"You can make to peoples swallow anything," says one expert: MARCEL DUCHAMP (interview on the express 23 July 1964) Under the name of art, for more than a hundred years now, to peoples have been made to swallow anything. We are in the midst of unreality, what is officially considered to be the art of the 20th century and the beginning of the current century has no connection with art, it is anti-art, non-art, hoax.

JEAN LOUIS HARROUEL Contemporary Art, Great Falsification Jean Cyrille Godefroy 2009

1) The old pathologies: the chosen peoples.

2) A new pathology: the enlightened

3) Political and social consequences of the new pathology: The Initiation.

4) Back to art. The Contemporary Conceptual Art or the Art of the Top Eye

  

1) The old pathologies: the chosen peoples.

  

When visiting the Museums of Contemporary Art of Europe, always installed in very expensive buildings, with a very generally remarkable architecture, designed by prestigious architects, the visitor is necessarily led to ask himself: How do they manage to impose this official contemporary anti-art, everywhere ugly, absurd, provocative, botched, sad, uprooted, obsessional, and as a result of all this, totally artificial ?

How do they manage to hold this obscure, incomprehensible, hermetic discourse everywhere, closed to the common people? And why is that?

It's easy to understand: They do it on purpose.

The Why is also simple to understand, as for ancient art, it is the ideology that inspires this art.

Official Contemporary Art is not a coincidence, an accident, a temporary error, it is a will, a project, in the long term, for society. A project which corresponds to a relatively recent ideology in human history, a new religion, that of man and of his reason. It is in the name of this faith in the human Raison that our elites want an art separated from the peoples, an art for an avant-garde of the chosen ones of the Intelligence, of Initiates, to which they claim to belong. For the elites of past centuries, art was a means of communicating with peoples and influencing them through the transmission of a shared ideological message. Art was not reserved, but rather a common good between elites and peoples.

Contemporary ideological and political elites have turned official contemporary art into an apartheid art, an art reserved for the enlightened, the initiated. It is true that these elites have new means of communication and propaganda towards the peoples: Schools, television, cinema, radio, mass media, advertising. The role of art as an instrument of indoctrination has become less essential and much more indirect. The art have could settle himself in "reserve". The Conceptual Contemporary Art, this art reserved for the "enlightened", is an excellent revealer of the values that animate the ideological and political elites of our time and in particular of one of the essential characteristics of contemporary political ideology: the claim of these elites to the possession of "higher lights", of higher knowledge, which can only be acquired through the mechanism of Initiation and which legitimizes their power of government. A doctrine that inspires all discourse, hermetic and nebulous, that is inseparable from official contemporary art, and that has considerable political and sociological implications, that go well beyond the museums of contemporary art alone.

Museums of contemporary art are only, in the aesthetic field, the apparent tip of an iceberg that concerns the entire Western society and whose invisible presence they reveal.

 

The pathology we are about to discuss here, considered from a collective, social point of view, is that of the chosen, the initiated and the enlightened. History has always known the chosen by race, ethnicity, nation, and God's chosen ones, who have influenced world events for millennia. For about three centuries now, representatives of a very similar neurosis have appeared in Europe, but whose doctrines and ideological justifications are different, and even often opposed: the chosen of Reason.

 

The pathology of "elected peoples", "superiors" by their races, native lands, cultures, and/or religions is very old. She has been active in all cultures, it is not possible to be complete.

The Aryans in India, or Nazi Germany,

The Greeks opposing the Barbarians,

The Chinese consider themselves the only "Sons of Heaven", but also the Japanese or Koreans (Moon)

The Jews, "Chosen People", "People of the Covenant" with the only true God, "people priest", people of the only true End Time Messiah.....

Muslims, Faithful to Allah, the One, vindictive and merciful, the only true one, as opposed to God or the Gods of the Infidels, condemned to eternal hell,

The Aztecs, the chosen people of Huitzilopochtli, a solar deity, practising human sacrifice by the tens of thousands annually to the detriment of the surrounding peoples.

The Inca, son of the Sun, reigning over a totalitarian society, so popular that it collapsed at the mere sight of a few dozen Spaniards.

The Protestants, predestined for salvation by the Grace of God alone, without the works being necessary.

The list would be long to establish of all the "superior peoples" and "True Believers" in human history.

The Lazarist Catholic Fathers Huc and Gabet, missionaries crossing Tibet in 1844-1846, were very sincerely frightened of the mass of the damned whom they met on their journey. They did not seem to have understood the distant humour of some of the Buddhist sages they met, who recognized the great spiritual and moral interest of Catholic teaching. Without however converting, Or maybe they didn't want their true thinking to show through in their book, for fear of attracting the wrath of their own hierarchy.

It is certain that by the cross effect of the reciprocal damnations of the various religions, especially Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the Infernos del Ciel must have been saturated with people for two millennia.

The Hells on Earth have also multiplied, in the name of these many true antagonistic faiths, eager to convert all those who did not ask them anything. Muslims have imposed themselves from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean via the suburbs of Vienna. Catholic Spain has been illustrated in this regard in South and Central America. But Protestants were not more tolerant one or two centuries later in North America. Even the Bisons will not escape the conversion with rifle.

All these "chosen", these "enlightened", these "initiates" have existed, and still exist, in an infinity of religions which, with very few exceptions, conceive of truth and of salvation, for them, but also for the others only through doctrines always based on the divine election, of a particular people or of believers without ethnic distinction but holders of the single Truth. Ecumenism is publicly displayed, but mental reservations are alive and well.

Doctrines are one thing, practices and behaviours can be different. But the doctrines of the monotheistic religions, derived from Semitic thought (Judaism, Christianity, Islamism), are all very marked by the same handicap: the simplistic belief in the existence on earth, within reach of human thought, of one Truth, and only one . This is not the case with the religious and philosophical doctrines of the Far East, such as the Hinduisms, Buddhisms, Taoisms, Confucianism and Shintoism, which distinguish all the truths to which the human mind can have access, multiple and even apparently contradictory, and the Metaphysical Truth, of which man cannot be aware during his lifetime. Far eastern religious thought is, as a result of this fundamental analysis, in theory much more tolerant than Western religious thought. For centuries, Hindu philosophical and religious thought in particular has been based on the principle that all the great religions of the world, despite their different and sometimes opposing discourses, are bearers of saving truths.

These pathologies of the belief in a unique truth and in a particular excellence of which a group of humans would be the sole holder because of a membership, ethnic or cultural, a filiation or a divine election, a faith or of an initiation, have long been based essentially on the race or the land of birth and on religion, these sources being able to be combined.

It is important to observe that these neuroses of superiority are not harmful in themselves but by the action of men, what men do with them. Religious beliefs, even exclusive ones, have not only had bad consequences in terms of civilization and art, contrary to the doctrine spread by their contemporary atheist opponents. History and in particular art history demonstrate this. The alchemy of pathology and normality is complex in human beings. Well-controlled and compensated neuroses can be stimulating and creative of memorable actions, of admirable and lasting civilizations. Without too much collateral damage. But other pathologies have been little creative or totally destructive, especially for those who were not chosen, elected, enlightened, initiated, those outside.

The pathology of election by belonging to a nation, a land and a culture of origin, for example, has wreaked havoc in Europe when it has lost its sense of proportion. When the neurosis became obsessive. When fidelity to a past and a culture has become an aggression against the past and the culture of others. This ultra-nationalism was the consequence of and reaction to the absurd conquests of the French Revolution and the First Empire. The whole 19th and first half of the 20th century was a period of dramatic clashes of multiple ultra-nationalist neuroses that were exported to Japan.

This ultra-nationalism was in no way born of the spontaneous passions of peoples, it was totally created and fuelled by the ideological and political elites of the time because it served their interests. Peoples always slaughter each other by order from above. And it is certainly not the simplistic dream of the "enlightened" of a Universal Republic, the new ideological mega-neurosis of globalism, that will be an obstacle to the massacres of peoples.

Since 1945 it is indeed the opposite neurosis that the elites have been imposing: nationalism, the simple feeling of national belonging, is described as a racist abomination, and it is the contempt for the nation, the land and the culture of birth, which is the mandatory correct thought under penalty of criminal conviction. What has happened so that in half a century the hypertrophied adoration of the nation becomes its utterest execration? The same speech that was worth the Legion of Honour in 1900 is worth prison in 2000. It is because a new ideology, which appeared in Europe in the 18th century, was imposed on peoples by the political-economical elites.

  

2) A new pathology: the enlightened

 

The important novelty with major political consequences is that all the superiority complexes, which were exclusively ethnocultural and/or religious in inspiration for millennia, were able, from the end of the 18th century, the famous "Enlightenment", to base oneself on totally secular, profane, rationalist ideologies, even claiming to be scientific.

This is the great recent progress of human civilization. The chosen one of Reason was born, and gradually imposed himself against the chosen one of God or certain Gods and against the feeling of belonging to a culture or a territory. There is often opposition between God's chosen ones, always very active in certain regions, and the chosen ones of Reason, but there is also very often an alliance. It depends on which God and which chosen people it is. And what a chosen people is hidden behind the chosens of reason. The vocabulary has evolved accordingly: the "enlightened" "the Illuminated", were both ben added and opposed to the "chosen of God" to the "believers", the "faithful", the "sons of Heaven"...

The "enlightened" are the spiritual sons of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a profound neurotic but highly gifted to found a system. These "enlightened" will have considerable political success: they are certainly the minority, but they are the exclusive legitimate interpreters of the General Will, the only true because the only one founded in Reason. This General Will, in reality particular, property of a handful of self-proclaimed enlightened people, is superior to the will of the majority of peoples supposedly lost by passions. The enlightened are inhabited by Reason while the peoples are only inhabited by passions.

This doctrine of "General Will", the expression of a minority enlightened by Reason, founded the new democratic, republican aristocracy, the modern, rationalist and materialistic aristocracy. Jean Jacques Rousseau is the Founder Father of the new conception of the political and ideological elite still in force throughout the West and Eurasia and which has even spread to the Far East, China and Korea.

The "avant-garde enlightened" by the lights of the dialectical and scientific materialism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, are indeed a direct avatar, adapted to the scientism of the 19th century, of the Rousseauist ideology. A century after Rousseau, it was necessary to be less literary, less "philosophical" and more "scientific". Hence Marxism Leninism, Maoism.....

These "enlightened" represent a double betrayal: betrayal of true philosophy, that of Socrates or Confucius, and betrayal of true science, just as modest, when it can express itself freely apart from the pressures of ideological drifts and political and economic ambitions.

The pathology of the "initiated" by their belonging to an esoteric doctrine and a network of elected officials is therefore not endangered, because religions have, in certain regions of the earth, less power over men than in the past. The chosen ones of God or of the Gods are no longer alone: they are neighboring, collaborating with, or facing, a new and growing category of chosen ones, those of Reason and Science. A reason and a science misguided, of course, but spirituality and religion too have been misguided.

The "superior men" thus continue to proliferate, who sometimes self-proclaim themselves with sincerity and good faith, almost innocently, as authorized and only able to teach and govern the mass of the uneducated, unelected, non- messianic, not predestined, unenlightened, unrelated, uninitiated, uneducated, in short all the poor inferior men misguided in their irrationality. Hell is paved with good intentions, in times of triumphant Reason as in the times of God or of the Gods or of the Fatherland.

Contemporary political elites consider themselves to be far above the people. They do not proclaim it too loudly, publicly, but they think it very loudly within their reserved cenacles.

This is not a new idea in the history of humanity. "Aristocracy" is defined etymologically from the Greek aristos, better, excellent, and kratos, power.

The novelty is not therefore in this belief in the political superiority of a few, but in the conceptions of the basis of the legitimacy of the power that these elites hold and exercise over peoples.

It is no longer the force of weapons, nor birth. Because these elites claim to be civilian, peaceful authorities, exercising effective control over the military and democrats, popularists.

This is no longer the divine election, because contemporary government elites are politically atheistic and proclaim themselves secular. Even in countries where religion has retained a certain social influence, such as the United States.

Likewise, wealth has been partly delegitimized. Money is in fact an ever more active actor of power over men, but the wealth is no longer so ostensible, it claims less, and is hidden more. You have to be rich to be powerful, but you shouldn't look so much anymore, unlike the old aristocracies. It is a wealth of merchants and bankers who are well established at the top of society, but who prefer relative discretion. It is no longer a wealth of aristocrats and nobles who display and proclaim their difference. But on this point, since the collapse of communist societies, developments are underway towards greater legitimacy of money.

 

3) Political and social consequences of the new pathology: The Initiation.

 

The public, official discourse bases the political legitimacy of the rulers on the election by the governed. This is the correct public doctrine. Political legitimacy through popular designation, a people more or less widely understood, is also not a novelty in human history. Neolithic societies, classical Greece, have experienced this type of legitimation of power. The people have always been most often a trompe l'oeil, an alibi, nothing new from this point of view either.

But in the 18th century, a political doctrine emerged in Europe that developed the idea of the coexistence of two totally contradictory political legitimacies: the peoples and the enlightened ones. The trick was to pretend to reconcile them. With a little intuition it is possible to guess for whose benefit.

18th century Europe proclaimed itself "the Enlightenment". The "lights" for Europe of course, but also for the whole world, because the West tends to claim to think for all other civilizations.

This appellation of "Age of Enlightenment" is charged with significance, like that of "Middle Ages" or "Renaissance". It expresses a vision of history that is infinitely more ideological propaganda than historical reality. Since the "Enlightenment" the legitimacy of political elites throughout the West has in fact been based on a new, fundamental, essential doctrinal affirmation, which remains discreetly in the background compared to the publicly reaffirmed principle of legitimacy through popular election. The political and ideological elites are legitimate because they are enlightened, enlightened, educated, initiated into the mysteries of the lights of a higher Reason. "Enlightenment" whose peoples are, by nature, in the most total ignorance, but which they can possibly acquire through appropriate education, an initiation. Education is for everyone, but Initiation is the obligatory passage for the entry into the world of ideological and political elites.

Initiation to a Higher Intelligence has become, in a little over two centuries, the cornerstone of the organization of the entire social and political system of the West. It is no longer only the business of a few groups, claiming marginal influence, but it is the whole of Western society that is politically governed, entirely, on the basis of Initiation. The peoples have seen nothing, and continue to see nothing. They still believe they are in an elective and pluralistic democracy. They have an excuse: everything has been done to hide this evolution from them.

It is essential to understand which Initiation is involved here. It is a worldly initiation, whose exclusive goal is success in society. It is an initiation with a view to global action on all men, a materialistic, prosaic, direct and exclusively social and political initiation.

It is not in any way a spiritual, intellectual or moral initiation whose necessary, unavoidable and primary purpose is the personal learning of discipline about oneself, the acquisition of individual wisdom through the mastery of one's desires, and a distance from the vanities of daily life. With, secondarily only, possible, indirect political and social effects, through the exemplarity of the individual behaviour or of a small group of wise men and disciples.

It is by no means initiation as it has been understood for millennia in all the great religions and philosophies. The initiation of Brahmanist, yogic, sannyāsin, Confucianist, Buddhist, or Socratic, Stoic, Epicurean (not confuse epicureanism and hedonism), scholastic, Augustinian, Benedictine, Aquinian, Dominican, Franciscan, etc. This is not here either the initiation, as it is understood on Mount Athos.

Certainly the Gnostic, Kabbalistic, magical, satanic drifts, whose purpose is not self-discipline and exemplary behaviour, but the acquisition of power over others, a public or occult power, have always existed. These abuses were very particular, individual, or the result of small groups whose influences remained marginal, without significant consequences at the level of societies, on the government of all men.

