wing of a blue roller

wing of a blue roller

Frederick John Pym Gore - Cornfield, Meopham, Kent (1956)

Spencer Gore - Harold Gilman’s House at Letchworth (1912)

Charles Ginner - University Buildings (c.1916) (pen and watercolour on paper)

Alexander McQueen - Oyster Dress (Spring/Summer 2003)
A number of gowns in Alexander McQueen’s “Transitions” collection of spring/summer 2003 appear to be poetic renderings of a disaster at sea. While a similar dress appeared colored like the plumage of a tropical bird, this gown of sand-colored organza recalls the mille-feuille ridging on the surface of a shell. The hem of the skirt, like the wavy lip of a giant mollusk, further emphasizes the seashell quality of the gown. But unlike Aphrodite, who was born in the foam of the sea and borne to shore on a scallop, McQueen’s beauty is a bruised pearl encased in a deconstructing oyster, the tumbled survivor of the violent action of waves.” Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

John Constable - Rainstorm over the sea [Seascape study with rainclouds] (c.1824-28)

“This spectacular oil sketch looking directly out to sea is one of the most remarkable open air sketches that Constable painted during his visits to Brighton. He depicted a dramatic sky, capturing the fleeting effect of a rainstorm at sea, with thunderous black clouds, and with a shaft of sunlight breaking through to light up the horizon on the left. […] In his biography on Constable, Andrew Shirley observed that Constable’s sketches: ‘convey an extraordinary force of emotion’ and that in this work in particular he captured ‘the transient rainstorm, tremendous but with a gleam of light, seized in a moment’ (Shirley 1949, pp. 22–21).” Source: National Gallery of Australia