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Laura Ashley, the cool 1960s and my life.
July 2013 saw the opening of Bath Fashion Museum‘s exhibition Laura Ashley: The Romantic Heroine. This was the largest Laura Ashley retrospective ever! The Bath Fashion Museum marked the 60th year of...
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Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durant-Ruel
In the 1860s art student Auguste Renoir started studying at Charles Gleyre's Paris studio, where he met Bazille, Monet and Sisley. Soon Renoir and his friends met Degas, Pissarro, Cezanne and...
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Night Will Fall (2014) - film footage from Nazi concentration camps
Historian Taylor Downing is well worth reading - he analysed the British 11th Armoured Division liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Hanover in mid-April 1945. British Army Film Unit...
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Catching a mass murderer in Australia - the Ivan Milat case
Gun culture never seemed to have much of a presence in C20th Australian history. There were occasional mass shootings in Australia during that era, but the shooters seemed to murder their own family...
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El Greco In New York
I would love to have seen the El Greco (1541–1614) paintings in New York. Not because I thought he was the finest artist in the history of humanity. But because views about his art have changed SO...
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Women doctors were vital in WW1 Europe
In 1887, while women were still denied the right to vote in the Australian colonies, 7 women began medical degrees at the Melbourne Medical School and two of them graduated in 1891. And the University...
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Terror and Catholic faith in Elizabethan England
This is a world where Sunnis and Shias have slaughtered each other (eg the Iraq War), Christians murdered Jews (eg the Holocaust), Catholics and Protestants slaughtered or starved each other's...
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Exhibition of Australian modernist art: June-Aug 2015
50 of the finest works of Australian modernist art from the past 60 years, selected by the curator Edmund Capon will be exhibited at TarraWarra Museum of Art next month. Commissioned by Hazelhurst...
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Rex Whistler and the Bright Young Things: curious friendships
Reginald Whistler (1905-44) was born in Kent and soon nicknamed Rex. As a teenager he was sent to boarding school at Haileybury where he quickly learned his skills in art. After high school, the young...
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Porcelain art objects from China; Qianlong exhibition in Melbourne
I would like to refer back to an earlier post that discussed London’s Summer Asia Week Chinese art auction sales. And let us pay attention to a Ming dynasty jar which was sold by Bonhams London in 2009...
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Claude Monet's military service in Algeria - 1861
Claude Monet (1840-1926) was born in Paris but his family soon moved to Le Havre where he grew up. In 1859–60 the teenager returned to Paris he was impressed by the Barbizon-school artists like Charles...
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Best exhibitions in an C18th country mansion: Compton Verney
Compton Verney is a Warwickshire manor that dates back to the C11th Domesday Book. In 1435, it was acquired by Richard Verney (1435-1490) with the cooperation of his brother, the Dean of Lichfield...
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Alfred Stieglitz (New York) and Georgia O'Keeffe (Hawaii)
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) studied in Germany but sailed back home to the USA in 1890. He went into partnership in a photo engraving business and five years later, he became editor of American...
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Savile Club Mayfair and the British-American connection
Each gentleman's club, at least in London, wanted to appeal to a particular population. The Carlton Club, for example, had a strong interest in Tory politics while the Garrick Club loved the...
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Catherine the Great, The Hermitage and Melbourne's winter blockbuster
Russian Empress Catherine the Great reigned from 1762-1796, a period of cultural renaissance for Russia. She was regarded as the nation’s foremost patron of the arts, literature and education and...
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Rembrandt - Old and New Testament
No other old masters, in any country or any century, showed as much interest in Jewish people or Jewish themes as did Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) in the Netherlands. Other painters, eg Grunewald,...
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Alma Schindler-Mahler-Gropius-Werfel: what a woman!
Towards the end of the 1960s, all my women friends used to devise a test question to recognise "the perfect marriage partner", once they left university. Some wanted a man committed to left wing...
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Identical twin sisters - separated at birth then reunited
I saw the film Twin Sisters created for TV2 and the Norwegian Film Institute in 2011, directed and produced by Mona Friis Bertheussen. Then I read the review below (New York Times 19/10/2014), written...
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Modern, independent women by Otto Dix, William Frater and Lina Bryans
Years ago I was given the 2003 book Lina Bryans, Rare Modern 1909-2000 to discuss... which I did in this blog. But before returning to Lina Bryans and her Australian colleagues, I needed first to...
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The Boer War, Baden Powell and the Boy Scout Movement
At the start of the Second Boer War in South Africa in 1899, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army could not send enough troops in time. While it seems absurd to us to go into war without troops,...
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