The extent of the state of dereliction of ex Royal Navy Percival Sea Prince WM735/G-RACA at Long Marston is evident from the moss and the spider webs.

 

200_2_P1130456EM

This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:

www.gao.gov/products/GAO-25-106795

 

Cybersecurity Workforce: Departments Need to Fully Implement Key Practices

 

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published by Muse Productions of Stroud and printed in England by Cotswold Printing.

 

The following information is provided on the divided back of the card:

 

'James McNeill Whistler

1834 - 1903.

Convalescent or Petit Déjeuner;

Note in opal 1883 - 1884.

Watercolour on white paper.

26 cm x 18 cm

Private Collection.

 

Tate Gallery, London 1994

Musée d'Orsay, Paris 1995

National Gallery of Art, Washington 1995.'

 

James McNeill Whistler

 

James Abbott McNeill Whistler RBA, who was born in 1834, was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age, and based primarily in the United Kingdom.

 

He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, and was a leading proponent of "art for art's sake".

 

James' signature for his paintings took the shape of a stylized butterfly with an added long stinger for a tail.

 

The symbol combined both aspects of his personality: his art is marked by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative.

 

He found a parallel between painting and music, and entitled many of his paintings "arrangements", "harmonies", and "nocturnes", emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony.

 

Whistler's most famous painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871), commonly known as Whistler's Mother, is a revered and often parodied portrait of motherhood.

 

Whistler influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his aesthetic theories and his friendships with other leading artists and writers.

 

-- James Abbott Whistler - The Early Years

 

James Abbott Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on the 10th. July 1834, the first child of Anna McNeill Whistler and George Washington Whistler. He was the elder brother of Confederate surgeon William McNeill Whistler.

 

In later years, Whistler played up his mother's connection to the American South and its roots, and he presented himself as an impoverished Southern aristocrat, although it remains unclear to what extent he truly sympathized with the Southern cause during the American Civil War.

 

He adopted his mother's maiden name after she died, using it as an additional middle name.

 

James' father was a railroad engineer, and Anna was his second wife. James lived the first three years of his life in a modest house at 243 Worthen Street in Lowell, Massachusetts. The house is now the Whistler House Museum of Art, a museum dedicated to him.

 

James claimed St. Petersburg, Russia as his birthplace during the Ruskin trial:

 

"I shall be born when and where I want,

and I do not choose to be born in Lowell."

 

Whistler was a moody child, prone to fits of temper and insolence, and he often drifted into periods of laziness after bouts of illness. His parents discovered that drawing often settled him down and helped to focus his attention.

 

The family moved from Lowell to Stonington, Connecticut in 1837, where his father worked for the Stonington Railroad. Three of the couple's children died in infancy during this period.

 

Their fortunes improved considerably in 1839 when his father became chief engineer for the Boston & Albany Railroad, and the family built a mansion in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the Wood Museum of History now stands.

 

-- James Whistler in Russia and England

 

The family lived in Springfield until they left the United States for Russia in late 1842 when James' father was recruited by Nicholas I of Russia to design a railroad in Russia.

 

The Emperor had learned of George Whistler's ingenuity in engineering the Canton Viaduct for the Boston & Albany Railroad, and he offered him a position to engineer the railway from Saint Petersburg to Moscow.

 

After moving to St. Petersburg, the young Whistler took private art lessons, then enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts at the age of eleven.

 

The young artist followed the traditional curriculum of drawing from plaster casts and occasional live models, revelled in the atmosphere of art talk with older peers, and pleased his parents with a first-class mark in anatomy.

 

In 1844, he met the noted artist Sir William Allan, who came to Russia with a commission to paint a history of the life of Peter the Great. Whistler's mother noted in her diary:

 

"The great artist remarked to me: 'Your

little boy has uncommon genius, but do

not urge him beyond his inclination.'"

 

In 1847–1848, James' family spent some time in London with relatives, while his father stayed in Russia. Whistler's brother-in-law Francis Haden, a physician who was also an artist, spurred his interest in art and photography. Haden took Whistler to visit collectors and to lectures, and gave him a watercolour set with instruction.

 

Whistler already was imagining an art career. He began to collect books on art, and he studied other artists' techniques. When his portrait was painted by Sir William Boxall in 1848, the young Whistler exclaimed that:

 

"The portrait is very much like me, and

a very fine picture. Mr. Boxall is a beautiful

colourist... It is a beautiful creamy surface,

and looks so rich."

 

In his blossoming enthusiasm for art, at fifteen, he informed his father by letter of his future direction:

 

"I hope, dear father, you will

not object to my choice."

 

His father, however, died from cholera at the age of 49, and the Whistler family moved back to his mother's home town of Pomfret, Connecticut.

 

The family lived frugally and managed to get by on a limited income. James' art plans remained vague, and his future uncertain. His cousin reported that Whistler at that time was:

 

"... slight, with a pensive, delicate face,

shaded by soft brown curls... he had a

somewhat foreign appearance and

manner, which, aided by natural abilities,

made him very charming, even at that

age."

 

-- Whistler at West Point

 

Whistler was sent to Christ Church Hall School with his mother's hopes that he would become a minister. Whistler was seldom without his sketchbook, and was popular with his classmates for his caricatures.

 

However, it became clear that a career in religion did not suit him, so he applied to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his father had taught drawing and other relatives had attended.

 

James was admitted to the highly selective institution in July 1851 on the strength of his family name, despite his extreme nearsightedness and poor health history.

 

However, during his three years there, his grades were barely satisfactory, and he was a sorry sight at drill and dress, known as "Curly" for his hair length which exceeded regulations.

 

Whistler bucked authority, spouted sarcastic comments, and racked up demerits. Colonel Robert E Lee was the West Point Superintendent and, after considerable indulgence toward Whistler, he had no choice but to dismiss the young cadet.

 

Whistler's major accomplishment at West Point was learning drawing and map making from American artist Robert W. Weir.

 

James' departure from West Point seems to have been precipitated by a failure in a chemistry exam where he was asked to describe silicon. He began by saying:

 

"Silicon is a gas."

 

As Whistler himself put it later:

 

"If silicon were a gas, I would

have been a general one day".

 

-- Whistler's First Job

 

After West Point, Whistler worked as draftsman mapping the entire U.S. coast for military and maritime purposes. However he found the work boring, and was frequently late or absent.

 

James spent much of his free time playing billiards and idling about, was always broke, and although a charmer, had little acquaintance with women.

 

After it was discovered that he was drawing sea serpents, mermaids, and whales on the margins of the maps, he was transferred to the etching division of the United States Coast Survey. He lasted there only two months, but he learned the etching technique which later proved valuable to his career.

 

At this point, Whistler firmly decided that art would be his future. For a few months he lived in Baltimore with a wealthy friend, Tom Winans, who even furnished Whistler with a studio and some spending cash.

 

The young artist made some valuable contacts in the art community and also sold some early paintings to Winans. Whistler turned down his mother's suggestions for other more practical careers, and informed her that with money from Winans, he was setting out to further his art training in Paris. Whistler never returned to the United States.

 

-- Whistler's Art Study in France

 

Whistler arrived in Paris in 1855, rented a studio in the Latin Quarter, and quickly adopted the life of a bohemian artist. Whistler preferred self-study and enjoyed the café life. Soon he had a French girlfriend, a dressmaker named Héloise.

 

He studied traditional art methods for a short time at the École Impériale and at the atelier of Charles Gleyre. The latter was a great advocate of the work of Ingres, and impressed Whistler with two principles that he used for the rest of his career: that line is more important than color, and that black is the fundamental color of tonal harmony.

 

Twenty years later, the Impressionists would largely overthrow this philosophy, banning black and brown as "forbidden colors," and emphasizing color over form.

 

While letters from home reported his mother's efforts at economy, Whistler spent freely, sold little or nothing in his first year in Paris, and was in steady debt.

 

To relieve the situation, he took to painting and selling copies from works at the Louvre, and finally moved to cheaper quarters. As luck would have it, the arrival in Paris of George Lucas, another rich friend, helped stabilize Whistler's finances for a while. In spite of a financial respite, the winter of 1857 was a difficult one for Whistler. His poor health, made worse by excessive smoking and drinking, laid him low.

 

Conditions improved however during the summer of 1858. Whistler recovered and traveled with fellow artist Ernest Delannoy through France and the Rhineland. He later produced a group of etchings known as "The French Set", with the help of French master printer Auguste Delâtre.

 

During that year, he painted his first self-portrait, Portrait of Whistler with Hat, a dark and thickly rendered work reminiscent of Rembrandt. However the event of greatest consequence that year was his friendship with Henri Fantin-Latour, whom he met at the Louvre.

 

Through Henri, Whistler was introduced to the circle of Gustave Courbet, which included Carolus-Duran (later the teacher of John Singer Sargent), Alphonse Legros, and Édouard Manet.

 

Also in this group was Charles Baudelaire, whose ideas and theories of "modern" art influenced Whistler. Baudelaire challenged artists to scrutinize the brutality of life and nature, and to portray it faithfully, avoiding the old themes of mythology and allegory.

 

Théophile Gautier, one of the first to explore translation qualities among art and music, may have inspired Whistler to view art in musical terms.

 

-- Whistler in London

 

Reflecting his adopted circle's banner of the Realism art movement, Whistler painted his first exhibited work, La Mère Gérard in 1858. He followed it by painting At the Piano in 1859 in London, which he adopted as his home, while also regularly visiting friends in France.

 

At the Piano is a portrait composed of his niece and her mother in their London music room, an effort which clearly displayed his talent and promise. A critic wrote:

 

"Despite a recklessly bold manner and

sketchiness of the wildest and roughest

kind, it has a genuine feeling for colour

and a splendid power of composition

and design, which evince a just

appreciation of nature very rare amongst

artists."

 

The work is unsentimental, and effectively contrasts the mother in black and the daughter in white, with other colors kept restrained in the manner advised by his teacher Gleyre. It was displayed at the Royal Academy the following year, and in many exhibitions to come.

 

In a second painting executed in the same room, Whistler demonstrated his natural inclination toward innovation and novelty by fashioning a genre scene with unusual composition and foreshortening. It later was re-titled Harmony in Green and Rose: The Music Room. This painting also demonstrated Whistler's ongoing work pattern, especially with portraits: a quick start, major adjustments, a period of neglect, then a final flurry at the finish.

 

After a year in London, James produced a set of etchings in 1860 called Thames Set, as counterpoint to his 1858 French set, as well as some early impressionistic work including The Thames in Ice.

 

At this stage, he was beginning to establish his technique of tonal harmony based on a limited, predetermined palette.

 

-- Whistler's Early Career

 

In 1861, after returning to Paris for a time, Whistler painted his first famous work, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl. The portrait of his mistress and business manager Joanna Hiffernan was created as a simple study in white.

 

However, others saw it differently. The critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary thought the painting an allegory of a new bride's lost innocence. Others linked it to Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, a popular novel of the time, or various other literary sources.

 

In England, some considered it a painting in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. In the painting, Hiffernan holds a lily in her left hand and stands upon a wolf skin rug (interpreted by some to represent masculinity and lust) with the wolf's head staring menacingly at the viewer.

 

The portrait was refused for exhibition at the conservative Royal Academy, but was shown in a private gallery under the title The Woman in White.

 

In 1863, it was shown at the Salon des Refusés in Paris, an event sponsored by Emperor Napoleon III for the exhibition of works rejected by the Salon.

 

Whistler's painting was widely noticed, although upstaged by Manet's more shocking painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. Countering criticism by traditionalists, Whistler's supporters insisted that the painting was "an apparition with a spiritual content," and that it epitomized his theory that art should be concerned essentially with the arrangement of colors in harmony, not with a literal portrayal of the natural world.

 

Two years later, Whistler painted another portrait of Hiffernan in white, this time displaying his newfound interest in Asian motifs, which he entitled The Little White Girl.

 

His Lady of the Land Lijsen and The Golden Screen, both completed in 1864, again portray his mistress, in even more emphatic Asian dress and surroundings.

 

During this period Whistler became close to Gustave Courbet, the early leader of the French realist school, but when Hiffernan modeled in the nude for Courbet, Whistler became enraged and his relationship with Hiffernan began to fall apart.

 

In January 1864, Whistler's very religious and very proper mother arrived in London, upsetting her son's bohemian existence and temporarily increasing family tensions. As he wrote to Henri Fantin-Latour:

 

"General upheaval!! I had to empty my

house and purify it from cellar to eaves."

 

James also immediately moved Hiffernan to another location.

 

From 1866, Whistler made his home in Chelsea, London, an area popular with artists, firstly in Cheyne Walk, then an ill-fated move to Tite Street, and finally Upper Church Street.

