Narrow boat, Regent's Canal, Islington

click photo to enlarge
For many years our visits to London involved staying in Rotherhithe by the River Thames. That great artery formed the subject of many of my photographs of the city during that time. Recently our stays in the city have centred on Islington and a different, much smaller waterway has received the attention of my camera. The Regent's Canal runs through the borough and we have come to know the stretch that passes east from Angel towards Hackney.

The canal remains a route for narrow boats and other pleasure craft and the tow path is a combined footpath and cyclepath, much used as a commuter route by pedestrians and cyclists as well as a pleasant place for a walk away from the noise and fumes of traffic. Today's photograph was taken not too far into our walk from Angel and appropriately, and not coincidentally, features a narrow boat called "Angel". I took the photograph using a bridge as a frame and also tried to capture some of the greenery that makes this part of the canal particularly pleasurable.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Narrow Boat, "Angel", on Regent's Canal, Islington
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 49mm (98mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Breedon Angel

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The Breedon Angel is one of a number of fascinating pieces of Saxon sculpture to be seen in the church of St Mary and St Hardulph at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire. The style of the pieces - small friezes, panels and individual figures -  is notably different from continental European sculpture of the period. Some is quite weathered and must have originally been placed on the exterior of this originally monastic church: it is all now inside for protection from the elements.

The "Breedon Angel", probably a depiction of the Archangel Gabriel, is the largest of the sculptures. The figure is framed by an arch and gives a benediction in the Byzantine manner. It is carved in stone quarried at Barnack near Peterborough. Dating the angel is difficult but it is thought likely to have been carved around 800AD.

The fame and value of this early and fine piece of sculpture is such that the piece on display in the church is not the original but a replica. It was made in 2001 by a process involving 3D laser scanning. Because Barnack stone is no longer quarried a very near match was sourced from Monks' Park Quarry in Wiltshire.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm (90mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shattered beauty

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Medieval stained glass is quite commonly found in English churches. However, it is often miscellaneous, jumbled fragments, complete sections of larger works, or reconstructions. The latter, often by Victorian restorers, usually have many pieces of the older glass missing and sometimes incorporate new glass in the form of decorative frames. Complete windows can be found, undamaged, just as they were conceived centuries ago, and a few complete church schemes have survived. However, the mutilation of the fabric of our churches that the Reformation set in train mean that very often we have to envisage the beauty that was by mental extrapolation from the little that now remains.

The following passage from Article 28 of the 1547 Injunctions of Edward VI makes it very clear that the destruction of stained glass was authorised to be prosecuted with severe vigour:
"Also, that they shall take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, coverings of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindles or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition; so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glass windows, or elsewhere within their churches or houses. And they shall exhort all their parishioners to do the like within their several houses." With this kind of official consent stone, wood and metal sculpture was vandalised or melted down, wall paintings were covered over with limewash and stained glass was smashed, some to be replaced with clear glass, but many destroyed windows were left empty. The danger with the latter course was that the weather would enter the building causing damaging and dangerous decay to the building's fabric, and so a further decree of 1559 ordered the repairing of such windows. Many church priests and congregations hid their stained glass, others collected and saved the shattered remnants, but elsewhere it was left broken on the ground and in time covered in earth. Interestingly we can see windows today that have been replaced or reconstructed from all of these circumstances.

Today's photograph (another from the vaults - see yesterday), is a re-assembly of fragments that can be seen in the church of St Agnes at Cawston in Norfolk. It looks like the beautiful work of the Norwich school of glass making that, along with York, flourished in the 1400s. The small photograph gives the context for the main image and shows how the restorers tried to make something of the figures and decorative fragments, musician angels, biblical figures and architectural canopies, all that remained after the iconoclasts had put down their hammers.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 200mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Snow-fallen angel

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By my calculation this area of Lincolnshire has had only one day since 18th December when snow hasn't covered the ground. Now that may be an inconsequential length of time compared with what can be expected in Canada, Finland and Siberia, but for this corner of England it's both long and unusual. Most years, after a snowfall, the weather warms sufficiently for it to melt away within a day or two. Sometimes it lingers for a week, with the odd top-up falling, usually during the night. However, this year the weather seems to have got stuck in a cycle of easterly and northerly winds, with some heavy or light snow most days recently. The first snow to fall wasn't accompanied by strong winds, so it was relatively pleasant. In recent days the icy blasts have made going out much more of an ordeal. Not that it has stopped this photographer, of course. But my radius of action has shrunk considerably, and the car has made only a few forays down the slippery roads.

Today's photograph shows a churchyard angel that I came across after a recent heavy bout of snow. She usually stands, looking quite imperious, gazing eastward, holding on to her anchor lest the winds or temptation should seek to bring her down from her pedestal. In the snow she looked to me like someone had poured the contents of a bag of icing sugar over her head, which seriously undermined her usual dignity. From memory, I think this is the only large monumental figure sculpture in this churchyard. Some of the eighteenth century graves have small cherubs and relief sculptures, but that's about it. In fact Lincolnshire churchyards contrast strongly with those I've been used to seeing in Lancashire where nouveau riche Victorian businessmen often constructed ostentatious memorials with angels, neo-classical weepers and the like.

For this photograph I was torn between a close-up of the angel's upper body and this contextual view. My final choice was clinched by the "white-out" of the trees behind that allowed the lichen-encrusted green stonework to stand out in a way that it wouldn't in less snowy circumstances.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 98mm (196mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Angels, pins and peacock feathers

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"...Angels can contract their whole substance into one part of space, and therefore have not partes extra partes..."
Richard Baxter (1615-1691), English theologian

The question of what exactly an angel is has long taxed Christians and others. Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians were lampooned by later writers for enquiring too gravely about their physical, gender (male, female or genderless?) and religious characteristics. The probem of "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is ascribed to such debates, though without much historical authority. As far as the physical appearance of angels goes, the fact is that every age has interpreted them in its own way, based on the few clues contained in the Bible, other early texts, and the depictions of previous generations.

Thus, the earliest angels of the C2 and C3 are without wings. However, by the time of the mosaics at S. Apollinaire Nuovo at Ravenna (c.520) they have halos, wings and toga-like clothes, perhaps derived from Roman murals. In the Book of Kells (c.800) the clothing changes to a mixture of toga-style drapery combined with the edged tunics worn by nobles of that period. The Winchester Psalter (c.1150) shows angels in what look like regal, ermine-trimmed robes, in a style of painting that derives from the Byzantine of Eastern Europe. From Duccio onwards the Italian Renaissance painters settled on flowing, often diaphanous dresses-cum-robes, but the ever-present halos and wings continued. Later Renaissance artists of the C16 and C17 combined the tradition of the Christian angel with the putto of late classical antiquity.

The eighteenth century didn't depart too strongly from these conventions, though William Blake, characteristically, went his own way showing a rebel angel as a naked, anguished man. In the nineteenth century they sought "authenticity" in their depictions. Thus, artists like William Morris looked back at medieval precedents and then updated the basic idea using the aesthetic of the time. Today's photograph of a musician angel is by the stained glass firm of C. E. Kempe & Co. and dates from 1882. It draws on the ideas of Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, uses pale subtle hues overall, but with bold highlights in primary colours. The drawing is very strong, as is the sense of pattern, but what stands out is the clarity of the conception. The angel has Kempe's characteristic peacock feather wings, and is one of a group of six such musicians (each with a different instrument) that fill a south window in the chancel of St Michael in the village of Hallaton, Leicestershire.

Incidentally, one of the angel's colleagues provided a great Christmas card illustration for me a couple of years ago!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 94mm (188mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On