The Engine

  TUDORS   The Tudor period began in 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth when Henry Tudor unexpectedly defeated Richard III and assumed the crown of England.   The period had begun with the deposition of Richard II in 1399.   Richard led an army to Ireland, over-extended his finances and was deposed by Bolingbroke who became Henry IV.   Richard was later murdered. Henry’s son defeated the French at Agincourt in 1415, consolidating England’s position on the near continent.   Henry V’s son became Henry VI.   Henry V had been a considerable soldier, but his son was scholarly, sensitive, and civilised.   He was responsible, for instance, for the construction of Eton college and King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.   His rival, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, discovered that he had a better claim to the crown than Henry VI, and decided to contest this claim.   This became the War of the Roses.   Two camps emerged, the House of Lanca...

  SARGENT AND FASHION at the TATE BRITAIN on the 26 th, MAY 2024 Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautraeu) by John Singer Sargent 1883-4 The emphasis of Tate Britain’s Sargent and Fashion exhibition is fashion, what’s in vogue, and, by implication, what’s not.   Not only fashion is on view here, but also the fashionable, not just what they wear but how they wear it. Mrs Hugh Hammersley, oil on canvas, 1892 Sargent lived in the era of haute couture , meaning high end fashion reserved for the very wealthy and implying sewing and dress making.   By the end of Sargent’s life, haute couture was giving way to pret a porter , meaning fashion ready to wear and for a much wider public. Lady Sassoon by John Singer Sargent, 1907 The exhibition talks firstly about Sargent’s use of black, for example his work Madame X (1883-4).   Black, traditionally reserved for mourning was beginning to break out of this confine and be used in a variety of new contexts.   Sargent idealise...

  ANGELICA KAUFFMAN at the ROYAL ACADEMY, LONDON on the 23 rd, MAY 2024 Self-portrait in the traditional costume of the Bregenz Forest, 1781 by Angelica Kauffman Angelica Kauffman was born in 1741 in Chur, Switzerland and trained and worked in Italy.   Her gender meant that she was unable to gain access to an apprenticeship in the workshop of a master but, under her father’s influence who was an Austrian muralist and painter, she gained practical artistic skills.   She left Italy in 1766 and moved to London where she was a Founding Member of the Royal Academy.   In 1782 she moved again and settled in Rome. Design, 1778-80 by Angelica Kauffman Kauffman was a society portraitist whose work was steeped in classicism, Greek columns, ancient sculptures and busts, but also heroic narratives like Ulysses and Anthony and Cleopatra.   Her male contemporaries like Joshua Reynolds referenced the work of the Old Masters, the traditional lineage of almost exclusively ...

  EXPRESSIONISTS TATE MODERN 21 ST MAY 2024   Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin by Gabriele Muenter, 1909 Militarism and autocracy were the forces that bound 19 th century Bavaria together.   Bavaria was one of the largest of the German states, allied to Napoleon and later part of the south German confederacy defeated by Prussia in 1866.   Bavaria was now part of the 2 nd Reich of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, yet it maintained many distinct regional flavours. The Dancer, Andrew Sacharoff by Marianne von Werefkin, 1909 King Ludwig I of Bavaria had attempted to liberalise Munich to attract artists, writers and musicians to its bohemia, the district of Schwabing.   His son continued the work by attracting the exiled composer Richard Wagner, for whom he provided the necessary funds for an opera house in the Franconian town of Bayreuth.   Wagner was relieved that he did not have to wear livery, for instance, one of a range of outdated regula...

  THE GERMAN WAR ECONOMY   Today the German economy is the third strongest in the world and many German companies such as Volkswagen, Siemens, BMW, Adidas, and Porsche are at the forefront of technological design and innovation, vorsprung durch Technik (progress through technology – a famous slogan used by Audi in the 1980s).   After WW1 the German economy was in crisis, a result of the debt incurred by Germany in borrowing money to fight the war, and because of reparations, a consequence of defeat and the Treaty of Versailles.   The sum owed amounted to 132 billion gold marks (US $33 billion dollars at the time).   The Germans regarded the Treaty as unfair and sought to re-negotiate the reparations bill resulting in the Dawes Plan and then the Young Plan which was a new schedule of payments which would allow Germany to re-pay a reduced debt by 1988.   The 1920s, known as ‘the roaring Twenties’ because of prosperity and economic boom was also affecti...