Pray, Love, Remember

My friend, Linda, has chastised me for not keeping up with my blog, so I'm making another effort.

Here's a photo from my easel of my latest, unfinished, on-going effort: Ellen Terry, the famous British actress, as Ophelia. The title of the piece will be: "Pray, Love, remember." The scene is from Ophelia's mad scene, as she's wandering through the castle, recounting the flowers in her hands: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember. And there is Pansies; that's for thoughts."

I thought I was about half-finished with this painting at the end of March, but as it turned out, I was only about one-sixteenth finished. Much work is still left to do, but it's mostly tweaking and refining at this point.

The great challenge with historical art is the attempt to be accurate, an attempt made more difficult by the necessity of working within a budget and a timeframe.

I've read Ellen Terry's memoirs, at least as they relate to her role as Ophelia, and I have a studio photo of her in costume, which is what this art is mostly based on. Recently, however, Google has placed online a number of out-of-copyright books, one of which is Henry Irving's memoirs. Irving was the actor/producer who hired Ellen Terry for the part of Ophelia, and then played Hamlet in the production. In his book, Irving notes that Terry played the part with an "armload" of flowers, including Lilies. Unfortunately, as you can see, I have handfuls, instead of armloads (and no Lilies, but alas, poor Yorick, at this point, that's how it's going to stay). Another recent Google book entry notes Terry's costume as "white samite," a heavy, medieval silk. Well, the photo looked like wool to me [heavy sigh]. However, I did manage to make it white-ish.

I don't know if any of you have noticed this or not, but when you're searching in Google, particularly for obscure historical reference and pictures, the search results vary, sometimes dramatically, from week to week (I've been searching for Victorian actress photos since July). It makes it difficult/impossible to say, "yes, I have the definitive visual information on this piece," when the next week, there might be a whole new portfolio of photos posted. Certainly makes it interesting.

Doing WW2 art seems to be much easier.