 

-- Whistler's Later Career

 

In 1866, Whistler decided to visit Valparaíso, Chile, a journey that has puzzled scholars, although Whistler stated that he did it for political reasons. Chile was at war with Spain, and perhaps Whistler thought it a heroic struggle of a small nation against a larger one, but no evidence supports that theory.

 

What the journey did produce was Whistler's first three nocturnal paintings (which he originally termed "moonlights"): night scenes of the harbor painted with a blue or light green palette.

 

After he returned to London, James painted several more nocturnes over the next ten years, many of the River Thames and of Cremorne Gardens, a pleasure park famous for its frequent fireworks displays, which presented a novel challenge to paint.

 

In his maritime nocturnes, Whistler used highly thinned paint as a ground with lightly flicked color to suggest ships, lights, and shore line. Some of the Thames paintings also show compositional and thematic similarities with the Japanese prints of Hiroshige.

 

In 1872, Whistler credited his patron Frederick Leyland, an amateur musician devoted to Chopin, for his musically inspired titles:

 

"I say I can't thank you too much for the name

'Nocturne' as a title for my moonlights! You have

no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics

and consequent pleasure to me—besides it is

really so charming and does so poetically say

all that I want to say and no more than I wish!"

 

At that point, Whistler painted another self-portrait and entitled it Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter (circa 1872). He also began to re-title many of his earlier works using terms associated with music, such as a "nocturne", "symphony", "harmony", "study" or "arrangement", to emphasize the tonal qualities and the composition, and to de-emphasize the narrative content.

 

Whistler's nocturnes were among his most innovative works. Furthermore, his submission of several nocturnes to art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel after the Franco-Prussian War gave Whistler the opportunity to explain his evolving "theory in art" to artists, buyers, and critics in France.

 

His good friend Fantin-Latour, growing more reactionary in his opinions, especially in his negativity concerning the emerging Impressionist school, found Whistler's new works surprising and confounding. Fantin-Latour admitted:

 

"I don't understand anything there;

it's bizarre how one changes. I don't

recognize him anymore."

 

Their relationship was nearly at an end by then, but they continued to share opinions in occasional correspondence.

 

When Edgar Degas invited Whistler to exhibit with the first show by the Impressionists in 1874, Whistler turned down the invitation, as did Manet, and some scholars attributed this in part to Fantin-Latour's influence on both men.

 

-- Whistler's Portraits

 

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 fragmented the French art community. Many artists took refuge in England, joining Whistler, including Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet, while Manet and Degas stayed in France.

 

Like Whistler, Monet and Pissarro both focused their efforts on views of the city, and it is likely that Whistler was exposed to the evolution of Impressionism founded by these artists, and that they had seen his nocturnes.

 

Whistler was drifting away from Courbet's "damned realism" and their friendship had wilted, as had his liaison with Joanna Hiffernan.

 

-- Whistler's Mother

 

By 1871, Whistler had returned to portraits and soon produced his most famous painting, the nearly monochromatic full-length figure entitled Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, but usually referred to as Whistler's Mother.

 

A model failed to appear one day, according to a letter from his mother, so Whistler turned to his mother and suggested that he do her portrait. He had her stand at first, in his typically slow and experimental way, but that proved too tiring, so the seated pose was adopted. It took dozens of sittings to complete.

 

The austere portrait in his normally constrained palette is another Whistler exercise in tonal harmony and composition. The deceptively simple design is in fact a balancing act of differing shapes, particularly the rectangles of curtain, picture on the wall, and floor which stabilize the curve of her face, dress, and chair.

 

Whistler commented that the painting's narrative was of little importance, yet the painting was also paying homage to his pious mother. After the initial shock of her moving in with her son, she aided him considerably by stabilizing his behavior somewhat, tending to his domestic needs, and providing an aura of conservative respectability that helped win over patrons.

 

The public reacted negatively to the painting, mostly because of its anti-Victorian simplicity during a time in England when sentimentality and flamboyant decoration were in vogue.

 

Critics thought the painting a failed "experiment" rather than a work of art. The Royal Academy rejected it, but then grudgingly accepted it after lobbying by Sir William Boxall - but they hung it in an unfavorable location at their exhibition.

 

From the start, Whistler's Mother sparked varying reactions, including parody, ridicule, and reverence, which have continued to this day. Some saw it as "the dignified feeling of old ladyhood", "a grave sentiment of mourning", or a "perfect symbol of motherhood."

 

Others however employed it as a fitting vehicle for mockery. It has been satirized in endless variations in greeting cards and magazines, and by cartoon characters such as Donald Duck and Bullwinkle the Moose.

 

Whistler did his part in promoting the picture and popularizing the image. He frequently exhibited it, and authorized the early reproductions that made their way into thousands of homes.

 

The painting narrowly escaped being burned in a fire aboard a train during shipping. It was ultimately purchased by the French government, the first Whistler work in a public collection, and is now housed in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

 

During the Great Depression in the United States, the picture was billed as a "million dollar" painting, and was a big hit at the 1933–34 Chicago World's Fair. It was accepted as a universal icon of motherhood by the worldwide public, which was not particularly aware of or concerned with Whistler's aesthetic theories.

 

In recognition of its status and popularity, the United States issued a postage stamp in 1934 featuring an adaptation of the painting.

 

In 2015, New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote:

 

"It remains the most important American

work residing outside the United States."

 

Martha Tedeschi wrote:

 

"Whistler's Mother, Wood's American Gothic, Leonardo

da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream

have all achieved something that most paintings -

regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or

monetary value - have not: they communicate a specific

meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer.

These few works have successfully made the transition

from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the

enormous venue of popular culture."

 

-- Other Portraits by Whistler

 

Other important portraits by Whistler include those of Thomas Carlyle (historian, 1873), Maud Franklin (his mistress, 1876), Cicely Alexander (daughter of a London banker, 1873), Lady Meux (socialite, 1882), and Théodore Duret (critic, 1884).

 

In the 1870's, Whistler painted full-length portraits of his benefactor Frederick Leyland and his wife Frances. Leyland subsequently commissioned the artist to decorate his dining room.

 

Whistler had been disappointed over the irregular acceptance of his works for the Royal Academy exhibitions and the poor hanging and placement of his paintings. In response, Whistler staged his first solo show in 1874.

 

The show was notable and noticed, however, for Whistler's design and decoration of the hall, which harmonized well with the paintings, in keeping with his art theories. A reviewer wrote:

 

"The visitor is struck, on entering the gallery,

with a curious sense of harmony and fitness

pervading it, and is more interested, perhaps,

in the general effect than in any one work."

 

Whistler was not so successful a portrait painter as the other famous expatriate American John Singer Sargent. Whistler's spare technique and his disinclination to flatter his sitters, as well as his notoriety, may account for this. He also worked very slowly, and demanded extraordinarily long sittings.

 

William Merritt Chase complained of his sitting for a portrait by Whistler:

 

"He proved to be a veritable tyrant, painting

every day into the twilight, while my limbs

ached with weariness and my head swam

dizzily. 'Don't move! Don't move!' he would

scream whenever I started to rest."

 

By the time James gained widespread acceptance in the 1890's, Whistler was past his prime as a portrait painter.

 

-- Whistler's Technique

 

Whistler's approach to portraiture in his late maturity was described by one of his sitters, Arthur J. Eddy, who posed for the artist in 1894:

 

"He worked with great rapidity and long hours, but

he used his colours thin, and covered the canvas with innumerable coats of paint. The colours increased in

depth and intensity as the work progressed.

At first the entire figure was painted in greyish-brown

tones, with very little flesh colour, the whole blending

perfectly with the greyish-brown of the prepared

canvas.

Then the entire background would be intensified a

little; then the figure made a little stronger; then the

background, and so on from day to day and week to

week, and often from month to month. ... And so the

portrait would really grow, really develop as an entirety,

very much as a negative under the action of the chemicals

comes out gradually - light, shadows, and all from the

very first faint indications to their full values.

It was as if the portrait were hidden within the canvas,

and the master by passing his wands day after day

over the surface evoked the image."

 

-- Whistler's Printmaking

 

Whistler produced numerous etchings, lithographs, and dry-points. His lithographs, some drawn on stone, others drawn directly on "lithographie" paper, are perhaps half as numerous as his etchings.

 

Some of the lithographs are of figures slightly draped; two or three of the very finest are of Thames subjects - including a "nocturne" at Limehouse; while others depict the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris, and Georgian churches in Soho and Bloomsbury in London.

 

The etchings include portraits of family, mistresses, and intimate street scenes in London and Venice. Whistler gained an enormous reputation as an etcher. Martin Hardie wrote:

 

"There are some who set him beside Rembrandt,

perhaps above Rembrandt, as the greatest master

of all time. Personally, I prefer to regard them as

the Jupiter and Venus, largest and brightest

among the planets in the etcher's heaven."

 

James took great care over the printing of his etchings and the choice of paper. At the beginning and end of his career, he placed great emphasis on cleanness of line, though in a middle period he experimented more with inking and the use of surface tone.

 

-- Whistler's Butterfly Signature and Painting Settings

 

Whistler's famous butterfly signature first developed in the 1860's out of his interest in Asian art. He studied the potter's marks on the china he had begun to collect, and decided to design a monogram of his initials.

 

Over time this evolved into the shape of an abstract butterfly. By around 1880, he added a stinger to the butterfly image to create a mark representing both his gentle, sensitive nature and his provocative, feisty spirit.

 

He took great care in the appropriate placement of the image on both his paintings and his custom-made frames. His focus on the importance of balance and harmony extended beyond the frame to the placement of his paintings in their settings, and further to the design of an entire architectural element, as in the Peacock Room.

  

-- The Peacock Room

 

Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room is Whistler's masterpiece of interior decorative mural art. Painted in 1876–1877, it is now considered a high example of the Anglo-Japanese style.

 

Frederick Leyland left the room in Whistler's care to make minor changes, "to harmonize" the room whose primary purpose was to display Leyland's china collection.

 

James painted over the original paneled room designed by Thomas Jeckyll (1827–1881), in a unified palette of brilliant blue-greens with over-glazing and metallic gold leaf.

 

Whistler let his imagination run wild, however:

 

"Well, you know, I just painted on. I went on -

without design or sketch - putting in every

touch with such freedom ... And the harmony

in blue and gold developing, you know, I forgot

everything in my joy of it."

 

James completely painted over 16th.-century Cordoba leather wall coverings first brought to Britain by Catherine of Aragon that Leyland had paid £1,000 for.

 

Having acquired the centerpiece of the room, Whistler's painting of The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, American industrialist and aesthete Charles Lang Freer purchased the entire room in 1904 from Leyland's heirs, including Leyland's daughter and her husband, the British artist Val Prinsep.

 

Freer then had the contents of the Peacock Room installed in his Detroit mansion. After Freer's death in 1919, The Peacock Room was permanently installed in the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. The gallery opened to the public in 1923.

 

A large painted caricature by Whistler of Leyland portraying him as an anthropomorphic peacock playing a piano, and entitled The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre – a pun on Leyland's miserliness and fondness for frilly shirt fronts – is in the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

 

-- Whistler and the Ruskin Trial

 

In 1877 Whistler sued the critic John Ruskin after the critic condemned his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. Whistler exhibited the work in the Grosvenor Gallery, an alternative to the Royal Academy exhibition, alongside works by Edward Burne-Jones and other artists.

 

Ruskin, who had been a champion of the Pre-Raphaelites and J. M. W. Turner, reviewed Whistler's work in his publication Fors Clavigera on the 2nd. July 1877. Ruskin praised Burne-Jones, while he attacked Whistler:

 

"For Mr. Whistler's own sake, no less than for

the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts

Lindsay (founder of the Grosvenor Gallery)

ought not to have admitted works into the

gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of

the artist so nearly approached the aspect

of willful imposture.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney

impudence before now; but never expected

to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas

for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

 

Whistler, seeing the attack in the newspaper, replied to his friend George Boughton:

 

"It is the most debased style of criticism

I have had thrown at me yet."

 

He then went to his solicitor and drew up a writ for libel, which was served to Ruskin. Whistler hoped to recover £1,000 plus the costs of the action. The case came to trial the following year after delays caused by Ruskin's bouts of mental illness, while Whistler's financial condition continued to deteriorate.

 

The case was heard in the Exchequer Division of the High Court on the 25th. and 26th. November 1878, before Baron Huddleston and a special jury. Counsel for John Ruskin, Attorney General Sir John Holker, cross-examined Whistler:

 

Holker: "What is the subject of Nocturne in

Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket?"

 

Whistler: "It is a night piece, and represents

the fireworks at Cremorne Gardens."

 

Holker: "Not a view of Cremorne?"