It is this Initiation, materialistic and non-spiritual, political and non-personal, initiation for action in the world and not for meditation on the world, initiation greedy for power over other men and not seeking wisdom through self-control, which has become, behind the mask of elective and liberal democracy, the system of government, unofficial, secret, but real and effective, of the whole West.

The government of the Shade was born thanks to the "Enlightenment". This was to be expected.

 

As a direct result of this evolution in conceptions of political legitimacy, in about 250 years, Europe and the West have gone from a transparent, public, obvious, nation-specific system of government to an opaque, secret, clandestine, unique system of government for the whole West. To take the example of France, and without going back to the medieval period, to the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, to the times of Francis I, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, all the French knew their governors. Not only at the local and regional level (the lord, baron, count, bishop or abbot), but also at the level of the entire kingdom. When the King allowed a minister to govern, as in the case of Louis XIII and Richelieu, all the people were informed. The same was true in all European nations, in the England of Elizabeth I, or in the German empire of Charles V or Ferdinand I, or in the Russia of Peter the Great and Catherine II. The exercise of political power was, everywhere in Europe, nominal, exoteric, ostensible, public. The peoples knew who ruled them. And the rulers knew that the peoples knew how to name those who ruled them. It was a political system based on personal and public responsibility. Even if the accountability could be pushed back into the distance. A distant, very distant one, often in the afterlife. But in this era of active and shared beliefs from the bottom up in the social hierarchy, this very distant beyond could be constraining down here.

 

At the beginning of the 21st century, the political system of the entire West has gradually come to be at the opposite end of this model: it is increasingly unified by a totalitarian, profane and no longer religious ideology, that of the Enlightenment and its latest avatar: Globalism. The system is totally secular, profan, atheistic and materialistic. But he also changed totally in his mode of exercise. Real political power has become secret, hidden, clandestine, cabalistic.

It is Plato's "Republic" that has thus been implemented, but a republic in which the Wise Men, at the top of the pyramid, are totally unknown to the general public. Only their creatures, their servants, the Guardians of the Compliant Order, appear officially, on the front of the stage. The official rulers, appointed after totally controlled elections, are all very brilliant puppets of an opaque, underground, secret system of influence, totally ignored or unknown by the populations.

These Influences act through sectarian organizations, with the most diverse names, hidden from the general public, totally opaque to the outside world, but all linked to each other at the top of the pyramid. In France the last leader who was not under the control of these illuminated Influences was General de Gaulle. The "1968 Revolution", an agitprop masterpiece organized by the enlightened, had no other purpose than to drive him out of power. The 1968 revolution, like its predecessors of 1789 or 1917 and many others, was nothing more than a coup d'état organized by masked elites, using peoples to establish their domination.

It is to these connected esoteric organizations that the apparent, official leaders are accountable, not to the peoples. And it is this underground organization, this Power of the Shadow, which, under the mask of institutions of democratic appearance, more or less elected, directs Western society. Exactly as it imposes Contemporary Art, without ever being accountable to the governed.

These sectarian organizations are structured on the model of progressive materialistic Initiation. This model operates exclusively by co-option and imposes rites of access and passage from the first grades to the higher grades. A whole hierarchy and a whole solemn, falsely symbolic and mysterious ritualism are instituted, with a single purpose: to give an impression of spirituality charged with a high conceptual and moral significance. But in reality effectively sorting the increasingly senior executives in the group hierarchy, and ensuring the total power of the "insiders" of the top (the Wise Men of the Plato Republic) over the "insiders" of the middle (the Guardians of the Plato Republic). And through these agents of control, transmission and execution of instructions, throughout society, on all those who are not part of these networks: the peoples.

 

Secrecy is a determining means of action in the politics of these networks of influence.

Secrecy commands the prohibition to reveal outside the group the belonging to the sect and its organization. This is the main oath, the first, founder, when entering the organization.

The secret imposes of course to deny the very existence of the secret vis-à-vis the outsiders. The secret publicly confessed is no longer a secret. The secret is never acknowledged, it is always denied.

But the secret is also the basic principle of the internal organization of these networks: The secret works only in one sense, as in the mafias, or in the "secret services" of the states: from the bottom to the top. But not from the top down. This secret is achieved by appropriate methods of compartmentalization, hence the lodges, circles, clubs, and other cells, reduced in number of participants who try out beyond a certain number of participants. From where also the diverse and multiple obediences, the related organizations, allied, separated at the base, but connected by their summits. This compartmentalization imposes the progressive signs of recognition which allow the certain identification, the proof of the belongings and the ranks, and ensure the transmission of the orders. This apparent dispersion and proliferation is one of the ways to keep the secret by blurring the tracks.

This sectarian system is based on an organization that has absolutely nothing to do with that of the armies and more generally of state administrations or private companies, in which the hierarchy, the chain of command, is apparent, publicly and clearly defined. In the organigram of organizations of this type, secrecy has replaced the transparency that is the rule in daily action.

This is the argument of the Initiation to "Higher Lights" that justifies this secret organization, partitioned, opaque not only with respect to foreigners to the sect, but even within the network, between its frames and its subordinate members. The Eye at the top of the pyramid sees everything. The middle and bottom floors see nothing, or only false pretense, appearances

At the end of the road to this materialistic, worldly, political Initiation, there is no true light, no discipline on oneself, no wisdom, no spirituality, no superior morality, but only the materiality of power over others, and that of money. This power is exerted first on the members of the network themselves, who are only instruments of the supreme power, the tentacles of the octopus, and through them extends its effects on the whole society.

This system of organizing total political power over humanity is very sophisticatedly hidden and organized very effectively:

1) This system is disguised as to the doctrinal principles behind generous philosophical proclamations such as "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", the well-known Masonic motto, which is also that of the French Republic. The Progress of Humanity as a whole, because the project is globalist, towards more light is of course the ultimate goal.

The true, materialistic, worldly and political goals of social success and control are hidden behind the systematically contrary discourse, the proclamation of a highly spiritual ambition, the alibi for philosophical, moral, social research, and a "selfless philanthropic and cultural action. This is the application of the well-known principle: the bigger the lie, the more often it is repeated, and the more it will appear to be true. This lie is effective both outside the group and inside, at least in the lower ranks and especially in all blue masonry. Man loves to deceive himself almost as much as he loves to deceive others.

2) To maintain secrecy, and to fit within the framework of the democratic appearance that is part of the official discourse, this system hides behind an exoteric, public apparatus. A legal facade, an associative institutional framework, a head office, dressed in a whole ceremonial apparatus intended to "communicate" publicly and to seduce and impress the members themselves, and the crowd remained outside. This institutional framework is used to recruit new members, train future executives, and hide the real underground organization. The iceberg has an apparent summit, but its depths are invisible to the common people, and also to the vast majority of its members.

3) This system of Shadow government in the name of Enlightenment has created and organized a basic motivation, universally effective, acting from the bottom to the top of its pyramid of ranks.

At the very bottom, from the very first ranks, and all along the hierarchy, the single engine, real despite public discourse, has nothing to do with the acquisition of wisdom, spirituality, an effort on oneself. It is not a yoga, certainly not an asceticism even less a distance from the realities of the world. On the contrary, it is a dive into the world. Motivation is eminently prosaic: it is ambition and social success. Social success by belonging to a small closed environment of effective relationships, the possession of an essential address book to promote private action, family, professional, and public action, political. The career and advancement, the power that is at the end, are with money the main engines of life in society. And these engines have been very smartly used and distributed from the bottom up the network pyramid. Belonging immediately provides material benefits, advancement in the rank hierarchy provides others, for which reason, it is necessary to know how to obey, without trying to unlock the secrets of unkwowns at higher ranks.

At the top is wealth and power over all men, in the most absolute concealment and, except the settling of scores, which can be deadly, "Death to traitors", the most total political impunity. Total irresponsibility, before God of course, because these ideological and political elites no longer believe in it, but also before the governed, because these real rulers are totally hidden from them.

The liberal capitalist West has learned the lessons from its confrontation with its communist rival. This rivalry was a family affair, a confrontation between "enlightened" people of different tendencies. To sum it up simply: The Bankers' Society versus the Apparatchiks' Society. The West of the Bankers triumphed, first and foremost on the economic field, because it did not ignore the engine of profit. But the triumph of the capitalist West is also due to the fact that it has gradually developed a very effective political system, also based on the Single Party of the enlightened, but a secret single party, not apparent, elusive, against which no revolt can succeed since it is a power that does not exist. Associations, lodges, circles, cells, brotherhoods, clubs, cenacles, unofficial and discreet committees, hidden in the fabric of society, connected in a discreet, effective but not very visible way, like the spider's web, are much more effective than the single public party, institutionalized, displayed, of the communist world. The political model of the official single party continues to work in China.

 

4) Back to art. The Contemporary Conceptual Art or the Art of the Top Eye

 

Contrary to appearances, we have not moved away from the Official Contemporary Art as it is exhibited in the Temples of Conceptual Art: the Museums of Official Contemporary Art.

Contemporary Conceptual Art (ConCon Art in short) is explained like all previous arts by the ideologies, good or bad, more or less good and bad, both good and bad, neuroses, more or less well controlled or not controlled at all that structure the minds of elites, and that they impose on their obedient or constrained sheeps.

Official contemporary art can therefore help to understand current political and ideological developments. The Contemporary Conceptual Art, ugly, absurd, provocative, botched, is a hermetic art, reserved for an elite of initiates to so-called higher lights. It's the Art of the Top Eye. Contemporary Art, devoid of any cultural roots, bears witness to a desire to erase the differences and murder the nations on the grounds of promoting a hypothetical universal man, the globalist homo. Subject and not citizen of a Universal Republic, the new ideological mirage at the fashion. The new mega-neurosis of the "enlightened".

The Conceptual Art, the Art of the Top Eye, is the echo of this collective pathology of election, common to many ethnic groups, cultures and human groups for millennia. A pathology that has adapted to the rationalism and materialism of our times, and which, in the last fifty years of the 20th century, has succeeded in structuring an entire effective political system that extends throughout the West and that intends to perpetuate its power, and develop its action on a global scale.

The Contemporary Conceptual Art ("ConCon Art"), the Art of the Top Eye is the application in the aesthetic field of the doctrines of the "Enlightenment", it is the expression of the neurosis of the election by the Reason, the result of the materialist Initiation. It is the policy of the "Enlightenment" in art which, after three centuries of implementation, can flourish without complex, without control, with impunity, richly, alongside the beautiful, significant and shared art of previous millennia.

 

A period in the history of European art has escaped this direct determinism of the neuroses and pathologies of election: the period of modern art, from 1850 to 1950 in approximate dates. For this reason alone that the diversity of ideologies, the competition between them has left during a century, the field open to artistic creation of popular origin not directly conditioned by the elites. The ideological and political elites were in conflict. The eye at the very top of the Pyramid was still only a project in progress, but it was not yet omnipotent. European artists were thus able to express themselves freely through multiple ancient and modern aesthetics.

The peoples were summoned by their elites to a first hyper massacre that claimed the lives of some artists. The ideological confrontation continued between the two wars. Another moment of possible freedom for artists, but only in a smaller part of Europe. Indeed, since 1917 in Russia, then since 1930 in Germany totalitarian regimes have imposed themselves which have exterminated men and the arts. It was at this time that the Official Contemporary Art, the Conceptual Art, the Art of the Top Eye, was set up in New York. The Top Eye that appears on every dollar bill.

New convocation of the peoples for a second great massacre. This period of appalling clashes between ideologies ended with the triumph of the Enlightenment in 1945.

It is this triumph of the Highest Eye that is expresses itself in Contemporary Conceptual Art.

 

Art is indeed a very reliable revealer of ideological and political predominances throughout human history. Long-term or temporary dominances. Aton didn't last long against Amon. Hellenism has totally disappeared in the Middle East under the blows of Islamic swords, but only after a millennium of domination. Mithra had to quickly give way to Christ etc.

In our time, there are still traces of the diversified freedom that Europe of Art experienced between 1850 and 1950. But it is necessary to look elsewhere than in the Art of the Top Eye for spontaneous and sincere artistic expression: photography, street art, private, local and regional commercial painting. Conceptual Art, the massacre of beauty and meaning, the refusal to share a common aesthetic between elites and peoples, could be the harbinger of a new great massacre of the Innocents by decision of their political and ideological elites.

  

Consequence California HELLS LEGION MC

It has been 1,067 days since Russia invaded Ukraine – the war continues – normality does not settle in – yet life goes on amidst the war, its consequences, and its losses.

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Went through one of the worst shit in my life because of this fuckin place. I'll never ever forget this place and the mother fuckin cops who dont give a fuck about people and fuck around for money. Have I used the word 'fuck' too much? Well...I dont give a fuck.

This picture is taken at one of my favorite spots in town, Fjällgatan, looking west.

 

Taken on Sunday, at approximately 4:50 pm.

 

Look at the number of cars on a Sunday afternoon, and not during rush hours.

 

The demolishing / restructuring of Slussen sure takes it toll in many ways.

 

From what I understand, the project will not be finished until the year 2023....

"There was a beautiful time in the beginning when I just did it and didn't analyze the consequences, but I think that time ends in everyone's work." -Lynda Barry

XCOM 2

 

- Console Commands with Debug Camera

- Reshade 3.0.5

- Nvidia Custom Resolution

- Workshop Mods

 

Skyrim Legendary Edition; Rudy ENB, NLVA, Kynreeve Armor, Immersive Weapons

I am... pretty much .... missing you..

 

Visit this location at Le Beau Paradis in Second Life

28" x 21"

Ceramic, unglazed porcelain, geode slices, red jasper

 

This piece began taking shape in my mind's eye shortly after the BP oil spill began. Although my thoughts & feelings about the event are full of ugliness & angst, the work itself was a joy to create .... Camouflaged Emotion

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

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

  

Some background:

The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk is a single-seat subsonic carrier-capable light attack aircraft developed for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps in the early 1950s. The delta-winged, single turbojet-engined Skyhawk was designed and produced by Douglas Aircraft Company, and later by McDonnell Douglas. It was originally designated A4D under the U.S. Navy's pre-1962 designation system.

 

Skyhawks played key roles in the Vietnam War, the Yom Kippur War, and the Falklands War. Sixty years after the aircraft's first flight in 1954, some of the 2,960 produced (through February 1979). The Skyhawk found many users all around the world, and some still remain in service with the Argentine Air Force and the Brazilian Naval Aviation. Operators in Asia included Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

 

Thailand procured the Skyhawk in 1984, for the Royal Thai Navy air arm to be used for naval and air space surveillance, against sea surface targets and for close air support for the Royal Thai Marine Corps. A total of thirty aircraft were purchased from the USA, twenty-four single seaters and six two-seat TA-4J trainers.

 

The single seaters were refurbished A-4Cs from USN overstock, modernized to a standard that came close to the USN’s A-4L, but with some specific differences and unique features that made them suitable for all-weather strike operations. This modified version was re-designated as A-4LT and featured the late Skyhawk versions’ distinct “Camelback” fairing that house the additional avionics as well as a heat exchanger. The most distinctive external difference to any other Skyhawk version was a unique, pointed radome.

 

The update for Thailand included an AN/APQ-126 terrain following radar in the nose, which was integrated into an ILAAS digital navigation system – a very modern system of its era. The radar also fed a navigation and weapons delivery computer which made possible accurate delivery of bombs from a greater stand-off distance, greatly improving survivability.

