The new chapter

Today I looked out over the sea as I took a walk on a windy Scandinavian sunday afternoon. It was great to be out; somewhere else; somewhere I had been a thousand times, but which nevertheless felt new as I fully empbraced being somewhere else after 6 months of lockdown due to the Corona-virus. As I left my house of the past 6 months, I embarked on a 38 hour journey, where I passed through 3 airports and a COVID-19 test to make it to what will be a self-imposed quarantine in a cabin in the Danish countryside. Being here feels like a new chapter in life after the past 6 months, that felt neverending while they were happening, but now just seem like an annoying prolongued weekend. A new chapter, not unlike the many times I have moved to a new country, or changed jobs, or just when you have known that you have finished something that you will never forget. The only thing remaining is to reflect on the lessons, and move forward towards.... Although I remain weary about Covid-19 and the risk it countinues to pose, I feel a little bit more optimistic, as I have recently had such difficulty seeing the positive side to anything. Maybe things will be ok? Maybe we will be able to travel, embrace, dance and live like we used to? Or maybe this is just a respite, mine and everyone else´s, as the virus gathers strength to take away our freedoms yet again?

What I did during quarantine IX

https://vimeo.com/413379220/1cafbe54a7

The Seated Lady

Last year, before all this COVID crisis locked me up indefinitely, one of my favourite passtimes was to travel, and visit museums. Last year I visited the Royal Art Museum in Brussels, on one of the beautiful days that seem to be so rare in Belgium, and should perhaps be spent outside. But I decided to dwell into the exhibition on the end of the 19th century and early 20th century: the golden age when Brussels had become a rich and fashionable European capital , fed by the exploitation of Congo. The French Sculptor Paul Dubois has a beautiful sculpture in the museum: Seated Lady. It is the life-size depiction of a young lady, seated sideways on a chair, that is almost completely covered by her fancy dress. Her gloved right hand on her lap is holding a closed fan, while her left arm is leaning on the back of the chair while she casually looks to her left. Perhaps she is at a party, and is waiting for someone to ask her to dance (her twisting left foot seems to indicate an eagerness to move, or just a nervous twitch?) or perhaps she is looking with jealousy at someone dancing with the man that she dreams about? I spent a while looking at her. The Seated lady seems to be one element in a big story. I imagined her as Kitty, in “Anna Karenina”, looking with jealousy at Anna Karenina dancing with Vronsky, who infatuated with Anna all but ignores the young Kitty. What also caught my attention is the way that the statue had been seated by the curators at the museum. She is looking directly at a paining: Arabian Fantasia, by Theo van Rysselberghe, a Belgian painter who was very famous at the turn of the century 19th-20th century, and who worked with realism, impressionism, neo-impressionism and pointilism (the museum in Brussels contains many of his pieces). When he was young, van Rysselberghe made two long trips to Spain and Morocco, and in the north of Africa he became captivated by the for-him so exotic setting and the strong powerful colours. The painting “Arabian Phantasia” is one of his main paintings from his fascination with the "Orient" (he is credited with having popularized Orientalism in Belgium). It is a light painting; one can almost feel the dry sun from a clear sky, and the intensity of the scene depicted: outside a walled city by the sea, crowds are looking at riders on beautiful and lively horses. One rider is coming towards the viewer in a bright red costume, skillfully holding the horse's rails with his left hand, while holding an old and decorated rifle in his right arms. Behind him – way behind him – one sees a group of riders coming in the same direction amid a cloud of dust. To the right one sees more riders, armed and in Arab costumes, on richly decorated horses, as if waiting for their turn to show their riding skills. The “Seated Lady” seems to spend all her time looking at the painting, and now I understood why: it is her longing to be in the warm and exotic landscapes of North Africa. To leave her boring and stiff European life, where everything had been planned out for her, to go and seek adventures in this walled city by the water, and live amid veiled women, Eastern mystics and Arabian princes with dark magical and captivating features. She is ready to protect herself from the heat with the fan, and she knows that her beautiful dress, with her shoulders temptingly trying to show, will captivate any Arabian prince. Her twisted left foot is in fact not for the desire to dance, but a desire to be carried onto one of those sculpturesque horses by a brave Arabian warrior, who will carry her off into the desert, to be his wife and raise his children; a captive, but with much more freedom than the dreamless life of obligations in Brussels. You may say that the “Seated Lady” may be a only a statue, but in fact it is a young lady dreaming; a young lady who cannot take her eyes off the beautiful painting that makes her dream. She is in fact no statue at all! And how I commend the curators of the Royal Art Museum of Brussels for having placed these two beautiful pieces of art in such a way as to form such a symbiosis!

