Contributions of the group PIFAL

Hennry Holiday, the Bonnetmaker and a Bonnet

nobody@ipernity.com (Götz Kluge) — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 05:21:37 +0000

Watch those fingers: The photo has been "photoshopped" (by Henry Holiday or Juseph Swain?) before I worked on it using GIMP.

The image shows Henry Holiday and segments of one of Henry Holiday's illustrations (cut by Joseph Swain) to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. The Segments show the Bonnetmaker and a bonnet.

Perhaps the photo is a portrait by Joseph Swain or a self portrait by Henry Holiday, made quite a few years after the Snark was published. Watch Holiday's tinkering (a "Victorian craze"?) with the little finger and the thumb of his left hand.

About the Bonnetmaker:
I've never heard this suggested, but I have always wondered if Carroll was using "Boots" as a portmanteau of "Bonnets and Hoods," and if he using "Boots" to MEAN the Maker of Bonnets and Hoods. You will note that no Boots ever appears in any picture, but the maker of Bonnets does. Also, "Maker of Bonnets" doesn't really begin with B. Carlo 20:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia author Carlo Fortunato (Cfortunato) reckoned that Boots also could be a portmanteau for the maker of Bonnets and Hoods. There may be hints in Carroll's poem too:

[...] The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. [...] The helmsman (This office was usually undertaken by the Boots, who found in it a refuge from the Baker’s constant complaints about the insufficient blacking of his three pairs of boots) used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, “No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm,” had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words “and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.“ [...]

The helmsman usually was the Boots. To me, the relation between the Boots and the Bellman looks like how the work relation between Carroll and Holiday could have looked like, self-mockingly described by Carroll. Moreover, Holiday's depiction of the maker of Bonnets and Hoods, who could be the Boots als well, could be a selfportrait.

009 · · The crew was complete: it included a Boots—
010 · · · · A maker of Bonnets and Hoods—
011 · · A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes—
012 · · · · And a Broker, to value their goods.

281 · · The maker of Bonnets ferociously planned
282 · · · · A novel arrangement of bows:
283 · · While the Billiard-marker with quivering hand
284 · · · · Was chalking the tip of his nose.

It is common understanding that among the Snark hunting crew, only the Boots has not been depicted in Henry Holiday's illustrations. However, if "Boots" is a shortname for "maker of Bonnets and Hoods", then all crew menbers are in the picture.

Henry Holiday

nobody@ipernity.com (Götz Kluge) — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 13:20:00 +0000

Götz Kluge has posted:

This is how Henry Holiday may have looked like a few years before he illustrated The Hunting of the Snark.

Brünhild (Minna Beckman-Tube)

nobody@ipernity.com (Risa Profana) — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 18:03:27 +0000

Risa Profana has posted:

In the german mythology contained in "The Nibelungenlied" Brunhild is the valiant warrior, favourite daughter of Wotan (Odin) and the love of the hero Siegfried, until feminine intrigues cause her to be betrayed and ripped-off of what conferred her with power. Her vengeance causes Siegfried's death.

This painting also represents Minna Beckmann Tube, the wife of the german painter Max Beckmann, who devoted herself to opera singing after he asked her to abandon painting. She came to interprete Brunhild and to be very successful in the opera, but after learning that her husband had fallen in love with another woman, her song silenced forever.

Oil Pastel on hardboard. 2002.

The Butcher and Benjamin Jowett

nobody@ipernity.com (Götz Kluge) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 08:43:41 +0000

Götz Kluge has posted:

053· · The last of the crew needs especial remark,
054· · · · Though he looked an incredible dunce:
055· · He had just one idea--but, that one being "Snark,"
056· · · · The good Bellman engaged him at once.

· · · · · · · · · · · · (Lewis Carroll, from The Hunting of the Snark, 1876)

· · · · · · Need I rehearse the history of Jowett?
· · · · · · I need not, Senior Censor, for you know it.
· · · · · · That was the Board Hebdomadal, and oh!
· · · · · · Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow!

