February Talk on the Cerne Abbas Giant by Mike Allen

 We were very fortunate to welcome Mike Allen, a geoarchaeologist and environmental archaeologist who coordinated all the archaeological science for the Cerne Giant excavations. A link to the information we were given prior to the talk is here. I took photos of the slides Mike posted for us while he talked about the magnitude of the hill carving. At Bangor University in 1970, I was impressed with our rag week attempts to raise money for WWT when some students carved a panda into a local hillside. The link here lists later exploits for rag week. I have a lifelong interest in hill figures as a result of this early exposure to them.

Mike produced some very informative slides to help answer questions and elucidate what we now know about the figure after his research.

The Cerne Abbas Giant is found in Dorset, north of Weymouth and Dorchester and surrounded by archaeological sites

This slide showed how he's changed over the years, basically in 1908 the navel was incorporated into  the phallus during a scouring operation, increasing it by 6 feet.

Apart from why this man was carved into a prominent hillside, there's also the question when was it carved and as you can see from the table, many people differed in their views

Above some handy stats

And a comparison with Wilmington Man in Sussex who isn't nearly as impressive is he?

There's clearly a book about the research available if you click on the link above

Even before the optically stimulated luminescence results, OSL, they discovered which snails were in the hill wash.

Interesting to see Ravilious painted both hill men, but gave the Giant a brown outline

I've enlarged the last slide for the conclusions because they are fascinating

Visit to Wiltshire Museum, Devizes

 Twelve members of the Friends met at Wiltshire Museum in Devizes last week to have a look at the Ravilious exhibition curated by James Russell. I thought I'd start with a photo of our group since it is such a rare event to get so many of us together in person. On arrival, we were offered a drink and biscuits in this room before going to look at the exhibition, we could also leave belongings in there for a couple of hours, which was very handy.

I'll also include a copy of the poster because there was no permission to take photos of the Ravilious works. 

It is a wonderful exhibition with many paintings and works by Ravilious, it's well worth seeing, not to be missed I would say. The rooms where the works are shown have been upgraded and are really lovely as well. I took a few photos of the wonderful museum artefacts, there are a huge amount of exhibits there.

I took 2 photographs of the Britton 'Celtic' Cabinet which was made in 1824 it's made in the shape of one of the trilithons at Stonehenge with inset watercolours by contemporary artists such as Cotman, it's well worth looking up when you're there.

There are many examples of storage jars, this pear shaped one was particularly lovely, it was found at Crofton.

Above are inlaid and glazed floor tiles found at Nash Hill tile kiln and Malmesbury Abbey 1275-1325

There was also an exhibition of 6 of David Inshaw's North Wiltshire Landscapes coloured etchings and aquatints which are fabulous, but hard to see on a stair way and difficult to photograph because of reflections. I have found information about them online and therefore have one good photograph:

This one is called 'Silbury Sunset'

Above Marlborough Downs

That one is 'East Kennet'

Above 'Silbury Sunrise;
This is what the Art Fund website says about them:

These vivid coloured aquatints are the first works that he produced in this technique. Those depicting the prehistoric monuments in the Avebury World Heritage Site point to the tradition of British Romanticism, of hallowed ancient monuments depicted in their landscape setting. Inshaw admired the work of Thomas Hardy and, like Hardy, is sensitive to the physical and spiritual idiosyncracies of the region's landscape, whether in association with human figures, with the dramatic prehistoric monuments of the area, or with its native wildlife. No aspect is wholly identifiable but the spirit of the place rings out.'

Fabulous visit, thank you to all who make Wiltshire Museum in Devizes such a brilliant place tfor visitors..

Latest Friends talk - James Russell on Eric Ravilious

I was really pleased to book James Russell, curator of the current Ravilious exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, to come and talk to us about the artist Eric Ravilious. He proved a very popular choice of speaker, all tickets were sold for the talk, and we had to send about twenty people away.
I will say something about his talk here, but by visiting his blog, you can watch 3 videos about the current Dulwich exhibition, and get an idea of what an insightful speaker he is.
So please click here for a link to his blog.
I wish I'd taken more photos, but there was so much going on that night that it was hard to concentrate on photos. There were lots of new people joining the Friends and we were taking the second payment for the trip to Dulwich on July 10th.
I took a photo of the computer screen before James' talk:

 The lovely Westbury white horse with a train in the background, and below James talking to a full house:

I've made a few notes, so I'll include them here.
Ravilious went to the Royal College of Art and was a contemporary of Henry Moore and Edward Burra. At this time, there was a resurgence of watercolour painting, and Sell Cottman was a great favourite of Ravilious. At the RCA he was taught by Paul Nash, along with Edward Bawden. Ravilious started by doing wood engraving, there are some in the Dulwich exhibition, it's a good way of illustrating books and newspapers. His wife, Firza was also a successful wood engraver, although she gave this up when they had children.
Ravilious loved the countryside around Wiltshire and liked staying at Oare House, open this year coincidentally on June 28th under the NGS scheme. He painted this atmospheric and cleverly executed painting in the vegetable garden:

It's called Strawberry Nets, the hills of Pewsey Vale can be seen in the background.
Ravilious wanted to be modern, quirky and unusual, so he painted avoiding green, substituting brown  where he could do so.
Peggy Angus another RCA artist was a Scottish communist who lived for years in half a cottage called Furlongs, close to Eastborne in a place called Furle, many glorious paintings were produced here. The glorious Mr Humphreys'greenhouse paintings were painted at nearby Furle Place.
Some memorable paintings were produced in a year of traveling around the border country around Capel y Ffin, Wiltshire and back to Eastbourne. He also painted around Castle Hedingham where he lived for several years, and where there's a memorial to him.
He sadly died in 1942 in the second world war over Norway where he'd gone for the fabulous midnight sun, aged just 39.
The children's book he was working on when he was killed was recently found and bought by the Devizes Museum.
I am really looking forward to the Friends' visit to the Dulwich Picture Gallery on Friday, it will be a real treat.