Further special equipment for the Thai Skyhawks included, among others, a Hughes AN/ASB-19 Angle Rate Bombing System, a Bendix AN/APN-141 Low altitude radar altimeter, an AN/AVQ-7(V) Head Up display (HUD), air refueling capability (with a fixed but detachable refueling probe), a brake parachute housing below the jet pipe, two additional underwing hardpoints (for a total for five, like the A-4E) and an increased payload. Avionics were modernized and expanded, giving the Thai Skyhawks ability to carry modern AIM-9L Sidewinder AAMs and AGM-65 Maverick AGMs. The latter became, beyond standard iron bombs and pods with unguided missiles, the aircrafts’ main armament against naval targets.

However, despite the modernization of the avionics, the A-4LTs retained the A-4Cs’ Wright J65-W-20 engine with 8,200 lbf (36 kN) of takeoff thrust.

 

The first aircraft were delivered in December 1985 to the Royal Thai Navy (RTN / กองทัพเรือไทย / Kong thap ruea thai), carrying a USN grey/white livery. They served in the No.104 RTN Squadron, distributed among two wings based at U-Tapao near Bangkok and at Songkhla in the south of Thailand, close to the Malaysian border. During regular overhauls (executed at Singapore Aircraft Industries, now ST Aerospace), the RTN Skyhawks soon received a new wraparound camouflage with reduced insignia and markings.

 

While in service, the Thai Skyhawks soon suffered from frequent maintenance issues and a low availability rate, since replacement parts for the reliable yet old J65 engine became more and more difficult to obtain. At times, half of the A-4LT fleet had to remain grounded because of engine problems. In consequence, the Thai Skyhawks were in the mid-Nineties supplemented by fourteen Vought A-7E Corsairs (plus four two-seaters) in the coastal defense, sea patrol and anti-shipping role. In 1999, they were retired and replaced by Royal Thai Air Force F-16s.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: one

Length: 40 ft 3 in (12.29 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 6 in (8.38 m)

Height: 15 ft (4.57 m)

Wing area: 259 ft² (24.15 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 0008-1.1-25 root, NACA 0005-0.825-50 tip

Empty weight: 9,146 lb (4,152 kg)

Loaded weight: 18,300 lb (8,318 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 24,500 lb (11,136 kg)

 

Powerplant:

1× Curtiss-Wright J65-W-20 turbojet with 8,200 lbf (36 kN)

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 575 kn (661 mph, 1,064 km/h)

Range: 1,700 nmi (2,000 mi, 3,220 km)

Combat radius: 625 nmi, 1,158 km

Service ceiling: 42,250 ft (12,880 m)

Rate of climb: 8,440 ft/min (43 m/s)

Wing loading: 70.7 lb/ft² (344.4 kg/m²)

Thrust/weight: 0.51

g-limit: +8/-3 g

 

Armament:

2× 20 mm (0.79 in) Colt Mk. 12 cannons in the wing roots, 100 RPG

Total effective payload of up to 7,700 lb (3,500 kg) on five hardpoints

- 1× Centerline: 3,500 lb capability

- 2× Inboard wing: 2,200 lb capability each

- 2× Outboard wing: 1,000 lb capability each

  

The kit and its assembly:

I originally had this project stashed away for the upcoming "1 Week Group Build" at whatifmodelers.com in June 2020, but since the current "In the Navy" GB had some days to go (and even received a two week extension) I decided to tackle this build on short notice.

 

The original idea was simply to build an A-4L, a modernized A-4C for the USN Reserve units, but similar machines had also been exported to Malaysia. For the naval theme I came across the Royal Thai Navy and its A-7E Corsairs - and from that the idea of a Skyhawk predecessor from the Eighties was born.

 

Instead of an A-4C (Fujimi does one in 1:72, but it's a rare kit) I based my build upon the nice Airfix A-4B/Q kit. Its biggest difference is the shorter nose, so that I decided to modify this "flaw" first and added a pointed radome instead of the usual blunt Skyhawk nose; not certain where it came from – it looks very Sea-Harrier-ish, but it’s actually the tip of a large drop tank (Italeri Tornado?). Nevertheless, this small change created a weird look, even more so with the black paint added to it later.

 

Further additions and mods are a dorsal avionics bulge from an Italeri A-4M, a scratched kinked refueling probe (made from wire and white glue, the early Skyhawks had straight probes but this would certainly interfere with the new radar in the nose), a brake parachute fairing under the tail (scratched, too, from sprue material) and additional antennae under the nose and behind the cockpit. Nothing fancy, rather details from more modern Skyhawk versions.

The AGM-65 Maverick missiles and their respective launch rails came from an Italeri Saab 39 Gripen, the drop tank on the ventral pylon is OOB.

  

Painting and markings:

This was a tough decision. The Thai Corsairs as primary (and historically later) benchmark carried a standard USN grey/white high-viz livery, even though with small roundels. There were also VTOL Harriers (former Spanish Matadors) operated for a short period by the Thai navy on board of the multi-purpose carrier HTMS Chakri Naruebet, which wore a darker two-tone grey livery, pretty boring, too. I rather wanted something more exciting (if not exotic), a more modern wraparound scheme, suited for both overwater and high-altitude duties. That brought me to the Thai F-5Ts (a.k.a. Tigris), which carried - among others - a quite unique US export/aggressor scheme in three shades of light grey, including FS 35414, which looked like a pale turquoise on these machines. I furthermore took inspiration by early Indonesian A-4s, which also carried an US export scheme, nicknamed "Grape", which included darker shades of blue, blue-gray and the bright FS 35414, too.

 

I eventually settled upon a compromise between these two liveries and tried to adapt the standard F-5 aggressor camouflage pattern for the A-4, made up from FS 36440 (Light Gull Grey), 35164 (Intermediate Blue) and 35414 (Light Blue). Current Thai L-39 Albatros trainers seem to carry a similar livery, even though I am not certain about the tones that are actually used.

The basic enamel paints I used are Humbrol 129 and 144, and for the greenish Light Blue I used "Fulcrum Grey Green" from Modelmaster (#2134), a tone that is quite greenish but markedly darker and more dull than e.g. Humbrol 65, so that the color would not stand out brightly from the other greys and better fit between them. Worked quite well.

 

The inside of the slats as well as of the air brakes on the flanks were painted in bright red (Humbrol 19), while the landing gear and the interior of the air intake were painted in white (Humbrol 130). The cockpit was painted in a bluish mid grey (Revell 57).

 

After basic overall painting, the model received the usual light black ink washing and some post-panel-shading, for a lightly used/weathered look.

Most decals/markings come from a Thai Harrier (from an Italeri AV-8A kit), some other markings and stencils were puzzled together from the scrap box, e.g. from a USN F-5E aggressor and from a Peruvian Mirage 2000. Some additional details like the black gun soot areas on the wing roots or the fine white lines on the radome were created with generic decal sheet material.

Finally, the kit received an overall coat of matt acrylic varnish, except for the radome, which became semi-gloss.

  

As intended, this build was realized in just a couple of days - and I am positively surprised how good the Skyhawk looks in its unusual, if not exotic colors! This fictional livery certainly looks different from a potential standard USN grey/white outfit, and more exciting than a dull grey-in-grey livery. And it’s so weird that it even adds some credibility to this whiffy aircraft model. 😉

L1270229 Atlanta

I know, It's a repeat, but I basically could barely move today. So sorry.

Almost sooc also. D;

 

89/365

consequence is a source to gain personal strength :=)))

01/12/17 #1796. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs...Grating some cheese is a welcome bonus.

© Harold Davis

One of the consequences of the redrafting of the NCC-funded rural services in the Ollerton and Newark areas three years ago was a greater proportion of mileage being taken in-house by the council. This includes services 333 (Wellow to Newark via Ollerton, Laxton, Egmanton, Moorhouse, and Ossington) and 334 (Caunton to Tuxford via Kneesall, Wellow, Ollerton, Laxton, and Egmanton) which operate in tandom, with the former running on Wednesdays and Fridays, and the latter on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. These routes combined elements of what were Travel Wright services 32 (Newark to Ollerton), 33 (Wed/Fri Egmanton to Newark), and 36 (Retford to Laxton/Tuxford).

 

Fiat Ducato SC65HFS was captured this morning on its way out of Laxton with the 08:45 334 from Kneesall to Tuxford.

St Helier's Church, known as the Town Church, is one of the 12 parish churches of Jersey.

 

Helier was a Belgian saint who lived as a hermit on an islet in St Aubin's Bay, about three quarters of a mile off the south coast of Jersey. In AD555 he was killed by pirates, beheaded by their leader who feared his men would be converted by Helier's preaching. In consequence Helier soon came to be venerated by the Islanders, and eventually was adopted as the Patron Saint of both Jersey and its capitat.

 

Land reclamation means that the church, which was once on the shoreline, is now some way inland. There are iron rings in the boundary wall, which some historians suggest were used to moor boats, but the tide would only have reached here on the highest of spring tides and it is much more likely that the rings were used to tie cattle brought to market in town. The original marketplace was about 60 metres away next to a large rock which was surrounded by the sea at high spring tides.

 

It is believed that a chapel was erected on the site of the present building very shortly after Helier's death, but the present church was begun in the 11th century. The earliest record is in a document regarding the payment of tithes signed by William the Conqueror, which is assumed to pre-date the Norman Conquest of 1066. All that is visible of the 11th century structure are the remains of window arches on either side of the choir. The building was reconsecrated in 1341 for unknown reasons.

 

The church building was extended to roughly its present size by the end of the 12th century, but most of that building is also lost. The sections of wall flanking the east window, part of a pier on the north east side of the crossing, the west face of the north door and the adjoining section to the west, and a small section of wall opposite are all that remain of the building period of roughly 1175 to 1200. The porch attached to the north door and the greater part of the nave and crossing were built in the second quarter of the 15th century.

 

The date of the chancel is impossible to determine, since the original walls have been obliterated by the north chapel on the one side and the south chapel on the other. Most of the north transept dates to the second quarter of the 13th century. The present south transept, vestry, and the westwards extension to the nave are largely Victorian. A major renovation and re-ordering of the church began in 2007, and will take several years.

 

A chapel, La Chapelle de la Madeleine, existed in the north west corner of the churchyard until the Reformation. Formerly the Rectory and church offices were on the north side of the churchyard. These were replaced in 1969 by a new Church House building, a large concrete edifice incorporating offices, a church hall, kitchens and a choir vestry, together with a flat. The Rectory was moved to a large, purpose built Georgian house in the early 19th century.

 

This is the Historic Environment Record for the church:

 

The church is of fundamental importance to the heritage of Jersey being among the oldest and most significant historic buildings in the Island. One of the 12 medieval parish churches in Jersey.

 

11-12th century in origin with later alterations, enlargements and restorations from the 13-21st century. The dedication may date from the 6th century when St Helier established his hermitage and was likely given land opposite to found a church. The earliest known recorded reference to St Helier's Church is in 1090. The church has been central to the life of the St Helier parish community for hundreds of years and provides important insights into medieval and later society such as religious activity, artistic endeavour, technical achievement, the health of the local economy and the well-being of the population.

 

The church is in the vanguard of the Island's greatest architectural achievements. It has a long and complex structural history with visible fabric of several different dates, reflecting the periods of rebuild and modification, its development intertwined with the ecclesiastical, political and social advancements and upheavals through the centuries. Current knowledge identifies the oldest part of the standing structure as the 12th century nave and chancel. It is believed that the north transept dates to the 13th century, as does the north chapel.

 

Considerable additions were made in the 15th century, almost doubling the church in size, with the crossing and tower rebuilt circa 1440, the nave and south aisle, and the south chapel added in the late 15th century.

 

The building underwent substantial restoration in the 1860s and 2000s. The church has a range of interesting memorials, fixtures and fittings and is a major feature in the townscape. Its immediate setting includes a churchyard enclosed by walls and gates, erected in 1845 to designs by Jean Le Capelain, containing a rich variety of tombstones and monuments - many of historic or artistic interest. Shown on the Richmond Map of 1795.

 

Rectors

13th Century

Nicolas Du Pont 1294

Robert de Carteret 1295

14th Century

Johan Le Sauvage 1309

Pierre d’Artis 1392

Roger Walden 1371-1385 (Later Archbishop of Canterbury)

15th Century

Rogier Herbert 1432

Johan Bunouet 1482-1502

16th Century

Andre de la Hougue 1502-1536

Jean Nicolle 1538-1540

Charles Mabson 1541-1553 (First Protestant Rector)

Louis Gibaut 1553-1559

Guillaume Morice 1562

Thomas Johanne 1567

Jean de Monanges 1570-1577

Guillaume Bonhomme 1577-1583

Pierre Henry dit Dancy 1583-1586

Mathieu de la Faye 1591

Jean de Bihan 1593

Claude Parent 1595

Thomas Oliver 1596-1638

17th Century

Pierre d’Assigny 1638-1643

Pierre Faultrat 1646-1651

Josué Bonhomme 1654-1657

Francois Le Couteur 1657-1660

Jean Dumaresq 1660-1686

Joseph Pythios 1687-1696

Jean Dumaresq 1696-1705

18th Century

Francois Le Couteur 1706-1716

Francois Le Couteur 1717-1734

Pierre Daniel Tapin 1735-1761

Jean Dupré 1761-1784

Edouarde Dupré 1784-1823

19th Century

Corbet Hue 1823-1837

Francis Jeune 1838-1844

James Hemery 1844-1849

Philip Filleul 1850-1875

William Corbet Le Breton 1875-1888

George Orange Balleine 1888-1906

20th Century

Samuel Falle 1906-1937

Mathew Le Marinel 1938-1959

Alan Stanley Giles 1959-1971

Thomas Ashworth Goss 1971-1984

Basil Arthur O’Ferrall 1985-1993

John Nicholas Seaford 1993-2005

21stCentury

Robert Key 2005 -

 

Long years ago, over a thousand years, the coastline of St Helier did not follow its exact contour of today. That portion of the town south of the cemetery wall, bordering Bond Street, was then submerged at high tide, forming the head of a little creek, with outlet somewhere about the meeting of Pier Road with Mulcaster Street. It then followed, approximately, the line of Bond Street, formerly known as "La rue de la Madelaine". From there, a sandy waste stretched far away westward to Mont Cochon.

 

The creek can be traced in a 1700 model of St Helier in the museum of La Société Jersiaise. Rings in the wall of the churchyard were found, where boats in old times had been fastened.

 

Near this creek, to the north-west of the present parish church, a chantry chapel stood, known as the "Chapelle de la Madelaine ", built of sea pebbles. Its precise position was a little to the westward of the new choir vestry. In the deed passed before the Royal Court on January 10, 1695, whereby Charles Dumaresq and James Corbet ceded in perpetuity the chapel to the parish authorities of St Helier, to be used as a poorhouse, it is described as bordering the cemetery on the south and the rectory on the east. It is evident from this document that the chapel had passed into private hands, probably sold at the Reformation by the Royal Commissioners. The chapel still existed late in the 18th century, but was allowed to fall into ruin.

 

It is probable that the chapel, one of many scattered through the island, was contemporary with the Fisherman's Chapel of St Brelade's Bay. St Helier, at the time we are referring to, was merely a collection of a few houses or huts, in fact a small fishing village; yet, the position acquired importance from its proximity to the scene of the labours and martyrdom of its patron saint, and later by the foundation of an important monastic establishment within the precincts of Elizabeth Castle itself.

 

It is possible, and even probable, that the present church originated from a second chantry chapel, dating back to about the 11th century, though there is no positive evidence of this. If so, in the ordinary course of evolution, this chapel became the chancel of the church. From extant records it would appear that during the Roman Catholic epoch, the Abbot of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte was recognised as patron, and nominated to the cure. It is, however, to be noted that, on several occasions, allusion is made to the King having presented, in time of war, candidates of his own choice to the living.

