Steventon Church

Here it is, finished at last:



Jane and Cassandra Austen Walking to Steventon Church, Christmas Morning
 



And, as you see, titled.

And signed.

And now released into the cyberworld.

But only in a highly unprofessional my-own-not-very-good photo form for the present. This was the best I could do. It will be properly scanned ready for printing as Christmas cards later on. So the snow WILL be snow-coloured and not dirty grey!

Appropriately enough this church is dedicated to St Nicholas. Very seasonal!

 

For any history geeks (like me) out there, here is a relevant bit from the church's official guide I dug up while originally researching the idea:

 

"Steventon church is best known for its associations with Jane Austen and is the single most important building left standing in Steventon which relates to her life when she lived here. The rectory is gone, but the church survives. It was an everyday part of the first 25 years of her life.

 

"Her father, George Austen, two of her brothers, James and Henry, and her nephew William Knight were all Rectors of Steventon. Prior to George his cousin Henry had been the Rector. Which is to say members of the Austen family were Rectors of  Steventon from 1759 to 1873, a period of 114 years, more than any other family in the church's history.

 

"Jane was baptised here as were four of her siblings - Henry, Cassandra, Francis and Charles. Her grandmother, her eldest brother James and both his wives, Anne and Mary, are buried here. As are Jane's nephew William Knight, several members of his family and a number of her friends and acquaintances.

 

"Every memorial, bar one, inside the church has a direct connection to Jane Austen. No doubt several of the graves in the churchyard are those of people she knew in the village."

Snow in July ...

Just taking a break here in blogland from the depths of winter:

 

I've got a bit muddled with my trays of sorted clippings and appear to have lost some important bits altogether, so I thought I'd come here then return to the worktable with new eyes. And maybe find those elusive bits. In fact they might be under the table now I come to think of it.

Even worse, they might be underfoot.

 

So, the scene is St Nicholas's in Steventon. The time, Christmas. The protagonists, Jane and Cassandra Austen.

Their father was the vicar there. That's going to be him, at the church door.

 

I have taken a few liberties, as is my wont.

I mean, I don't think a dog would have been allowed into church for one thing. And the spire was added to the building years later, after the Steventon era of Jane. And I'm not religious enough to know whether Anglicans have what looks like it might be a midnight service.

As for Regency guardian angels ... 

But it's the atmosphere that counts, right?

It's going to be a really traditional Christmas card.

 

There's still a long way to go, but consider the initial stage:

I'm nearer the finish than the start.

Jane and Cassandra relocate to the US

Sold this week, one of my most popular (card-wise) original collages:

 

Now parcelled up and ready to fly to a new home in Philadelphia.

 

But still available, of course, in giclee print form from my website:

www.amandawhite-contemporarynaiveart.com

 

and as cards and small digital prints from my online shop:

http://AmandaAWhite.etsy.com

Jane Austen in Bath

4, Sydney Place

Jane Austen lived in three different houses during her Bath period. Her father had suddenly decided to retire and up sticks from the only home Jane had known for the first twenty-five years of her life and decamp to the fashionable spa of Bath.

We are so accustomed to seeing these beautiful honey-coloured buildings from an historical perspective that it's easy to forget that for Jane and her contemporaries they were new-builds.

Gracious and elegant on the outside, the interiors left much to be desired if we are to believe Jane. While still house-hunting she filled her sister in on their progress after a viewing of Green Park Buildings (which would be a subsequent Austen lodging and the place where her father eventually died):

"Our views of GP Buildings seem all at an end, the observation of the damps still remaining in the offices of an house which has been only vacated a week, with reports of discontented families and putrid fevers, has given the coup de grace..."

But number 4 Sydney Place (built in 1795) appears to have satisfied the Austen family and they moved in in the summer of 1801 and stayed until 1805.

One of its principle attractions was its proximity to one of Jane's favourite Bath haunts: Sydney Gardens, a park where (according to a contemporary source) "The hand of taste is visble in every direction." Indeed, number 4 overlooked (as it still does) the gardens, and the first floor drawing room commanded fine views over its sloping lawns and shady walks.

The hall and dining room were on the ground floor and a passage off led through to a pleasant garden at the back of the house.

The comings and goings of visitors to the gardens must have offered endless people-watching opportunities for the nosy Austen sisters...

And not just by day either.

"Upon gala nights the music, singing, cascades, transparencies, fireworks, and superb illuminations, render these gardens very similar to Vauxhall," wrote a contemporary chronicler.

Sounds divine.

Chawton Cottage - again

Drawn back to doing a view of Jane Austen's Hampshire cottage from the front, overlooking the busy road to Winchester. Okay, so I am capturing it at a not so busy time of day. Or not so busy day. 

Sunday then.

And it looks a bit churned up.