 

Whistler: "If it were A View of Cremorne it

would certainly bring about nothing but

disappointment on the part of the beholders.

It is an artistic arrangement. That is why I call

it a nocturne. ..."

 

Holker: "Did it take you much time to paint

the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon

did you knock it off?"

 

Whistler: "Oh, I 'knock one off' possibly in a

couple of days – one day to do the work and

another to finish it ..."

 

Holker: "The labour of two days is that for

which you ask two hundred guineas?"

 

Whistler: "No, I ask it for the knowledge I

have gained in the work of a lifetime."

 

Whistler had counted on many artists to take his side as witnesses, but they refused, fearing damage to their reputations. The other witnesses for him were unconvincing, and the jury's own reaction to the work was derisive.

 

With Ruskin's witnesses being more impressive, including Edward Burne-Jones, and with Ruskin absent for medical reasons, Whistler's counterattack was ineffective. Nonetheless, the jury reached a verdict in favor of Whistler, but awarded a mere farthing in nominal damages, and the court costs were split.

 

The cost of the case, together with huge debts from building his residence ("The White House" in Tite Street, Chelsea, designed with E. W. Godwin, 1877–8), bankrupted him by May 1879, resulting in an auction of his work, collections, and house.

 

Stansky notes the irony that the Fine Art Society of London, which had organized a collection to pay for Ruskin's legal costs, supported him in etching "The Stones of Venice" (and in exhibiting the series in 1883), which helped recoup Whistler's costs.

 

Whistler published his account of the trial in the pamphlet Whistler v. Ruskin: Art and Art Critics, included in his later The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890), in December 1878, soon after the trial.

 

Whistler's grand hope that the publicity of the trial would rescue his career was dashed as he lost rather than gained popularity among patrons because of it. Among his creditors was Leyland, who oversaw the sale of Whistler's possessions.

 

Whistler made various caricatures of his former patron, including a biting satirical painting called The Gold Scab, just after Whistler declared bankruptcy. Whistler always blamed Leyland for his financial downfall.

 

-- Whistler's Later Years

 

Anna Lea Merritt wrote:

 

"It is always a delight to remember that actually

once Mr. Whistler was really shy! Those who had

the pleasure of hearing his first Ten O'Clock must

remember that when he came before his rather

puzzled and distinguished audience, there were

a few minutes of very palpable stage fright."

 

After the trial, Whistler received a commission to do twelve etchings in Venice. He eagerly accepted the assignment, and arrived in the city with girlfriend Maud Franklin, taking rooms in a dilapidated palazzo they shared with other artists, including John Singer Sargent.

 

Although homesick for London, he adapted to Venice and set about discovering its character. He did his best to distract himself from the gloom of his financial affairs and the pending sale of all his goods at Sotheby's.

 

He was a regular guest at parties at the American consulate, and with his usual wit, enchanted the guests with verbal flourishes such as:

 

"The artist's only positive virtue is idleness -

and there are so few who are gifted at it."

 

His new friends reported, on the contrary, that Whistler rose early and put in a full day of effort. He wrote to a friend:

 

"I have learned to know a Venice in Venice

that the others never seem to have perceived,

and which, if I bring back with me as I propose,

will far more than compensate for all annoyances

delays & vexations of spirit."

 

The three-month assignment stretched to fourteen months. During this exceptionally productive period, Whistler finished over fifty etchings, several nocturnes, some watercolors, and over 100 pastels - illustrating both the moods of Venice and its fine architectural details.

 

Furthermore, Whistler influenced the American art community in Venice, especially Frank Duveneck (and Duveneck's "boys") and Robert Blum who emulated Whistler's vision of the city and later spread his methods and influence back to America.

 

Back in London, the pastels sold particularly well, and James quipped:

 

"They are not as good as I

supposed. They are selling!"

 

James was actively engaged in exhibiting his other work, but with limited success. Though still struggling financially, he was heartened by the attention and admiration he received from the younger generation of English and American painters who made him their idol, and eagerly adopted the title "pupil of Whistler".

 

Many of them returned to America and spread tales of Whistler's provocative egotism, sharp wit, and aesthetic pronouncements - establishing the legend of Whistler, much to his satisfaction.

 

In January 1881, his mother Anna Whistler died. In her honour, he publicly adopted her maiden name McNeill as a middle name.

 

Whistler published his first book, Ten O'Clock lecture in 1885, a major expression of his belief in "art for art's sake". At the time, the opposing Victorian notion reigned, namely, that art, and indeed much human activity, had a moral or social function.

 

To Whistler, however, art was its own end, and the artist's responsibility was not to society, but to himself, to interpret through art, and to neither reproduce nor moralize what he saw. Furthermore, he stated:

 

"Nature is very rarely right, and must

be improved upon by the artist, with

his own vision."

 

Though differing with Whistler on several points, including his insistence that poetry was a higher form of art than painting, Oscar Wilde was generous in his praise, and hailed the lecture as a masterpiece:

 

".... not merely for its clever satire and amusing

jests ... but for the pure and perfect beauty of

many of its passages ... for that he is indeed one

of the very greatest masters of painting, in my

opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr.

Whistler himself entirely concurs."

 

Whistler, however, thought himself mocked by Oscar Wilde, and from then on, public sparring ensued leading to a total breakdown of their friendship, precipitated by a report written by Herbert Vivian. Later, Wilde "symbolically murdered Whistler", basing Basil Hallward, the murdered artist in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, on Whistler.

 

Whistler joined the Society of British Artists in 1884, and on the 1st. June 1886, he was elected president. The following year, during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, Whistler presented to the Queen, on the Society's behalf, an elaborate album including a lengthy written address and illustrations that he made.

 

Queen Victoria so admired "the beautiful and artistic illumination" that she decreed henceforth, "that the Society should be called Royal."

 

This achievement was widely appreciated by the members, but soon it was overshadowed by the dispute that inevitably arose with the Royal Academy of Arts.

 

Whistler proposed that members of the Royal Society should withdraw from the Royal Academy. This ignited a feud within the membership ranks that overshadowed all other society business. In May 1888, nine members wrote to Whistler to demand his resignation. At the annual meeting on the 4th. June 1888, he was defeated for re-election by a vote of 18–19, with nine abstentions.

 

Whistler and 25 supporters resigned, while the anti-Whistler majority (in his view) was successful in purging him for his "eccentricities" and "non-English" background.

 

With his relationship with Maud Franklin unraveling, Whistler suddenly proposed to Beatrice Godwin (also called Beatrix or Trixie), a former pupil and the widow of his late friend, architect Edward William Godwin.

 

Through his friendship with Godwin, Whistler had become close to Beatrice, whom Whistler painted in the full-length portrait titled Harmony in Red: Lamplight.

 

By the summer of 1888 Whistler and Beatrice appeared in public as a couple. At a dinner Louise Jopling and Henry Labouchère insisted that they should be married before the end of the week.

 

The marriage ceremony was quickly arranged; as a member of Parliament, Labouchère arranged for the Chaplain to the House of Commons to marry the couple. No publicity was given to the ceremony to avoid the possibility of a furious Maud Franklin interrupting the marriage ceremony.

 

The marriage took place on August 11, 1888, with the ceremony attended by a reporter from the Pall Mall Gazette, so that the event received publicity. The couple left soon after for Paris, to avoid any risk of a scene with Maud.

 

Whistler's reputation in London and Paris was rising, and he gained positive reviews from critics and new commissions. His book The Gentle Art of Making Enemies was published in 1890 with mixed success, but it afforded helpful publicity.

 

In 1890 James met Charles Lang Freer, who became a valuable patron in America, and ultimately his most important collector.

 

Around this time, in addition to portraiture, Whistler experimented with early colour photography and with lithography, creating a series featuring London architecture and the human figure, mostly female nudes.

 

He contributed the first three of his Songs of Stone lithographs to The Whirlwind, a Neo-Jacobite magazine published by his friend Herbert Vivian. Whistler had met Vivian in the late 1880's when both were members of the Order of the White Rose, the first of the Neo-Jacobite societies.

 

In 1891, with help from his close friend Stéphane Mallarmé, Whistler's Mother was purchased by the French government for 4,000 francs. This was much less than what an American collector might have paid, but that would not have been so prestigious by Whistler's reckoning.

 

After an indifferent reception to his solo show in London, featuring mostly his nocturnes, Whistler abruptly decided he had had enough of London. He and Trixie moved to Paris in 1892, and resided at n° 110 Rue du Bac, Paris, with his studio at the top of 86 Rue Notre Dame des Champs in Montparnasse.

 

He felt welcomed by his old Paris friends Monet, Auguste Rodin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as Stéphane Mallarmé, and he set himself up a large studio.

 

James was at the top of his career when it was discovered that his wife Trixie had cancer. They returned to London in February 1896, taking rooms at the Savoy Hotel while they sought medical treatment. He made drawings on lithographic transfer paper of the view of the River Thames, from the hotel window or balcony, as he sat with her. She died a few months later.

 

In 1899, Charles Freer introduced Whistler to his friend and fellow businessman Richard Albert Canfield, who became a personal friend and patron of Whistler's. Canfield owned a number of fashionable gambling houses in New York and Rhode Island, including Saratoga Springs and Newport, and was also a man of culture with refined tastes in art.

 

Canfield owned early American and Chippendale furniture, tapestries, Chinese porcelain and Barye bronzes; he also possessed the second-largest and most important Whistler collection in the world prior to his death in 1914.

 

In May 1901, Canfield commissioned a portrait from Whistler; he started to pose for Portrait of Richard A. Canfield in March 1902. According to Alexander Gardiner, Canfield returned to Europe to sit for Whistler at the New Year in 1903, and sat every day until May 16, 1903.

 

Whistler was ill and frail by this time, and the work was his last completed portrait. The deceptive air of respectability that the portrait gave Canfield caused Whistler to call it 'His Reverence'. The two men were in correspondence from 1901 until Whistler's death.

 

A few months before his own death, Canfield sold his collection of etchings, lithographs, drawings and paintings by Whistler to the American art dealer Roland F. Knoedler for $300,000. Three of Canfield's Whistler paintings hang in the Frick Museum in New York City.

 

In the final seven years of his life, Whistler did some minimalist seascapes in watercolor and a final self-portrait in oil. He corresponded with his many friends and colleagues. Whistler founded an art school in 1898, but his poor health and infrequent appearances led to its closure in 1901.

 

-- Whistler's Death

 

James died in London on the 17th. July 1903, six days after his 69th. birthday. He was laid to rest in Chiswick Old Cemetery in west London, adjoining St. Nicholas' Church, Chiswick.

 

-- Whistler The Man

 

Whistler was the subject of a 1908 biography by his friends, the husband-and-wife team of Joseph Pennell and Elizabeth Robins Pennell, printmaker and art critic respectively.

 

The Pennells' vast collection of Whistler material was bequeathed to the Library of Congress. The artist's entire estate was left to his sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip. She spent the rest of her life defending his reputation and managing his art and effects, much of which eventually was donated to Glasgow University.

 

Whistler had a distinctive appearance, short and slight, with piercing eyes and a curling mustache, often sporting a monocle and the flashy attire of a dandy.

 

He affected a posture of self-confidence and eccentricity. He often was arrogant and selfish toward friends and patrons. A constant self-promoter and egoist, he relished shocking both friends and enemies.

 

Though he could be droll and flippant about social and political matters, he always was serious about art, and often invited public controversy and debate to argue for his strongly held theories.

 

Whistler had a high-pitched, drawling voice and a unique manner of speech, full of calculated pauses. A friend said:

 

"In a second you discover that he is not

conversing - he is sketching in words,

giving impressions in sound and sense

to be interpreted by the hearer."

 

Whistler was well known for his biting wit, especially in exchanges with his friend and rival Oscar Wilde. Both were figures in the Café society of Paris, and they were often the "talk of the town".

 

They frequently appeared as caricatures in Punch, to their mutual amusement. On one occasion, young Oscar Wilde attended one of Whistler's dinners, and hearing his host make some brilliant remark, apparently said, "I wish I'd said that", to which Whistler riposted, "You will, Oscar, you will!"

 

In fact, Wilde did repeat in public many witticisms created by Whistler. Their relationship soured by the mid-1880's, as Whistler turned against Wilde and the Aesthetic Movement. When Wilde was publicly acknowledged to be a homosexual in 1895, Whistler openly mocked him.

 

Whistler revelled in preparing and managing his social gatherings. As a guest observed:

 

"One met all the best in Society there—the people

with brains, and those who had enough to appreciate

them. Whistler was an inimitable host. He loved to be

the Sun round whom we lesser lights revolved ...

All came under his influence, and in consequence,

no one was bored, no one dull."

