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Albert Wainwright

June 15, 2015, 6:13 am
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Today's post is staying in the 1930s but this time with Front Free Endpaper favourite, Albert Wainwright. I spent an extremely enjoyable afternoon yesterday with Nick Elm, with whom I edited a book reprinting Wainwright's diaries of his affair with a young German chap called Otto. We were working on a new book and in the process I got to browse through all manner of Wainwright's artwork and sketchbooks, which is always a joy. So, not being one to keep things to myself here are a few pieces. The painting above is quite simply beautiful. We think that maybe it is a painting of the Queen of Sheba given the presence of the lion, but we'd be happy to hear other ideas. Whatever the subject it is quite the most exquisite of his paintings I have ever seen I think. The dark, moody background sets off the jewel like quality of the colours in the foreground perfectly.

These next two are pages from his sketchbooks, which AW used like we might use a diary. These are from a sketchbook he filled when on holiday in Ostende in the late 1930s, just before the war.

If you are interested in Wainwright then do have a look as our book Albert and Otto: Albert Wainwright's Visual Diary of Love in the 20s on Amazon, it's available on most local Amazon sites too if you prefer.






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Vivian Forbes

June 22, 2015, 2:21 pm
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I wrote a little bit about Vivian Forbes on this blog a couple of years ago explaining how he was a devoted to his fellow artist Glynn Philpot but probably as a result, rather overshadowed by him. He isn't particularly well served on the internet either for images of his artwork. So I have gathered a few here. Some of these come from auction websites and others are my own scans of auction catalogues. His prices are very reasonable at auction still with a number of these selling for less than £500 in the late 1990s






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The Little Juggler by Barbara Cooney

June 24, 2015, 2:24 pm
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This is The Little Juggler (of Our Lady). It's a story many of you will know I'm sure. It is based on a 13th century French manuscript that tells the tale of orphan and street juggler Barnaby who becomes a monk. Discovering that he has nothing to give the Virgin Mary as a gift during the spring festival he juggles for her instead (you may by now be realising this is basically the same story as The Little Drummer Boy) which the monks think is outrageous and he gets into a whole heap of trouble and needless to say the Blessed Virgin herself comes to his aid and the moral of the story is happily asserted that even the smallest offering made sincerely is worthwhile. 

The story was popularised in the 1890s by Anatole France and this version is often described as an 'adaptation' of his story. In fact, Barbara Cooney who provides both text and illustrations made her own adaptation of the story direct from the medieval source. It's a delightful book and the illustrations are in both colour and black and white but the colour ones, some of which are reproduced here have such an incredible vibrancy in just blue, red and green that I just had to share them.








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British Neo-Romantic Art in South Wales

June 25, 2015, 2:46 pm
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Having had the immense privilege to see France and Nicolas McDowall's art collection 'in situ' as it were, over the years, I am thrilled to bits to hear that a large selection of their assiduous, forty-year in the making, collection of British Neo-Romantic art is to be exhibited. It was, in fact, only after encountering and spending time with this collection and the careful and quiet thoughts of Frances and Nicolas that I even knew there was something called Neo-Romantic art!

If you are anywhere close to South Wales in the next couple of months it will surely be a must see exhibition. There is to be a catalogue too, 74pp, heavily illustrated and with words by the lovely Dr Peter Wakelin and very reasonably priced from the Monnow Arts Centre.
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Crossdressing Boys

June 27, 2015, 2:34 pm
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This is a scrapbook from the 1920s of press clippings made by The Art Theatre Company about their productions at that period. There are several pages devoted to their production of a new play by George Moore called "The Making of an Immortal", a play about Shakespeare, so far so straightforward. My eye was drawn to the image at the bottom of the page though in which we see three boys dressed as women, to play the women's parts in the play, as in Elizabethan theatre. It can't surely be the last time that boys played the women's parts on the West End stage... but it might be close!



