The Styrous® Viewfinder: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Showing posts with label Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Show all posts

December 24, 2020

Corona Virus isolation ~ Day 283: Christmas Eve roses & berries

arranged by Tom White

A rose is a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus Rosa, in the family Rosaceae, or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be erect shrubs, climbing, or trailing, with stems that are often armed with sharp prickles.

The name rose comes from French, itself from Latin rosa, which was perhaps borrowed from Oscan, from Greek ρόδον rhódon (Aeolic βρόδον wródon), itself borrowed from Old Persian wrd- (wurdi), related to Avestan varəδa, Sogdian ward, Parthian wâr.

The cultural history of the rose has led to it being used often as a symbol. In ancient Greece, the rose was closely associated with the goddess Aphrodite. In the Iliad, Aphrodite protects the body of Hector using the "immortal oil of the rose" and the archaic Greek lyric poet Ibycus praises a beautiful youth saying that Aphrodite nursed him "among rose blossoms". The second-century AD Greek travel writer Pausanias associates the rose with the story of Adonis and states that the rose is red because Aphrodite wounded herself on one of its thorns and stained the flower red with her blood.

Aphrodite

Book Eleven of the ancient Roman novel The Golden Ass by Apuleius contains a scene in which the goddess Isis, who is identified with Venus, instructs the main character, Lucius, who has been transformed into a donkey, to eat rose petals from a crown of roses worn by a priest as part of a religious procession in order to regain his humanity.

Isis

fifteenth or fourteenth century BCE

Following the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the rose became identified with the Virgin Mary. The color of the rose and the number of roses received has symbolic representation. The rose symbol eventually led to the creation of the rosary and other devotional prayers in Christianity.

The Wars of the Roses were a series of English civil wars for control of the throne of England fought between supporters of two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster, represented by a red rose, and the House of York, represented by a white rose. Eventually, the wars eliminated the male lines of both families.

Roses are a favored subject in art and appear in portraits, illustrations, on stamps, as ornaments or as architectural elements. Henri Fantin-Latour was also a prolific painter of still life, particularly flowers including roses. The rose 'Fantin-Latour' was named after the artist. Other impressionists including Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir have paintings of roses among their works.

In 1908, Henry Albert Payne was commissioned to produce a wall painting for the decoration of the Palace of Westminster. His work, Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens, is an allegory on the Wars of the Roses and now hangs in the Palace's East Corridor.

Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens - 1910
painting by Henry Albert Payne

"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." was written by Gertrude Stein as part of the 1913 poem Sacred Emily, which appeared in the 1922 book Geography and Plays. In that poem, the first "Rose" is the name of a person.

Christmas Eve in other languages:

Arabic - ليلة عيد الميلاد

Catalan - Nit de Nadal

Chinese - 平安夜

Dutch - kerstavond

French - Réveillon de Noël

German - Heiligabend

Greek - παραμονή Χριστουγέννων

Hawaiian - Mele Kalikimaka

Hebrew - ערב חג המולד

Irish - Oíche Nollag

Japanese - クリスマス・イブ or Kurisumasu ibu

Korean = 크리스마스 이브

Norweigen - Julaften

Persian - شب کریسمس

Polish - Wigilia

Portuguese - Véspera de Natal

Russian - канун Рождества

Spanish - Nochebuena

Turkish - Noel arifesi

Ukranian - Святвечір

Zulu - usuku ngaphambi kukakhisimusi

Viewfinder links:

Corona Virus articles

William Shakespeare

Gertrude Stein
Styrous®
Tom White

Net links:

Taste of Home ~ 75 Christmas Eve Dinner Ideas
Time & Date ~Christmas Eve in the United States

YouTube links:

Kelly Clarkson ~ Christmas Eve (Official Audio)

Céline Dion ~ Christmas Eve (Official Audio)

Yamashita Tatsuro ~ Christmas Eve

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve / Sarajevo

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Juliet.

~ William Shakespeare

Styrous® ~ Thursday, December 24, 2020

The Doc is in

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June 2, 2016

Guernsey discovers the Viewfinder

And I discover Guernsey is a country!

From time to time I check the stats for the Viewfinder. The stats include the number of page views by day, week, year and all-time history use. It also registers page views by browser, operating system and country.

This morning a new country was listed, Guernsey. I had always assumed it was part of Great Britain, not a separate country. I checked with my old reliable, Wikipedia, and sure enough, it's an independent country.

Guernsey is a jurisdiction within the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a Crown dependency. Situated in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy, the jurisdiction embraces not only all ten parishes on the island of Guernsey, but also the much smaller inhabited islands of Herm, Jethou and Lihou together with many small islets and rocks. The jurisdiction is not part of the United Kingdom. However, defence and most foreign relations are handled by the British Government.

The whole jurisdiction lies within the Common Travel Area of the British Isles and is not a member of the European Union, but has a special relationship with it, being treated as part of the European Community for the purposes of free trade in goods. Taken together with the separate jurisdictions of Alderney and Sark it forms the Bailiwick of Guernsey. The two Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey together form the geographical grouping known as the Channel Islands.

It has its own flag . . .

a coat of arms . . . .

And the geology is unique. Guernsey has a geological history stretching further back into the past than most of Europe. There is a broad geological division between the north and south of the Island. The Southern Metamorphic Complex is elevated above the geologically younger, lower lying Northern Igneous Complex. Guernsey has experienced a complex geological evolution (especially the rocks of the southern complex) with multiple phases of intrusion and deformation recognizable.

Measuring just 24 sq miles (San Francisco is 49 sq miles), it was invaded by the Nazis in World War II. It was attacked by air, with the first raid on June 28, 1940, killing 33 islanders and injuring 67. Around 4,000 people - mainly children - had been evacuated in the months before the attack.

The German Occupation began two days later, on June 30, and lasted for almost five years, when the island was finally liberated on May 9, 1945.

As part of the Atlantic Wall, between 1940 and 1945 the occupying German forces and the Organisation Todt constructed fortifications round the coasts of the Channel Islands such as this observation tower at Battery Moltke, Jersey (why does Fascist architecture always look so cool?).

observation tower at Battery Moltke, Jersey

photographer unknown

The seaman's knitted woollen sweater, guernsey, or gansey, similar to a jersey, originated there; it is sometimes known as a knit-frock in Cornwall. The guernsey is the mainstay of Guernsey's knitting industry which can be dated back to the late 15th century when a royal grant was obtained to import wool from England and re-export knitted goods to Normandy and Spain.

Guernseymen wearing their guernseys

Lé Viaer Marchi (The Old Market), Guernsey

Art & Literature

Victor Hugo wrote some of his best-known works while in exile in Guernsey, including Les Misérables. There is a famous painting on the beach there by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Children on the Beach of Guernsey (1883)

by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

English is the language in general use by the majority of the population, while Guernésiais, the Norman language of the island, is spoken fluently by only about 2% of the population (according to 2001 census). George Métivier, considered by some to be the island's national poet, wrote in Guernesiais.