And there's a visitor calling.

Darn! Right in the middle of a beautifully turned sentence ...

Apparently Miss Austen, who didn't have A Room of Her Own (in the Virginia Woolf sense of a study - her father had one of those), would hide her work (i.e. whatever one of the series of classic works of English literature she was engaged on) under a blotter whenever visitors interrupted her flow of written words. A squeaky door she didn't allow to be oiled would give her sufficient warning to compose herself.

I hope the visitor in the picture is a welcome one.

With lots of the sort of gossip Miss Austen thrived on.

Summer Evening in the Austen Garden

 

Finished at long last! 

Jane Austen having an al fresco writing session on an idyllic summer's evening (hence the golden glow in the west!) surrounded by her flowers and her cats and serenaded by the birds. 

I am relieved to finish it because it seemed to become fiddlier by the minute. Miss Austen's minute eyebrows were the last straw - or should I say last pieces to be pasted down. The cats' eyeballs weren't exactly a piece of cake either!

Detail (what's she writing? A letter, a future classic or maybe just her shopping list?)

birdsong!

While I was searching for suitable pieces in magazines I came across a wonderful photo of an old fashioned coach and horses of the sort that thundered past the Austen cottage frontage and which Jane would have heard as she sat in her garden. I am very tempted to have a go at that scene but for the time being I'm tidying up the studio and my scrappings-littered table and going with the flow and seeing what surfaces in my doodle book ..

Also have to choose and photograph two paintings to send off for the great big British Naives show at Delamore House in May.

Right, time for a celebratory cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit I think

Al fresco with Miss Austen ...

You find me struggling with the garden, not an hour since I was hacking back the ivy (which is going bonkers - or should that be growing bonkers?) and potting up some pansies.

But my mind and inward eye was on Jane Austen's shrubs and borders which are what's on my ancient drawing board (a venerable and battered piece of solid wood that dates from my first week at art school more years ago than I care to remember - I may upload a photo of it some time).

As you see, I am still at the piecing and plotting stage after laying in a crazy quilt-style lawn.

Here's my original doodle:

Jane Austen's great-niece said:

"I remember the garden well, a very high thick hedge divided it from the Winchester road and around it was a pleasant shrubbery walk, with a rough bench or two where, no doubt, Mrs Austen and Cassandra and Jane spent many a summer afternoon ..."

Well, I have departed a bit from the rough benches I know though who knows they may yet supercede the more elegant wrought iron furniture.

Anyway, this is the current state of play.

Anything - or then again nothing - may happen in the next 24 hours.

My Little Shop

and some of my current stock:

A Jane Austen Christmas

A John Keats Christmas

Seasonal cards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These and other goodies available in my shop here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/AmandaAWhite

Out of season's greetings from Miss Austen ...

I glued in the last snowflake (which all look suspiciously like the cotton wool balls my dad and I used to make for the Christmas tree when I was really small) this afternoon.

 

The light wasn't very good so it's a bit dark and there is about 3 and a half centimetres chopped off on either side because my camera doesn't do nice slimline rectangles, only dumpy ones. When I have better images on the Canon I will replace all the duff photos I have taken of late. As it is there are just one-and-a-half robins on either side of the house instead of two.
But I wanted to upload it because I then feel it is done and out there and I am freed to start on something else.

Mrs Austen in her pyjamas has gone. And that may or may not be Martha Lloyd in the doorway putting out the cat. The swirly lines have writing on. Which may or may not (ambiguous moi?) be words written by Jane Austen, a Christmas carol or just a simple swirl of seasonal fog. Or all three. I gave the neighbour bearing holly a black dog. The Dilke's refugee cat is back in the scraps box.

Christmas always reminds me of childhood. And one of the things I loved most in the run up was opening envelopes from aged relatives containing those dated (even then) cheapo cards with cheesy scenes of coaches and four, snow, glowing mullioned windows and rosy cheeked people in strange old-fashioned clothes. Often liberally sprinkled in glitter. I thought they were wonderful and would wish myself into the jolly scenes. As I got older and more sophisticated (who am I kidding?) I would outwardly make fun of them while still sneakily getting a thrill if one came through the post.

So now I produce this design. I think there are some echoes in there. My past is catching up on me ...

Beavering away on Chawton Cottage

Okay, so some of this is stuck down and some is in a state of flux. Is this a metaphor for my life I ask myself in ironic tone.

I am afraid it is becoming a bit unwieldy. For a "cottage" Jane Austen's was a bit of a humdinger as far as size goes. I have had to add on more at the sides as I go along to try to approximate to the rather grand proportions.

Looks like the turkey might be squeezed out. But there goes Jane Austen crossing the street. And her mum is at the door. Though she looks a wee bit too much like she is in her pyjamas at the moment so that will have to be changed.

