Three solitary figures in a landscape
1 Man on a mountain Caspar David Friedrich painted the work usually called The wanderer above the sea of fog in 1818. Though it found little fame at the time, it’s long been seen as the quintessence of German Romanticism in the visual arts. Friedrich was the mountain man of the early nineteenth century. Until […]
Walking across Afghanistan
There can’t be many more walks more extreme than the one described by Rory Stewart in his book The places in between. He takes us with him on a journey he made, entirely on foot, across the central regions of Afghanistan in 2002, from Herat to Kabul, soon after the US-led invasion of the country […]
Cyffro yng Ngholfa, 1912
Pentref bach iawn yw Colfa (Colva), rhyw saith milltir i’r gogledd o Glaerwen (Clyro), cartref Francis Kilvert. Dim rhagor, a dweud y gwir, na hen eglwys, sy’n dyddio o’r drydedd ganrif ar ddeg, a ffermdy, oedd yn arfer bod yn dafarn o’r enw The Sun Inn yn nyddiau Kilvert (‘Mrs Phillips brought me a pint […]
Beacons Way, day 2: Llanthony to Crickhowell
It’s before seven o’clock in the morning, but it has the look of a dark day to come. I glance out of my bedroom window overlooking the ruins of Llanthony Priory. I can’t see the top of the Hatterrall Ridge I’d descended yesterday afternoon, or the top of the hill I’ll be climbing this morning. […]
Beacons Way, day 1: Abergavenny to Llanthony
I’ve had Ffordd y Bannau, the Beacons Way, in my sights for years. I bought the guide written by John Sansom, the deviser of the Way, and Arwel Michael, but it lay on the shelf unused for a decade or more till now. The reason I hesitated is that, as a 100-mile path across almost […]
Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando
One of my favourite paintings by Edgar Degas is Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. As well as being one of his boldest – it’s probably one of the most audacious compositions ever painted in the nineteenth century – it has the great advantage of being easily seeable, since it’s usually on display in […]
Saving the gannets
The jaunty oil sketch may look charming, but it conceals an ugly story. It was painted by a well-known Cardiff artist, Thomas Henry Thomas, after a visit he and three friends from the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society made to Grassholm (Gwales) on 26 May 1890. They’d come to study the bird colonies, especially northern gannets and […]
Kathleen Jamie’s ‘Cairn’
The old Athenian playwrights were expected to follow their three tragedies for the festival of Dionysus with a lighter ‘satyr’ play. The idea, it seems, was to take the edge off the horrors and traumas of the earlier dramas. Kathleen Jamie, after publishing a trilogy of collections of lengthy essays on the large themes that […]
Still life, still alive
‘Still life’ is a paradox. Can something that’s still or unmoving be alive, especially if it’s a dead creature or an inanimate object? The French equivalent, nature morte, is equally stark in its self-contradiction. But the term isn’t the only paradox. One of the reasons why the still life has had such a long history, […]
Delweddu pont: Pontypridd a’r artistiaid
Mae llawer o sôn yn yr Eisteddfod Genedlaethol, a gynhelir yng nghanol Pontypridd ym Mharc Ynysangharad, am ‘bontio’ rhwng siaradwyr Cymraeg a’r mwyafrif o’r trigolion lleol sy ddim yn medru’r iaith. Perthnasol iawn yw’r metaffor, o gofio bod Pontypridd yn cynnig esiampl wych o adeilad sydd wrth ei wraidd. Dyw’r gair ‘gwych’ ddim, mewn gwirionedd, […]