 

In Paris, Whistler was friends with members of the Symbolist circle of artists, writers and poets that included Stéphane Mallarmé and Marcel Schwob. Schwob had met Whistler in the mid-1890's through Stéphane Mallarmé; they had other mutual friends, including Oscar Wilde (until they argued) and Whistler's brother-in-law, Charles Whibley.

 

Whistler was friendly with many French artists, including Henri Fantin-Latour, Alphonse Legros, and Gustave Courbet. He illustrated the book Les Chauves-Souris with Antonio de La Gandara. He also knew Édouard Manet and the Impressionists, notably Claude Monet, and Edgar Degas.

 

As a young artist, he was a close friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His close friendships with Monet and poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who translated the Ten O'Clock lecture into French, helped strengthen respect for Whistler by the French public.

 

Whistler was friendly with his fellow students at Gleyre's studio, including Ignace Schott, whose son Leon Dabo Whistler later would mentor.

 

Whistler's lover and model for The White Girl, Joanna Hiffernan, also posed for Gustave Courbet. Historians speculate that Courbet used her as the model for his erotic paintings Le Sommeil and L'Origine du Monde, possibly leading to the breakup of the friendship between Whistler and Courbet.

 

During the 1870's and much of the 1880's, Whistler lived with his model and mistress Maud Franklin. Her ability to endure long, repetitive sittings helped Whistler develop his portrait skills.

 

He not only made several excellent portraits of her, but she was also a helpful stand-in for other sitters. Whistler had two daughters by Maud Franklin: Ione (born circa 1877) and Maud McNeill Whistler Franklin (born 1879).

 

Maud sometimes referred to herself as 'Mrs. Whistler', and in the census of 1881 gave her name as 'Mary M. Whistler'.

 

Whistler had several extramarital children, of whom Charles James Whistler Hanson (1870–1935) is the best documented. After Whistler parted from his mistress Joanna Hiffernan, she helped to raise Hanson, even though his mother was the parlour maid, Louisa Fanny Hanson.

 

In 1888, Whistler married Beatrice Godwin, whom he called Beatrix or Trixie. She was the widow of his friend E. W. Godwin, the architect who had designed Whistler's White House, and the daughter of the sculptor John Birnie Philip and his wife Frances Black.

 

Beatrix and her sisters Rosalind Birnie Philip and Ethel Whibley posed for many of Whistler's paintings and drawings; with Ethel Whibley modeling for Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian (1888–1900).

 

The first five years of their marriage were very happy, but her later life was a time of misery for the couple, due to her illness and eventual death from cancer. Near the end, she lay comatose for much of the time, completely subdued by morphine, given for pain relief. Her death was a heavy blow that Whistler never quite overcame.

 

-- Whistler's Legacy

 

Whistler was inspired by and incorporated many sources in his art, including the work of Rembrandt, Velázquez, and ancient Greek sculpture in order to develop his own highly influential and individual style.

 

He was adept in many media, with over 500 paintings, as well as etchings, pastels, watercolors, drawings, and lithographs.

 

Whistler was a leader in the Aesthetic Movement, promoting, writing, and lecturing on "art for art's sake." With his pupils, he advocated simple design, economy of means, the avoidance of over-labored technique, and the tonal harmony of the final result.

 

Whistler has been the subject of many major museum exhibitions, studies, and publications. Like the Impressionists, he employed nature as an artistic resource.

 

Whistler insisted that it was the artist's obligation to interpret what he saw, not to be a slave to reality, and to "bring forth from chaos glorious harmony".

 

During his life, he influenced many artists throughout the English-speaking world. Whistler had significant contact and exchanged ideas and ideals with Realist, Impressionist, and Symbolist painters. The artist Walter Sickert was his pupil, and the writer Oscar Wilde was his friend.

 

Whistler's Tonalism had a profound effect on many American artists, including John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Henry Salem Hubbell, Willis Seaver Adams (whom he befriended in Venice) and Arthur Frank Mathews.

 

Whistler met Mathews in Paris in the late 1890's; he took Whistler's Tonalism to San Francisco, spawning a broad use of that technique among turn-of-the-century California artists.

 

Whistler was also a major influence on the 1880's Heidelberg School movement in Australia, otherwise known as Australian impressionism. As American critic Charles Caffin wrote in 1907:

 

"Whistler did better than attract a few followers

and imitators; he influenced the whole world of

art.

Consciously or unconsciously, his presence is

felt in countless studios; his genius permeates

modern artistic thought."

 

During a fourteen-month stay in Venice in 1879 and 1880, Whistler created a series of etchings and pastels that not only reinvigorated his finances (this was after he had declared bankruptcy following the Ruskin trial), but also re-energized the way in which artists and photographers interpreted the city - focusing on the back alleys, side canals, entrance ways, and architectural patterns - and capturing the city's unique atmospherics.

 

In 1940 Whistler was commemorated on a United States postage stamp when the U.S. Post Office issued a set of 35 stamps commemorating America's famous authors, poets, educators, scientists, composers, artists, and inventors: the Famous Americans Series.

 

The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Patience pokes fun at the Aesthetic movement, and the lead character of Reginald Bunthorne is often identified as a send-up of Oscar Wilde, though Bunthorne is more likely an amalgam of several prominent artists, writers, and Aesthetic figures.

 

Bunthorne wears a monocle and has prominent white streaks in his dark hair, as did Whistler.

 

Novelist Henry James had become well enough acquainted with Whistler to base several fictional characters on "the queer little Londonized Southerner," most notably in Roderick Hudson and The Tragic Muse.

 

Whistler also appeared as one of Henry James's most attractive minor characters, the sculptor Gloriani in The Ambassadors, whose personality, way of life, and even home were closely based on Whistler.

 

George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby has a character, Joe Sibley, "the idle apprentice," who was meant to depict Whistler. Whistler threatened to sue, and in subsequent editions the character was replaced by another.

 

Whistler was also the model for a character in Marcel Proust's novel, In Search of Lost Time — the painter Elstir.

 

Whistler was the favorite artist of singer and actress Doris Day. She owned and displayed an original etching of Whistler's Rotherhithe and two of his original lithographs, The Steps, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris and The Pantheon, from the Terrace of the Luxembourg Gardens.

 

Whistler achieved worldwide recognition during his lifetime, including:

 

- 1884: elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

 

- 1892: made an officer of the Légion d'Honneur in France.

 

- 1898: became a charter member and first president, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.

 

A statue of James McNeill Whistler by Nicholas Dimbleby was erected in 2005 at the north end of Battersea Bridge on the River Thames in London.

Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Peter King (R-NY) (L) and ranking member Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) question witnesses during a hearing on the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community and the community's response, on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 10, 2011. UPI/Kevin Dietsch

Peter I commonly known as Peter the Great, was Tsar of all Russia from 1682, and the first Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch who remained the ultimate authority. His methods were often harsh and autocratic.

 

Most of Peter's reign was consumed by long wars against the Ottoman and Swedish Empires. Despite initial difficulties, the wars were ultimately successful and led to expansion to the Sea of Azov and the Baltic Sea, thus laying the groundwork for the Imperial Russian Navy. His victory in the Great Northern War ended Sweden's era as a great power and its domination of the Baltic region while elevating Russia's standing to the extent it came to be acknowledged as an empire. Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment.

 

In 1700, he introduced the Gregorian calendar but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change; they wanted to maintain its distinct identity and avoid appearing influenced by Catholic practices.[citation needed] In 1703, he introduced the first Russian newspaper, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, and ordered the civil script, a reform of Russian orthography largely designed by himself. He founded the city of Saint Petersburg on the shore of the Neva as a "window to the West" in May 1703. In 1712 Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, where it remained – with only a brief interruption – until 1918. He promoted higher education and industrialization in the Russian Empire.

 

Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the Saint Petersburg State University were founded in 1724, a year before his death.

 

Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, transforming it into a major European power. His administrative reforms, creating a Governing Senate in 1711, the Collegium in 1717 and the Table of Ranks in 1722 had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign.

 

Early life

Peter was named after the apostle. He grew up at Izmaylovo Estate and was educated from an early age by several tutors commissioned by his father, Tsar Alexis of Russia, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, and Paul Menesius. On 29 January 1676, Alexis died, leaving the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the weak and sickly Feodor III of Russia. Throughout this period, the government was largely run by Artamon Matveev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors.

 

This position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family (Maria Miloslavskaya was the first wife of Alexis I) and Naryshkin family (Natalya Naryshkina was his second) over who should inherit the throne. He jointly ruled with his elder half-brother, Ivan V, until 1696. Ivan, was next in line but was chronically ill and of infirm mind. Consequently, the Boyar Duma (a council of Russian nobles) chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tsar, with his mother as regent.

 

This arrangement was brought before the people of Moscow, as ancient tradition demanded, and was ratified. Sophia, one of Alexis' daughters from his first marriage, led a rebellion of the Streltsy (Russia's elite military corps) in April–May 1682. In the subsequent conflict, some of Peter's relatives and friends were murdered, including Artamon Matveyev, and Peter witnessed some of these acts of political violence.

 

The Streltsy made it possible for Sophia, the Miloslavskys (the clan of Ivan) and their allies to insist that Peter and Ivan be proclaimed joint Tsars, with Ivan being acclaimed as the senior. Sophia then acted as regent during the minority of the sovereigns and exercised all power. For seven years, she ruled as an autocrat. A large hole was cut in the back of the dual-seated throne used by Ivan and Peter. Sophia would sit behind the throne and listen as Peter conversed with nobles, while feeding him information and giving him responses to questions and problems. He lived at Preobrazhenskoye. This throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow.

 

At the age of 16, Peter discovered an English boat on the estate, had it restored and learned to sail. He received a sextant, but did not know how to use the instrument. Therefore, he began a search for a foreign expert in the German Quarter. Peter befriended two Dutch carpenters, Frans Timmerman and Karsten Brandt, and several other foreigners in Russian service. Peter studied arithmetic, geometry, and military sciences. He was not interested in a musical education but seems to have liked fireworks and drumming.

 

Peter was not particularly concerned that others ruled in his name. He engaged in such pastimes as shipbuilding and sailing, as well as mock battles with his toy army. Peter's mother sought to force him to adopt a more conventional approach and arranged his marriage to Eudoxia Lopukhina in 1689. The marriage was a failure, and ten years later Peter forced his wife to become a nun and thus freed himself from the union.

 

By the summer of 1689, Peter, planned to take power from his half-sister Sophia, whose position had been weakened by two unsuccessful Crimean campaigns against the Crimean Khanate in an attempt to stop devastating Crimean Tatar raids into Russia's southern lands. When she learned of his designs, Sophia conspired with some leaders of the Streltsy, who continually aroused disorder and dissent. Peter, warned by others from the Streltsy, escaped in the middle of the night to the impenetrable monastery of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra; there he slowly gathered adherents who perceived he would win the power struggle. Sophia was eventually overthrown, with Peter I and Ivan V continuing to act as co-tsars. Peter forced Sophia to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family.

 

Still, Peter could not acquire actual control over Russian affairs. Power was instead exercised by his mother, Natalya Naryshkina. It was only when Natalya died in 1694 that Peter, then aged 22, became an independent sovereign. Formally, Ivan V was a co-ruler with Peter, though being ineffective. Peter became the sole ruler when Ivan died in 1696 without male offspring, two years later.

 

Peter grew to be extremely tall, especially for the time period, reportedly standing 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m). Peter had noticeable facial tics, and he may have suffered from petit mal seizures, a form of epilepsy. Meanwhile, he was a frequent guest in German quarter, where he met Anna and Willem Mons.

 

Ideology of Peter's reign

As a young man, Peter I adopted the Protestant model of existence in a pragmatic world of competition and personal success, which largely shaped the philosophy of his reformism. He perceived the Russian people as rude, unintelligent, stubborn in their sluggishness, a child, a lazy student. He highly appreciated the state's role in the life of society, saw it as an ideal instrument for achieving high goals, saw it as a universal institution for transforming people, with the help of violence and fear, into educated, conscious, law-abiding and useful to the whole society subjects.

 

He introduced into the concept of the autocrat's power the notion of the monarch's duties. He considered it necessary to take care of his subjects, to protect them from enemies, to work for their benefit. Above all, he put the interests of Russia. He saw his mission in turning it into a power similar to Western countries, and subordinated his own life and the lives of his subjects to the realization of this idea. Gradually penetrated the idea that the task should be solved with the help of reforms, which will be carried out at the autocrat's will, who creates good and punishes evil. He considered the morality of a statesman separately from the morality of a private person and believed that the sovereign in the name of state interests can go to murder, violence, forgery and deceit.