I have been mugging up on Chawton Cottage for some background info: It was already 120 years old when the Austens moved in, part of Jane's brother Edward's estate. He improved it quite a lot for them, adding on more rooms at the back, apparently. Jane, her mother, her sister and their friend Martha Lloyd were not the only inhabitants, there were several servants. No wonder the place is a bit of a sprawler rather than a poky two up two downer with roses round the door traditional building associated with the word "cottage".

And it must have had an interesting view, looking out as it did over the main road to Winchester with all the comings and goings of the coaches that that implies. And the clatter. In fact in one of her letters Jane describes looking out of the front window and seeing the face of one of her nephews inside a passing coach.

Anyway, enough of this and back to the drawing board. I am setting myself a this week deadline for this larger-than-usual piece.

A Happy Christmas in July ...

I always did prefer cold to heat so what better time to put together my Jane Austen Christmas card design?

As the petunias wilt, brittle rubber tree leaves clatter to the ground and the cats sprawl in the shade, here am I in the cool and clutter of the studio moving bits of paper around the drawing board and trying to imagine myself into a Regency December in Hampshire kinda mood.

The idea came to me when I stumbled upon a contemporary engraving of holly sellers. I don't know if that's a holly seller approaching Chawton Cottage or one of the neighbours, but either way he gave me the way in to the picture: Probably not raggety enough for a seller now I come to think of it. A neighbour then. With a gift of holly and fir from his fields to deck the Chawton Cottage halls.

On the left is a refugee - surplus cat from the Dilke tribe in Keats House I found in my box of unused bits and pieces.

He may yet be transformed into a turkey. I am not sure that turkeys had got their feet on the Christmas traditions ladder or do I mean under the traditional Christmas meal table at that time, probably not, but I will conveniently ignore the fact. I fancy doing a turkey.

In the meantime I am pleased to announce the unveiling yesterday of my (still under construction) new website:

http://www.amandawhite-contemporarynaiveart.com/

Please drop by and have a look if you have the time, as I say I am still faffing around with it so there are lots of blanks and things that probably need blanking come to that. Golly I am getting so au fait with technology I can't believe it.

Jane Austen collage, finished at last

Jane and Cassandra Austen Tending Their Garden at Steventon

Phew! Finished at last. Has this been my most fiddly to date? Probably. It has also been a bit of a mission tracking down suitable prints that I thought fitted the period.

My admittedly shallow researches so far didn't actually turn up any references to either Jane or her sister Cassandra tending their garden at Steventon Rectory, their practical enthusiasms seemed channelled into putting their ensembles together and attending dances but I daresay they may have done some genteel pruning or cutting of flowers for the house.

But they most certainly did patchwork.
In a letter written to Cassandra in 1811 Jane wrote:
"Have you remembered to collect pieces for the patchwork - we are now at a standstill?" And I believe one is on display at the Jane Austen Museum in Chawton. So I've got that right, anyway

I don't seem to be able to capture the brightness of this picture. I've taken about a dozen shots but none of them come up to the mark. I'm looking forward to getting some professional style photos taken by my daughter when she arrives at the back end of July.
Bear with me!

The Austen Rectory taking shape

But more slowly than I would wish given distractions, various. Which is to say watching too much Wimbledon and hacking back ivy and an African creeper (I really don't know its proper name, African creeper is what a friend from South Africa used to call it so I bow to her superior knowledge) in the arbour I'm trying to get tidied up for use as an outdoors painting den. Yes, painting. Certainly not collaging - the bits would scatter to the four breezes.

And I will have to share with the cats as they think it's theirs. Although they seem to have gone off it at the moment. But cats are like that. As soon as they see someone else muscling in on their former territory I daresay the arbour will become all the rage with them.

I will post a picture at some point once it is respectable.

In the meantime I post the above work-in-slow-progress shot. To make me feel I am getting somewhere. The colours are much brighter but I can't move the piece to better light without much of it going awol.

It has acquired Pollock's Toy Museum-style drapes. And Jane and sister Cassandra with lady-like trugs doing some lady-like gardening. (I don't think hacking back alien creepers would have registered on their horizon). So you see life does sometimes reflect art. Or should that be the other way around?

Steventon Rectory

Steaming ahead with Jane Austen

Sort of.......

It went from this earlier start

But still a long way to go.

Steventon Rectory was the home of Jane Austen for the first 25 years of her life. The place was torn down many years ago and there is now nothing left of it except a water pump in the middle of a field, so I am treating it as a bit of a fairy tale with more than a sideways (or backwards) glance at the simply stunning quilt exhibition at the V&A last year and to childrens' samplers of the time. 

Jane's letters are full of references to fabrics and sewing projects so the idea of a patchwork effect feels right.

Let us see how it goes.