Allan Bank by Moonlight

Finished this last night ... Allan Bank in Grasmere by moonlight, with William Wordsworth and his books in the foreground.

The poet was a keen gardener and spent a lot of time in that of Allan Bank, creating a romantic landscape, complete with "viewing tunnel" and walks. So sheep, with their voracious appetite, were probably a no-no, but I have put them in to add a Samuel Palmer-ish touch.

The windowframes, as often happened with Georgian buildings, were later replaced by gaping plate glass numbers. I went so far as to get in touch with the National Trust to check on their former small-paned status, which was confirmed by Sarah Woodcraft, a very helpful NT outdoor team curator for the area.

Progress in paradise ...

Golly, the sheep are threatening to overwhelm things. I may have to have a cull ... Though I have to say Palmer was never one to eek out his sheep when it came to a rural landscape.

And there's William Wordsworth, contemplating the moon in the finest nocturnal Romantic tradition of contemplating the moon, life, love and everything. And sheep, of course.

I almost had a disaster when I came in and discovered the big ginger, Princess Pushy, lying fast asleep in total feline abandon right across the board. (Actually, thinking about it, it would be a cat-astrophe, not a disaster). Anyway, to a large extent it was as so much was dislodged (and this despite my not yelling at her so as not to frighten her and scatter the lot), it took ages to restore order (thank goodness for my digital images).

Am having trouble finding a nice large piece of slightly off-white for the house .... nothing in the scrap boxes is quite what I have in mind. And I really like to start the process of sticking the whole collage beginning with the house itself. 

Might have to resort to the stationer or art shop tomorrow .....

An earthly paradise

That's how Dorothy Wordsworth described the grounds of Allan Bank, the rather grand house on the hill overlooking Grasmere Lake where in 1808 she, her brother William, his wife Mary, Mary's sister Sara and the three little Wordsworth children moved when they left the increasingly cramped conditions of Dove Cottage.

In addition there were two friends, fellow poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey, who also came to stay for protracted visits. Extraordinary characters, one of whom was in love with Sara.

It must have been quite an interesting and emotional household!

Ironically Allan Bank had been lambasted as a horrible blot on the landscape by Wordsworth as he had watched it being built, slap bang in the middle of his idyllic, beloved view from Dove Cottage a couple of years previously, a no-concessions white rectangle in the midst of lush green upland.

But as it turned out the Wordworth Allan Bank interlude was a brief one. The chimneys smoked horribly and William fell out with the landlord. After two years they left for pastures new though near.

The house is now a National Trust property, recently restored after fire destroyed much of the interior a few years ago.

The above is what I did yesterday. I haven't got very far as you see. Though I must admit it has moved on from the minimalist evening before:

As you see, it's all about moving the pieces around at the moment.

I've been looking at a lot of Samuel Palmer, Edward Calvert and British neo-Romantics lately and I think some of it has rubbed off. I enjoyed going through my boxes of cuttings to assemble a nice big swatch of nightime colours and reading some Wordsworth at bedtime to try and think my way into this imaginary landscape loosely based on some photos hunted down on the net (good old Google).

Dove Cottage, Grasmere and a lot of weather

Finished at last.

After a lot of putting in taking out of sheep and a whole lot of weather. As I said in another post, heavy weather and the cozy clicking of windscreen wipers are what I remember most about my childhood day trips to the Lakes. 

Consequently it is a bit of a wet and blustery vision I have snipped of the cottage with Mr W himself watching that flock go by, though they look lively rather than leisurely, I'm afraid.

So here it is again, that inspirational fragment from To Sleep:

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees 

Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,

Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky ...

Far too cold and wet for bees , murmuring or otherwise I think.

As usual the picture above has lost some details, it not being the same proportion as my camera shots and me being a non-cropper (still).

So here is the unadulterated version, adulterated by bits of masking paper round the edges.

In the bleak midwinter

This is taking longer than I would like because of all the other things going on right now, not least of them being Christmas, which all of a sudden is upon us. And not a single card written! 

Just as well I have decided on placing Dove Cottage bang in the middle of winter with none of that foliage I was talking about. Far too fiddly for the feel of the picture, anyway. 

 Must be the effect of hearing carols on the radio seeping into my scissors. In the Bleak Midwinter has always been one of my favourites, mixing my poets here I know. 

I have taken a bit (a bit? you must be joking) of a liberty with the positioning of the cottage too - in Wordsworth's day he did have a clear view over Lake Grasmere but I doubt whether even then it was lapping almost up to the front garden! But needs (and spatial limitations) must.

Working on Wordsworth

It's coming together at last.

I was still faffing around in a fairly directionless manner, abandoning the board and going back to my doodle book.

 Then I found these four tranquil lines from a longer poem by Wordsworth called To Sleep:

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees

Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,

Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky ...

Then I found a couple of full page Dolce & Gabanna ads in some magazines I bought at the car boot sale on Saturday .... allowing me some big pieces for smooth fields in just the right Lake Districty shade ...

 Another day or two and plenty of foliage should do it.

I want to keep it looking rough-hewn.

The Dove and Olive, Grasmere

The Dove and Olive was the name of William Wordsworth's seventeenth century cottage during its time as an inn. Some also refer to it as The Dove and Olive Bough. By the time the Wordsworths (brother and sister) moved in on December 20 1799, it had been empty for several years and was known as Dove Cottage.

Here, on the edge of Grasmere lake, William and Dorothy - and eventually William's wife Mary - spent eight idyllic years of "plain living and high thinking".

It was the beginning of English Romanticism and here was written Wordsworth's greatest poetry.

Here endeth the lesson.

And here starteth the collage.

I made the mistake of laying down papers and playing around with them on the hideously bright Mediterranean blue cartridge paper currently covering my drawing board.

THAT IS NOT THE BACKGROUND!!!

I always start off with the windows.

The windows are the eyes to a building's soul.

To badly misquote somebody or other.

The left hand window was finished. Or so I thought. It is now binned. For being too neat.

The windows (and everything else) will be pretty much as you see the rest here: rough hewn and sort of geological. To echo the rugged Lake District. No good giving this home a delicate refined look. It is an honest seventeeth century cottage set in a landscape fashioned by glaciers rather than man.

I lived in a primitive, thick-walled seventeenth century cottage in the north once. Massive thick walls and little in the way of refinement - and that was the twentieth century. So I feel a kinship and am keeping the feel of the thing primitive and "plain living". Earthy. No mod cons. Part of the landscape.

Anyway, more later ...