 

He went through the naval service, starting from the lowest ranks: bombardier (1695), captain (1696), colonel (1706), schout-bij-nacht (1709), vice-admiral (1714), admiral (1721). By hard daily work (according to the figurative expression of Peter the Great himself, he was simultaneously "forced to hold a sword and a quill in one right hand") and courageous behavior he demonstrated to his subjects his personal positive example, showed how to act, fully devoting himself to the fulfillment of duty and service to the fatherland.

 

Reign

Peter implemented sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing Russia. Heavily influenced by his advisors from Western Europe, Peter reorganized the Russian army along modern lines and dreamed of making Russia a maritime power. He faced much opposition to these policies at home but brutally suppressed rebellions against his authority, including by the Streltsy, Bashkirs, Astrakhan, and the greatest civil uprising of his reign, the Bulavin Rebellion.

 

Peter implemented social modernization in an absolute manner by introducing French and western dress to his court and requiring courtiers, state officials, and the military to shave their beards and adopt modern clothing styles. One means of achieving this end was the introduction of taxes for long beards and robes in September 1698.

 

In his process to westernize Russia, he wanted members of his family to marry other European royalty. In the past, his ancestors had been snubbed at the idea, but now, it was proving fruitful. He negotiated with Frederick William, Duke of Courland to marry his niece, Anna Ivanovna. He used the wedding in order to launch his new capital, St Petersburg, where he had already ordered building projects of westernized palaces and buildings. Peter hired Italian and German architects to design it.

 

As part of his reforms, Peter started an industrialization effort that was slow but eventually successful. Russian manufacturing and main exports were based on the mining and lumber industries. For example, by the end of the century Russia came to export more iron than any other country in the world.

 

To improve his nation's position on the seas, Peter sought more maritime outlets. His only outlet at the time was the White Sea at Arkhangelsk. The Baltic Sea was at the time controlled by Sweden in the north, while the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea were controlled by the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire respectively in the south.

 

Peter attempted to acquire control of the Black Sea, which would require expelling the Tatars from the surrounding areas. As part of an agreement with Poland that ceded Kiev to Russia, Peter was forced to wage war against the Crimean Khan and against the Khan's overlord, the Ottoman Sultan. Peter's primary objective became the capture of the Ottoman fortress of Azov, near the Don River. In the summer of 1695 Peter organized the Azov campaigns to take the fortress, but his attempts ended in failure.

 

Peter returned to Moscow in November 1695 and began building a large navy in Voronezh. He launched about thirty ships against the Ottomans in 1696, capturing Azov in July of that year.

 

Grand Embassy

Peter knew that Russia could not face the Ottoman Empire alone. In 1697, he traveled "incognito" to Western Europe on an 18-month journey with a large Russian delegation–the so-called "Grand Embassy". He used a fake name, allowing him to escape social and diplomatic events, but since he was far taller than most others, he could not fool anyone. One goal was to seek the aid of European monarchs, but Peter's hopes were dashed. France was a traditional ally of the Ottoman Sultan, and Austria was eager to maintain peace in the east while conducting its own wars in the west. Peter, furthermore, had chosen an inopportune moment: the Europeans at the time were more concerned about the War of the Spanish Succession over who would succeed the childless King Charles II of Spain than about fighting the Ottoman Sultan.

 

In Königsberg, the Tsar was apprenticed for two months to an artillery engineer. In July he met Sophia of Hanover at Coppenbrügge castle. She described him: "The tsar is a tall, handsome man, with an attractive face. He has a lively mind is very witty. Only, someone so well endowed by nature could be a little better mannered." Peter rented a ship in Emmerich am Rhein and sailed to Zaandam, where he arrived on 18 August 1697. He studied saw-mills, manufacturing and shipbuilding but left after a week. Through the mediation of Nicolaas Witsen, an expert on Russia, the Tsar was given the opportunity to gain practical experience in shipyard, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months, under the supervision of Gerrit Claesz Pool. The diligent and capable Tsar assisted in the construction of an East Indiaman ship Peter and Paul specially laid down for him. During his stay the Tsar engaged many skilled workers such as builders of locks, fortresses, shipwrights, and seamen—including Cornelis Cruys, a vice-admiral who became, under Franz Lefort, the Tsar's advisor in maritime affairs. Peter later put his knowledge of shipbuilding to use in helping build Russia's navy.

 

Peter felt that the ship's carpenters in Holland worked too much by eye and lacked accurate construction drawings. On 11 January 1698 (Old Style) Peter arrived at Victoria Embankment with four chamberlains, three interpreters, two clock makers, a cook, a priest, six trumpeters, 70 soldiers from the Preobrazhensky regiment, four dwarfs and a monkey. Peter stayed at 21 Norfolk Street, Strand and met with King William III and Gilbert Burnet, attended a session of the Royal Society, received a doctorate from Oxford University, trained a telescope on Venus at the Greenwich Observatory, and saw a Fleet Review by Royal Navy at Deptford. He studied the English techniques of city-building he would later use to great effect at Saint Petersburg. At the end of April 1698 he left after learning to make watches, carpenting coffins and posing for Sir Godfrey Kneller.

 

The Embassy next went to Leipzig, Dresden, Prague and Vienna. Peter spoke with Augustus II the Strong and Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.[18] Peter's visit was cut short, when he was forced to rush home by a rebellion of the Streltsy. The rebellion was easily crushed before Peter returned home; of the Tsar's troops, only one was killed. Peter nevertheless acted ruthlessly towards the mutineers. Over one thousand two hundred of the rebels were tortured and executed, and Peter ordered that their bodies be publicly exhibited as a warning to future conspirators. The Streltsy were disbanded, some of the rebels were deported to Siberia, and the individual they sought to put on the Throne — Peter's half-sister Sophia — was forced to become a nun.

 

Peter's visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions. He commanded all of his courtiers and officials to wear European clothing and cut off their long beards, causing his Boyars, who were very fond of their beards, great upset. Boyars who sought to retain their beards were required to pay an annual beard tax of one hundred rubles. Peter also sought to end arranged marriages, which were the norm among the Russian nobility, because he thought such a practice was barbaric and led to domestic violence, since the partners usually resented each other.

 

In 1698, Peter I instituted a beard tax to modernize Russian society. In the same year Peter sent a delegation to Malta, under boyar Boris Sheremetev, to observe the training and abilities of the Knights of Malta and their fleet. Sheremetev investigated the possibility of future joint ventures with the Knights, including action against the Turks and the possibility of a future Russian naval base. On 12 September 1698, Peter officially founded the first Russian Navy base, Taganrog on the Sea of Azov.

 

In 1699, Peter changed the date of the celebration of the new year from 1 September to 1 January. Traditionally, the years were reckoned from the purported creation of the World, but after Peter's reforms, they were to be counted from the birth of Christ. Thus, in the year 7207 of the old Russian calendar, Peter proclaimed that the Julian Calendar was in effect and the year was 1700. On the death of Lefort in 1699, Menshikov succeeded him as Peter's prime favourite and confidant. In 1701, the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation was founded; for fifteen years, not only naval officers, but also surveyors, engineers, and gunners were educated there.

 

Great Northern War

First Winter Palace

Peter made a temporary peace with the Ottoman Empire that allowed him to keep the captured fort of Azov, and turned his attention to Russian maritime supremacy. He sought to acquire control of the Baltic Sea, which had been taken by the Swedish Empire a half-century earlier. Peter declared war on Sweden, which was at the time led by the young King Charles XII. Sweden was also opposed by Denmark–Norway, Saxony, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Preobrazhensky regiment took part in all major battles of the Great Northern War.

 

Russia was ill-prepared to fight the Swedes, and their first attempt at seizing the Baltic coast ended in disaster at the Battle of Narva in 1700. In the conflict, the forces of Charles XII, rather than employ a slow methodical siege, attacked immediately using a blinding snowstorm to their advantage. After the battle, Charles XII decided to concentrate his forces against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which gave Peter time to reorganize the Russian army. He invited Nicolaas Bidloo to organize a military hospital. In 1701, Peter the Great signed a decree on the opening of Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation.

 

While the Poles fought the Swedes, Peter founded the city of Saint Petersburg on 29 June 1703, in Ingermanland (a province of the Swedish Empire that he had captured). It was named after his patron saint Saint Peter. He forbade the building of stone edifices outside Saint Petersburg, which he intended to become Russia's capital, so that all stonemasons could participate in the construction of the new city. Peter moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1703. While the city was being built along the Neva he lived in a modest three-room log cabin (with a study but without a fire-place) which had to make room for the first version of the Winter palace. The first buildings which appeared were the Peter and Paul Fortress, a shipyard at the Admiralty and Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

 

Following several defeats, Polish King Augustus II the Strong abdicated in 1706. Swedish king Charles XII turned his attention to Russia, invading it in 1708. After crossing into Russia, Charles defeated Peter at Golovchin in July. In the Battle of Lesnaya, Charles suffered his first loss after Peter crushed a group of Swedish reinforcements marching from Riga. Deprived of this aid, Charles was forced to abandon his proposed march on Moscow.

 

Charles XII refused to retreat to Poland or back to Sweden and instead invaded Ukraine. Peter withdrew his army southward, employing scorched earth, destroying along the way anything that could assist the Swedes. Deprived of local supplies, the Swedish army was forced to halt its advance in the winter of 1708–1709. In the summer of 1709, they resumed their efforts to capture Russian-ruled Ukraine, culminating in the Battle of Poltava on 27 June. The battle was a decisive defeat for the Swedish forces, ending Charles' campaign in Ukraine and forcing him south to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Russia had defeated what was considered to be one of the world's best militaries, and the victory overturned the view that Russia was militarily incompetent. In Poland, Augustus II was restored as King.

 

Peter, overestimating the support he would receive from his Balkan allies, attacked the Ottoman Empire, initiating the Russo-Turkish War of 1710. Peter's campaign in the Ottoman Empire was disastrous, and in the ensuing Treaty of the Pruth, Peter was forced to return the Black Sea ports he had seized in 1697. In return, the Sultan expelled Charles XII.

 

The Ottomans called him Mad Peter (Turkish: deli Petro), for his willingness to sacrifice large numbers of his troops in wartime. Peter I loved all sorts of rarities and curiosities. In 1704 Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a child with Ethiopian origin, was presented to him; in 1716 Peter took him to Paris.

 

In 1711, Peter established by decree a new state body known as the Governing Senate. Normally, the Boyar duma would have exercised power during his absence. Peter, however, mistrusted the boyars; he instead abolished the Duma and created a Senate of ten members. The Senate was founded as the highest state institution to supervise all judicial, financial and administrative affairs. Originally established only for the time of the monarch's absence, the Senate became a permanent body after his return. A special high official, the Ober-Procurator, served as the link between the ruler and the senate and acted, in Peter own words, as "the sovereign's eye". Without his signature no Senate decision could go into effect; the Senate became one of the most important institutions of Imperial Russia.

 

1712, Peter I issued a decree establishing an Engineering School in Moscow, which was supposed to recruit up to 150 students, and two-thirds of them were to consist of nobles.[31] Therefore, on 28 February 1714, he issued a decree calling for compulsory education, which dictated that all Russian 10- to 15-year-old children of the nobility, government clerks, and lesser-ranked officials must learn basic mathematics and geometry, and should be tested on the subjects at the end of their studies.

 

Peter's northern armies took the Swedish province of Livonia (the northern half of modern Latvia, and the southern half of modern Estonia), driving the Swedes out of Finland. In 1714 the Russian fleet won the Battle of Gangut. Most of Finland was occupied by the Russians.

 

In 1716, the Tsar visited Riga, and Danzig in January, Stettin, and obtained the assistance of the Electorate of Hanover and the Kingdom of Prussia fighting a war against Sweden at Wismar. He was forced to leave Mecklenburg. In Altona he met with Danish diplomats. He went on to Bad Pyrmont in May/June, because of an illness he stayed at this spa. He arrived in Amsterdam in December, where he bought some interesting collections: those of Frederik Ruysch, Levinus Vincent and Albertus Seba and paintings by Maria Sibylla Merian for his Kunstkamera. He visited a silk manufacture and a paper-mill, and learned to create paper and to spin silk. He visited Herman Boerhaave and Carel de Moor in Leiden and ordered two mercury thermometers from Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and instruments from Musschenbroek. In April 1717 he continued his travel from Flushing to Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands and Dunkirk, Calais, Paris, where he obtained many books and proposed a marriage between his daughter and King Louis XV. Saint-Simon described him as "tall, well-formed and slim…with a look both bewildered and fierce." Via Reims, and Spa Peter travelled on to Maastricht, at that time one of the most important fortresses in Europe, where he was received by Daniël van Dopff, the commander of the fortress. He went back to Amsterdam and visited the Hortus Botanicus and left the city early September.