· · · · · · · · · · · · (Lewis Carroll, from Notes by an Oxford chiel, 1874)

Here the Butcher's face could be an allusion to Benjamin Jowett's face. Jowett was an Oxford contemporary of Lewis Carroll.

Hidden Carrol

nobody@ipernity.com (Götz Kluge) — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 03:47:26 +0000

Götz Kluge has posted:

Photographic self portrait by Lewis Carroll, and its inclusion into an illustration by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. In the drafts and in Holiday's drawing I didn't see that structure.

[top]: Henry Holiday: vectorized segment of an illustration (cut by Joseph Swain) to The Beaver's Lesson in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876)
[left]: Original detail
[center]: Low pass filtered detail
[right]: Photographic self portrait by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll, May 1875) displayed in mirror view. (Credits for the photo: Watts Gallery, Compton, Guildford)

Perhaps Joseph Swain (the cutter) played a bigger role in this allusion&citation game. I think that C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) knew about Henry Holiday's allusions. There even may have been a cooperation in combining pictorial and textual allusions. But how can we be sure that Carroll/Dodgson knew about the "hidden Carroll" and the provoking simulacrum (based on a fold in the suit) in that picture?

This comparison also shows, how low pass filtering (blurring) can help. It removes unimportant details in a similar way as our eye/brain "removes" the single dots in a dithered image. In 2009 I initially used the illustrations in the Snark version of Ebooks Adelaide. Due to their low resolution they were blurred renderings of Holiday's illustrations already. Without the blurring I perhaps would not have noticed the first allusion which I found in December 2008.

Billiard-Marker & Henry George Liddell

nobody@ipernity.com (Götz Kluge) — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 05:20:38 +0000

Götz Kluge has posted:

[right]: Henry Holiday's depiction of the Billiard marker in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. The face in color is Henry George Liddell's face (by Hubert von Herkomer). Liddell was Carroll's (Dodgson's) superior in Christ Church, Oxford. (In the image I wrote "George Henry Liddell". But I am to lazy to correct that mistake now.)

[left]: The left image shows Holiday's draft for the right picture and an image depicting Liddell at age 28. That clear resemblance in Holiday's draft of the Billiard marker to Carroll's boss perhaps was a bit too much for Carroll. In the right picture the resemblance is weaker, but the asymmetry of the eyes and eyebrows still is there. In that final illustration Holiday was more cautious: He gave an older Liddell a wig (which slipped a bit out of position) and chopped of his chin.

The Bellman and Charles Darwin

nobody@ipernity.com (Götz Kluge) — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 22:34:00 +0000

Götz Kluge has posted:

1876 and around 1870.

If it was for this pairing only, I would not use this side-by-side image as an example for allusions to Charles Darwin (19th century portrait) in Lewis Carroll's and Henry Holiday's The Hunting of the Snark. Also, too obvious allusions to Darwin would have narrowed the interpretation space which Carroll wanted to leave to his readers. However, there is more.

Darwin portrait found in What Mr Darwin Saw in His Voyage Round the World in the Ship ‘Beagle’, 1879.
»Extracts paraphrased by W.P. Garrison from Darwin’s Beagle diaries.
Son of a US abolitionist, W.P. Garrison published this work anonymously. His stated aim was to 'interest children in the study of natural history, and physical and political geography'. Garrison selected extracts from Darwin's original diaries, reorganising material thematically into four parts: 'Animals', 'Man' (strange peoples and customs, particularly of savage and barbarous life), 'Geography' (physical features of the countries visited by Mr Darwin) and 'Nature' (account of the grandeur of terrestrial processes).«
Source: University of Cambridge > Department of History and Philosophy of Science > Whipple Library > Rare book collections > Online exhibitions

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler

nobody@ipernity.com (Risa Profana) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:50:30 +0000

Risa Profana has posted:

German painter. About her: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfriede_Lohse-W%C3%A4chtler