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The Letters of Frederick Rolfe to Charles Kains-Jackson

July 2, 2015, 12:25 pm
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My Dear KJ... The Letters of Frederick Rolfe to Charles Kains-Jackson 
Callum James Books, Portsmouth: 2015. 74pp. Octavo softcover.
ISBN: 9780957450134
£10 (publisher's special price) + £3 p&p (UK), £4 (EU), £5 (Rest of World)
The Blurb: "In 1889, the small town of Christchurch on the South Coast of England was a sleepy neighbour to the booming Victorian seaside resort of Bournemouth. It was here that, somewhat wearied from two failed attempts to complete his vocational training for the Catholic priesthood, a writer and artist of no great achievement called Frederick Rolfe, now calling himself Baron Corvo, came to live for a few years. 

Rolfe went on to become one of the most idiosyncratic novelists of nineteenth and twentieth century, attracting a loyal following of readers and collectors who value his eccentricity of language and the unique vision of his fiction. It was during his time in Christchurch that Rolfe wrote the letters in this current volume to a London solicitor called Charles Kains-Jackson, who was close to the whole of the 1890s 'set' as an editor and contributor to magazines. 

These letters are one side of a correspondence unusual at this time because they are between two gay men, comfortable with their own and each other's sexuality. They range across art, poetry, religion, current affairs and a good dose of gossip. Rolfe is witty, outrageous, camp and insightful by turns."
I quite often begin posts like this by saying that I am "delighted to announce", in this instance, given it is nearly six year since I started working on editing this series of letters, "relieved to announce" would also be appropriate. The book contains 17 letters from Rolfe to Kains-Jackson written during Rolfe's stay in Christchurch. There is an introduction which sets the letters in context and the letters are annotated. In an appendix I have added seven previously unpublished poems by Kains-Jackson from his commonplace books including his 'obituary poems' for such figures are Lionel Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson.

You can buy your copy of the book direct from me by making a payment through Paypal to callum at callumjamesbooks dot com for the correct amount (see above for postage). You may prefer to buy from Amazon.co.uk or from Amazon.com and the book should be available on other regional and local Amazon sites. You could also support your local independent bookshop by going in and quoting the ISBN number and asking them to order you a copy.

If paying via paypal, please make sure that the address on your account is the one to which you would like the book delivered.
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Theras. The Story of an Athenian Boy

July 4, 2015, 8:32 am
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This delightful little book was published in the UK in 1925 by J. M. Dent in a little 12mo. series of books called the Kings Treasuries of Literature under the general editorship of Sir A. T. Quiller Couch. This one is about an Athenian boy who loses his father in a way (or does he) and is taken to Sparta and then travels around a bit. That's about the size of the narrative but it's really just an excuse to introduce a bit of classical history about how they lived in Athens and Sparta to a young reader. Although there is an illustration opposite the title page, not scanned here, that is initialed just "G" I can find no other indication of who the illustrator might have been. 






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The Best School Prize Bookplate Ever?

July 7, 2015, 2:29 am
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Prompted by the post last week about crossdressing boys in the theatre, an Australian friend sent me this scan of an bookplate in his collection. He is quite adamant that the prize should be reinstated although it seems most likely that Mr Cadell won't be around anymore to give lessons in the art of it. One wonders if there is somewhere a prize book for the Best Senior Female Impersonator as well!
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WW1 Auxiliary Hospital: Englethwaite Hall Cumbria

July 7, 2015, 7:28 am
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This is Englethwaite Hall in Cumbria. It was built in 1879 by John Thomlinson, a plaster-of-paris 'magnate'. The house passed through several owners before it was taken over by the Red Cross and opened on July 15th, 1916 as a fully equipped Auxiliary Hospital with 50 beds. It remained open, under the charge of Miss Ida C Kentish, until April 30th, 1919 having treated 593 patients. Whilst I would never consider myself as having an interest in 'military history' I do have an interest in the personal stories of individuals in the First World War. Auxiliary Hospitals have featured in a number of novels about WW1 and, indeed, in ITV's Downton Abbey and it fascinating to finally get a glimpse inside one as it 'really' was from this photo album. I have to say that it looks more or less as I conjured these things in my mind's eye, although I wasn't really prepared for the chintz wallpaper and floral bedcovers! The house went to ruin and was finally pulled down in 1969 and is now the site of a caravan park. This album contains these, obviously professional, documentary photos at the front and the res of the album is filled with candid and personal shots of the soldiers/patients (not shown in this post) in groups or individually, sadly none of them identified.