 

The Tsar's navy was powerful enough that the Russians could penetrate Sweden. Still, Charles XII refused to yield, and not until his death in battle in 1718 did peace become feasible. After the battle near Åland, Sweden made peace with all powers but Russia by 1720. In 1721, the Treaty of Nystad ended the Great Northern War. Russia acquired Ingria, Estonia, Livonia, and a substantial portion of Karelia. In turn, Russia paid two million Riksdaler and surrendered most of Finland. The Tsar retained some Finnish lands close to Saint Petersburg, which he had made his capital in 1712. Between 1713 and 1728, and from 1732 to 1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia.

 

Title

Following his victory in the Great Northern War, he adopted the title of emperor in 1721.

 

By the grace of God, the most excellent and great sovereign emperor Pyotr Alekseevich the ruler of all the Russias: of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan and Tsar of Siberia, sovereign of Pskov, great prince of Smolensk, of Tver, of Yugorsk, of Perm, of Vyatka, of Bulgaria and others, sovereign and great prince of the Novgorod Lower lands, of Chernigov, of Ryazan, of Rostov, of Yaroslavl, of Belozersk, of Udora, of Kondia and the sovereign of all the northern lands, and the sovereign of the Iverian lands, of the Kartlian and Georgian Kings, of the Kabardin lands, of the Circassian and Mountain princes and many other states and lands western and eastern here and there and the successor and sovereign and ruler.

 

Later years

In 1717, Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky led the first Russian military expedition into Central Asia against the Khanate of Khiva. The expedition ended in complete disaster when the entire expeditionary force was slaughtered.

 

In 1718, Peter investigated why the formerly Swedish province of Livonia was so orderly. He discovered that the Swedes spent as much administering Livonia (300 times smaller than his empire) as he spent on the entire Russian bureaucracy. He was forced to dismantle the province's government.

 

To the end of 1717, the preparatory phase of administrative reform in Russia was completed. After 1718, Peter established colleges in place of the old central agencies of government, including foreign affairs, war, navy, expense, income, justice, and inspection. Later others were added, to regulate mining and industry. Each college consisted of a president, a vice-president, a number of councilors and assessors, and a procurator. Some foreigners were included in various colleges but not as president. Peter did not have enough loyal, talented or educated persons to put in full charge of the various departments. Peter preferred to rely on groups of individuals who would keep check on one another. Decisions depended on the majority vote.

 

Peter's last years were marked by further reform in Russia. On 22 October 1721, soon after peace was made with Sweden, he was officially proclaimed Emperor of All Russia. Some proposed that he take the title Emperor of the East, but he refused. Gavrila Golovkin, the State Chancellor, was the first to add "the Great, Father of His Country, Emperor of All the Russias" to Peter's traditional title Tsar following a speech by the archbishop of Pskov in 1721. Peter's imperial title was recognized by Augustus II of Poland, Frederick William I of Prussia, and Frederick I of Sweden, but not by the other European monarchs. In the minds of many, the word emperor connoted superiority or pre-eminence over kings. Several rulers feared that Peter would claim authority over them, just as the Holy Roman Emperor had claimed suzerainty over all Christian nations.

 

In 1722, Peter created a new order of precedence known as the Table of Ranks. Formerly, precedence had been determined by birth. To deprive the Boyars of their high positions, Peter directed that precedence should be determined by merit and service to the Emperor. The Table of Ranks continued to remain in effect until the Russian monarchy was overthrown in 1917.

 

The once powerful Persian Safavid Empire to the south was in deep decline. Taking advantage of the profitable situation, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723, otherwise known as "The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great", which drastically increased Russian influence for the first time in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region, and prevented the Ottoman Empire from making territorial gains in the region. After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over territory to Russia, comprising Derbent, Shirvan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Baku, and Astrabad. Within twelve years all the territories were ceded back to Persia, now led by the charismatic military genius Nader Shah, as part of the Treaty of Resht, the Treaty of Ganja, and as the result of a Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire, which was the common enemy of both.

 

Peter introduced new taxes to fund improvements in Saint Petersburg. He abolished the land tax and household tax and replaced them with a poll tax. The taxes on land and on households were payable only by individuals who owned property or maintained families. The new head taxes were payable by serfs and paupers. In 1725 the construction of Peterhof, a palace near Saint Petersburg, was completed. Peterhof (Dutch for "Peter's Court") was a grand residence, becoming known as the "Russian Versailles".

 

In the winter of 1723, Peter, whose overall health was never robust, began having problems with his urinary tract and bladder. In the summer of 1724, a team of doctors performed surgery releasing upwards of four pounds of blocked urine. Peter remained bedridden until late autumn. In the first week of October, restless and certain he was cured, Peter began a lengthy inspection tour of various projects. According to legend, in November, at Lakhta along the Gulf of Finland to inspect some ironworks, Peter saw a group of soldiers drowning near shore and, wading out into near-waist deep water, came to their rescue.

 

This icy water rescue is said to have exacerbated Peter's bladder problems and caused his death. The story, however, has been viewed with skepticism by some historians, pointing out that the German chronicler Jacob von Staehlin is the only source for the story, and it seems unlikely that no one else would have documented such an act of heroism. This, plus the interval of time between these actions and Peter's death seems to preclude any direct link.

 

In early January 1725, Peter was struck once again with uremia. Legend has it that before lapsing into unconsciousness Peter asked for a paper and pen and scrawled an unfinished note that read: "Leave all to ..." and then, exhausted by the effort, asked for his daughter Anna to be summoned.

 

Peter died between four and five in the morning 8 February 1725. An autopsy revealed his bladder to be infected with gangrene. He was fifty-two years, seven months old when he died, having reigned forty-two years. He is interred in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

 

After the death of Peter I, there were immediately students who came to the Military College with a request to "leave science" under the pretext of "unconsciousness and incomprehensibility."

 

Religion

Peter did not believe in miracles and founded The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, an organization that mocked the Orthodox and Catholic Church when he was eighteen. In January 1695, Peter refused to partake in a traditional Russian Orthodox ceremony of the Epiphany Ceremony, and would often schedule events for The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters to directly conflict with the Church. He often used the nickname Pakhom Mikhailov (Russian: Пахом Михайлов) among the ministers of religion who made up his relatively close circle of long-term drinking companions. He drank less than the others, deliberately getting the others drunk in order to listen to their drunken conversations.

 

Peter was brought up in the Russian Orthodox faith, but he had low regard for the Church hierarchy, which he kept under tight governmental control. The traditional leader of the Church was the Patriarch of Moscow. In 1700, when the office fell vacant, Peter refused to name a replacement, allowing the patriarch's coadjutor (or deputy) to discharge the duties of the office. Peter could not tolerate the patriarch exercising power superior to the tsar, as indeed had happened in the case of Philaret (1619–1633) and Nikon (1652–66). In 1716 he invited Theophan Prokopovich to come to the capital. In 1718 he ordered to translate the "Introduction to European History" (a work by Samuel Pufendorf); the Ecclesiastical Regulations of 1721 are based on it. The Church reform of Peter the Great therefore abolished the patriarchate, replacing it with a Holy Synod that was under the control of a Procurator, and the tsar appointed all bishops.

 

In 1721, Peter followed the advice of Prokopovich in designing the Holy Synod as a council of ten clergymen. For leadership in the Church, Peter turned increasingly to Ukrainians, who were more open to reform, but were not well loved by the Russian clergy. Peter implemented a law that stipulated that no Russian man could join a monastery before the age of fifty. He felt that too many able Russian men were being wasted on clerical work when they could be joining his new and improved army.

 

A clerical career was not a route chosen by upper-class society. Most parish priests were sons of priests and were very poorly educated and paid. The monks in the monasteries had a slightly higher status; they were not allowed to marry. Politically, the Church was impotent.

 

Marriages and family

Peter the Great had two wives, with whom he had fifteen children, three of whom survived to adulthood. Peter's mother selected his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina, with the advice of other nobles in 1689. This was consistent with previous Romanov tradition by choosing a daughter of a minor noble. This was done to prevent fighting between the stronger noble houses and to bring fresh blood into the family. He also had a mistress from Westphalia, Anna Mons.

 

Upon his return from his European tour in 1698, Peter sought to end his unhappy marriage. He divorced the Tsaritsa and forced her to join a convent. She had borne him three children, although only one, Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia, had survived past his childhood.

 

Menshikov introduced him to Marta Helena Skowrońska, a Polish-Lithuanian peasant, and took her as a mistress some time between 1702 and 1704. Marta converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and was given the name Catherine. Though no record exists, Catherine and Peter married secretly between 23 Oct and 1 December 1707 in St. Petersburg. Peter valued Catherine and married officially, at Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 19 February 1712.

 

His eldest child and heir, Alexei, was suspected of being involved in a plot to overthrow the Emperor. Alexei was tried and confessed under torture during questioning conducted by a secular court (count Tolstoy). He was convicted and sentenced to be executed. The sentence could only be carried out with Peter's signed authorization, and Alexei died in prison, as Peter hesitated before making the decision. Alexei's death most likely resulted from injuries suffered during his torture. Alexei's mother Eudoxia was punished. She was dragged from her home, tried on false charges of adultery, publicly flogged, and confined in monasteries while being forbidden to be talked to.

 

In 1724, Peter had his second wife, Catherine, crowned as Empress, although he remained Russia's actual ruler.

 

Issue

By his two wives, he had fifteen children: three by Eudoxia and twelve by Catherine. These included four sons named Pavel and three sons named Peter, all of whom died in infancy. Only three of his children survived to adulthood. He also had three grandchildren: Tsar Peter II and Grand Duchess Natalia by Alexei and Tsar Peter III by Anna.

 

Mistresses and illegitimate children

Princess Maria Dmitrievna Cantemirovna of Moldavia (1700–1754), daughter of Dimitrie Cantemir

Unnamed son (1722 - 1723?) – different sources say that the baby was stillborn or died before he was one year old.

Lady Mary Hamilton, Catherine I's lady in waiting of Scottish descent.

Miscarriage (1715)

Unnamed child (1717 - 1718?)

 

Legacy

Peter's legacy has always been a major concern of Russian intellectuals. Riasanovsky points to a "paradoxical dichotomy" in the black and white images such as God/Antichrist, educator/ignoramus, architect of Russia's greatness/destroyer of national culture, father of his country/scourge of the common man. Voltaire's 1759 biography gave 18th-century Russians a man of the Enlightenment, while Alexander Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" poem of 1833 gave a powerful romantic image of a creator-god. Slavophiles in mid-19th century deplored Peter's westernization of Russia.

 

Western writers and political analysts recounted "The Testimony" or secret will of Peter the Great. It supposedly revealed his grand evil plot for Russia to control the world via conquest of Constantinople, Afghanistan and India. It was a forgery made in Paris at Napoleon's command when he started his invasion of Russia in 1812. Nevertheless, it is still quoted in foreign policy circles.

 

The Communists executed the last Romanovs, and their historians such as Mikhail Pokrovsky presented strongly negative views of the entire dynasty. Stalin however admired how Peter strengthened the state, and wartime, diplomacy, industry, higher education, and government administration. Stalin wrote in 1928, "when Peter the Great, who had to deal with more developed countries in the West, feverishly built works in factories for supplying the army and strengthening the country's defenses, this was an original attempt to leap out of the framework of backwardness." As a result, Soviet historiography emphasizes both the positive achievement and the negative factor of oppressing the common people.

 

After the fall of Communism in 1991, scholars and the general public in Russia and the West gave fresh attention to Peter and his role in Russian history. His reign is now seen as the decisive formative event in the Russian imperial past. Many new ideas have merged, such as whether he strengthened the autocratic state or whether the tsarist regime was not statist enough given its small bureaucracy. Modernization models have become contested ground.

 

He initiated a wide range of economic, social, political, administrative, educational and military reforms which ended the dominance of traditionalism and religion in Russia and initiated its westernization. His efforts included secularization of education, organization of administration for effective governance, enhanced use of technology, establishing an industrial economy, modernization of the army and establishment of a strong navy.

 

Historian Y. Vodarsky said in 1993 that Peter, "did not lead the country on the path of accelerated economic, political and social development, did not force it to 'achieve a leap' through several stages.... On the contrary, these actions to the greatest degree put a brake on Russia's progress and created conditions for holding it back for one and a half centuries!" The autocratic powers that Stalin admired appeared as a liability to Evgeny Anisimov, who complained that Peter was, "the creator of the administrative command system and the true ancestor of Stalin."

 

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "He did not completely bridge the gulf between Russia and the Western countries, but he achieved considerable progress in development of the national economy and trade, education, science and culture, and foreign policy. Russia became a great power, without whose concurrence no important European problem could thenceforth be settled. His internal reforms achieved progress to an extent that no earlier innovator could have envisaged."

