Drawn in Colour - Degas from the Burrell

Edgar Degas, The Red Ballet Skirts, about 1900. The Burrell Collection, Glasgow (35,243)

©CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection

This gorgeous (and free) exhibition at the National Gallery in London coincides with the centenary of the death of Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917).  A loan from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, it’s the first time most of these works have been seen outside that city since they were acquired at the beginning of the 20^th c by the shipping magnate, Sir William Burrell. The three sections – Modern Life, Dancers and Private Worlds – explore the artist’s skills and innovations, along with the historical and personal contexts in which the works were created, and leave you with a richer understanding of his talent.

Edgar Degas, Jockeys in the Rain, about 1883-6. The Burrell Collection, Glasgow (35,241)  ©CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection

Although Degas’s art training had followed a traditional path, he soon moved away from the usual subjects and technical conventions and took inspiration from the fast-changing world around him. He returned continually to a handful of subjects – dancers, horseracing, and women bathing – experimenting with materials and techniques. This exhibition gives fascinating insights into the way he worked.

Edgar Degas, After the Bath, Woman drying herself, about 1890-5

© The National Gallery, London

While the scenes look as if they’ve been drawn directly from life, with unusual angles and abrupt cut-offs, they are in fact the result of careful and painstaking composition. He would make individual studies, then assemble them, moving them around until be achieved the balance he wanted. In After the Bath, Woman drying herself (above), you can see how extra sheets were added to enlarge the picture.

Edgar Degas, Woman looking rhrough Field Glasses, about 1869. The Burrell Collection, Glasgow (35,239) ©CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection

Degas made countless sketches for future reference. This woman looking directly with you through her field glasses was intended for a larger racetrack picture, her challenging attitude a complete contrast to most depictions of women at that time.

Degas was an avid ballet-goer. In one year alone, 1885, he is recorded as having attended 54 performances at the Paris Opera, which had its own corps de ballet and was close to his studio. He often portrayed the dancers, not as the audience saw them, but behind the scenes, rehearsing, holding an aching back or foot, waiting to go on stage. Pastels were his medium of choice: those on display  reveal how his technique evolved, the carefully blended layers of his early works giving way to a dense build-ups of bold, fluorescent cross-hatchings and bright highlights. When talking about his Russian Dancers (above, with a mirror-image preliminary sketch) Degas described these as “orgies of colour”.

Edgar Degas, Grande Arabesque, First Time, about 1885, posthumous cast, Glasgow Museums Collection

With age, his eyesight failing, the exhibition relates how he increased his sculpture output. In the final room, showing women at their toilettes, seemingly unaware of being watched, there is a bronze of a naked dancer in an arabesque pose, her back a physical echo of a painted figure on the wall nearby. The figure was modelled with wax and cast only posthumously. Degas said such pieces were made “for my own satisfaction... to give my paintings and drawings greater expression, greater ardour and more life”.

Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell, National Gallery, London, to May 7 2018. Free.

Historic ships on the Thames

This month's Totally Thames Festival brought an awesome range of historic ships to the heart of London. On Saturday, September 16, Tower Bridge opened to allow a flotilla of traditional Thames barges to pass through.

Crowds lined the banks to watch as the past met the present.

A few days earlier, in nearby St Katherine's Dock, there was a reunion of some of the Little Ships that had been part of the heroic operation to rescue trapped troops from the beaches of Dunkirk back in 1940. Their efforts were dramatised in the recent film, Dunkirk, and one of the ships in the dock, the Elvin (above), was actually used in the film.

These survivors of an epic chapter in warfare have their own, fascinating, histories. The Massey Shaw (above) made three trips from Ramsgate to Dunkirk with a volunteer crew, bringing back 110 troops and ferrying a further 500 out to larger ships offshore. During the Blitz she helped save St Paul's Cathedral by pumping water from the Thames to fight the fires that were raging. She was decommissioned in 1971 and deteriorated until discovered at St Katherine's Dock by a fireman who had been on her at Dunkirk. A trust was formed and she returned to full working order in 2012/13.

The Anne (above), built in 1925, suffered considerable damage during and after Operation Dynamo, and developed rot. She changed hands several times. A restoration in the 1970s meant she was able to take part in the 70th anniversary return of the Little Ships in 2010 and is now back with the family of her original owner, Percy Derby, after being spotted for sale on eBay by his great-grandson. The latest restoration reflects her original condition, though with the addition of a wheelhouse.

The Hilfranor was attacked by German dive bombers during the evacuation and abandoned on the coast of France. The story has it that two French soldiers, desperate to escape, baled her out and got the engine going. They made it as far as the Goodwin Sands, where she sank again, but was spotted by a British minesweeper and towed into Ramsgate. Repaired, she stayed in service for the rest of the war, used as an auxiliary patrol vessel and by the Fire Service.