 

This period, (the 12th century) would be synchronous with the first of several crude changes which the church has undergone. Once more we cannot help expressing regret that during the many restorations our Jersey parish churches have "suffered", the canons of good taste and architectural design seem so frequently to have been ignored; the more unpardonable since in every case these buildings were planned in accordance with convention, thus offering free scope for better treatment.

 

The period we have now arrived at (12th century) was that of the first enlargement. It may be reasonably assumed that the primitive development (from the simple chantry) consisted in the prolongation of the chapel westward, the whole being then divided into a sanctuary, sIightly raised, for the priesthood, and a nave, or body, used by the congregation.

 

In the centre of this village arose a church, partly built of pebbles. Houses clustered around, in contrast to the somewhat isolated position held by most of the sister churches.

 

St Helier thus assimilated to the continental type, where churches are usually found near, and often in actual contact with the dwellings of the civil community. In England, on the other hand, our great cathedrals, almost invariably, stand in an open space, the “Close", round which the clergy live. Hence the deduction, (a wrong one nowadays at least) that English clergy form a class apart, and are less intimately associated with those to whom they minister, than is the case abroad.

 

Hard beaten earth as usual made a flooring. On this, the occasion of the first enlargement, a mortuary chapel was thrown out northward of the chancel; also a transept, and, as if to remind those who should follow later, not to forget the form of the "Latin Cross" when making further change, a corresponding addition to the south, "La Chapelle de la Vierge" was at the same time added.

 

The date of the mortuary chapel would appear to be about 1160. The exterior is conspicuous, owing to the roof being constructed with a different pitch from that of the main structure; also by the light, thin buttresses of Norman type. Inside, the broken remains of two Norman and two transition (Romanesque) arches, are still preserved; also two niches for the reception of ancient tombs.

 

Jersey churches are nothing if not unconventional, and as the sequel shows, St Helier was not to prove an exception.

 

During the early half of the 15th century, further and most important alterations were undertaken. These probably gave rise to the "Dedicace" date of consecration, 1341.

 

The chancel walls were raised. The increased elevation can even now be traced in the chancel gable, through contrast in the work of the two periods. A south chancel aisle was added. A handsome crenellated tower, with cross vaulting beneath, standing on massive piers, was erected, and lastly, heavy barrel roofs replaced those previously existing, of wood or thatch.

 

Stronger support became essential for such ponderous additions. This was supplied by means of buttresses within, and heavy circular pillars on octangular pediments carrying transition arches to form an arcading, and take the inward thrust; the outer buttresses being at the same time strengthened. Caen stone and Chausey granite now superseded pebbles, brought from the sea.

 

Towards the end of the same century, (the 15th) further important changes were again made. Of these, the chief consisted in the addition of a southern nave aisle, involving more cumbrous arcading, and tending to render the interior somewhat dark and gloomy. Flamboyant tracery appeared in the upper portions of the eastern windows.

 

Thus, a nave consisting of five bays was completed, and the church rested from structural change for many years.

 

Things pursued their normal course, until two centuries later, arose a storm of radical and revolutionary attack, a storm that, pro tem destroyed the monarchy of England, only to collapse itself under the burden of its own iniquity. It culminated in an era of bigotry and desecration. The experience of her sister churches, was that of St Helier, intensified perhaps, owing to her metropolitan status.

 

During the following century, an historic event took place, under the very shadow of St Helier's Church. In 1781, the French, led by the so-called Baron de Rullecourt, attempted by a "coup de main" the capture of the Island. They failed, defeated by the gallant Peirson who, in the hour of victory, lost his life. Many prisoners were taken, who were interned, for safety, in the parish church, a handy place pending incarceration.

 

Reinforcements from the west arrived after the fight was over. True to their instincts the St Ouennais desired no half measures. "Let us bum them church and all", they said, and this they would undoubtedly have done, unless tradition errs, had not a force of regulars prevented them.

 

The next and last structural enlargement, or rather "restoration of St Helier's Church, took place in 1864. During the preceding revolutionary innings its leaders had busied themselves with the interior, purging it of aught that savoured of the Romish religion. A craze for galleries obsessed them. No fewer than seven, for the general public, and several belonging to private families, were placed in different parts.

 

One of the first named, known as the Common Gallery, at the west end, served as the roof of a town arsenal, for the parish guns. Another was devoted to the use of "fumeurs". The lofty Three Decker pulpit, of course, appeared, pride of the Puritan. It held a position confronted by a special pew for the Lieut-Governor. The travelling communion table also was there, used as occasion arose for parish elections, or even public auctions. Such were the marks of the roundhead regime.

 

Under the name of church reform, aught else went by the board. Stoups and piscinas, fonts and ornaments of every kind, were swept away. Governor Paulett, by virtue of a Royal Commission, seized the church plate and sold it; also the bells, and sold them. Such also was the situation during a certain period, happily short.

 

Intemperance of every kind must find a nemesis. Reaction was not long delayed, Early in the 18th century an organ ("box of whistles") appeared, tucked away in one of the many galleries. Then, huge chandeliers, in brass, lighted by many candles, whilst tracery again adorned the window, so that, once more, St Helier's came to assume its pristine garb.

 

In 1864 the work of restoration was taken seriously in hand. Some interesting reproductions, illustrating the church during this transition period, and presenting views from the northwest and southwest speak for themselves. Some of the neighbouring buildings can still be recognised.

 

A committee was entrusted with the task of securing stained glass windows. How well they did their work is recorded below, including names of many noted Jerseymen as donors.

 

The cost of restoration amounted to some £4,000, The nave was lengthened, a south transept added, A vestry and porch was opened on the north side, where the two Norman and transition arches, belonging to the mortuary chapel previously mentioned, were discovered, and removed to another position.

 

For these was substituted yet further heavy arcading, to match that in the remainder of the church, although it would seem rather late for trying to introduce uniformity within a building whose principal feature, one might almost say charm, lay in the opposite direction.

 

As to the interior, all the old galleries were taken out, whilst a new one was placed at the west end of the nave, and a second in the south transept, Stalls in thc chancel were appropriated to the choir, near the organ, on the north.

 

Church furniture of modem type was introduced, and many gifts from various well-wishers helped to renovate and beautify the church, A handsome lectern in brass was the contribution of Francis Bertram.

 

Members of the congregation presented a painting representing The Last Supper, to form a reredos, and specially as a tribute to the Rev P A Le Feuvre, Vice-Dean of Jersey, who died whilst in the act of ministering at the altar, on Easter Day 1889. A brass plate, in the chancel, further commemorates this tragic event.

 

Under one date or another may be seen recorded on these ancient walls nearly every Jersey name of note, the earliest, that of Maximilian Norreys, marked by a plain grey slab, with armorial bearings, and going back to 1591; one of the latest is that of Lieut-Colonel P Le Gallais, killed in the Boer War of 1901-2.

 

There, too, are other names familiar to Jerseymen as household word. Bandinel, La Cloche, d'Auvergne, de Carteret, Anquetil, Durell, a list too numerous for mention here. Tablets to several Lieut-Governors augment this roll, amongst them one to Major-General Archibald Campbell, who died during his term of office and found a last resting place within the church.

 

But, in this Roll of Honour none holds a more distinguished place than that of Francis Peirson. He lies beneath the tower. A simple monument (some think too simple), placed in he chancel by the States of Jersey, is thus inscribed:

 

"To the memory of Major Francis Peirson, who, when this Island was invaded by the French, fell bravely fighting at the head of British and Island troops. He died in the flower of youth and in the moment of victory the 6th day of January 1781, aged 24. The States of the Island in grateful testimony of their deliverance, caused this monument to be erected at the public expense".

His story needs no recital, nor his brave memory any costly monument. The French Commander, Rullecourt, was buried in the churchyard near the north transept door.

 

And still we might go on, but those who would recall to mind the Island's history by names of men who made it, cannot do better than spend a quiet hour within those sacred walls that speak.

 

St Helier's church plate is not remarkable, all being post-Reformation. Amongst its donors appear the names of Jean and Abraham Herault; a chalice, presented by the former, taking the pride of place for antiquity (1639). Philip Le Geyt, Francis Le Couteur, Mauger, Ste Croix, and Lempriere are other names associated with the collection.

 

But, doubtless the greatest general interest will centre round the pieces forming a service sent for the use of Charles, then Prince of Wales, later King Charles II, for use during his brief stay at Elizabeth Castle.

 

For a long time this service lay unheeded, certainly uncared for, somewhere within the castle walls. Its whereabouts, in some way, came to light, and then the British Government authorities took steps to have it properly looked after. Since the withdrawal of soldiers from the castle, it has been placed under the special guardianship of the Dean of Jersey, for use of the garrison at certain services, held in the parish church, once more created Garrison Church of Jersey.

 

The service consists of three pieces, flagon, chalice, and paten. All bear the London hallmark. The front of the flagon bears a coat of arms supposed to be those of Lord Capel. The chalice bears the arm, and the paten (1621-22) the crest of Sir Thomas Jermyn, Governor of Jersey from 1631 to 1644.

 

Two memorable occasions may be mentioned when this plate must have been used, each associated with the Royal refugee. On 26 April 1646, Charles, then Prince of Wales, attended the parish church in state, supported by the loyalists of Jersey. Later, in 1649, after his father's execution, the Prince, now King, was again present at a requiem service.

 

The scene is quaintly described as follows:

 

"On this occasion the young Prince, only 16 years of age, occupied a chair fronting the pulpit; a table was placed conveniently, so that his highness might rest his elbows on it".

The Duke of York, his brother, accompanied him; the Jersey Militia guarded his route from castle to church, and many devoted adherents followed in his train. He wore the Order of the Garter, and was loyally hailed as King, Jersey the first to acclaim him.

 

A Roll of over 50 Rectors attests the antiquity of the Christian faith, as held by the National Church in Jersey. From 1294, up to the present time, no break occurs. The earliest on record is Nicolas Dupont, 1294.

 

No fewer than seven Deans have served as Rectors of St Helier, the last but not least distinguished being the Very Reverend Samuel Faile.

 

We now conclude this brief memorial of St Helier's Parish Church; at times seat of the Deans, scene of many stirring episodes, pro-cathedral, and in some sense a local Valhalla. It cannot be denied, that, taken as a whole, the building with its lofty crenelated tower, is dignified, though unsymmetrical. A critic of the interior might perchance exclaim in Goethe's dying words, "Encore de la lumiere".

 

In fact, there seems to have been a clerestory at one time. Perhaps, in the not far distant future, the powers that be may yet again draw light from heaven.

 

History will testify to the present era as one of religious and social activity, of "rapprochement" among the Island churches, of material improvement as regards the fabric and its surroundings and, let us hope, of further generous gifts to adorn the interior, and perfect the services. It will be from no lack of interest or energy on the part of the present holder of the benefice should such not prove to be the case.

 

The following is the list of windows in the church, together with their subjects, and names of the donors:

 

Chancel, east window, the gift of the Hemery family. The upper portion represents "The Lord enthroned", while the lower portions represent "The angel announcing the resurrection", and "The risen Lord appearing to Mary Magdalene”. This window is the work of one of the most eminent artists of the period, and was exhibited at the great exhibition of 1862, as an example of British Ecclesiastical art.

Chancel aisle, east window, given by the restoration committee. Four lights, representing "The Adoration of the Magi", "Christ in the Temple", "The Marriage Feast in Cana", and "Christ bearing His Cross".

Chancel aisle (first window), the gift of Jurat E C Malet de Carteret, the subject being "Christ healing the sick".

Chancel aisle (second window), given by the Le Breton family; the subjecL of the three panels being “Christ appearing to St Thomas", "St Paul preaching at Athens", and "The woman of Samaria".

South aisle (first window) presented by the late Jurat J G Falle, the subjects represented being "The healing of the woman", " Christ, the Consoler", and " St Peter walking on the sea".

South aisle (second window), given by the late Mr N Le Quesne, "Christ blessing the children ".

South aisle (third window) presented by the son of the late Mr Abraham de Gruchy, "The baptism of our Lord".

South aisle (west window), presented by he Westaway family, "The Ascension".

Nave (west window), presented by the late MR George Bertram, "The Crucifixion".

Nave (north window), the gift of tbe late Mr Jean de Gruchy, " The raising of Lazarus ".

North transept, given by the late Mr Philip Le Rossignol, "Christ walking on the Sea".

South transept, given by the Parish of St Helier, "The sacrifice of Isaac", "The framing of the law", and "The brazen serpent".

Mortuary Chapel, raised by subscription among tbe widows of tho congregation, " Christ, the Good Shepherd".

Vestry, presented by he late Mrs John Le Masurier, "The Annunciation".

A squirrel's prayer (A message to mankind)

  

Thank you for the life you give

The air I breathe, the dray in which I live

For the land around in which we roam

My wife and kids who call it home

  

Thank you for the food received

For love and hope and dreams believed

For every breath each day I take

For the little things that big things make

  

Thank you for the seasons all

For Spring and Summer, winter, fall

For happiness, contentment also

The birds and bees and flowers that grow

  

Thank you for the clouds and sky

The trees that offer shelter high

For rain that feeds the land I love

The earth below, the stars above

  

If I could ask for one small favour

Please watch over man's behaviour

I fear that dreadful changes may

Create a world of dread one day

  

The need to breed and feed and greed

Light pollution, lead not heed

Blinkered thoughts of exploration

Forests felled, extermination

  

Species dying by the hands

Of thoughtless folk as man expands

Pesticides and chemicals

Placed within the hands of fools

  

A planet pale and suffocating

Dwindling hope, excruciating

It's not too late if man could see

Responsibility lies with he

  

A squirrel, I, a chain and link

Like all who dwell on Earth I think

Thank you for my life, it's great

And Man take note... It's not too late!

  

Written by

Paul Williams 22nd May 2021

  

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A SERIES ON THE EASTERN GRAY/EASTERN GREY SQUIRREL (SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS)

  

By Paul Williams

  

The Grey (or Gray) squirrel, you either love 'em or you hate 'em. Cute and fluffy little funsters or destructive critters who ruin trees, kill bird chicks and trees and damage our homes... oh and it's their fault we lost our native Red squirrels as well!

  

OK

  

I get it and I see both sides of the story of course. For my part, I am a nature, wildlife and landscape photographer who prefers the company of animals and natural beauty to fellow humans who are systematically plundering Mother Earth's resources and killing off her beautiful creatures at an alarming rate! I believe there is a natural order of things, creatures kill other creatures to survive, they adapt to situations and when mankind encroaches on their territory to make a fast buck, those animals sometimes adapt to survive and the order changes. That is the balance of nature which is ever changing and affected by us..... the dumbest of the great apes. Some species are driven out by others, some may be destined to become extinct, the fittest will survive, and sometime a species will need intervention and help from mankind in order to survive... usually as a direct consequence of mankind's own actions in destroying the animal kingdom's natural habitat of course.

  

I adore these little fellas and at almost sixty years old, I never grew up knowing red squirrels at all. I've seen reds in Scotland and black squirrels in Stanley Park on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, but in my beloved home country of England I have always known and loved the cute little Greys. They visit my garden and give me hours, days, weeks of happiness and wonderful photographic opportunities, and I see them in Parks and forests all around me, so it's time to offer up an insight into the Grey squirrel, much loved, much hated... a sort of Marmite rodent if you will.

  

WHAT EXACTLY IS A SQUIRREL?

