Happy Birthday, Ruskin

Ruskin, Saint Mark's Basilica, Venice: Sketch after Rain, 27 May 1846, 1846

People are eternally divided into two classes: the believer, builder, and praiser, and the unbeliever, destroyer, and critic.

John Ruskin, born on this day in 1819

Happy Birthday, Homer

Homer, Trout Fishing, Lake St. John, Quebec, 1895

Winslow Homer was born on this day in 1836.

Breaths.

Hilder, A February Day, n/d

THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: FEBRUARY

The snow is gone from cottage tops

The thatch moss glows in brighter green

And eves in quick succession drops

Where grinning ides once hath been

Pit patting Wi a pleasant noise

In tubs set by the cottage door

And ducks and geese wi happy joys

Douse in the yard pond brimming oer

The sun peeps thro the window pane

Which childern mark wi laughing eye

And in the wet street steal again

To tell each other spring is nigh

And as young hope the past recalls

In playing groups will often draw

Building beside the sunny walls

Their spring-play-huts of sticks or straw

And oft in pleasures dreams they hie

Round homsteads by the village side

Scratting the hedgrow mosses bye

Where painted pooty shells abide

Mistaking oft the ivy spray

For leaves that come wi budding spring

And wondering in their search for play

Why birds delay to build and sing

The milkmaid singing leaves her bed

As glad as happy thoughts can be

While magpies chatter oer her head

As jocund in the change as she

Her cows around the closes stray

Nor lingering wait the foddering boy

Tossing the molehills in their play

And staring round in frolic joy

Ploughmen go whistling to their toils

And yoke again the rested plough

And mingling oer the mellow soils

Boys' shouts and whips are noising now

The shepherd now is often seen

By warm banks oer his work to bend

Or oer a gate or stile to lean

Chattering to a passing friend

Odd hive bees fancying winter oer

And dreaming in their combs of spring

Creeps on the slab beside their door

And strokes its legs upon its wing

While wild ones half asleep are humming

Round snowdrop bells a feeble note

And pigions coo of summer coming

Picking their feathers on the cote

The barking dogs by lane and wood

Drive sheep afield from foddering ground

And eccho in her summer mood

Briskly mocks the cheery sound

The flocks as from a prison broke

Shake their wet fleeces in the sun

While following fast a misty smoke

Reeks from the moist grass as they run

Nor more behind his masters heels

The dog creeps oer his winter pace

But cocks his tail and oer the fields

Runs many a wild and random chase

Following in spite of chiding calls

The startld cat wi harmless glee

Scaring her up the weed green walls

Or mossy mottld apple tree

As crows from morning perches flye

He barks and follows them in vain

Een larks will catch his nimble eye

And off he starts and barks again

Wi breathless haste and blinded guess

Oft following where the hare hath gone

Forgetting in his joys excess

His frolic puppy days are done

The gossips saunter in the sun

As at the spring from door to door

Of matters in the village done

And secret newsings mutterd oer

Young girls when they each other meet

Will stand their tales of love to tell

While going on errands down the street

Or fetching water from the well

A calm of pleasure listens round

And almost whispers winter bye

While fancy dreams of summer sounds

And quiet rapture fills the eye

The sun beams on the hedges lye

The south wind murmurs summer soft

And maids hang out white cloaths to dry

Around the eldern skirted croft

Each barns green thatch reeks in the sun

Its mate the happy sparrow calls

And as nest building spring begun

Peeps in the holes about the walls

The wren a sunny side the stack

Wi short tail ever on the strunt

Cockd gadding up above his back

Again for dancing gnats will hunt

The gladdend swine bolt from the sty

And round the yard in freedom run

Or stretching in their slumbers lye

Beside the cottage in the sun

The young horse whinneys to its mate

And sickens from the threshers door

Rubbing the straw yards banded gate

Longing for freedom on the moor

Hens leave their roosts wi cackling calls

To see the barn door free from snow

And cocks flye up the mossy walls

To clap their spangld wings and crow

About the steeples sunny top

The jackdaw flocks resemble spring

And in the stone archd windows pop

Wi summer noise and wanton wing

The small birds think their wants are oer

To see the snow hills fret again

And from the barns chaff litterd door

Betake them to the greening plain

The woodmans robin startles coy

Nor longer at his elbow comes

To peck wi hungers eager joy

Mong mossy stulps the litterd crumbs

Neath hedge and walls that screen the wind

The gnats for play will Hock together

And een poor flyes odd hopes will find

To venture in the mocking weather

From out their hiding holes again

Wi feeble pace they often creep

Along the sun warmd window pane

Like dreaming things that walk in sleep

The mavis thrush wi wild delight

Upon the orchards dripping tree

Mutters to see the day so bright

Spring scraps of young hopes poesy

And oft dame stops her burring wheel

To hear the robins note once more

That tutles while he pecks his meal

From sweet briar hips beside the door

The hedghog from its hollow root

Sees the wood moss clear of snow

And hunts each hedge for fallen fruit

Crab hip and winter bitten sloe

And oft when checkd by sudden fears

As shepherd dog his haunt espies

He rolls up in a ball of spears

And all his barking rage defies

Thus nature of the spring will dream

While south winds thaw but soon again

Frost breaths upon the stiffening stream

And numbs it into ice-the plain

Soon wears its merry garb of white

And icicles that fret at noon

Will eke their icy tails at night

Beneath the chilly stars and moon

Nature soon sickens of her joys

And all is sad and dumb again

Save merry shouts of sliding boys

About the frozen furrowd plain

The foddering boy forgets his song

And silent goes wi folded arms

And croodling shepherds bend along

Crouching to the whizzing storms

John Clare

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the image.