 

While the cultural turn in historiography has downplayed diplomatic, economic and constitutional issues, new cultural roles have been found for Peter, for example in architecture and dress. James Cracraft argues:

 

The Petrine revolution in Russia—subsuming in this phrase the many military, naval, governmental, educational, architectural, linguistic, and other internal reforms enacted by Peter's regime to promote Russia's rise as a major European power—was essentially a cultural revolution, one that profoundly impacted both the basic constitution of the Russian Empire and, perforce, its subsequent development.

In popular culture

 

Peter has been featured in many histories, novels, plays, films, monuments and paintings. They include the poems The Bronze Horseman, Poltava and the unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great, all by Alexander Pushkin. The former dealt with The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue raised in Peter's honour. Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote a biographical historical novel about him, named Peter I, in the 1930s.

 

The 1922 German silent film Peter the Great directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki and starring Emil Jannings as Peter

In 1929 A.N. Tolstoy's play was true to the party line, depicting Peter as a tyrant who "suppressed everyone and everything as if he had been possessed by demons, sowed fear, and put both his son and his country on the rack."

The 1937–1938 Soviet film Peter the Great

The 1976 film How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor, starring Aleksey Petrenko as Peter, and Vladimir Vysotsky as Abram Petrovich Gannibal, shows Peter's attempt to build the Baltic Fleet.

Peter was played by Jan Niklas and Maximilian Schell in the 1986 NBC miniseries Peter the Great.

The 2007 film The Sovereign's Servant depicts the unsavoury brutal side of Peter during the campaign.

A character based on Peter plays a major role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.

Peter is one of many supporting characters in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle – mainly featuring in the third novel, The System of the World.

Peter was portrayed on BBC Radio 4 by Isaac Rouse as a boy, Will Howard as a young adult and Elliot Cowan as an adult in the radio plays Peter the Great: The Gamblers and Peter the Great: The Queen of Spades, written by Mike Walker and which were the last two plays in the first series of Tsar. The plays were broadcast on 25 September and 2 October 2016.

A verse in the "Engineers' Drinking Song" references Peter the Great:

There was a man named Peter the Great who was a Russian Tzar;

When remodeling his the castle put the throne behind the bar;

He lined the walls with vodka, rum, and 40 kinds of beers;

And advanced the Russian culture by 120 years!

 

Peter was played by Jason Isaacs in the 2020 'antihistory' Hulu series The Great.

Peter is featured as the leader of the Russian civilization in the computer game Sid Meier's Civilization VI.

Peter was played by Ivan Kolesnikov in the 2022 Russian historical documentary film Peter I: The Last Tsar and the First Emperor.

The extent of the state of dereliction of ex Royal Navy Percival Sea Prince WM735/G-RACA at Long Marston is brought home with some impact in this view of the cockpit.

 

200_2_P1130461E

Item No: 67

C8/370/2014/M

Agenda:-To consider the application for renewing the permit and seeking concurrence

in respect of the stage carriage KL 55 G 4472 on the route Kozhikode-Thirur via Feroke,

N.B, Ramanattukara, University, Thayyalikadavu, Parappanangadi, and Tanur and

Extention of service from Tiru-Kuttipuram as LSOS. R.P expired on 21-02-2014

Applicant: Kamurudheen, S/o Muhammadkutty Haji, Nalakath, Vadakkayi House,

Theyyalakadavu, Malappuram.

 

Detail of the extent of the damage to the building. The roof was burning and collapsing at this point. On the left you can see fire and smoke from behind an air vent.

 

Shots from one of the largest fires that Ottawa has seen in years, and which started in the landmark Home Hardware on Beechwood Avenue. These are photos of the efforts to fight the fire.

Urban extents illustrate the shape and area of urbanized places. Urbanized localities are defined as places with with 5,000 or more inhabitants that are delineated by stable night-time lights. For poorly lit areas, alternate sources are used to estimate the extent of cities.

Nikon d7000

Nikkor 70-300mm @155mm

extention tube @ 68mm

f 4.8

ISO 200

Yongnuo flash, mounted @ 1/8

 

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Photos on GETTY IMAGES

 

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Bodmin is a civil parish and historic town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated south-west of Bodmin Moor.

 

The extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character. It is bordered to the east by Cardinham parish, to the southeast by Lanhydrock parish, to the southwest and west by Lanivet parish, and to the north by Helland parish.

 

Photograph by James Russiello, September 8, 2010

 

The town of Bodmin has played a central role in the development of Christianity in Cornwall, and tradition, legend and history combine to suggest that the area around the Berry Tower was an early focus of settlement. The 12th century ‘life’ of St Petroc states that the saint built two habitations in the place that was later to become Bodmin: one in the valley where the parish church now is, and the other on the hill to the north – at the Berry. Here may also have been the seat of the Cornish bishop Kenstec in the 10th century. The site is located on a prominent spur overlooking the modern town and may have been fortified, as the names Berry, derived from Anglo-Saxon burh, and Dinuurin, which contains Cornish dyn, both suggest. No remains survive to substantiate this however.

 

The focus of mediæval Bodmin was a long main street stretching west from the parish church. This was a thriving, busy place, with markets, fairs, and many religious institutions including a Priory, a Friary, a hospital, and 13 chapels. There were also numerous guilds – associations formed for social, religious or economic purposes whose activities might include charitable works, raising money for various causes or building projects, and alms giving. By 1470 there were three guilds based at the Berry, the main one being the Guild of the Holy Rood. This guild was associated with a chapel here and at the beginning of the 16th century was responsible for building this tower.

 

Remarkably, accounts relating to the building of the tower still survive and provide a fascinating insight into the methods, materials and processes involved in such a project. The income for the work came mainly from local donations and gifts, all of which are recorded in the accounts. From the accounts we know that work on the tower commenced in 1501 and that it took ten years to build, growing at a rate of about 6 feet per year. Granite for windows and quoins came from St Austell or Bodmin Moor, but the slate was from a local quarry. During the last four years the furnishings like floors, a bell, lead roof and window fixings were provided. At the same time as the tower was raised, the chapel was extended with a south aisle, whose walls were decorated with murals of St Christopher and St Petroc.

 

Although work was completed in 1514, the newly refurbished chapel was only in use for just over three decades before the cataclysmic changes of the Reformation forced it to close. By the 18th century, only the tower remained with the chapel reduced to foundations. The present cemetery was established on the site by Bodmin Town Corporation in the 19th century. An interpretation board on the site provides detailed information about the building of the tower.

 

Standing in front of Berry tower is a mediæval wheel-headed cross of perhaps 12th or 13th century date. This was moved here in 1860 from its original site on Cross Lane at the junction of Berry Lane.

 

At the foot of the hill on which Berry Tower stands is Bodmin parish church, dedicated to St Petroc, the most important Celtic saint in mediæval Cornwall, whose relics survive in the church, in a 13th century ivory casket. This is one of the largest parish churches in Cornwall, reflecting the importance of Bodmin in the Middle Ages. Here also can be seen the holy well of St Guron, a pillar from the Friary, a good collection of coffin slabs from both the Priory and the Friary and the remains of another guild chapel, that of St Thomas. In the nearby Shire Hall is Bodmin’s Museum, with displays of finds from all these sites.

I found the district inhabitants against the load extention by evil magistrate.

 

if you go close to the wall, the light turns on, and sometimes you hear the music. it was "kissing you" by Des'ree but mixed with something annoying sounds..

    

Pride can stand, a thousand trials,

The strong will never fall

But watching stars without you,

My soul cried.

 

Heaving heart is full of pain,

Oh, oh, the aching.

'Cause I'm kissing you, oh.

I'm kissing you.

 

Touch me deep, pure, and true,

Gift to me forever

'Cause I'm kissing you, oh.

I'm kissing you.

 

Where are you now?

Where are you now?

'Cause I'm kissing you.

I'm kissing you, oh.

    

I love this song, I never thought I hear the song like this.

  

Number:

198273

 

Date created:

1959

 

Extent:

1 photographic print : gelatin silver ; 8 x 10 in.

 

Description:

 

First row, from left to right: 1) Roger W. Cole; 2) Walter C. Peterson; 3) Robert B. Welch; 4) A. Edward Maumenee; 5) John E. Eisenlohr; 6) Norris L. Newton.

 

Second row, from left to right: 1) Rodriquez (Fellow); 2) Raul E. Valenzuela (Fellow); 3) George A. Platt; 4) J. Lane Reeves; 5) David L. Knox; 6) I. Willard Abrahams; 7) J. Donald M. Gass; 8) Eugene O. Wiggs.

 

Rights:

Photograph is subject to copyright restrictions. Contact the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives for reproduction permissions.

 

Subjects:

Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute--People

Cole, Roger W.

Peterson, Walter C.

Welch, Robert B.

Maumenee, A. Edward (Alfred Edward), 1913-

Eisenlohr, John E.

Newton, Norris

Valenzuela Encina, Raul

Platt, George A.

Reeves, Joseph L.

Knox, David L.

Abrahams, Irwin W.

Gass, John D. McJ.

Wiggs, Eugene O.

Ophthalmologists

Group portraits

Portrait photographs

 

Notes:

Photographer unknown.

Fine Featherheads: The original feather extension! Available here:

www.etsy.com/listing/80431960/featherheads-ocean-extensio...

Number:

198293

 

Date created:

1962

 

Extent:

1 photographic print : gelatin silver ; 8 x 10 in.

 

Description:

 

First row, from left to right: 1) William F. Britton; 2) Thomas E. Acers; 3) A. Edward Maumenee; 4) John E. Eisenlohr; 5) William H. Jarrett, II.

 

Second row, from left to right: 1) George A. Hall; 2) David Paton; 3) Frederick M. Blanton; 4) Leslie A. Bard; 5) John W. Pemberton; 6) Barry Cullen (Fellow); 7) Harry G. Randall.

 

Rights:

Photograph is subject to copyright restrictions. Contact the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives for reproduction permissions.

 

Subjects:

Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute--People

Britton, William A.

Acers, Thomas E.

Maumenee, A. Edward (Alfred Edward), 1913-

Eisenlohr, John E.

Jarrett, William H. II

Hall, George A.

Paton, David

Blanton, Frederick M.

Bard, Leslie A.

Pemberton, John W.

Randall, Harry G. II

Ophthalmologists

Group portraits

Portrait photographs

 

Notes:

Photographer unknown.

"The American Cemetery at Colleville-sur- Mer is situated on the top of the cliff overlooking the famous Omaha Beach. The cemetery, 172 acres in extent, is one of fourteen American World War II Cemeteries constructed on foreign soil. Beyond the reception building, you will see a magnificent semi-circular memorial. Centered in the open arc of the memorial is a bronze statue which represents “The Spirit of American Youth rising from the waves”. In the extension of the ornamental lake there is a central path leading to the 10 grave plots where 9 387 soldiers are buried among which are 4 women and 307 unknown soldiers.

 

The crosses are oriented Westwards, towards their native land. The precisely aligned headstones against the immaculately maintained emerald green lawn and the omnipresence of the sea convey an unforgettable feeling of peace and serenity. At the crossing of the main paths laid in the form of a Latin Cross, the Chapel shelters a black marble altar on which is the inscription : “I give them eternal life and they shall never perish”. In the garden of the missing located behind the memorial is a semi-circular wall containing the names of 1 557 missing in the region.

 

The little haven of verdure invites you to meditation and memory. The Normandy American Cemetery is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), an independent agency created in 1923 by the Congress of the United States of America and attached to the executive branch of the US Gouvernment. The Commission is responsible for commemorating the services and achievements of the United States Armed Forces through the execution of suitable memory shrines, for designing, constructing, operating and maintaining permanent US military cemeteries and memorials in foreign countries. No one enters the Colleville Cemetery by chance, it must be a voluntary process. The visitor prepares himself to penetrate with attention and contemplation a piece of United States in France."

 

www.musee-memorial-omaha.com/en/partenaire/american-cemet...

 

www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-america...

 

"Located between Arromanches and Grandcamp Maisy, on the Normandy coast, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is a haven of peace which encourages contemplation. Here, in a beautifully green space perched upon a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach, about 10,000 perfectly aligned white crosses point towards America. In fact, within 173 acres, the cemetery of Omaha gives a home to the fallen American soldiers who sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom during World War II, namely the first episode of the battle of Normandy, “Operation Overlord” which commenced on 6th June 1944.

 

As well as this cemetery, the Omaha Beach site – a codename for one of the 5 ally landing sectors – is home to a semi-circle memorial, where at the centre is a bronze statue titled The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves. A chapel and orientation table stand just a stone’s throw away, pointing towards the beaches where the allied forces landed in 1944. Discover the museum here which puts into perspective the daily life of these soldiers in France, who fought for liberty. Film, reconstitutions, uniform collections, weapons and vehicles will throw you into the heart of the history of the Normandy landings.