  

The word 'Squirrel', was first recorded in 1327 and hails from the Anglo-Norman word 'Esquirel', from old French 'Escurel', which was a reflex for the Latin word 'Sciurus'.The Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is also known as the Eastern Grey squirrel or simply grey squirrel depending on the region of the world it is found. It is a tree squirrel, of the squirrel family Sciuridae including over one hundred arboreal species native to all continents of the world other than Antarctica and Oceania. Tree squirrels live mostly in trees, apart from the flying squirrel. The best known genus is Sciurus, containing most of the bushy tailed squirrels which are found in Europe, North America, temperate Asia as well as central and south America.

  

The scientific classification for the Eastern Grey is:

KINGDOM: ANIMALIA PHYLUM: CHORDATA CLASS: MAMMALIA ORDER: RODENTIA FAMILY: SCIURIDAE GENUS: SCIURUS SUBGENUS: SCIURUS SPECIES: SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS

  

They were first noted by German naturalist, botanist, entomologist, herpetologist, and malacologist - Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788.

  

A mammal and rodent, predominantly herbivorous they are none the less an omnivore with a life span of between two and ten years. They can grow to 70cm in length and weigh up to 8kg. There are more than two hundred and sixty species of worldwide squirrel, the smallest being the African pygmy squirrel at just 10cm in length, whereas the Indian giant squirrel is three feet long! The oldest fossil of a squirrel, Hesperopetes, dates back to the late Eocene epoch period Chadronian period of 40-35 million years ago. The tree squirrels rotate their ankles by 180 degrees, so that the hind paws pointy backwards gripping tree bark which enables them to descend a tree headfirst.

  

Originally native to Eastern and Midwestern United States of America, they were first introduced into the United Kingdom in 1876 in Henbury Park, Macclesfield in Cheshire when Victorian banker Thomas V. Brocklehurst released a pair of Greys that he brought back from a business trip to America after their attraction as pets had waned. Victorians had a penchant for collecting exotic animals and birds of the world, but trends came and went and subsequently animals were simply discarded into the wilderness. There are early records of greys released near Denbighshire in north Wales from private collections. Later introduced to several regions in the UK, they quickly settled and spread, colonizing an area of three hundred miles in a quarter of a century between Argyll and Stirlingshire in Scotland.

  

Introductions of the Greys between 1902 and 1929 (the year of the last recorded introduction), included: Regent’s Park in London, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk and Hampshire. Grey Squirrels spread into Gloucestershire and eastern Wiltshire with animals coming directly from the United States or from Woburn. One hundred greys were released in Richmond Park in Surrey in 1902, Ninety one into Regent’s Park between 1905 and 1907 and a further ten New Jersey imported greys were introduced into Woburn Park in Bedfordshire.

  

Predators include hawks, weasels, raccoons, bobcats, foxes, domestic and feral cats, snakes, owls, and dogs, African harrier-hawks in Africa and... oh yes, Mankind pretty much everywhere who despise, mistreat, cull or eat it .

  

FACTS, MYTHS AND THAT POXY PARAPOX!

  

FACTS, MYTHS AND THAT POXY PARAPOX!

  

The massive decline in native red squirrels blamed upon the spread of the invasive greys has always been perhaps a little harsh as reds were already in a steep decline due to loss of habitat and disease and thus the greys simply took over the areas where the reds were dwindling. It's also a fact that reds were also seen as a plague, branded as pests who killed birds and damaged trees and the culling of reds almost brought them to the brink of extinction. Licenses to kill reds could still be obtained up until the seventies!

Reds suffered at the hands of mankind thanks to a combination of agricultural deforestation also linked with war and fuel needs which caused extinction in Southern Scotland and Ireland by the early eighteenth century, way before greys had been introduced. Harsh winters killed off the less hardy red population in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  

Greys are more adept at finding food and adapting to locations and environments, but also carry the squirrel poxvirus (SQPV) which although not particularly harmful to them, is a serious infection for the reds.

 

Parapox in red squirrels causes swollen lesions around the mouth, eyes, ears and nose also the front paws and sometimes genitals and skin ulcers and kills a red within fifteen days. There is no definitive correlation between the spread of the virus and the spread of the Greys, it actually arrived in several areas before the greys began to colonize there. An epidemic virus was observed in Red squirrels from at least 1900 with isolation attempts failing, and the first case of Parapox in the UK was in 1980 in the county of Norfolk. Greys cannot transmit the virus to reds via saliva or faeces, but reds can between each other from bodily secretions and at animal feeders in gardens. The transmission from greys to reds is though to come from parasites. Eight to ten per cent of reds survive the virus, and there is some evidence that reds are slowly building an evolved resistance.

  

Greys are seen as pests to forest land, stripping bark from trees during May and June, and are also capable of destroying household bins, water pipes, causing roof damage not to mention taking eggs and killing young chicks of ground nesting and songbird populations. They also take from bird feeders and there is a whole industry for creating squirrel proof feeders these days.

  

THE CULLING OF GREY SQUIRRELS

  

Grey squirrels have limited legal protection and can be legally controlled all year round by a variety of methods including shooting and trapping. Methods of trapping and killing include Drey poking and shooting, Tunnel trapping using spring traps set in accordance with BASC’s trapping pest mammals code of practice. They can also be shot using a shotgun or powerful air rifle or up until September 30th 2014 poisoned by Warfarin (Now outlawed).

  

Whilst professional trapping and extermination is hopefully done as humanely as possible, there have been cases, many of them where cost savings have been gained by battering the squirrels to death! Grey squirrels are trapped in ghastly metal contraptions for hours and hours, wearing themselves out frantically trying to escape by gnawing at the metals bars. They bite the floor and scratch at them with their claws and do not get a moments peace or rest through absolute fear. Once the traps are retrieved, each squirrel, terrified will be thrown into a sack and smacked on the head countless times with a blunt instrument. When a mother is slaughtered, her babies who are totally dependent on her, will die a slow death of thirst and starvation.

  

There is an argument for the control of Greys on many grounds but also a counter argument that Culling does not work, and has not on countless times where, once a population of greys have been culled, the nearest group will move back in and claim the land. The university of Bristol concluded that there was little evidence that culling greys to save red squirrels was effective, and that perhaps finding a way of boosting red squirrel immunity to the poxvirus or planting areas of yew trees where reds are known to thrive and spending money on research into positive moves might be a better option.

  

In Ireland, the re-introduction of the Pine marten, a species made extinct originally by the very same land owners who also wish to do the same to the grey squirrel, has seen the rapid demise of the grey and the re-introction of the native reds. Red squirrels are smaller and more nimble than their grey counterparts, and as such can get to the very ends of tree branches where neither the pine martins, nor more importantly the heavier greys can, thus surviving and thriving. As a result in Ireland, the grey squirrel population has crashed in approximately 9,000 km2 of its former range and the reds has become common once more after a thirty year absence... oh and Pine Martens are protected again!

  

In Scotland, Pine Martens exist in areas where Red squirrels thrive, and greys do not. So perhaps there is a lesson here, as in England where there are no pine martens, the greys are prolific breeders. So there is an argument against the barbarity of shooting and poisoning greys, and if, as so many believe, the greys MUST be controlled, how about a more humane and natural method that nature intended.. with reintroduction of predators. Just a thought!

  

So a few facts and figures on the greys and to wrap up, from a purely personal perspective I love these little guys, as I do almost every creature in nature other than those eight legged beasties that shall not be named and for which I have a deep and powerful phobia that borders on paranoia!

  

I could no more harm an animal deliberately than eat a McDonald's MCRib (Once saw how they are made and let me just say... eeeuuuuuwwwww!!).

  

They are small, cute, cuddly, furry, they photograph beautifully, have great personality and make me smile. They trust me enough to take food from my hand in parks, and I can't bare the though of ugly, hairy land owners sticking a shotgun in their face and blowing them away! I appreciate they can be a pest, a problem, a menace, that their PR managers might have a bit of a problem winning you over when they flay small chicks alive on your lawn or decimate the songbird population by stealing their eggs.... and perhaps there is a need to keep the population under control and try and re-establish the red population.....

  

Yep I get that....

  

I just hope we can solve the problem more humanely to create a peaceful coexistence of the reds and greys in different areas. A man can dream can't he.

  

Paul Williams June 18th 2021

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Forty seven metres at 09:33am on a cold morning Saturday 22nd May 2021, off Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.

  

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Nikon D850 Focal length 600mm Shutter speed: 1/500s Aperture f/6.3 iso400 Tripod mounted with Tamron VC Vibration Control set to position 3. Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L (14 bit uncompressed) Size L (8256 x 5504) Focus mode: AF-C AF-Area mode: 3D-tracking Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points Exposure mode: Manual mode Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance on: Auto1 (5090k) Colour space: Adobe RGB Picture control: Neutral (Sharpening +2)

  

Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Lee SW150 MKII filter holder. Lee SW150 95mm screw in adapter ring. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Manfrotto MT057C3-G Carbon fiber Geared tripod 3 sections. Neewer Carbon Fiber Gimble tripod head 10088736 with Arca Swiss standard quick release plate. Neewer 9996 Arca Swiss release plate P860 x2.Jessops Tripod bag. Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

    

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LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 27.85s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.47s

ALTITUDE: 44.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF FILE: 91.4MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 39.20MB

    

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PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

Peter Bruegel II. 1564-1638. Anvers. The peasant wedding. vers 1620.

Hertogenbosch. Het Noordbrabants Museum

 

LE RÉALISME NÉERLANDAIS.

 

Le réalisme néerlandais, plus exactement flamand et néerlandais, s'enracine dans une culture qui correspond au peuplement germanophone des Pays Bas au sens large (Pays Bas et Belgique actuels).

La partie sud du pays, flamande, se développe beaucoup plus précocement que la partie nord, néerlandaise. Dès le 11è siècle la Flandre est avec la plaine du Pô un des tous premiers moteurs de la Renaissance de l'Europe après les Ages Sombres consécutifs au lent dépérissement de l'Empire Romain et à la série d'invasion germaniques, scandinaves et arabo-berbères qui l'accompagnent et en aggravent encore les conséquences.

En peinture l'école de Bruges, que certains historiens d'art appellent encore "les primitifs flamands", n'a rien de primitif et constitue un excellent témoin du développement économique et politique de la Flandre au 15è siècle et 16è siècle.

L'Europe de l'ouest étant catholique, les oeuvres de ces peintres sont essentiellement orientées par les thèmes religieux. Mais le réalisme naturaliste, l'esprit concret et pragmatique de cette population apparaît déjà très clairement comme en témoignent Jérôme Bosch (1450-1516) et surtout Bruegel Pierre l'Ancien (1525-1569). Ce dernier notamment peint tout aussi souvent des tableaux profanes que des oeuvres sacrées, notamment ses kermesses, danses de mariage, travaux des saisons. Mais en outre ses tableaux religieux relèguent bien souvent le thème spécifiquement sacré en fond de scène, et en fait un prétexte à une restitution très détaillée de la vie quotidienne à son époque.

Cette caractéristique flamande va se développer encore, après la Réforme, aux Pays Bas du Nord dont le démarrage économique plus tardif prend tout son essor au 17è siècle.

La Réforme de tendance calviniste qui triomphe aux Pays Bas est religieusement presque iconoclaste. Le protestantisme néerlandais n'interdit certes pas absolument les représentations imagées religieuses -heureusement pour Rembrandt- mais il les limite considérablement. Les intérieurs des églises sont dépouillés du décor peint ou sculpté des temps catholiques. Les thèmes religieux qui demeurent sont essentiellement tirés de l'Ancien Testament, la Vierge et donc le Christ enfant, les Saints et les Saintes disparaissent. En outre l'Eglise ayant été chassée du pays un mécène essentiel disparaît.

Les artistes des Pays Bas du Nord doivent se reconvertir, ils vont le faire de manière exemplaire, en devenant les inventeurs d'une peinture profane, séculière, tout à fait particulière, qui restera originale en Europe encore jusqu'au 19è siècle.

Les artistes néerlandais n'ont peut être pas, dans l'absolu, créé les genres de la peinture de paysage, de la peinture de nature morte, ou de la peinture de moeurs, mais ils leur ont donné un tel développement, bien avant les autres régions de l'Europe, que cela équivaut à une invention.

Avant les artistes des Pays Bas du Nord le paysage est presque toujours le décor d'une scène historique ou mythologique. C'est aux Néerlandais que l'on doit le développement du paysage sans autre thème que la nature, et les banales et quotidiennes activités humaines contemporaines. Le thème certes déjà connu "des travaux et des jours" se généralise, se sécularise, et sort des livres d'heures.

Les peintres des Pays Bas vont aussi considérablement développer la peinture de moeurs en quittant les milieux aristocratiques pour s'intéresser aux paysans, artisans et bourgeois. Un domaine où leur réalisme et leur sens de l'observation font merveille. Les artistes flamands et néerlandais nous permettent, bien mieux que les peintres baroques ou classiques des écoles de l'Europe du Sud ou de l'Allemagne d'observer les modes de vie de l'époque.

Une vache qui pisse, un cochon qui ronfle, une femme qui boit, qui range son linge dans l'armoire, ou épouille sa fille, des paysans avinés qui se disputent, ou des bourgeois qui patinent sont des thèmes très distinctifs des Pays Bas. Des thèmes qui ne se rencontrent pas, ou très peu, ailleurs en Europe. Ce n'est pas du tout la peinture française de l'époque de Louis XIII et Louis XIV. Même les frères Le Nain sont très loin du réalisme flamand et néerlandais.

Enfin la nature morte, qui peut avoir quelques vagues connotations religieuses avec les "vanités", prend aussi un essor qui est spécifique de cette région de l'Europe.

Dans le domaine du portrait l'Europe catholique avait depuis longtemps ouvert la voie et les Pays Bas sont moins originaux, sauf à privilégier le portrait bourgeois par rapport au portrait aristocratique. Mais quand le milicien bourgeois des "grandes compagnies" porte l'épée on voit bien qu'il n'est pas un aristocrate. De même que les régentes des hopitaux, béguinages, orphelinats et oeuvres charitables diverses ne peuvent pas se confondre avec les grandes dames de la noblesse - et de la religion- française, hispanique ou germanique.

Les artistes des Pays Bas nous restituent ainsi, encore une fois, avec réalisme, le décor humain de leur époque, à un niveau social que les peintres du sud de l'Europe ignorent car leur clientèle est toujours ailleurs: Les Rois, les Princes, l'Aristocratie ou une très grande bourgeoisie assimilée, et bien sûr l'Eglise.

 

THE NETHERLANDS REALISM.

 

The Dutch realism, more precisely Flemish and Dutch, is rooted in a culture that corresponds to the German-speaking population of the Netherlands in the broad sense (the Netherlands and Belgium today).

The southern part of the country, Flemish, develops much earlier than the northern part, Dutch. From the 11th century Flanders was, with the plain of the Po and Tuscany, one of the first engines of the Renaissance of Europe after the Dark Ages consecutive to the slow decline of the Roman Empire and to the series of Germanic Scandinavian and Arabic-Berbers invasions that accompany it and further aggravate the consequences.

In painting the school of Bruges, which some art historians still call " the Flemish primitives", is nothing primitive and is an excellent witness to the economic and political development of Flanders in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Western Europe being Catholic, the works of these painters are essentially oriented by religious themes. But the naturalistic realism, the concrete and pragmatic spirit of this population, already appears very clearly as evidenced by Jerome Bosch (1450-1516) and especially Bruegel Peter the Elder (1525-1569). The latter, in particular, paints profane paintings as often as sacred works, notably his kermesses, wedding dances, works of the seasons. But in addition his religious pictures often relegate the specifically sacred theme to the background, making it a pretext for a very detailed restitution of everyday life in his time.

This Flemish characteristic will continue to develop after the Reformation in the Northern Netherlands, whose later economic growth took off in the 17th century.

