Category: History

Rambling with the Nats, 1873

naturalists
Artists impression of Victorian naturalists, drawn on Clip Studio Paint (I’m trying out the Lasso filled-shape tool). It would be wonderful if a photograph of the Nats on a ramble in Victorian times ever turned up.

Wakefield Express- 31 May 1873

WAKEFIELD NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY

On Saturday last the members of this Society had a field-day at Nostell, Ryhill, and Wintersett. It was a beautiful day, and nature decked in her spring garb of ever-varying green, displayed that wonderful freshness with which no other part of the year can vie. After several hours’ enjoyment in the woods and lanes, the party met at the Angler’s Arms, Wintersett, where, after tea, the president (Mr Alderman Wainwright, F.L.S.) took the chair and subsequently named the plants about fifty species which had been collected during the afternoon. – Mr Taylor named the conchological specimens, of which fourteen species were exhibited, and Mr Sims named the geological specimens and made some interesting remarks on the geological formations of the neighbourhood. – Messrs. Parkin and Lumb, whose attention had been chiefly directed during the day’s excursion to the observation of the spring migrants, reported they had seen fifteen species of them, and that they had also noticed a Heron and a pair of Common Gull besporting themselves upon the reservoir. Messrs. Fogg and Heald exhibited the larvae of several species of geometae. Returning by way of Hawe Park, the party arrived back at Wakefield as the evening closed in, after spending a most enjoyable and delightful day.

My thanks to Lesley Taylor for spotting this.

Plain Portraits

Liz White

After my woodcut experiment in Adobe Illustrator, l’ve gone for more of a lithographic effect for these portraits, simplifying the tones in my original pen and wash drawings into ragged-edged blocks. You don’t get the texture of the original watercolour wash but it’s implied in those irregular edges.

This is Liz White in character as Fiona Grayson in Chris Lang’s ITV crime drama Unforgotten, drawn from a photograph in the Radio Times in March.

George Stephenson

George Stephenson
George Stephenson

It can be disappointing if you’ve painted a subtle watercolour and the nuances are lost on the printed page. A reduced tonal range might make for a more successful printed image. I’ll have to try it.

George Stephenson was all set to have a walk-on part in my current Addingford show at the Redbox Gallery, Horbury, but he was upstaged by Stan Barstow’s Joby, so perhaps I can use him in a print publication, looking suitably robust in the Image Trace treatment that I’ve given him in Illustrator.

Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth

I’m considering printing the series I drew of Wakefield Women in History and the graphic feel would work well as I’m trying to keep the subject brisk and lively, rather than making it archival and authoritative, like an illustrated Dictionary of National Biography.

Dame Mary Bolles

Dame Mary Bolles

Another Wakefield Woman in History, Dame Mary Bolles, the formidable Stuart-era lady of Heath Old Hall, also lends herself to this treatment. It’s easy for me to go for too much detail in a historical costume but what I want in this series is to sum up remarkable lives in broad brushstrokes.

George Stephenson

George Stephenson
Stephenson

George Stephenson was the engineer of our local stretch of the Manchester and Leeds Railway (1840), so he deserves a walk-on part in my Redbox Gallery show. Perhaps that should be a swagger-on part because, not surprisingly as the designer of the Locomotion, he was proud of his achievements and perhaps a bit too keen to keep telling people about them.

This quote from The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives a good impression of what it would have been like to meet him:

To the end of his life he remained an inveterate and dogmatic deliverer of advice, often while waiting at railway stations telling engineers how to improve the efficiency of their locomotives, and demonstrating to labourers the most effective way to use a shovel and barrow.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

St Ignatius R.C. Primary, 1994

taff

Mr Brooke was a stickler for pencil and rulers, Mrs Johnson was the school’s hedgehog wrangler, Mrs Manning was noted for getting in the groove on the school’s upright piano and Mrs Argent – in those pre-mobile days – apparently had the job of summoning teachers to the phone, but I think my favourite member of staff from St Ignatius R.C. Primary School, 1994, would be Mrs Claypole, cheerfully pushing the the school dinners trolley.

tea towel

After more than half a century, our tea towel is gradually fading and getting thinner, so I thought that it was time to scan it, as it’s now a bit of a historical document.

It was produced by Stuart Morris Textiles of Hadleigh, Suffolk. It dates from when one of our nephews was in his last year there. Haven’t spotted him yet amongst the self-portraits.

A Classic Cake

John Carr

It’s so hard to find a birthday card with a Horbury theme, so it was back to the drawing board for this one, celebrating local architect John Carr’s towering achievement, the classical confection that is the Parish Church of St Peter’s & St Leonard’s.

Happy birthday to Alex!

Carr topped the spire with that rather un-Christian symbol, a Grecian urn, but this crashed down and was replaced with a wrought iron cross. The urn, which was about 7 feet tall, was carefully pieced together again and, in my teenage years stood as an oversize garden ornament in a house on Cluntergate which I believe had once belonged to a Mr Green.

Maunder

maunder

MAUNDER, talk incoherently, or in a low tone, grumblingly. “What are teh maundrin thear abaht?”

Wakefield Words, William Stott Banks, 1865

A Clip Studio Paint animation of a page from my illustrated version of William Stott Banks Wakefield Words, A List of Provencial Words in use at Wakefield in Yorkshire 1865.

Link

Wakefield Words, paperback, available post free in the UK from Willow Island Editions.

Women in History

Women in History title page

For a cover illustration for Wakefield Women in History, I’ve gone for three of the more dynamic characters which, of course, includes my dynamic mother-in-law Betty.

women in history

I’ve drawn twelve subjects, which should fit into the format and length of my booklet.

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King features in a couple of television documentaries this week, giving me an opportunity to draw him from two small black and white photographs. That rather unusual angle, looking up at his face, might explain why I struggled with proportions in my first attempt.

Mary Creagh

Mary Creagh

Mary Creagh was Wakefield’s first woman MP, elected in 2005, so she’s one of my local Women in History. She’s invariably more upbeat than in my drawing but this is from a still from a Channel 4 interview, live from the Palace of Westminster, in December 2019, a week after she lost her seat to Imran Nasir Ahmad Khan, our current MP, who was literally parachuted in – yes, really, landing on a school playing field – to stand for the Conservative Party.

In the interview she reflected that the then Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn had been guilty of ‘preening narcissism’, so here she reminds me of a distraught character in a Samuel Beckett play or as Cordelia, banished by the folly of her father, in King Lear.

Mary Creagh has always taken a keen interest in environmental issues and during her time at Westminster she was chair of the Environmental Audit Select Committee. She’s now chief executive of the national walking charity Living Streets.

Link

Living Streets the UK charity for everyday walking

Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor

Hard to believe that it’s now six years since I last saw Kate Taylor, Wakefield historian. On Saturday mornings, she and archivist John Goodchild used to treat themselves to breakfast at the Cottage Tearooms in Horbury then call in at the Rickaro Bookshop on the High Street. Barbara worked there at the time.

Kate Taylor

In the 1970s Kate wrote articles on history and architectural heritage for the Wakefield Express, so it was a big thing for me when she called to interview me when my first book A Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield was published. It meant a lot to me that she took my work seriously.

I liked Kate’s uncompromising support for architectural conservation and always felt that she had an air of quizzical scepticism about her and a twinkle of mischief. She was force to be reckoned with and I couldn’t finish my Wakefield Women in History month without including her.