Independent – Yes, really!

The main story in 6 December’s Independent newspaper (London) describes how:

An undercover investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, published in The Independent today, has taped senior executives at Bell Pottinger:
* Claiming they have used their access to Downing Street to get David Cameron to speak to the Chinese premier on behalf of one of their business clients within 24 hours of asking him to do so;
* Boasting about Bell Pottinger's access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, to Mr Cameron's chief of staff Ed Llewellyn and to Mr Cameron's old friend and closest No 10 adviser Steve Hilton;
* Suggesting that the company could manipulate Google results to "drown" out negative coverage of human rights violations and child labour;
* Revealing that Bell Pottinger has a team which "sorts" negative Wikipedia coverage of clients;

Later in the article:

Joint events could be held with influential think tanks close to government, such as Policy Exchange, the firm suggested. Another strategy would include passing information to key academics "so that they are then blogging the right messages out there – so it's coming from an independent,"

and:

A presentation shown during the meeting said it could "create and maintain third-party blogs" – blogs that appeared to be independent. These would contain positive content and popular key words that would rank highly in Google searches.

I doubt whether Bell Pottinger’s false flags, if they exist, would be so daft as to call themselves ‘independent’, but just to reassure readers – this blog really is independent and I’m on my own with my own views. You may well think that is all too apparent, and also that nobody in their right mind would pay me for this stuff.

Though I wouldn’t mind knowing how to rank more highly on Google. A recent search for Sarah Helm Loyalty found my recent post ranked 142nd. The much respected Normblog’s contribution on the same subject was 50th, the highest for a private blogger as far as I could tell. So probably I should just learn to face up to my own intellectual shortcomings!

Landscapes in Oxford and Bath

In a post back in August I remarked in passing “should France ever leave the Eurozone, which may seem unlikely”. Now we are being told that the breakup of the euro is the subject of contingency planning in finance ministries, embassies and the headquarters of multinationals across the world. What could be a better way to escape briefly from the encircling economic gloom than two visits to Arcadia?

The Ashmolean in Oxford is showing Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape, the first major exhibition of his work in over a decade. Claude Gellée (c.1600–1682), spent most of his working life in Rome, but his origins were in the commune of Chamagne in the Duchy of Lorraine, (now in Vosges (88) in France; never Champagne as the Ashmolean press pack states, perhaps wanting to inject some fizz). His biographical details are unclear, he may even have been trained originally as a pastry-cook, but by his thirties he was settled in Rome and had begun to make a name for himself by painting port scenes and landscapes. During his long artistic career he had the patronage of royalty as well as popes and cardinals.

The exhibition is organised in three sections: firstly, sketches and drawings from the Roman countryside; then thirteen paintings mostly with classical (Aeneas and Dido in Carthage, left) or religious themes, all providing the enchantment promised by the show’s name; finally, etchings including the fascinating series of the fireworks in Rome in 1637.

Claude’s work was encountered and collected on the Grand Tour by the English aristocracy who later laid out their parklands in the spirit of his pastoral idyll. One English artist he had some influence over was Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) whose landscapes are the subject of the Bath Holburne Museum’s second major exhibition since redevelopment, Gainsborough’s Landscapes: Themes and Variations. Although only six paintings are shown, these were well-chosen and helpfully complemented by drawings and prints, all skilfully curated by Susan Sloman. Gainsborough’s fame and livelihood came from his portraiture, particularly during the years 1759-74 when he lived in Bath, but as he said:

I’m sick of portraits and wish very much to take up my viol de gamba and walk off to some sweet village where I can paint landskips and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease.

Perhaps this shows in his portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews (below) in the National Gallery, London, which, although telling us all we might want to know about them, still manages to be 50% landscape.

Gainsborough painted a romantic view of the countryside around Bath but populated it with more realistic inhabitants, Peasants Returning from Market (left) or looking after pigs, than Claude’s paintings feature. The exhibition reminds us of our encircling economic realities when it explains that Bath’s popularity as an all year spa and resort depended on winter heating provided by the coal mined a few miles to the south of the city.

Economic reality may also be intruding in the way that shows are increasingly augmenting a relatively small number of paintings with drawings, etchings and so on (Table below). In so far as these lesser works add depth and focus and encourage a more scholarly approach in visiting exhibitions, this is probably not entirely a retrograde step. Anyway, given that paintings are inevitably more expensive to transport and insure, we are probably going to have to get used to it.

Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape continues at the Ashmolean until 8 January and then can be seen at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt from 3 February to 6 May 2012. Gainsborough’s Landscapes: Themes and Variations will be in Bath until 22 January and then the appropriate parkland surroundings of Compton Verney from 11 February to 10 June 2012. Let’s hope the eurozone will survive for both.