The Reformation of Calvinist tendency which triumphs in the Netherlands is religiously almost iconoclastic. Dutch Protestantism does certainly not absolutely forbid religious images - fortunately for Rembrandt- but he limits them considerably. The interiors of the churches are stripped of the painted or carved decoration of Catholic times. The religious themes that remain are essentially drawn from the Old Testament, the Virgin and therefore the Christ Child, the Saints and the Holy Women disappear. In addition the Church having been expelled from the country, an essential patron disappears.

The artists of the Low Countries of the North must reconvert, they will do so in an exemplary way, becoming the inventors of a profane, secular painting, quite particular, which will remain original in Europe until the 19th century.

The Dutch artists may be not have, in absolute terms, created the genres of landscape painting, of still life painting, or painting of manners, but they have given them such a development long before other regions of Europe, that is equivalent to an invention.

Before the artists of the Low Countries of the North the landscape is almost always the decor of a historical or mythological scene. It is the Dutch to development of the landscape with no other theme than nature, and the banal and daily contemporary human activities. The theme already known "works and days" is generalized, secularized, and comes out of the books of hours.

The painters of the Netherlands will also considerably develop the painting of manners by leaving the aristocratic circles, to take an interest in peasants, craftsmen and bourgeois. An area where their realism and their sense of observation are wonderful. Flemish and Dutch artists allow us, far better than the Baroque or classical painters of the schools of Southern Europe or Germany, to observe the ways of life of the time.

A cow that pisses, a pig that snores, a woman who drinks, who puts her clothes in the cupboard, or chases his daughter's lice, drunken peasants who dispute, or bourgeois who skate, are very distinctive themes of the Netherlands . Topics that do not meet, or very little, elsewhere in Europe. This is not at all the French painting of the time of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Even the Le Nain brothers are far from Flemish and Dutch realism.

Finally, still life, which may have some vague religious connotations with the "vanities", also takes a boom that is specific to this region of Europe.

In the field of portraiture Catholic Europe had long opened the way, and the Netherlands is less original, except to favor the bourgeois portrait in relation to the aristocratic portraiture. But when the bourgeois militiaman of the "big companies" bears the sword, it is clear that he is not an aristocrat. Just as the regentes of hospitals, beguines, orphanages and various charitable works can not be confused with the great ladies of the nobility - and of the French, Hispanic or Germanic religion.

The artists of the Netherlands thus restore to us, once again, with realism, the human decor of their time, on a social level that the painters of southern Europe ignore because their clientele is always elsewhere: The Kings, Princes, The Aristocracy or a very large assimilated bourgeoisie, and of course the Church.

   

I was on a lunch break from my job in the operating theatre, a couple of hundred yards from here. I had my camera with me, as I often did, when I noticed this bus. As a type, it wasn't unusual on the 192 route and I certainly didn't know much on the technical side about them but I have to say I recognised it! Only a few years had passed since I rode these on a regular basis to my school in Chorlton. I recognised a 'foreigner' in Stockport! My family moved to Stockport in 1968 and I was a regular traveller on local buses. When 'SELNEC' was created as the South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire abomination of business and liveries, 'borrowing' buses became commonplace. This carries the BS sticker, identifying it as belonging to Birchfields Road Depot. My 1974 reference book by A. Witton tells me that it's a Leyland Titan with a Metro Cammell body, dating from 1963 or 1964, ex Manchester Corporation.

That aside, we have a 'moment in time' in Stockport. The businesses on the right are long gone but the Garrick Theatre above them still exists. Part of the frontage on the right is now a real ale/live music venue called the 'Spinning Top'.

The scaffolding surrounds the construction of a post office facility that has since been run down with the rest of the post office.

The Unity Inn, just visible to the left of the bus, has been boarded up for years

The building behind the construction site was demolished to make way for Stockport's biggest McDonald's franchise, the current focal point for teenage violence in the area, mostly in the night hours, though nobody seems to correlate that with a 24 hour facilty.

As for the rest of the vehicles, I'll leave them you! Enjoy!

 

30 by 30 acrylic on gallery canvas

Fall River, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. View large on black

 

Explored 10/4/10, #404

Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Palace Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe, but with less species.

Consecuencia de el fenómeno atmosférico DANA (también llamado "gota fría") el 3 de septiembre de 2023 que propició una gran crecida en el río Tajo, arrastrtando miles de cañas y llevando una gran cantidad de tierra en sus aguas.

 

Water level exceeding the cutwater at 12.28 p.m. September/05/2023. Old Bridge of Talavera de la Reina.

Consequence of the DANA atmospheric phenomenon (also called "cold drop") on September 3, 2023, which caused a large flood in the Tagus River, dragging away thousands of reeds and carrying a large amount of mud in its waters.

 

Original size:

www.flickr.com/photos/97080338@N06/53187284969/sizes/o/

Some background:

The idea for a heavy infantry support vehicle capable of demolishing heavily defended buildings or fortified areas with a single shot came out of the experiences of the heavy urban fighting in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. At the time, the Wehrmacht had only the Sturm-Infanteriegeschütz 33B available for destroying buildings, a Sturmgeschütz III variant armed with a 15 cm sIG 33 heavy infantry gun. Twelve of them were lost in the fighting at Stalingrad. Its successor, the Sturmpanzer IV, also known by Allies as Brummbär, was in production from early 1943. This was essentially an improved version of the earlier design, mounting the same gun on the Panzer IV chassis with greatly improved armour protection.

 

While greatly improved compared to the earlier models, by this time infantry anti-tank weapons were improving dramatically, too, and the Wehrmacht still saw a need for a similar, but more heavily armoured and armed vehicle. Therefore, a decision was made to create a new vehicle based on the Tiger tank and arm it with a 210 mm howitzer. However, this weapon turned out not to be available at the time and was therefore replaced by a 380 mm rocket launcher, which was adapted from a Kriegsmarine depth charge launcher.

 

The 380 mm Raketen-Werfer 61 L/5.4 was a breech-loading barrel, which fired a short-range, rocket-propelled projectile roughly 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) long. The gun itself existed in two iterations at the time. One, the RaG 43 (Raketenabschuss-Gerät 43), was a ship-mounted anti-aircraft weapon used for firing a cable-spooled parachute-anchor creating a hazard for aircraft. The second, the RTG 38 (Raketen Tauch-Geschoss 38), was a land-based system, originally planned for use in coastal installations by the Kriegsmarine firing depth-charges against submarines with a range of about 3.000 m. For use in a vehicle, the RTG 38 was to find use as a demolition gun and had to be modified for that role. This modification work was carried out by Rheinmetall at their Sommerda works.

 

The design of the rocket system caused some problems. Modified for use in a vehicle, the recoil from the modified rocket-mortar was enormous, about 40-tonnes, and this meant that only a heavy chassis could be used to mount the gun. The hot rocket exhaust could not be vented into the fighting compartment nor could the barrel withstand the pressure if the gasses were not vented. Therefore, a ring of ventilation shafts was put around the barrel which channeled the exhaust and gave the weapon something of a pepperbox appearance.

 

The shells for the weapon were extremely heavy, far too heavy for a man to load manually. As a result, each of them had to be carried by means of a ceiling-mounted trolley from their rack to a roller-mounted tray at the breech. Once on the tray, four soldiers could then push it into the breech to load it. The whole process took 10 minutes per shot from loading, aiming, elevating and, finally, to firing.

There were a variety of rocket-assisted round types with a weight of up to 376 kg (829 lb), and a maximum range of up to 6,000 m (20,000 ft), which either contained a high explosive charge of 125 kg (276 lb) or a shaped charge for use against fortifications, which could penetrate up to 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) of reinforced concrete. The stated range of the former was 5,650 m (6,180 yd). A normal charge first accelerated the projectile to 45 m/s (150 ft/s) to leave the short, rifled barrel, the 40 kg (88 lb) rocket charge then boosted this to about 250 m/s (820 ft/s).

 

In September 1943 plans were made for Krupp to fabricate new Tiger I armored hulls for the Sturmtiger. The Tiger I hulls were to be sent to Henschel for chassis assembly and then to Alkett, where the superstructures would be mounted. The first prototype was ready and presented in October 1943. By May 1944, the Sturmtiger prototype had been kept busy with trials and firing tests for the development of range tables, but production had still not started yet and the concept was likely to be scrapped. Rather than ditch the idea though, orders were given that, instead of interrupting the production of the Tiger I, the Sturmtigers would be built on the chassis of Tiger I tanks which had already been in action and suffered serious damage. Twelve superstructures and RW 61 weapons were prepared and mounted on rebuilt Tiger I chassis. However, by August 1944 the dire need for this kind of vehicle led to the adaptation of another chassis to the 380 mm Sturmmörser: the SdKfz. 184, better known as “Ferdinand” (after its designer’s forename) and later, in an upgraded version, “Elefant”.

 

The Elefant (German for "elephant") was actually a heavy tank destroyer and the result of mismanagement and poor planning: Porsche GmbH had manufactured about 100 chassis for their unsuccessful proposal for the Tiger I tank, the so-called "Porsche Tiger". Both the successful Henschel proposal and the Porsche design used the same Krupp-designed turret—the Henschel design had its turret more-or-less centrally located on its hull, while the Porsche design placed the turret much closer to the front of the superstructure. Since the competing Henschel Tiger design was chosen for production, the Porsche chassis were no longer required for the Tiger tank project, and Porsche was left with 100 unfinished heavy tank hulls.

It was therefore decided that the Porsche chassis were to be used as the basis of a new heavy tank hunter, the Ferdinand, mounting Krupp's newly developed 88 mm (3.5 in) Panzerjägerkanone 43/2 (PaK 43) anti-tank gun with a new, long L71 barrel. This precise long-range weapon was intended to destroy enemy tanks before they came within their own range of effective fire, but in order to mount the very long and heavy weapon on the Porsche hull, its layout had to be completely redesigned.

 

Porsche’s SdKfz. 184’s unusual petrol-electric transmission made it much easier to relocate the engines than would be the case on a mechanical-transmission vehicle, since the engines could be mounted anywhere, and only the length of the power cables needed to be altered, as opposed to re-designing the driveshafts and locating the engines for the easiest routing of power shafts to the gearbox. Without the forward-mounted turret of the Porsche Tiger prototype, the twin engines were relocated to the front, where the turret had been, leaving room ahead of them for the driver and radio operator. As the engines were placed in the middle, the driver and the radio operator were isolated from the rest of the crew and could be addressed only by intercom. The now empty rear half of the hull was covered with a heavily armored, full five-sided casemate with slightly sloped upper faces and armored solid roof, and turned into a crew compartment, mounting a single 8.8 cm Pak 43 cannon in the forward face of the casemate.

 

From this readily available basis, the SdKfz. 184/1 was hurriedly developed. It differed from the tank hunter primarily through its new casemate that held the 380 mm Raketenwerfer. Since the SdKfz. 184/1 was intended for use in urban areas in close range street fighting, it needed to be heavily armoured to survive. Its front plate had a greater slope than the Ferdinand while the sides were more vertical and the roof was flat. Its sloped (at 47° from vertical) frontal casemate armor was 150 mm (5.9 in) thick, while its superstructure side and rear plates had a strength of 82 mm (3.2 in). The SdKfz.184/1 also received add-on armor of 100 mm thickness, bolted to the hull’s original vertical front plates, increasing the thickness to 200 mm but adding 5 tons of weight. All these measures pushed the weight of the vehicle up from the Ferdinand’s already bulky 65 t to 75 t, limiting the vehicle’s manoeuvrability even further. Located at the rear of the loading hatch was a Nahverteidigungswaffe launcher which was used for close defense against infantry with SMi 35 anti-personnel mines, even though smoke grenades or signal flares could be fired with the device in all directions, too. For close-range defense, a 7.92 mm MG 34 machine gun was carried in a ball mount in the front plate, an addition that was introduced to the Elefant tank hunters, too, after the SdKfz. 184 had during its initial deployments turned out to be very vulnerable to infantry attacks.

 

Due to the size of the RW 61 and the bulkiness of the ammunition, only fourteen rounds could be carried internally, of which one was already loaded, with another stored in the loading tray, and the rest were carried in two storage racks, leaving only little space for the crew of four in the rear compartment. To help with the loading of ammunition into the vehicle, a loading crane was fitted at the rear of the superstructure next to the loading hatch on the roof.

Due to the internal limits and the tactical nature of the vehicle, it was intended that each SdKfz. 184/1 (as well as each Sturmtiger) would be accompanied by an ammunition carrier, typically based on the Panzer IV chassis, but the lack of resources did not make this possible. There were even plans to build a dedicated, heavily armored ammunition carrier on the Tiger I chassis, but only one such carrier was completed and tested, it never reached production status.

 

By the time the first RW 61 carriers had become available, Germany had lost the initiative, with the Wehrmacht being almost exclusively on the defensive rather than the offensive, and this new tactical situation significantly weakened the value of both Sturmtiger and Sturmelefant, how the SdKfz 184/1 was semi-officially baptized. Nevertheless, three new Panzer companies were raised to operate the Sturmpanzer types: Panzer Sturmmörser Kompanien (PzStuMrKp) ("Armored Assault Mortar Company") 1000, 1001 and 1002. These originally were supposed to be equipped with fourteen vehicles each, but this figure was later reduced to four each, divided into two platoons, consisting of mixed vehicle types – whatever was available and operational.

 

PzStuMrKp 1000 was raised on 13 August 1944 and fought during the Warsaw Uprising with two vehicles, as did the prototype in a separate action, which may have been the only time the Sturmtiger was used in its intended role. PzStuMrKp 1001 and 1002 followed in September and October. Both PzStuMrKp 1000 and 1001 served during the Ardennes Offensive, with a total of four Sturmtiger and three Sturmelefanten.

After this offensive, the Sturmpanzer were used in the defence of Germany, mainly on the Western Front. During the battle for the bridge at Remagen, German forces mobilized Sturmmörserkompanie 1000 and 1001 (with a total of 7 vehicles, five Sturmtiger and two Sturmelefanten) to take part in the battle. The tanks were originally tasked with using their mortars against the bridge itself, though it was discovered that they lacked the accuracy needed to hit the bridge and cause significant damage with precise hits to vital structures. During this action, one of the Sturmtigers in Sturmmörserkompanie 1001 near Düren and Euskirchen allegedly hit a group of stationary Shermans tanks in a village with a 380mm round, resulting in nearly all the Shermans being put out of action and their crews killed or wounded - the only recorded tank-on-tank combat a Sturmtiger was ever engaged in. After the bridge fell to the Allies, Sturmmörserkompanie 1000 and 1001 were tasked with bombardment of Allied forces to cover the German retreat, as opposed to the bunker busting for which they had originally been designed for. None was actually destroyed through enemy fire, but many vehicles had to be given up due to mechanical failures or the lack of fuel. Most were blown up by their crews, but a few fell into allied hands in an operational state.

 

Total production numbers of the SdKfz. 184/1 are uncertain but, being an emergency product and based on a limited chassis supply, the number of vehicles that left the Nibelungenwerke in Austria was no more than ten – also because the tank hunter conversion had top priority and the exotic RW 61 launcher was in very limited supply. As a consequence, only a total of 18 Sturmtiger had been finished by December 1945 and put into service, too. However, the 380 mm Raketen-Werfer 61 remained in production and was in early 1946 adapted to the new Einheitspanzer E-50/75 chassis.