 

Outside of Omaha Beach, the landing beaches of Sword Beach, Juno Beach, Gold Beach and Utah Beach were the centre stage for the largest airborne military operation in history. Amongst these places of remembrance, Omaha Beach is the place where The Allies lost the majority of their troops. It is also a small corner of America on French turf: given to the US, these Normand territories are managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission."

 

us.france.fr/en/discover/normandy-visit-omaha-beach-ameri...

 

Urban extents illustrate the shape and area of urbanized places. Urbanized localities are defined as places with with 5,000 or more inhabitants that are delineated by stable night-time lights. For poorly lit areas, alternate sources are used to estimate the extent of cities.

Satellite observations of the September extent of sea ice in the Arctic shows in 2007 shows a 23% decrease from the previous minimum, in 2005, and 39% below the average minimum extent for the time period 1979-2000. The bottom part of this graphic shows the development according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and the merging of five global climate models - the resultant projections shows successive decreases for this century. The Arctic sea ice represents a habitat for wildlife, a climate change indicator and an important factor in the global circulation systems. This graphic is also available in Norwegian.

 

For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:

www.grida.no/resources/5502

 

This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Hugo Ahlenius, UNEP/GRID-Arendal

The extent of the state of dereliction of ex Royal Navy Percival Sea Prince WM735/G-RACA at Long Marston is brought home with some impact in this view of the cockpit.

 

200_2_P1130463E

Part of the Birmingham Gateway project

Regardless of the extent of the ongoing tyranny and oppression I have been forced to deal with in Greece for nearly a decade under the harshest environment, my efforts in finding Justice and Freedom for my life have not stopped and it never will until my last breath.

 

Hence, on December 23rd, 2022, while enduring day 140th of my 4th Hunger Strike outside the UNHCR office in Athens, I left my shelter again to reach the Indian Embassy and plead for their help in providing urgent Humanitarian aid and mediation with this UN Agency.

 

Although I managed to speak with two Embassy representatives and even though they said they would help, ultimately they had gotten the Police involved to take me away. This time I was held in Police Custody for 2-hours before being let go.

 

Watch the video and read in-depth details here: 👇

 

👉🔗 chng.it/xnBYn46Hng

 

Please sign the Petition and Donate if you can.

 

Thank you. 🙏💔🆘

 

#HumanRights #Justice #Freedom #Immigration #Refugees #Politics #Democracy #Petition #Crowdfunding #Philanthropy #Europe #Greece #Athens #UnitedNations #UNHCR #India #IndiaInGreece

Regardless of the extent of the ongoing tyranny and oppression I have been forced to deal with in Greece for nearly a decade under the harshest environment, my efforts in finding Justice and Freedom for my life have not stopped and it never will until my last breath.

 

Hence, on December 23rd, 2022, while enduring day 140th of my 4th Hunger Strike outside the UNHCR office in Athens, I left my shelter again to reach the Indian Embassy and plead for their help in providing urgent Humanitarian aid and mediation with this UN Agency.

 

Although I managed to speak with two Embassy representatives and even though they said they would help, ultimately they had gotten the Police involved to take me away. This time I was held in Police Custody for 2-hours before being let go.

 

Watch the video and read in-depth details here: 👇

 

👉🔗 chng.it/xnBYn46Hng

 

Please sign the Petition and Donate if you can.

 

Thank you. 🙏💔🆘

 

#HumanRights #Justice #Freedom #Immigration #Refugees #Politics #Democracy #Petition #Crowdfunding #Philanthropy #Europe #Greece #Athens #UnitedNations #UNHCR #India #IndiaInGreece

Regardless of the extent of the ongoing tyranny and oppression I have been forced to deal with in Greece for nearly a decade under the harshest environment, my efforts in finding Justice and Freedom for my life have not stopped and it never will until my last breath.

 

Hence, on December 23rd, 2022, while enduring day 140th of my 4th Hunger Strike outside the UNHCR office in Athens, I left my shelter again to reach the Indian Embassy and plead for their help in providing urgent Humanitarian aid and mediation with this UN Agency.

 

Although I managed to speak with two Embassy representatives and even though they said they would help, ultimately they had gotten the Police involved to take me away. This time I was held in Police Custody for 2-hours before being let go.

 

Watch the video and read in-depth details here: 👇

 

👉🔗 chng.it/xnBYn46Hng

 

Please sign the Petition and Donate if you can.

 

Thank you. 🙏💔🆘

 

#HumanRights #Justice #Freedom #Immigration #Refugees #Politics #Democracy #Petition #Crowdfunding #Philanthropy #Europe #Greece #Athens #UnitedNations #UNHCR #India #IndiaInGreece

This image shows the rough terrain just inside the eastern rim of Gale Crater as well as the eastern extent of Mr. Sharp. The scene here measures 18 x 64 kilometers (11 x 40 miles).

 

During the month of April, Mars will be in conjunction relative to the Earth. This means the Sun is in the line of sight between Earth and Mars, and radio communication between the two planets is almost impossible. During conjunction, the two rovers (Curiosity and Opportunity) and orbiting spacecraft at Mars continue to operate, but don't send the data to Earth. Their recorded data will be sent to Earth when Mars moves away from the Sun and full radio communication between Earth and Mars is reestablished. During conjunction, the THEMIS Image Of The Day will be a visual tour of Gale Crater, the location of NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity.

 

See the Red Planet Report at redplanet.asu.edu for updates on Mars research.

 

For the latest THEMIS Mars images as received by mission scientists, see themis.asu.edu/livefrommars. To learn more about the THEMIS camera and its Mars images, see themis.asu.edu. And for more information about this image and to get larger versions, see themis.asu.edu/node/6134

 

This image is in the public domain and may be republished free of charge, but if used it should be credited as NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University.

Looking under Freeth Bridge, the original built in 1849 is still in place and is now flanked either side with the modern extention to allow for increased traffic on the A5, Watling Street, roman road which it carries.

Named after John Freeth, engineer, clerk to the Birmingham Canal Navigation Company.

Door jammed shut with the frost! i think my foundation stone was moved up 2mm by frost uplift? its back in place now and the door shows no sign of sticking.

I dug the found hole down to the clay but not in it! Doh

Hasselblad 500C + C Planar 80mm/2.8 T* @ f2.8 with 10mm extention

Swarovski Pink Neon Pearls Bracelet in Shock Pink with extention for girls by Tone Smaasund

Extention tube macro of a cork screw.

 

Strobist: sb800 to camera right behind diffusion foam. reflector on left, black foam behind, black granite below. Triggered with ebay trigger. Taken in total darkness to not get ambient light at all, had to use a flashlight to focus.

1/125th sec at f13.

Extention tube macro of a cork screw.

 

image DSC_0292

This tranquil scene belies to some extent the true nature of this part of Leicester. I love to walk around a city and enjoy its architecture, especially the historical architecture. The River Soar, seen here from the West Bridge, is fairly choked with weed and affected by litter. From a distance, the abandoned Donisthorpe Friars Mill charms across the centuries but, seen more closely, its state of dereliction and that of its surroundings is sad and scars the city.

 

200_P1040550

Urban extents illustrate the shape and area of urbanized places. Urbanized localities are defined as places with with 5,000 or more inhabitants that are delineated by stable night-time lights. For poorly lit areas, alternate sources are used to estimate the extent of cities.

Dublin

Regardless of the extent of the ongoing tyranny and oppression I have been forced to deal with in Greece for nearly a decade under the harshest environment, my efforts in finding Justice and Freedom for my life have not stopped and it never will until my last breath.

 

Hence, on December 23rd, 2022, while enduring day 140th of my 4th Hunger Strike outside the UNHCR office in Athens, I left my shelter again to reach the Indian Embassy and plead for their help in providing urgent Humanitarian aid and mediation with this UN Agency.

 

Although I managed to speak with two Embassy representatives and even though they said they would help, ultimately they had gotten the Police involved to take me away. This time I was held in Police Custody for 2-hours before being let go.

 

Watch the video and read in-depth details here: 👇

 

👉🔗 chng.it/xnBYn46Hng

 

Please sign the Petition and Donate if you can.

 

Thank you. 🙏💔🆘

 

#HumanRights #Justice #Freedom #Immigration #Refugees #Politics #Democracy #Petition #Crowdfunding #Philanthropy #Europe #Greece #Athens #UnitedNations #UNHCR #India #IndiaInGreece

Rose Quartz Gemstone Bracelet with Extention in Design Brenda for Girls by Tone Smaasund

Little Bee feeding on a cosmo flower in my garden.

Pentax K200D & Pentax-M 85/2 (MF) & Pentax Extention Tube

Regardless of the extent of the ongoing tyranny and oppression I have been forced to deal with in Greece for nearly a decade under the harshest environment, my efforts in finding Justice and Freedom for my life have not stopped and it never will until my last breath.

 

Hence, on December 23rd, 2022, while enduring day 140th of my 4th Hunger Strike outside the UNHCR office in Athens, I left my shelter again to reach the Indian Embassy and plead for their help in providing urgent Humanitarian aid and mediation with this UN Agency.

 

Although I managed to speak with two Embassy representatives and even though they said they would help, ultimately they had gotten the Police involved to take me away. This time I was held in Police Custody for 2-hours before being let go.

 

Watch the video and read in-depth details here: 👇

 

👉🔗 chng.it/xnBYn46Hng

 

Please sign the Petition and Donate if you can.

 

Thank you. 🙏💔🆘

 

#HumanRights #Justice #Freedom #Immigration #Refugees #Politics #Democracy #Petition #Crowdfunding #Philanthropy #Europe #Greece #Athens #UnitedNations #UNHCR #India #IndiaInGreece

This partlet is based on the Portrait of a Woman found in the Uffizi, dated around 1550-65 and possibly by Alessandro Allori.

 

Urban extents illustrate the shape and area of urbanized places. Urbanized localities are defined as places with with 5,000 or more inhabitants that are delineated by stable night-time lights. For poorly lit areas, alternate sources are used to estimate the extent of cities.

Regardless of the extent of the ongoing tyranny and oppression I have been forced to deal with in Greece for nearly a decade under the harshest environment, my efforts in finding Justice and Freedom for my life have not stopped and it never will until my last breath.

 

Hence, on December 23rd, 2022, while enduring day 140th of my 4th Hunger Strike outside the UNHCR office in Athens, I left my shelter again to reach the Indian Embassy and plead for their help in providing urgent Humanitarian aid and mediation with this UN Agency.

 

Although I managed to speak with two Embassy representatives and even though they said they would help, ultimately they had gotten the Police involved to take me away. This time I was held in Police Custody for 2-hours before being let go.

 

Watch the video and read in-depth details here: 👇

 

👉🔗 chng.it/xnBYn46Hng

 

Please sign the Petition and Donate if you can.

 

Thank you. 🙏💔🆘

 

#HumanRights #Justice #Freedom #Immigration #Refugees #Politics #Democracy #Petition #Crowdfunding #Philanthropy #Europe #Greece #Athens #UnitedNations #UNHCR #India #IndiaInGreece

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▪Highly Precise ▪Fine Tip

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Khối lượng chuyên nghiệp Lông mi mở rộng nhíp

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Profissional Pinça de extensão de pestanas de volume

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Профессиональный объемный пинцет для наращивания ресниц

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In this picture you see the flats and burnt-out shop next to the building that has collapsed - the same used to be on the left. Not sure if this building is safe or is going to be demolished.

Number:

198048

 

Date created:

1951

 

Extent:

1 photographic print : gelatin silver ; 8 x 10 in.

 

Description:

 

First row, from left to right: 1) Robert Day; 2) Alan C. Woods; 3) Howard A. Naquin.

 

Second row, from left to right: 1) Robert A. Schimek; 2) James R. Duke; 3) David A. Rosen; 4) Richard E. Hoover; 5) Lawrence T. Post, Jr..

 

Third row, from left to right: 1) Albert D. Ruedemann; 2) Gardner M. Moulton; 3) W. Jerome Knauer, Jr..

 

Rights:

Photograph is subject to copyright restrictions. Contact the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives for reproduction permissions.

 

Subjects:

Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute--People

Day, Robert

Woods, Alan C. (Alan Churchill), 1889-1963

Naquin, Howard A.

Schimek, Robert A.

Duke, James R.

Rosen, David A.

Hoover, Richard E.

Post, Lawrence T. (Lawrence Tyler), 1887-1958

Ruedemann, Albert D., Jr.

Moulton, Gardner N.

Knauer, William J., Jr.

Ophthalmologists

Group portraits

Portrait photographs

 

Notes:

Photographer unknown.

Le cres