Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle

On our way back from Portmeirion a couple of weeks ago, we called in at the Penrhyn Castle near Bangor. This stately home, built in the style of a Norman castle,  between 1820 and 1845 for the Pennant family, must be the largest National Trust property I’ve visited. It was enormous. Inside it was incredibly ornate. All the rooms were massive, with high, vaulted ceilings, every piece of stonework appeared to be intricately carved, there were even stained glass windows. Gothic in style it was like being inside a cathedral. Unfortunately photographs are not permitted inside NT properties and there aren’t any pictures of the interior on the NT web site.

So what did this property say about the person who had it built?

Well,  its one big ego statement. The design shows that the guy clearly wanted to be compared with the Norman barons who ruled the conquered territories of England and Wales with an iron fist. No doubt that’s how he wanted his workers to see him. He also wanted to impress his peers. The castle proclaims out loud “look how much money I have”. But the origins of that money is nothing to be proud of.

The Pennant family’s wealth was originally made in Jamaica from sugar plantations “employing” slave labour. When the possibility of abolition of slavery in the British empire was looming on the horizon, Richard Pennant, a slave owner, anti-abolitionist MP and Irish peer, married Anne Susannah Warburton, the daughter of General Hugh Warburton, acquiring the Penrhyn estate. He invested his fortune in the estate, opening the massive quarry at Bethesda linking it to the sea at Bangor with a narrow gauge railway. Although there was a castle on the estate, the current building was constructed for one of Richard’s successors, George Hay Dawkins Pennant. He was obviously cast in the same mould as his predecessor – although not a slave owner he was a hard employer, ruling his industrial empire with a rod of iron. When the workers in the Penrhyn quarry at Bethesda started to organise he refused to recognise their union and provoked a major strike in 1900. Helped by a recession in the slate industry, Pennant refused to concede to his workers’ demands and they were finally defeated after a long struggle lasting 3 years.  Pennant blacklisted the strikers, refusing to re-engage them.

Another aspect of how the Pennants treated their workers can be seen in the steam engine museum at the Castle. It has an interesting collection of narrow gauge steam engines. One of the displays,  of an engine used on the Penrhyn quarry works railway had two carriages attached to it. A sumptuous covered carriage used by the owner and his managers when visiting the quarry, and an open-topped waggon rode by workers.  Given the prevailing weather in North Wales (i.e. lots of rain) it must have been a pretty miserable journey to work for a large part of the year.  The wagons weren’t even provided by the employers. The workers had to club together to purchase them themselves.

Carriage for the bosses - open-topped wagon for the workers

Peter Randall-Page at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Summer in Britain has been pretty miserable – with much of July and August a washout.  So when the weather forecast for Thursday was promising we decided it would be a good idea to take a day off work and go out somewhere and enjoy a rare bit of sunshine. As we’d enjoyed our visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park earlier this year, we decided to make the journey over the Pennines and have a look at their new exhibitions.  Set in a country park, with a pleasant walk (uphill!) of a couple of kilometres between the two main galleries, and with plenty of works in the grounds to look at as well, a visit to the YSP is a good way to combine a bit of culture with some exercise in the countryside.

The exhibition in the Underground gallery, with some works displayed outdoors on the lawn, showed works by Peter Randall-Page, a British sculptor. There are over 50 pieces in the exhibition, many of them large scale sculptures carved from granite boulders and other rocks,  including two massive pieces, “Corpus” and “Fructus”, each weighing more than 13 tonnes and over two metres high, that were  created especially for YSP from Kilkenny limestone .

I really liked his large scale sculptures. They were abstract pieces with complex patterns carved into their surface. My natural reaction was to want to touch them, to feel their surface and texture. It was possible to do this for the pieces displayed outdoors, but this was strictly prohibited for the work inside the gallery.

Indoors there were three large spaces, each displaying a number of sculptures together with works created from tiles, fragments of fired brick clay, which were used to create symmetrical abstract patterns on the wall. In a fourth room there were smaller works, which were really experiments, trial pieces and models for larger sculptures, together with sketches and drawings. These allowed the viewer to get an idea of the process involved in the development of his ideas and works.

The larger stone sculptures reminded me of some of the pieces displayed during our visit in April, when there was an exhibition of works by Isamu Noguchi. He was obviously an influence and I later read in the exhibition guide theat they had corresponded in the 1970′s.

In the entrance space there were four spectacular pieces collectively titles “Shapes in the Clouds (Plato Dreaming of Artemis)”, smaller in scale than most of the other sculptures. They were carved from a stunning marble, which had a structure which revealed very fine delicate, swirling patterns. I could see why the artist compared them to clouds, but J said that they reminded her of the patterns that you can see on Jupiter and the other gas giants and I think that this was a good description of how they looked.

Unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the gallery, but I was able to take some photographs of the works displayed outdoors (and to touch them!). The Guardian has some pictures of the exhibition, including works from inside the gallery, on its website.  There are also reviews by the Guardian and New Statesman.

"In Mind of Monk"

"Multiplication by Division"

"Secret Life IV"

A night in Portmeirion

The Village

Anyone who has ever watched the 1960′s TV show “The Prisoner” will recognise the scene in the picture above. It’s the village were Patrick McGoohan was held captive as “Number 6″.  I used to watch this programme as a boy and was always facinated by the place.

The location for the series was  Portmeirion, a fantasy village in North Wales created by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis. He acquired the estate, on a peninsula near Portmadoc, in 1925. At that time there were only a few buildings on the site, including the mansion that now houses the hotel, a lodge/stable block that is now become “the Salutation“, the building now known as “the Mermaid” and  Castell Deudraeth, a Victorian mansion, which isn’t in the village proper, but stands closer to the entrance to the estate.

Over the years he assembled a collection of buildings which he relocated to the site while he had others constructed from scratch from his designs. In some cases he created new structures from disparate elements he acquired. For example the ornate porch on “the Pantheon” (or “Dome”) is a massive Norman Shaw fireplace!  The result was an Italian style village on the coast of North wales. But its misleading to think of it as Italian – it has its own style. I mean, would an Italian village have a floodlit statue of the buddha and statues of Thai dancers on top of columns in the main square? Look closely at the buildings and they’re not always what they seem. Proportions are such that some of them appear larger than they really are.

It isn’t always obvious to day visitors, but the village is actually a hotel.  Of course, there is the Hotel itself, situated in a stunning location on the estuary, and Castell Deudraeth is also a hotel. But most of the buildings are either hotel rooms or suites or self catering accommodation. It isn’t cheap to stay there but as a special treat we booked a suite in one of the village buildings. You don’t know which one you’re staying in until you arrive. We had the top floor of “the Anchor“. It had two rooms – a lounge and a bedroom with a four-poster bed. Nicely furnished it had an excellent view out over the estuary.

The Anchor

Inside "the Anchor"

The deal we had was for dinner bed and breakfast, the meals being taken in the main hotel. The food was very good – one quibble is that the meat was cooked more than we’d really asked for – “medium” was really well done and “rare” was more like medium.

As hotel guest you get the run of the village and it was good to be able to wander around after all the day visitors had left. Mind you, it wasn’t too busy when we arrived as it had been raining heavily on and off during the morning and afternoon. Luckily it eased off just after we arrived and we were able to wander round the village, walk down to the beach – luckily “Rover” wasn’t around (a “prisoner reference!) – and wander around the woods.

No sign of Rover!

Unfortunately it poured down the next morning, so we only stayed a little while before moving on. Despite the rain it was an enjoyable break and we’ll do it again sometime – apparently you can get good deals during the off-season and it would be good to re-visit during the winter months.

Berthe Morisot: artist and model

There aren’t many works by female artists in the world’s galleries (although the Pompidou Centre in Paris has tried to address this with its current exhibition elles@centrepompidou). One exception is the impressionist painter Berthe Morisot who has works displayed in a number of major galleries including the Musee d’Orsay and Musee Marmottan in Paris. and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Her style is typical of the Impressionists. She uses bright colours and her works capture the essence of her subject,  rather than being photographic or academic. She tended to concentrate on domestic scenes, including paintings of her friends and family. “Le berceau” (see below) which is displayed in the Gare d’Orsay being a typical example. It prtrays her sister Edma and Edma’s baby daughter Blanche.

Le berceau (The Cradle) by Berthe Morisot

In my view she was a major artist despite the constraints placed upon her as a woman living in the 18th Century. Despite this she managed to balance being a wife and mother with producing some important works, contributing to all but one of the Impressionist exhibitions. Perhaps she could have achieved even more if she had lived in a more enlightened age. There is a good article about her life and work here.

There is another reason why you can’t help noticing Berthe Morisot during a visit tot he Musee Marmotan and the Gare d’Orsay – she appears in a number of major paintings by Manet.

"Le Balcon" by Manet

Here she is sitting at the front of the balcony

"Berthe Morisot à l'éventail" by Manet

and here she is, with her face hidden behind a fan.

"Berthe Morisot au bouquet de violettes" by Manet

This is probably his most well known painting of her.

Looking at these pictures I can understand why he took her as his subject so often. She was an attractive woman with a dark, mysterious beauty.  No wonder tongues wagged (and continue to wag) about his relationship with her! There is, however, no direct evidence to suggest that their relationship went beyond a close friendship.  She actually married his brother, Eugene, and they had a daughter Julie, who Berthe included in many of her works.  Julie’s diary was published as a book  – “Growing up with the Impressionists: the Diary of Julie Manet” which is an interestig read for anyone interested with the Impressionists and their world.

Growing Up with the Impressionists: The Diary of Julie Manet