Granny's Photo Stash 8

[poliphilo]

This one's a bit miscellaneous. I'm posting it simply because it's so atmospheric.

The people are my great uncle Charles Randle Jackson (my grandmother's brother- always known as Uncle Ran) and his wife- and they're punting on the lake at Suffolk House, the Jackson family home outside Croydon. Not that the place matters, really. It could be the Norfolk Broads, it could be the River Cam. Punting- such a quintessentially early 20th century middle-class pastime.

Randle served in the Great War, and survived to pursue a not in the least bit celebrated career as a painter and sculptor. I met him in the 1950s when he came to our house in Croydon with a very much younger second wife. I don't think he was married when he went to war so I suppose this picture dates from the 1920s. Did my grandmother take it? Probably.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

This is indeed wonderfully atmospheric. Are you showing any of them to your mother? It's amazing how the floodgates open and memories come tumbling out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We just showed her an album of her German holiday in 1937. She remembered nothing- until we got to the bit right at the end where they were visiting the zoo at Rotterdam and her father had made a note that she'd taken a picture of some lion cubs. "Oh, yes," she said. "They let us into the cage to play with them."

She's always been an animal lover.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

I can see a Impressionist painting being created from that photo. Monet would do wonders with it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My Granny- who presumably took the picture- was an art student- and must have been aware of Monet...

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

The whole stash is wonderful - but I especially love this one... It's like a painting.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

All that family was artistic so it's not surprising that they took good photographs. My grandmother's mother was a decent amateur watercolourist, her brother was a professional painter and sculptor and she herself trained as a wood-carver. She gave up her craft when she married but not before she'd executed a few professional commissions.

[sovay]

This one's a bit miscellaneous. I'm posting it simply because it's so atmospheric.

It is good. The photographic medium makes the whole scene look like it's about to dissolve into light.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's a dreamlike quality.