  

Specifications:

Crew: Six (driver, radio operator/machine gunner in the front cabin,

commander, gunner, 2× loader in the casemate section)

Weight: 75 tons

Length: 7,05 m (23 ft 1½ in)

Width: 3,38 m (11 ft 1 in)

Height w/o crane: 3,02 m (9 ft 10¾ in)

Ground clearance: 1ft 6¾ in (48 cm)

Climbing: 2 ft 6½ in (78 cm)

Fording depth: 3 ft 3¼ (1m)

Trench crossing: 8 ft 7 ¾ in (2,64 m)

Suspension: Longitudinal torsion-bar

Fuel capacity: 1.050 liters

 

Armour:

62 to 200 mm (2.44 to 7.87 in)

 

Performance:

30 km/h (19 mph) on road

15 km/h (10 miles per hour () off road

Operational range: 150 km (93 mi) on road

90 km (56 mi) cross-country

Power/weight: 8 hp/ton

 

Engine:

2× Maybach HL120 TRM petrol engines with 300 PS (246 hp, 221 kW) each, powering…

2× Siemens-Schuckert D1495a 500 Volt electric engines with 320 PS (316 hp, 230 kW) each

 

Transmission:

Electric

 

Armament:

1x 380 mm RW 61 rocket launcher L/5.4 with 14 rounds

1x 7.92 mm (0.312 in) MG 34 machine gun with 600 rounds

1x 100 mm grenade launcher (firing anti-personnel mines, smoke grenades or signal flares)

  

The kit and its assembly:.

This fictional tank model is not my own idea, it is rather based on a picture of a similar kitbashing of an Elefant with a Sturmtiger casemate and its massive missile launcher – even though it was a rather crude model, with a casemate created from cardboard. However, I found the idea charming, even more so because the Ferdinand/Elefant was rather a rolling bunker than an agile tank hunter, despite its powerful weapon. Why not use the same chassis as a carrier for the Sturmtiger’s huge mortar as an assault SPG?

 

The resulting Sturmelefant was created as a kitbashing: the chassis is an early boxing of the Trumpeter Elefant, which comes not only with IP track segments but also alternative vinyl tracks (later boxing do not feature them), and casemate parts come from a Trumpeter Sturmtiger.

While one would think that switching the casemate would be straightforward affair, the conversion turned out to be more complex than expected. Both Elefant and Sturmtiger come with separate casemate pieces, but they are not compatible. The Sturmtiger casemate is 2mm wider than the Elefant’s hull, and its glacis plate is deeper than the Elefant’s, leaving 4mm wide gaps at the sides and the rear. One option could have been to trim down the glacis plate, but I found the roofline to become much too low – and the casemate’s length would have been reduced.

 

So, I used the Sturmtiger casemate “as is” and filled the gaps with styrene sheet strips. This worked, but the casemate’s width created now inward-bent sections that looked unplausible. Nobody, even grazed German engineers, would not have neglected the laws of structural integrity. What to do? Tailoring the casemate’s sides down would have been one route, but this would have had created a strange shape. The alternative I chose was to widen the flanks of the Elefant’s hull underneath the casemate, which was achieved with tailored 0.5 mm styrene sheet panels and some PSR – possible through the Elefant’s simple shape and the mudguards that run along the vehicle’s flanks.

Some more PSR was necessary to blend the rear into a coherent shape and to fill a small gap at the glacis plate’s base. Putty was also used to fill/hide almost all openings on the glacis plate, since no driver sight or ball mount for a machine gun was necessary anymore. New bolts between hull and casemate were created with small drops of white glue. The rest of the surface details were taken from the respective donor kits.

  

Painting and markings:

This was not an easy choice. A classic Hinterhalt scheme would have been a natural choice, but since the Sturmelefant would have been converted from existing hulls with new parts, I decided to emphasize this heritage through a simple, uniform livery: all Ferdinand elements would be painted/left in a uniform Dunkelgelb (RAL, 7028, Humbrol 83), while the new casemate as well as the bolted-on front armor were left in a red primer livery, in two different shades (Humbrol 70 and 113). This looked a little too simple for my taste, so that I eventually added snaky lines in Dunkelgelb onto the primer-painted sections, blurring the contrast between the two tones.

 

Markings remained minimal, just three German crosses on the flanks and at the rear and a tactical code on the casemate – the latter in black and in a hand-written style, as if the vehicle had been rushed into frontline service.

 

After the decals had been secured under sone varnish the model received an overall washing with dark brown, highly thinned acrylic paint, some dry-brushing with light grey and some rust traces, before it was sealed overall with matt acrylic varnish and received some dirt stains with mixed watercolors and finally, after the tracks had been mounted, some artist pigments as physical dust on the lower areas.

  

Again a project that appeared simple but turned out to be more demanding because the parts would not fit as well as expected. The resulting bunker breaker looks plausible, less massive than the real Sturmtiger but still a menacing sight.

 

Innocenzo da Imola (Innocenzo Francucci)

1490-1545 Bologna

Saint François Saint Antoine de Padoue vers 1510-1520

Ferrara Pinacoteca Nazionale

 

POURQUOI LA PEINTURE IMITE LA SCULPTURE

 

L'effondrement de l'Empire romain a pour conséquence un considérable recul du savoir et des techniques dans toute l'Europe de l'ouest. Une régression qui a durée, dans certains domaines, comme l'hygiène privée et publique, dans les villes, jusqu'au 19è siècle. Les Arts n'échappent pas à cette récession technique.

Mais l'architecture, la sculpture et la peinture ne vont pas récupérer, au même rythme, les capacités techniques semblables ou équivalentes à celles des artistes grecs et romains.

L'Architecture paléochrétienne et mérovingienne (5è au 8è siècle) des églises copie les basiliques civiles romaines encore debout, et réemploie le plus souvent leurs matériaux, dans des ouvrages qui ne proposent, techniquement, rien de nouveau.

Mais dès l'époque carolingienne (9è siècle) et ottonienne (10è siècle), puis avec l'architecture romane (11è), l'art du bâtiment en Europe développe de nouvelles techniques, rendues nécessaires par l'emploi de la pierre en couverture des bâtiments. Ces techniques sont nécessairement différentes de l'architecture de briques, ou de "ciment" des romains qui n'utilisaient le marbre ou la pierre que pour les colonnes, le parement, le décor. Mais pas en couverture des monuments.

Ces techniques de l'Europe de l'ouest sont aussi différentes de l'architecture grecque, qui utilisait certes plus la pierre taillée que les romains mais pratiquait peu l'arc, et pas la voûte. L'architecture grecque était une architecture de plate bande, techniquement très simple, héritée des constructions en bois. Sa perfection est d'ordre harmonique plus que technique.

 

L'architecture européenne qui généralise l'utilisation de la pierre et privilégie, non seulement l'arc, mais la voûte de pierre, va donc bien au delà d'une récupération. Elle invente et développe un art et des techniques nouvelles.

L'architecture a bien sûr été tributaire de la récupération de certaines techniques de base comme la taille de la pierre, elles mêmes conditionnées par la redécouverte de procédés fiables de forge des outils en fer. Les architectures carolingienne et ottonienne, sont en petit appareil de pierres irrégulières noyées dans un un mortier faisant lien. L'époque romane emploie le moyen appareil. Il faudra attendre l'architecture gothique pour que soit employée la pierre taillée en grand appareil.

Mais dès le début du 10è siècle avec Cluny 1 et dans le courant du siècle (Paray le Monial est consacrée en 976) on peut dire que l'architecture romane a retrouvé des capacités techniques tout à fait remarquables, techniquement aussi complexes que l'architecture romaine, mises au service d'une esthétique nouvelle.

 

La Sculpture suit le même chemin, d'abord de récession. Très vite les savoirs-faire nécessaires à la sculpture du bronze se perdent. Les statues équestres disparaissent. Les statues de pierre perdent de leur réalisme, et se dégagent de moins en moins de leurs supports (les Tétrarques). Les artistes cessent peu à peu de savoir sculpter une statue dont on puisse faire le tour (la ronde bosse) et se limitent au haut relief, puis au bas relief, bientôt à la gravure.

Une première récupération se fait à l'époque romane, sous forme d'une statuaire peu dégagée de son support, mais déjà très expressive, dont le portail ouest de Chartres (1150 env) donne une bonne idée.

C'est l'époque gothique qui, dès le 13è siècle, achève la récupération technique dans l'art de la sculpture, en donnant naissance à une statuaire dégagée de son support. Les sculptures de la cathédrale de Strasbourg vers 1280 en sont une démonstration. Il faudra attendre la fin du 15è siècle pour que les sculpteurs retrouvent le savoir faire nécessaire pour dresser des bronzes équestres (Verrochio, le Colleone. 1485env)

 

La Peinture va mettre plus longtemps que l'architecture et que la sculpture pour retrouver les capacités techniques équivalentes à celles des artistes grecques et romains.

Il fallait retrouver les savoirs-faire nécessaires pour quitter la représentation du monde en deux dimensions, qui est celle de l'art paléo-chrétien, byzantin et encore roman.

Savoirs-faire nécessaires pour représenter sur une surface plane ( livre, mur ou tableau de bois, cuivre...) le monde qui nous entoure, en trois dimensions.

Cette récupération des techniques commence à l'époque gothique, au nord comme au sud de l'Europe, vers 1300, et elle est achevée vers 1450. A cette date les peintres européens, gothiques et "pré-renaissants", ont retrouvé la capacité de peindre les personnages avec leurs volumes et leurs expressions pyschologiques différenciées, et les environnements, paysages ou architectures, avec une perspective crédible. Une perspective capable de recréer l'illusion de la troisième dimension.

 

Ces efforts des peintres pour retrouver les techniques permettant de voir en trois dimensions, sur une surface plate, expliquent pourquoi durant le 14è et le 15è siècle, les peintres, au nord et au sud de l'Europe, ont multiplié les tableaux imitant des sculptures.

Exercice qui démontrait leur capacité à restituer le réel de manière totalement conforme à la vision de l'homme.

  

WHY THE PAINT MIMICS THE SCULPTURE

 

The collapse of the Roman Empire has resulted a considerable decline in knowledge and technology all over in Western Europe. A decline that lasted, in some areas, such as private and public hygiene, in cities, until 19th century. The arts are not immune to this technical recession.

But architecture, sculpture and painting are not going to recover at the same pace, the technical capabilities, similar or equivalent to those of the Greek and Roman artists.

 

The architecture Early Christian and Merovingian (5th to 8th century) of the churches, copy the Roman civil basilicas, still standing, and reuses most often their materials in buildings that offer technically nothing new.

But from the Carolingian period (9th century) and Ottonian (10th century) and the Romanesque architecture (11th), the art of building in Europe develops new techniques, made necessary by the use of stone as the cover . These techniques are necessarily different from the architecture of bricks, or "cement" of the Romans, who used the marble or stone for columns, siding, decor. But not as cover of the monuments.

These techniques of Western Europe are also different from Greek architecture, which has certainly more used the cut stone that the Roman architecture, but little practiced the arch, and not the vault. Greek architecture was an architecture, of flat band, technically very simple, inherited the wooden constructions. His perfection is harmonic order, more than technical.

The European architecture, which generalizes the use of stone, and favours not only the arch, but the stone vault, goes well beyond a recovery. She invents and develops an art, and new technologies.

The architecture was of course dependent on the recovery of certain basic techniques, such as the size of the stone, themselves conditioned by the rediscovery of reliable processes of forging of iron tools. The Carolingian and Ottonian architectures, are in small apparatus of irregular stones embedded in a mortar by link. The Romanesque period uses the medium apparatus. It was not until the Gothic architecture that the stone cut into large apparatus was used.

But from the beginning of the 10th century with the Abbey of Cluny 1, and in the course of the century (Paray le Monial is consecrated in 976) we can say that the Romanesque architecture has regained technical abilities quite remarkable, technically as complex as the Roman architecture, placed at the service of a new aesthetic..

 

The sculpture follows the same path, first of recession. Very quickly the know-how necessary for the bronze sculpture are lost. The equestrian statues disappear. The stone statues lose their realism, and emerge less and less from their supports (the Tetrarchs). The artists gradually ceased to know sculpt a statue which can be go around (the hump round ) and are limited to high relief and the low relief, soon only engraving.

A first recovery occurs in the Romanesque period, in the form of a sculpture badly cleared of its support, but already very expressive, the west portal of Chartres (1150 approx) gives a good idea.

This is the Gothic period which already from the 13th century, completes the technical recovery in the art of sculpture, giving birth to a statuary, free from its support. The sculptures of the cathedral of Strasbourg, in 1280, are a demonstration. Must await the late 15th century that the sculptors found the expertise needed to develop equestrian bronzes (Verrocchio, the Colleoni. 1485env)

 

The painting will take longer as the architecture and the sculpture to regain the technical capabilities equivalent to those of Greek and Roman artists.

It was necessary to find again the know-how necessary to exit of the representation of the world in two dimensions, which is that of the Paleo-Christian art, Byzantine art and even of the Romanesque art.

Know-how needed to represent on a flat surface (book, wall or easel painting on wood) the world around us, in three dimensions.

This recovery of technical began in the Gothic period, both north and south of Europe, around 1300, and was completed around 1450. At that time the European painters, Gothic and "pre-renascent" have recovered the ability to paint the characters with their volumes and differentiated psychological expressions and the environments, landscapes or architectures, with a credible perspective. A perspective able to recreate the illusion of the third dimension.

These efforts of the painters to regain the techniques allowing to see in three dimensions on a flat surface, explain why, during the 14th and 15th century, the painters, to the north and the south of Europe, have multiplied the paintings imitating the sculptures.

Exercise that demonstrated their ability to completely reproduce the real in a manner consistent with the human vision.

  

An Unexpected Consequence

 

Something woke me up around 3:30 am that Saturday morning, not sure what. But something since my head was throbbing, I assumed that was the culprit.

 

I slowly, silently arose, not wishing to disturb the others who had gathered in our suite's living room for a “sleepover after an evening of heavy partying. But by the looks, everyone was still passed out.

 

I wasn’t surprised, judging from the amount of drinks we all had consumed.

 

What happy drunks we had all been.

 

I carefully tiptoed amongst them through the room, deciding to get aspirin from my bathroom.

 

The girls and I had all fallen asleep in the living room instead of retiring to our respective bedrooms that connected to the master suite

 

I was surprised to see my bedroom door was closed.

 

Was someone else inside?

 

I looked around the room, not noticing anyone missing.

 

Shrugging it off, I went inside, closing the door behind me.

 

I saw my reflection in the wall-sized mirror at the end of the room, next to the surprisingly open outside balcony door.

 

“Looking good.” I complimented myself.

 

I was wearing my slinking long pure silk nightgown, coloured a deep chocolate brown. Along with my shiny matching robe. The robe was open and I could see my peaking out chest, my smallish mounds bulging, sexily outlined by my nightgown.

 

I ran my fingers down the front, touching them, feeling a rather pleasant sensation that I was still not awake enough to fully enjoy.

 

There is nothing like the feel of a bit of nice silk lying against one’s naked figure.

 

I took a step back, admiring my figure, clad tightly in shiny silk, with jewels sparkling that were reflected in the hotel suite's mammoth mirror.

 

For, from my evening out, I was still wearing my long diamond earrings(£18,000) and three diamond rings(£12,000,£5,000, £3,000) because I love to sleep with my diamonds on, and they had looked so pretty with my black satin evening gown, along with the rest of my diamonds, that I had worn out for the evening before.

 

They had looked even more delicious worn with my spaghetti strap chocolate silk slinky nightgown as I played with them,and myself, a wee bit more.

 

I guess I kept wearing them because I wanted the feeling to continue on, as it was.

 

We had all been dressed up to the nines, attire, and jewellery, Friday evening, including the three of us girls who were staying in the two connected rooms.

 

Though last night those rooms, like mine, had been empty since all of us were asleep in the living room, sort of an adult storytelling sleepover.

