Dulwich Picture Gallery

About a month ago we visited the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see the Anna Ancher exhibition (fascinating, if a little uneven) and had a wander through the permanent collection housed in the main gallery distinctively designed by Sir John Soane. Soane’s great innovation, the indirect lighting supplied by overhead lantern glazing became the model for a generation or more of subsequent museum designers. It was England’s first public art gallery when it opened in 1817. 

The painting collection had its origins in a project led by a London art dealer and philanthropist, Sir Francis Bourgeois, (whose name lives on in the form of the famous YouTube trainspotter) to assemble a group of Old Masters as the basis of a National Gallery for Poland on behalf of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). By 1795 the PLC had ceased to exist and on his death in 1811 Bourgeois bequeathed funding for Sir John Soane to design a new museum to display the collection. In his design Soane included a Mausoleum to house the remains of Bourgeois and his business partner, Desenfans (and the latter’s wife) that occupies the heart of the building. For those who notice it, it is a slightly unsettling presence but at the same time it’s a grand gesture on the part of Soane to honour an unfulfilled ambition of Bourgeois to create a mausoleum for himself and Desenfans in the grounds of the latter’s home.

These are some notes on the examples that caught my attention.  At the top of the post is a wonderful small portrait by Rubens as a family man. Sensitive and tender, from c. 1612, a painting of his 12 year old daughter, Clara Serena. A sense of immediacy underlines her fragility and, sadly, she only lived a few more years. A stark reminder of how often infant mortality haunted family lives. Next is a small scale version of an old favourite subject due to its potential for eroticism and gruesome violence, in which the Jewish heroine Judith brandishes the severed head of the inebriated Assyrian commander, Holofernes. Based on a much larger original work by Cristofani Aliori, more dramatic conceptions of this story feature the moment of decapitation, most memorably that by Artemisia Gentileschi.  Below is an enigmatic composition of female heads orientated in opposition. It turns out to be a surviving fragment of a Poussin painting from c. 1529, rescued from the remains of an Adoration of the Golden Calf, otherwise war damaged beyond repair. Then we have a close-up on the hands of a Locksmith, extracted from a portrait by an unidentified Neapolitan artist, the full painting can be seen here. Following this is another intimation of mortality - a deathbed portrait of “Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby”, painted by Anthony van Dyck. The story goes that she suddenly died in her sleep at the age of 32 whereupon her husband summoned Van Dyck to record her likeness within two days of her demise. Sidestepping any mawkish sentiment, the artist shows her asleep in peace while also conveying, via the cloudy turbulence of her nightdress that her sleep has no end to it. Finally we have an entire wall of Gainsborough portraits except for a single Hogarth (lower left). The centrepiece is a double portrait (c. 1772) of Elizabeth and Mary Linley, accomplished singers and performers from a well-connected Bath family, their willowy forms surrounded by wispy foliage. About 12 years later in 1785, Gainsborough was employed to update their apparel to reflect changing fashions, by which time their musical careers were over, thanks to their marital status. 

 

Kino International Berlin

Opened in what was then East Berlin in1963 and part of the final phase of the westward extension of Karl-Marx-Allee concluding at Alexanderplatz, in which the Soviet wedding cake style was supplanted by something more contemporary. The cinema is a concrete framed construction designed by Josef Kaiser with a first floor box that projects forward to give the appearance of floating. The mostly glazed façade is only broken by a full height poster for the current film which by tradition is always hand-painted. On the other three sides of the box are stylised relief carvings moulded in concrete and designed to celebrate world peace and healthy outdoor pursuits. When complete, the capacity was an audience of 600. Eight rows of seats with the best sightlines and extra legroom were reserved for the use of weary party apparatchiks who could relax and stretch out their legs after a hard day’s labour ordering arrests and enforcing party discipline. It was a prestige project for the DDR and has remained in business since reunification. A two year closure for refurbishment began in May 2024 and reopening could be as early as the end of this month if all goes to plan.

 

Fire over America

It’s a dangerous occupation so firefighters are heroes everywhere (other than those who start their own fires) and nowhere more so than in the US.  Serving as the guardians of their community and emblems of selfless devotion to duty, they pose on these postcards inside their vehicles or standing to attention outside their fire stations. The men of the Salvage Corps in Newark exhibit an air of grim resolve as they prepare for their next assignment.  Edward Croker was appointed Chief Fire Officer for the city of New York in 1899 at the age of only 35. He led by example and attended every major fire in the city, often first on the scene thanks to his automobile outrunning the teams of horses that carried his comrades. After leaving the Fire Department he became an advocate and promoter of fire prevention.

Equipped with water pumps and access beneath the hull to an unlimited water supply, construction of special purpose Fire Boats began in the early 1900s. Equally effective at extinguishing waterfront fires as those onboard ship. In Seattle the Duwamish went into service in 1909 - after retirement in 1985 the vessel was preserved as a National Monument. Opportunistic postcard businesses appear to have used the same images, with extensive but clumsy retouching on the pairs of cards from New York. Postcards of burning buildings in San Francisco and Chicago (where extreme cold is freezing the water jets on contact) follow. The final item is a memorial in Hoboken where the local community honours the fire crew who perished in the line of duty.