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Mr Mercury Returns

July 11, 2015, 2:50 pm
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Last month I blogged about the number of appearances made by Mercury as a design image within some 1930s magazines I have, and a number of those appearances were of "Mr Mercury" in the National Benzole Mixture adverts. Regular correspondent to Front Free Endpaper, Nick, was immediately at the keyboard to send this delightful addition above and the following explanation:

Being the proud owner of two pre-war Austin cars I liked your recent piece on Mr Mercury. National Benzole really hit the mark with him mainly, as one commentator of the time put it, because he was so "startlingly naked". It was a stroke of advertising genius and the company soon had top graphic illustrators such as Tom Purvis on its books.

But Mr Mercury came about in a curious way. In 1927 National Benzole was experimenting with various puns on the word 'Spirit' - which is what benzole is, basically - and they came up with the slogan "The Spirit with the Devil in it". The advertisement showed a speeding car being urged on by a harmless little demon resembling an elf crossed with a butterfly. It caused a furore, and several mainstream Churches successfully demanded its withdrawal. But National Benzole were not to be beaten and, almost in retaliation it would seem, launched the gloriously naked and unashamed Mr Mercury on an unsuspecting public in 1928. Interestingly there do not seem to have been any complaints this time, certainly not from the Churches!

Although Mr Mercury spent much of his 30-year career either showing off his physique solo, or giving delighted lady motorists a 'start', he had at least one possible dalliance in 1937/38 with an elderly gentleman who has more than a slight twinkle in his eye at the sight of the beautifully lithe young god pressing all the right buttons for him. I attach a copy of that advert from my collection. Despite research I haven't succeeded in discovering the identity of the model for Mr Mercury - possibly he was just drawn as a combination of parts making up the perfect man. And how!
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Philip Core Paints Roger Rees as Hamlet

July 13, 2015, 1:21 pm
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I am a huge fan of The West Wing (and in my mind every time I say that, the word 'huge' sounds just like President Bartlett says it when throwing a strop "he was a yooge contributor... a yooge contributor" - yes, I'm that kind of fan!), and it was through his comic turn as the British Ambassador Lord John Marbury in The West Wing that I knew and appreciated Roger Rees whose obituaries you will have been reading in the last few days. He was, of course, much more than a 'comic turn' and I would urge you to read some of those obituaries and get a sense of a quite remarkable actor who perhaps never quite found the acclaim he deserved. 

My other interest in Rees came much more recently. You might have picked up from the blog here that I am doing some biographical research into an artist called Philip Core and there are at least two pieces of art by Core in which Rees features. In 1984 Rees was the lead in the RSC's Hamlet and Core was commissioned to paint the poster. At this stage in my research I haven't seen the poster but I am assuming it might be the same image as used on the front of the program (above), that I bought recently. There is another image though, less likely to have been part of the official commission (below) titled "Around Hamlet: Roger Rees" in which a naked Rees, holding the iconic skull, is painted repeatedly from various angles. It is reproduced in the Gay Mens' Press edition of Core's paintings and is there dated 1984 and is clearly not an insubstantial work at nearly two metres across. I know that Core sometimes painted portraits from photographs and sometimes from life, but this has the air of an image painted from life and I had, at the beginning of the year, been very much looking forward to contacting Rees's agent to ask if he could tell me anything about the painting. Sadly, of course, that opportunity has passed with Roger Rees, by all accounts a vibrant and passionate man with a skill on the stage second to none.



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New Short Catalogue from Callum James Books

July 15, 2015, 12:43 pm
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This is something I tried eighteen months ago and was pleasantly surprised by the response so once again: a catalogue (a short one) of unique books and other items. We are talking handwritten manuscripts, collections of photographs and postcards, notebooks, clippings books... all sorts of 'stuff' and, I hope, the kind of things that our type of person really has a feeling for.

So if you are in the UK, this is a little summer treat, if you are one my Australian customers, think of it as a winter warmer!