 

Though I will admit deep down a smouldering yearning was felt to have it being a role-playing sleepover.

 

Now as I looked myself over in the mirror I started to have a prickly sensation that I was after all, not alone in the room.

 

I literally jumped because that feeling was immediately confirmed as an unfamiliar male voice commanded:

“Freeze sister, not a peep out of you now!”

 

I froze… not knowing what the hell was going on.

 

Except I was correct in using the word ‘Hell’

 

^^^^

A thin, muscular male comes out of one of the room’s shadowy corners, facing me.

 

I could tell his intentions by the black tight-fitting spandex suit, gloves, and ski mask he was wearing.

 

He nodded his head to me….

“I don’t wish to hurt you, lady, I’m only after the “ice” I was told you were wearing out tonight. Now don’t scream. I will use force and some of your friends may be hurt. You don’t want that to happen, do you? Nod if you’re going to be a good lass.”

 

I nodded yes, feeling my earrings swing against my face.

 

“That’s the girl. Undo your pretty robe, drop it to the floor. Good. Now move it over unto the bed.”

 

I did so and he picked up my robe laying it out onto the end of the bed. Then he picked up my robe's satin sash.

 

“Now ladybird , hold out your hands.”

 

I obeyed. He looked down at my fingers. I could see my rings glistening and saw he was watching also.

 

He pleasurably sighed, then got to business.

 

“Spread out your fingers!”

 

I did and he slowly located, then worked off my three pretty rings. Reaching over, he plopped each onto my chocolate-coloured silk robe.

 

“Now sister, clasp your hands in front of you…”

 

I obeyed and he firmly tied my wrists together with the robe’s silk sash.

 

“Now lay back on the bed”

 

I did so and he lifted my bound wrists and using one of my long black satin gloves tied them to a bedpost. Then he took the other glove gagging my mouth with it.

 

I could see my reflection in the vanity mirror. Almost surreal, like I was watching someone else.

 

He turned on his torch, catching my long diamond earrings in the beam.

 

“Blinding those, lovely to look at, but I’m running out of time aren’t I? Leave them for later, eh luv!”

 

Moving easily like a muscular black panther, he rose and strolled over to the vanity dresser. He opened the pair of jewelry cases belonging to me and my sister-in-law Cadie.

 

The beam caught up with the reflection of the jewellery both contained. I could see them sparkling.

  

He turns, shined the light in my face…

 

I was told you birds were wearing “ice” but there’s much more here. Let’s say I save time by taking it all for sorting later..”

 

It wasn’t a question.

 

With a sigh, I watched as he emptied onto my silk robe, the glimmering contents of first one, then the other of our jewel cases.

 

The pile dazzled with explosive, expensive sparkling.

 

Discarding both emptied cases, he turned his light back on the dresser. There were more of our expensive personal items laid out there. Cadie’s, my husband’s, and mine.

 

Several times he reached in sweeping some of them into his palm. Dumping them onto the chocolate-coloured silk robe

 

My husband’s possessions. Rolex money clip, billfold, silver gunmetal cigarette case, and matching lighter.

 

Cade’s silver comb and mirror, silver makeup compact, and her satin evening clutch.

 

Along with my gold makeup compact kit, gold Lamé clutch purse, gold cigarette case, and gold lighter.

 

He next shined the light carefully around the room.

 

Stopping on the open closet.

 

He went over and rummaged through it.

 

He whistled, and from my close he pulled out my rust-coloured mink jacket, throwing it onto the bed.

 

Then he turned back, fingering through my good skirts, blouses, party dresses, gowns, satins, and silks all of them.

 

He pulled my back satin opera outfit, a long satin skirt with the rhinestone belt and matching rhinestone embellished jacket, that I usually wore with one of my silky long-sleeved high-neck tops.

 

Lovely this he said shingling his light so it sparkled.

 

Then he tossed it on my bed, covering the fur.

 

He happily “dived” back in, and I heard him exclaiming…

 

“This is more like it, good thing I didn’t take a pass on the closet.”

 

He was pulling out the black satin gown with rhinestone trimmings I had worn out this past evening. His light caught my beautiful broach (£38,000), which I had left attached.

 

it came into sparkling life under the torch beam.

 

He whistled as he walked over, eyeing it up.

 

The thief then shined his torch beam in my face

You weren’t going to try and hold this out now were you love? I’ll pretend you were going to point it out.”

He laid it out on the bed, then approached me…

“With that said, lady. Are you holding anything else out!”

 

I shook my head, no, my eyes pleading since my mouth was gagged into silence.

 

Grinning, his torch beam was shined into one ear then the other

“Not quite telling the truth, Lovely sparkler’s them.”

 

He reached up, I was limp, with no fight in me.

 

The thief then laid the torch on the bed…

 

With his teeth the wanker pulled off his thin black gloves, he looked positively evil wearing that ski mask. His eyes are large and I swear, beguilingly, studying me.

 

His mouth opened wide as he reached over with long touching fingers, to begin working off each of my earrings, tossing them onto the valuably shimmering piled out on my beautiful satiny silky robe.

 

Again he stared into my eyes, his own masked lined menacing one’s mere millimeters away.

 

“Not saying I don’t trust you telling your not hiding anything valuable, but, well luv, I’ll be having myself a look anyway. You’ll understand…”

 

I cringed, arching my back as his fingers grasped my arms.

 

He then reached down and squeezed around my bulging chest ,noticing they were hard and perking, pointing up through the sheer fabric of my silky nightgown like a pair of plump fleshy mounds with hard tips.

 

Then I felt his fingers smoothly running over along my silk-clad figure, until he reached my wet pussy and discovers why my “mounds” were so firm under his touch.

 

For yes, I will have to confess having been sinfully aroused throughout the whole wickedly hot experience.

 

You see it started when he was pulling off my rings.

 

No, actually I told a lie…

 

It was when he first grasped me:

The abruptness, the shock, and the surprise, quickly turned to aroused waves of tingling sexually tinged excitement at being held captive, by a thief after my jewels.

 

As he worked at stealing our valuables, a tingling, cringing feeling of helplessness and horror watching a masked man doing that, with the look of pleasure he had in his eyes.

 

Then as he pulled off my rings, well I realized I was growing even more acutely aroused in a quite “horney” role play’esque situation.

 

Arousal that began its stimulating flame, arising from the explosive emerging “kindling” that is one’s own erotica being played out for real when least expected.

 

He could see my struggle against my bonds, and he knew, the Git just instinctively knew why….

 

Then the prat just touched the hairs around my privates

 

Stroking gently, reaching deep enough inside my pussy hairs, just enough to keep me aroused, but not allowing me to come into orgasm.

 

My eyes were opened wide staring at his masked form hovering over me.

 

Then he plunged his fingers deeply inside.

 

My whole figure arched up, fingers tingling.

 

Then the stinking prat, he pulled back. The wanker knew and stopped, just as my figure was trying to come in a full-body arching, explosive orgasm.

 

It was bad enough The bloody thief was stealing my jewels, but adding in robbing me clean of a chance at feeling that titular flame of orgasmic stimulation as I had closed my eyes starting to wince with excitement, that was just bloody rude.

 

^^^^^^

 

Then he was done, all back to business, as he nimbly rose, then picking up his gloves said the chilling words as he put them back on….

 

“Do the other rich dame’s bedrooms have things this nice, as I was told. No answer eh? Well, we will see for me self now won’t I!”

 

He picked back up his torch, letting the beam play down the long chocolate-silken night gown I was wearing over my naked figure.

 

He nodded his head in disbelieving approval.

 

Turning it off, he pocketed the torch, then reaching down he rolled up my satin robe with our valuables in it.

 

Picking up a black backpack he purred…

 

“The lads that were following you birds around last night, they put me onto this job saying to just to snatch the shiny jewels you and your girlfriends wearing out this evening. But lady you have enough here I could make a bit extra for me self!”

 

He stuffed the chocolate satin robe inside his jogger's pack. Followed by cramming in my black gown with the broach.

 

Then lifting my mink he said

But I better see how much of the good stuff your lady friends have in their rooms first. But I’ll take this item in case I have the storage space.”

 

Extinguishing his torch, He started to walk out, then looked back at me and came to my bedside.

 

“And don’t worry about this”

he said touching my now still prickly, damp crotch.

 

"Your not the first broad I’ve tied up to rob whose felt this way, now we’re you!?”

 

Snickering, he confidently opened the door, slipping without a look back

 

He was now in the living room where the others were all sleeping!

 

^^^^

That night thief thoroughly cleaned us out of all our jewels and various other items of high value we had in our bedrooms.

 

Though it was a very nasty thing to have happened to all of us. I did feel a wee bit guilty.

 

For to tell the truth, since I had been erotically aroused by the entire incident that occurred in my bedroom under the thief’s hands whole robbing me, I didn’t quite feel as sad about it as my equally jewel-relieved girlfriends.

 

Fini

 

Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640 Anvers

Ferdinando Gonzaga infante di Mantova 1605

Parme Fondazione Magnani Rocca

 

La fondation Magnani Rocca est un charmant petit musée. Le visiteur passe vite d'une époque à une autre. Il m'a paru amusant d'accentuer la transition et de mélanger dans la galerie, pas dans l'album, des époques lointaines. Pour mieux mettre en évidence les ruptures de styles et de thèmes. Ruptures toujours liées aux changements des croyances des hommes.

The Magnani Rocca foundation is a charming little museum. The visitor quickly passes from one era to another. It seemed fun to me to accentuate the transition and to mix distant eras in the gallery, not in the album. To better highlight the breaks in styles and themes. Ruptures always linked to changes in men's beliefs.

  

LA PEINTURE AUX PAYS BAS

 

1° Il faut distinguer les Pays Bas du Sud et les Pays Bas du Nord, et d'autre part l'époque selon que la religion pratiquée est catholique ou protestante.

Les Pays Bas du Sud correspondent à la Belgique actuelle et au nord de la France. Ils ont fait partie de l'empire romain, et ils sont catholiques. Ethniquement et linguistiquement ils sont soit d'origine Celte et parlent français, soit d'origine Germanique et parlent flamand. Les Pays Bas du Sud, Flandre et Wallonie, sont une des régions d'Europe qui se développe, économiquement, politiquement, techniquement, le plus rapidement vers l'an 1000. A peu près à égalité avec l'Italie du Nord. C'est donc un des lieux privilégiés de la renaissance de l'Europe après la période sombre qui a débuté lors de l'effondrement de l'Empire romain.

Les Pays Bas du Nord correspondent au Pays Bas actuels (Nederland). Ils n'ont pas fait partie de l'empire romain. Ethniquement et linguistiquement ils sont germaniques. Ils sont catholiques jusqu'à la Réforme protestante. Economiquement leur développement est plus tardif que celui des Pays Bas du Sud. Ils se constituent en état indépendant du Sud avec la Réforme. Séparation de fait : 1579 (Union d'Utrecht). Reconnaissance définitive de cette indépendance par tous les pays européens: 1648.

 

2° Les Pays Bas du Sud sont, au 15è siècle et au début du 16è siècle, le lieu d'activité des Peintres dits "Primitifs Flamands". Peintres Gothiques, ayant leurs ateliers principalement à Bruges, Gent, Tournai, Bruxelles, Anvers. Les sujets de leur tableaux sont exclusivement catholiques. Sous l'influence de l'Italie commencent à apparaître en fin de période les thèmes de la mythologie et de l'histoire de l' Antiquité Gréco-Romaine. Ils vont de Jan Van Eyck à Pieter Bruegel l'Ancien, jusqu'à la séparation de fait du Sud et du Nord. C'est une acception large, certes, mais pratique.

Après la séparation de fait (1579) ces thèmes de peinture, religion catholique, mythologie, histoire antique, restent très dominants, même si le paysage, la peinture de moeurs et la nature morte ont aussi une place, plus importante que dans les pays du sud de l'Europe ou en Allemagne et en Autriche.

 

Les Pays Bas du Nord. Ils sont plus tardivement développés économiquement et politiquement. Leur peinture gothique, catholique, a en outre été presque entièrement détruite par les protestants.

La Réforme va avoir une conséquence considérable sur la peinture de ces régions et ensuite de l'Europe : la religion et la mythologie ou l'histoire gréco-romaine ne sont plus les thèmes habituels de la peinture. Ces thèmes disparaissent même presque totalement.

Rembrandt et certains de ses élèves sont une exception à cette tendance.

Les Pays Bas du Nord mettent en place, à la toute fin du 16è et au début du 17è siècle, un nouvel art de la peinture dont les thèmes sont tout à fait principalement:

Le paysage, et notamment les marines

La nature morte

La peinture des moeurs de la société bourgeoise et paysanne, et le portrait des classes bourgeoises.

Ces thèmes se répandront dans le reste de l'Europe mais seulement au cours du 19è siècle. Les peintres pré-impressionnistes français notamment s'inspireront beaucoup des peintres néerlandais du 17è siècle.

  

PAINTING IN THE NETHERLANDS (LOW COUNTRIES)

 

1. We must distinguish the Southern Netherlands (Southern Low Countries) and the Netherlands from the North (Northern Low Countries), and also according to the time that the religion practiced is Catholic or Protestant.

The Netherlands South (Southern Low Countries) correspond to the present Belgium and the north of France. They have been part of the Roman Empire and they are Catholics. Ethnically and linguistically they are either of Celtic origin and speak French or of Germanic origin and speak Flemish. South Netherlands (Southern Low Countries) , Flanders and Wallonia, are one of the regions of Europe that develops, economically, politically, technically, quickly, from the year 1000. Almost on par with the Italy of North . It is therefore a privileged places of the rebirth of Europe after the dark period that began with the collapse of the Roman Empire.

 

The Northern Low Countries correspond the current Netherlands (Nederland). They have not been part of the Roman empire. Ethnically and linguistically they are Germanic. They are Catholics until the Protestant Reformation. Economically development is later than tha of the Southern Low Countries. They become an independent state of South part with the Reformation. Separation of fact: 1579 (Union of Utrecht). Definitive recognition of independence by all European countries: 1648.

 

2. The Southern Low Countries (Netherlands South) are, in the 15th century and early 16th century, the place of business of the Painters, called "Flemish Primitives". Gothic painters, with their workshops mainly in Bruges, Ghent, Tournai, Brussels, Antwerp. The subjects of their paintings are exclusively Catholic. Under the influence of Italy begin to appear at end of period, the themes of mythology and the history of the Greco-Roman Antiquity. They go from Jan van Eyck at Pieter Bruegel the Elder, to the de facto separation of the North and South. This is a broad sense, certainly, but practical.

After the separation of fact (1579) these themes of painting, Catholic religion, mythology, ancient history, remain very dominant, even though the landscape, painting of manners and the nature morte also have a place, more important than in the countries of southern Europe or in Germany and Austria

 

The Northern Low Countries (Netherlands North). They are later developed economically and politically. Their Gothic painting, Catholic, was also almost completely destroyed by the Protestants.

The Reform will have a significant impact on the painting in these areas and then to Europe: Religion and Mythology or Greco-Roman history are no longer the usual themes of painting. These themes same disappear almost completely.

Rembrandt and some of his students are an exception to this trend.

The Northern Low Countries (Netherlands North) put in place, at the end of the 16th and early 17th Paysage avec un chalet et un grand arbre.century, a new art of painting whose themes are quite mainly:

The landscape, and in particular the marine

The Still life

The painting of the mores of the bourgeois and peasant society, and the portrait of the middle classes.

These themes will become more widespread in the rest of Europe, but only during the 19th century. The French pre-Impressionist painters in particular be inspired many of the Dutch painters of the 17th century.