What I did during quarantine VIII

What I did during quarantine VII

What I did during quarantine VI

Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson

In 2008 I visited the National Gallery of Art, one of the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC. As I often do, I looked a bit into the works of art beforehand, and came across the curious story of this painting, from 1633, of the Dutch Master Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641):

It is called “Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson”. While it may appear obvious who is Queen Henrietta Maria, one may be led to think that Sir Jeffrey Hudson is a child; but you would be mistaken: Sir Jeffrey Hudson, depicted on the painting dressed in a red suit, boots, and holding a monkey (the Court Monkey Pug), is a dwarf that belonged to the Queen's Court, and with a fascinating life story.

First, some context: Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669) was Queen of England, married to King Charles I (1600-1649) and Mother of King Charles II (1630-1685) and thus lived in the midst the English Civil War (that led to her husband's beheading) and the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 (under her son). As daughter of the French King Henry IV (1553-1610) she spent many of the tumultuous years in England in exile in France (at Versailles), and was only allowed to return to England upon the restoration. The Queen was never popular, as she was a devoted Catholic, and this was one of the many aspects that led to the overthrow of Charles II, as many saw the potential return of a Carholic in the throne as a threat to the English Anglican Church.

As most Queens at the time, Queen Henrietta Maria held a large household of Court ladies, staff, Priests, as well as people for pure entertainment, whose employment may be qualified more or less as a form of slavery. It was this household that Jeffrey Hudson (1619-1682) joined in 1626 at the tender age of 7. He had been born in a town in Rutland, in the East Midland, and from an early age had caught attention for being tiny, barely reaching 50 centimeters. As his father worked for the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers (1592-1628), the Duchess of Buckingham noticed the “curious marvel”, and decided to use him to entertain the King and Queen when they visited: Jeffrey Hudson jumped out of a cake presented to the Queen in a miniature armour. It delighted the Queen so much that Hudson was presented as gift to the Queen.

Jeffrey Hudson became a fixed part of the Court, even being sent along or accompanying the Queen on mission abroad (probably so that foreign dignitaries could see him in wonder), for instance to France or the Netherlands. For the latter, he joined the Queen who was seeking to gather support for her husband as the English civil war started in 1642, but with little success, and when returning to England, the Queen appointed Hudson to Captain; it is unclear whether it was a joke or a motivation, but Hudson certainly knew how to ride and shoot, and may have seen action during the war. However, it did not last long, as the Queen fled to the safety of the French Court in 1643, and took Hudson along.
Jeffrey Hudson may have been a captain and also had a relatively high level of education, having basically grown up at the Court. But he was probably still seen as an entertainment and probably continued to be the object of insults and jokes. It is unknown whether it was this that led his to challenge against the brother of one Baron William Crofts, who happened to be the Head of the Lifeguard and Master of the Royal Household. In a duel on horseback, Croft only bought a squirt-gun, probably hoping for a bit of fun on behalf of the Dwarf. But Jeffrey Hudson must have been more skilled and angrier than expected, and managed to kill his opponent by a shot in the head.
This proved a massive scandal, of course, as Lord Croft was a powerful man, but also as dueling was illegal in France at the time, and Jeffrey Hudson was sentenced to death. Only the Queen's appeal directly to the most powerful man in France, Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) led to the death sentence being commuted into exile.
This was the end of Jeffrey Hudson's time in the Royal Court, and although details are less about the subsequent years, his story continued: it is unclear how it happened exactly, but he was on a ship that was captured by a Turkish pirate, and spent years as a slave in North Africa. It is likely that at some point he may have been ransomed by Englishmen who regularly paid ransom for English captives. By 1669 he was certainly back in England, and settled around his native Oakham. He received some subsidies from the Royal household, but appears to have been largely poor. The “Popish plot”, which was a conspiracy that gripped England in 1678 about a Catholic plot to kill King Charles II, led to him being imprisoned for a while; maybe because he had served Queen Maria Henrietta, he was seen as a Catholic. In any case, he did pass away  around 1682, and was buried in a Catholic grave.
Jeffrey Hudson was a celebrity during his time at the Queen's Court, even appearing in paintings (such as Van Dycks) and in many poems and anecdotes of the time. He was known as “Lord Minimus” and the Queen must have appreciated him so as to intercede on his behalf and make him a captain. That is why his time in Court is so well documented. But in his late life, back in Oakham, James Right (1643-1713) a local writer from Oakland, also took time to interview and document Jeffrey Hudson's life, which surely is both interesting and sad.

It is here I return to my own visit to the National Gallery in 2008: I never saw the painting! As I arrived at where the tour told me it was, it was clearly marked, but it was not the correct painting. I cannot say I was disappointed, but I did write the museum to inform them:

As you can see, they kindly replied, and surely will not forget Sir Jeffrey Hudson!