Prices range from £15 to £600 so I hope there's something for everyone in both subject matter and price. The catalogue is in pdf format only here:

http://www.callumjamesbooks.com/unique2.pdf

NB: if you have a btinternet account and are on my mailing list, you may be wondering why you haven't already got an email about this. It's because btinternet routinely 'delay' and then often don't deliver emails coming from the company who provide my email services. There are only two things you can do about this. You can talk to btinternet and ask them about it (they won't talk to me because I'm not one of their customers!) or if you would like to provide an alternate email I can change your entry on my list.
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David by Giacomo Manzu

July 20, 2015, 8:49 am
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Browsing some art books today I was rather struck by this sculpture of David by Giacomo Manzu, c.1939, and by the more usually helpful write up in the book:

"The biblical figure of David has been a continuing source of inspiration in the work of Manzu. Several versions exist of this subject whose main characteristic is a crouching figure ready to let fly with a sling. From the first realization of 1935 to the later ones of 1938-39, there is a clear break in the choice of subject; David is no longer a virile nude with head and chest erect, as in the first version, but a thin child whose curved back echoes the rounded form of the stone on which he is crouching. In choosing a young boy as David, Manzu expressed his poetic vision of a child struggling against violence."




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The Thackeray and Kinglsey Hotels in Bloomsbury

July 21, 2015, 2:39 am
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Visitors to the British Museum might recognise the lower facade in the above picture as, The Thackeray Hotel, now no longer a hotel, is still more or less intact and faces the main pillared entrance to the Museum. The other hotel above, The Kingsley Hotel, which was supposedly in the road behind the Thackeray, I have been unable to locate on Google Streetview: doesn't mean it's not there just that I can't find it.

The two hotels, presumably managed by the same company issued a little booklet in the 1920s about things "Old and New" to see in London and included in the booklet were numerous illustrations of the interior of the hotels. One imagines any number of literary detectives sweeping across the Afghan rugs and leaning on the mahogany mantles. Delicious!

 





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Three things I love about this Vintage Swimwear Postcard

July 23, 2015, 4:27 pm
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Three things I love about this postcard:
1) The towels make them look like Roman statues
2) The utter disregard for Health and Safety
3) The way that "Love from Aunt Lily" makes it all so very camp!
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Together Forever

July 27, 2015, 2:12 pm
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Dated December 1942 on the back and taken on the same day at the same photographer's studio in the UK, an American serviceman and his sweetheart presumably. Still together 73 years later tucked together on the shelf of a junk shop from whence I rescued them today.


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J. S. Wixom Drawings

July 28, 2015, 7:21 am
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J. S. Wixom is not a name that trips off the tongue from among the pantheon of twentieth century gay artists. As far as I can tell the scarce book Drawings and Paintings of J. S. Wixom is the only publication of this Utah based artist. The drawings here are all from the book and were done between 1969 and 1972 when the book was published. In fact, the lack of publishing imprint suggests maybe a self-published book, which might be why it is scarce today. Apologies for the quality of the images but the book is too large to place on my flatbed scanner, but I hope they give a fair impression of the work.













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Grubby Little Campers

July 29, 2015, 4:07 pm
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I was intrigued enough to buy these simply because they seem such a motley crew.. and grubby! Not scouts and don't appear to be military either. No information came with the photos but they still need a damn good wash whoever they are!





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An Eastern European Vintage Body!

August 6, 2015, 12:12 pm
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Well if I had a body like that I think I would be wanting to show it off a little too! This handsome chap was waiting for me on the mat when I got in this evening. I know this blog has readers from Eastern Europe, I wonder if anyone can help with the writing on the back?



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Short List #19

August 6, 2015, 12:20 pm
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This weekend I sent out Short List No.19. These are lists of anywhere from 25-40ish items that are new to my stock. Many of the items you see here on Front Free Endpaper end up on the Short Lists. They only go to members of my mailing list. It is not an onerous mailing list who also get first look at all my longer catalogues before they are published on my website, and they get information about new publications too. So, I hear you ask 'why am I not already on this list?! What can I do to remedy the situation?" The answer is simple of course, you need only drop me a line at the email address to the top right of the this page and let me know you want in on the list. 

The 'stuff' on these lists is heavily tailored to the tastes and interests of the people who receive it so it is often the case that the contents sell pretty quickly. New people asking to be on the list get links to all previous short lists to browse at their leisure and, who knows, they may find an unsold item that takes their fancy. 

My longer catalogues all appear at the website: www.callumjamesbooks.com

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