The Betty, now the Nuala, was requisitioned from the Thames and went across to Dunkirk. She was later fitted with an Oerlikon gun on her foredeck and served as a patrol vessel along the east coast of England. After the war she returned to civilian life and her name was changed to Nimrod, and later to Nuala. Her owners had no idea of her Dunkirk provenance until papers were released by the Admiralty in 1985.

The Firefly, built in 1923, was one of three vessels of that name that took part in the evacuation and, at just 26 ft long, among the tiniest. In 1995 a Dunkirk veteran, Dennis Kinnel, told the then owner the story of how he'd been rescued by the Firefly after swimming out to her, pulling a seriously-injured comrade. She was, he said, the ship that probably saved his life.

Also on show at St Katherine's Dock and attracting much attention was another, instantly recognisable boat - the Queen's rowbarge, Gloriana. A lasting legacy of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012, she is now managed by a charitable trust to promote better use of the Thames.
The Totally Thames Festival runs until the end of September. Details and events at:
http://totallythames.org/

Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia

Two and a half thousand years ago, bands of fearsome horse-riding warriors roamed across a homeland that stretched from southern Russia and the Black Sea to China. They were masters of mounted warfare, with deadly bows and pointed battle axes. Their encounters with the Greeks, Assyrians and Persians were recorded by ancient historians but they themselves had no written language and built no cities, so for centuries all trace of their culture was lost. It was not until the discovery of ancient tombs, buried in the frozen ground and containing a wealth of Scythian treasures like this gold buckle (above), that the truth about their lives was revealed.

Some of the objects, like this torc with lion-head terminals, on loan from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, were uncovered during scientific expeditions sent to southern Siberia in the 1720s by Peter the Great; others were found quite recently in large burial mounds in the Pazyryk valley of the High Altai mountain region of southern Siberia. Excavations are ongoing, and, as this fascinating exhibition at the British Museum in London shows, continue to reveal more insights into a lost world.

The displays begin with the treasures brought back to the Czar. Buried so as to accompany their owners into the afterlife, they are stunning - intricately decorated with real and imaginary creatures like these dragons (above). For the Scythians, constantly on the move, these burials are their monuments. They contain not just bling, but everything needed for life after death, including cooking pots and food. There are even some lumps of cheese on display. Found in a decorated bag, thanks to the permafrost they look dairy-fresh despite being well past their use-by date.

Also well-preserved are these women's felt stockings, beautifully embroidered and discovered in one of the Pazyryk burial mounds.

The lifestyle of the Scythians depended on horses, and they took their favourite ones with them to the grave. These were buried with elaborate bridles (above), saddle pendants, covers for the mane and tail and even masks (below), perhaps to ensure they were reborn as some kind of mythical super-beast.

Life in the Siberian landscape was tough and there was heavy competition for survival, with tribes fighting against each other. The Scythians developed a fearsome set of weapons. The exhibition includes the mummified head of a tribal chief who was killed in battle, seemingly by the three battle-axe blows to the head. (His skin bears tatoos of fearsome beasts designed to protect him.)

Weapons were highly prized by their owners - this gold scabbard, found in a tomb in the north-west Caucasus and dating from the 7th c BC, is decorated with lions and winged bulls. When united, the tribes were a continuous threat to the Persian empire and according to the Greek historian, Herodotus, they defeated King Darius and his powerful army in about 513 BC.

The archers were known to the Greeks; at one point some served as city police in Athens. This decorated Athenian plate from around 500 BC shows an archer running while looking back and  pulling an arrow from his quiver.

Life was not all battles however - they knew how to enjoy themselves. Among the finds on display is a hemp-smoking kit - Herodotus said the fumes made the Scythians 'howl with delight' as they inhaled them, and that it was also employed in cleansing rituals and for pain relief. And while sitting relaxing in their tents, drinking fermented mare's milk or imported Greek wine, it's tempting to imagine them listening to tales of past exploits and heroes.

One of these has come down to us from Herodotus - the story of how Scythes, the son of Heracles, became ruler of the Scythians after managing to string his father's bow. This beautiful bowl shows Heracles either setting up the test or concluding the tale. The Scythians outlasted the Persian empire, and there was some cultural interaction between them and their settled neighbours, but in about the second century BC they disappeared and were replaced by other nomadic powers. Now, however, the centuries of oblivion that followed are over, and their lives and achievements are being rediscovered.  A British Museum blog even suggests that George R.R.Martin may have had them in mind when he created the bloodthirsty, horseriding Dothraki in Game of Thrones.
The BP exhibition, Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia, is at the British Museum until January 14, 2018. Admission £16.50 (concessions available).
www.britishmuseum.org