Bridge Postcards of 2025

A selection of vintage postcard views of bridges acquired in 2025, beginning in Dresden with a record low water level on the River Elbe. A crowd of locals enjoy the novelty of exploring the river bed on foot. In August 2025 all river transport was suspended when the Elbe fell to its lowest level ever recorded. Next is from Ironbridge in Shropshire where the pioneering cast iron bridge manufactured by Abraham Darby has crossed the River Severn since 1779. Equally famous is the ancient Roman aqueduct built in the first century near Nîmes that follows. The River Trent at Gunthorpe, Nottinghamshire was first crossed by this cast iron toll bridge in 1875 - it was replaced in 1927 by a three arch concrete structure.  Constantine is Algeria’s third city, built on a high plateau above the River Rhumel and is known as the City of Bridges. The El-Kantara stone bridge of 1863 is one of the oldest to span the spectacular gorge and the colonial French influence is very apparent in this unusual elevated view. When completed in 1889 the Sukkur railway bridge over the River Indus was the longest cantilever bridge in the world. Later renamed the Lansdowne Bridge (in honour of the Viceroy), it’s still in use as a rail link between the city of Lahore and the port of Karachi on the Arabian Sea. 

Next is a single track railroad bridge in the Pacific Northwest of the US, completed in 1912 and still crossed today by freight trains - in 1957 a vertical-lift section was added. Another railway subject follows - this card shows what was in 1905 a common method of testing the loading capacity of new bridges by running multiple locomotives over the top and monitoring the impact. In Melbourne the River Yarra is spanned by the Queen’s Bridge, completed in 1889 and protected by listing on the Victoria Heritage Register. Hydraulically powered lifting bridges are very much an American thing - two more examples here from Portland, Oregon and Chicago. The final card is an elevated view of the second Tay Bridge opened in 1887 to replace the one that collapsed in a storm in December 1879 - everyone on board the train crossing the bridge at the time lost their lives. There’s something peculiarly Victorian about the action of the North British Railway in recovering the submerged locomotive and returning it to service. 

 

Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972)

My admiration for the radical and pioneering poster work produced by Lucian Bernhard in the early years of the last century, knows no bounds.  His invention of the sachplakat where the advertiser’s message is reduced to a single, starkly simplified rendering of the product carefully positioned on a flat colour ground together with the product name was an amazing step forward in the evolution of the modern style. It marked a decisive break with prose heavy graphics laden with testimonials and descriptive copy.  Bernhard acknowledged his debt to the Beggarstaff Brothers (William Nicholson and James Pryde) for the elegant and spare distillation of complex forms in their fin-de-siècle theatrical poster designs. But the impact of his bold colour choices and taut compositions was all his own work.

It’s always been a puzzle that no monograph devoted to his work existed. After all, his great Munich-based rival, Ludwig Hohlwein (whose instincts were much more conservative) was the subject of a major survey by H K Frenzel (editor of Gebrauchsgraphik) in 1926 as well as several post-war exhibition catalogues. Steven Heller has long been the major online cheerleader for Bernhard with a series of well researched postings of which this is one from 2012. Anyway, the wait is over - in 2024 Christopher Long’s monograph was published by KANT in Prague (ISBN: 97880 743 74135). The long absence of a monograph is well explained by the author in his introduction where he describes all the fabrications and misinformation he had to sift through. Much of it was created by Bernhard himself - he changed his name (from Emil Kahn), created false chronologies and circulated endless falsehoods about his career. It’s hard to detect a purpose behind the mendacity - perhaps a desire to embellish his reputation or, more simply, an appetite for mischief-making. It seems that Bernhard was something of an unknowable character - despite his gregarious personality, he had few, if any, close friends and his womanising ways and long absences placed enormous strain on his wife and family.

The sachplakat era began in 1903 with the first reductive poster designs for the Priester match company that limited the elements to the company name and two stylised matches. The writer has untangled the evolution of the Priester variants and concludes that the most celebrated version, usually dated between 1904 to 1906, was actually created more than a decade later. Bernhard quickly acquired prestigious clients - Adler typewriters, Stiller shoes, Osram lightbulbs, Kaffee Hag, Manoli cigarettes and most lucrative of all, Bosch electricals, whose booming business was powered by Bernhard’s explosive spark-plug in all its variations.  This period of expansion came to an end with the outbreak of war in 1914 and Long has a detailed account of Bernhard’s brief service and his subsequent deployment on propaganda duties that utilised his many talents from cartooning to typography. After the war he continued to serve the new Socialist government designing banknotes and party political posters. Alongside this he expanded his advertising business to the point where some 24 staff were employed in his city centre office and studios. Throughout the 1920s Bosch continued to be his best client.

In 1923 Bernhard was invited to New York for a lecture tour arranged by a printer and Modernism enthusiast, Roy Latham whose intention was to galvanise the city’s admen to adopt a more adventurous European approach. Bernhard was captivated by the city, extended his stay and began a period of 4 years dividing his time between Berlin and New York. The Berlin office carried on in his absences under the management of his deputy, Fritz Rosen although the output began to lose its radical edge. In New York Bernhard found the innate conservatism of the locals made it difficult to find work.  Assiduous cultivation of personal contacts eventually paid off - notably with Amoco and REM  cough medicines. Faint echoes of the sachplakat could be detected in the REM and Amoco posters and a possible awareness of Dorothy and Otis Shepard’s designs for Wrigley. Amoco was still offering him work as late as the 1950s but his last 20 years were a sad postscript of semi-retirement. Bernhard laboured long and hard to adapt his European subtleties to the prevailing visual vulgarity but his heart was never really in it. All of this and much more in this generously illustrated and superbly researched survey - the author has tracked down every archival reference and available source to describe the twists and turns of a long career that began in Stuttgart, flourished in Berlin and languished in a long, slow decline in New York.