Breeze.

Homer, A Tropical Breeze, 1890

Watercolor.

Conservator Kristi Dahm gives an inside view of the techniques employed by masters of watercolor painting, as well as the chemistry of pigments and the cutting edge contemporary methods used to analyze and preserve them. Dahm is an Assistant Conservator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. She has researched myriad topics related to the preservation and technical study of art on paper, from the analysis of Italian Renaissance metalpoint drawings to longevity issues for contemporary prints. She co-authored Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light, a study of the materials and techniques in Homer's watercolor paintings.

Contemplative.

Orson Schofield “Old Mountain” Phelps (1816-1905) was the archetypical Adirondack guide.

Guide historian Chuck Brumley attributed this to the wide literary attention Phelps received from early city visitors to the High Peaks, including Verplanck Colvin and Charles Dudley Warner. Phelps was painted by Winslow Homer. He became a stock character in the guidebooks of E.R. Wallace and S.R. Stoddard.

Phelps certainly had the requisite outdoor skills to be a well-known Adirondack guide, and he cut many High Peaks trails still in use, as well as naming a number of high peaks. But it was his personality and aphorisms that caught the imagination of many of the “city men” he guided. He amused and impressed his clients with rustic humor and philosophy.

CONNECT

You might be misled by the shaggy suggestion of Old Phelps's given name—Orson—into the notion that he was a mighty hunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his veins. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The hirsute and grisly sound of Orson expresses only his entire affinity with the untamed and the natural, an uncouth but gentle passion for the freedom and wildness of the forest. Orson Phelps has only those unconventional and humorous qualities of the bear which make the animal so beloved in literature; and one does not think of Old Phelps so much as a lover of nature,—to use the sentimental slang of the period,—as a part of nature itself.

His appearance at the time when as a "guide" he began to come into public notice fostered this impression,—a sturdy figure, with long body and short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut-colored trousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head surmounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top, so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like some nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny hair was long and tangled, matted now many years past the possibility of being entered by a comb. His features were small and delicate, and set in the frame of a reddish beard, the razor having mowed away a clearing about the sensitive mouth, which was not seldom wreathed with a childlike and charming smile. Out of this hirsute environment looked the small gray eyes, set near together; eyes keen to observe, and quick to express change of thought; eyes that made you believe instinct can grow into philosophic judgment. His feet and hands were of aristocratic smallness, although the latter were not worn away by ablutions; in fact, they assisted his toilet to give you the impression that here was a man who had just come out of the ground,—a real son of the soil, whose appearance was partially explained by his humorous relation to soap. "Soap is a thing," he said, "that I hain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed to have been put on him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion had supplied the place of our artificial breeding to this man.

Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting on a log, with a short pipe in his mouth. If ever man was formed to sit on a log, it was Old Phelps. He was essentially a contemplative person. Walking on a country road, or anywhere in the "open," was irksome to him. He had a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not unlike that of the bear: his short legs bowed out, as if they had been more in the habit of climbing trees than of walking. On land, if we may use that expression, he was something like a sailor; but, once in the rugged trail or the unmarked route of his native forest, he was a different person, and few pedestrians could compete with him. The vulgar estimate of his contemporaries, that reckoned Old Phelps "lazy," was simply a failure to comprehend the condition of his being. It is the unjustness of civilization that it sets up uniform and artificial standards for all persons. The primitive man suffers by them much as the contemplative philosopher does, when one happens to arrive in this busy, fussy world.

CONNECT

Homer, Two Guides, 1877

JSTOR has David Tatham's essay, The Two Guides: Winslow Homer at Keene Valley, Adirondacks ... HERE.

Therapeutic.

Homer, Adironack Guide, 1892

Rufus Wallace, a hired hand at the North Woods Club in Minerva, New York, modeled for Homer for almost twenty-five years. Wallace, often depicted alongside a younger model to suggest intergenerational camaraderie, is seen here in advanced age and alone. He is the light-struck protagonist in the center of a dark and foreboding scene. But for the shaft of sunshine that illuminates his face, paddle, and wake, Wallace would recede into the forest, a natural man in an urban age. Although Wallace himself is an archetype, his vessel provides an instant sense of place. The guide boat, perfected in the mid-nineteenth century, provided a sturdy and lightweight means to navigate the Adirondack's rivers and lakes. As the region evolved into a controlled wilderness for Americans pursuing the experience of nature as a cure for the perceived dangers of modern life, hours in a guide boat and the company of rugged individuals like Wallace were widely held to be therapeutic pastimes.

CONNECT

Happy Birthday, Homer.

Homer, Campfire, Adirondacks, 1892

Winslow Homer was born on this day in 1836.

What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous work in the right way.

Winslow Homer

Sitting in on John Wilmerding's ("Ol' Wilmerding") talk, "Winslow Homer in His Art," at the The College of the Atlantic ...

Marc Simpson's lecture, "Yankee Urchins and Pie-Nurtured Maidens: Winslow Homer's Paintings of 1870s America" ...

Sunset.

Marin, Sunset, Casco Bay, 1919

Quietly.

Obata, Mt. Fuji and Ashinoko Lake from Motohakone (detail), 1953

When all thoughts

Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd’s purse.

Like the little stream

Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.

Ryokan