Making a Compleat Gentleman

West Wycombe Manor was set in a beautiful Park and the perfect setting for a man of means who also enjoyed the good life. Its colonaded west front is highly unusual, for a climate like England recalling perhaps many happy times spent lazing in the loggia of an Italian Palazzo. While smaller than most of his friends country houses today it is a perfect film set for eighteenth century period films because it encapsulates and reflects in architecture the society of a time when young men of privilege went in passionate pursuit of civilised life. Is it the perfect Temple to Taste of a Compleat Gentleman?

That which we are we are…new year’s eve reflection

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a controversial figure in his own time. His poem Ulysses,  [...]

Creating the English style

interior that looked like it had evolved naturally over time…what constituted an ‘old money’ look.

Bunny in Sydney – Art or Artifice…

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) The Critic as Artist, 1891
This exhibition many would say is long overdue. In the landscape of Australian painting history Rupert Bunny is a significant figure who inserted himself effortlessly into French Parisian life during the so-called ‘Belle Epoque’ or beautiful era, demonstrating through [...]

Women of Influence – Marquise de Pompadour, pleasure is a serious business

The pleasure of love is in loving.  Francois de la Rochefoucauld (1613-80)
Author Carolyn McDowall
French painter François Boucher (1703-1770) produced many of the images that we have of the enigmatic Jeanne Antoinette, Marquise de Pompadour, Maîtresse-en-titre, or the official Mistress of Louis XV of France.
The daughter of a local beauty, Louise-Madeleine de la Motte and [...]

Love Jewellery – Rome to Renaissance

If you bring both gold and precious or semi precious stones together skilfully a add a dash of passion, smidgen of sentiment, make them expressive of romance as well as symbolic of true love then you have a ‘tour de force’, a triumph of Cupid’s D’art!

An important aspect of every human society yet recorded is a belief that gold and gemstones had an enormous effect on the affairs of many. This has not been limited to any age or culture some of the first tokens of human affection were worn as treasured souvenirs.

Mirror Mirror on the wall…

he mirror has occupied a unique place in his imagination as a site of the divine or demonic, of lucidity or madness. It is the ‘matrix of the symbolic’ and accompanies the human quest to know and understand our identity.

Women of Influence – Diane de Poitiers, enchantress

The mistresses and consorts of the Kings of France have a strong history of helping others with extraordinary talent to achieve their highest potential through patronage, of changing standards of moral or social behaviour and of dictating the design and disposition of domestic architecture and gardens

Garden Flights of Fantasy

The influence of the classic Chinese Garden was expressed in the fashion for Chinoiserie, a style preference that spread through England, Europe and Russia in the eighteenth century with pagodas, bridges and oriental follies becoming de rigeur

Weaving the Threads of Destiny

Tapestry and embroidery are both forms of textile art. However both have very different techniques and the difference is not always understood.