Artists of the Promenade des Anglais, Nice

Promenade des Anglais (1892) by Edvard Munch

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is best known for his iconic work of anxiety and despair The Scream. But the artists also painted pictures that you'd want to hang on your bedroom wall or have as your screensaver, like his depiction here of Nice's beautiful Promenade des Anglais in 1892.


The famous walk has attracted many artists, the most notable of which was Raoul Dufy who lived for many years in the city. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted the promenade, as did less well known artists like Angelo Garino (1860-1945) in this painting below from 1922. The location is close to the Jardin Albert 1er with its fine esplanade and which once bore the name of le jardin Paradis (Paradise Garden).

Promenade des Anglais (1922) by Angelo Garino

German Max Beckmann (1884-1950) was another artist that was attracted to the charm of La Prom. In his work from 1947 called simply Promenade des Anglais in Nizza (Nizza is the Italian name for Nice which was once an Italian possession) we look down from the Colline du Chatêau, or Castle Hill, onto the broad sweep of the Bay of Angels below, with the dome of the famous Negresco Hotel clearly visible, though slightly exaggerated.

Promenade des Anglais in Nizza (1947) by Max Beckmann

Around the year 1938 Paris-born artist Pierre Eugène Montézin (1874-1946) set up his pallet on the promenade and painted his lovely picture Les palmiers sur la promenade des Anglais à Nice (Palm trees on the Promenade des Anglais). The artist loved the open air and the countryside and was still producing landscapes at the time of his sudden death on a painting trip to Brittany in 1946.

Les palmiers sur la promenade des Anglais à Nice (circa 1938)
by Pierre Eugène Montézin

Other artists who painted the Promenade were Emmanuel Costa (born 1933); Belgian artist Gaston de Vel (1924-2010); Rose Calvino (born 1956); and doubtless many others, attracted by the light, the colours and the atmosphere of one of the most famous avenues on the Riviera. 

La promenade des Anglais à Nice (circa 1901) by Emmanuel Costa

Famous theatrical flops

Isabella and Claudio depicted
by William Holman Hunt
(1850). Shakespeare  leaves
it an open question whether
Isabella accepts the marriage
proposal of the duke-come-
fake-holy man.

Every writer has his or her flops, even the most renowned of them  all - William Shakespeare.  Measure for Measure, for instance, his story of a corrupt deputy, a phoney monk and a hysterical nun, placed among the Comedies in the First Folio but now regarded as a 'problem play' (along with Troilus and Cressida and the  ironically titled Alls Well That Ends Well). During the dramatist's lifetime the play has only one recorded performance, in 1604, when it was given before James I. It was revived in 1662 under the title The Law Against Lovers, an adaptation which included characters from Much Ado About Nothing, along with music and dancing. (Samuel Pepys saw the production and thought it 'a good play and well acted, especially the little girl's...dancing and singing, and were it not for her, the loss of Roxalana would spoil the house'). And in a 1699 version is was retitled once more, this time called Beauty the Best Advocate, with the most interesting bits (the low-life parts) removed.


Even worse for the poet was Troilus and Cressida, which does not seem to have been performed at the time he wrote it. It was staged during the Restoration in another heavily adapted version by John Dryden, who altered both plot and characterisation, as well as trying to 'improve' Shakespeare's 'ungrammatical' language. The piece was then ignored for most of the 18th century and for all but the last two years of the 19th century. But it was revived with much success in the 20th century and in the form that Shakespeare wrote it, demonstrating perhaps that the man was right all along, ungrammatical language and all.

These 'problem plays' immediately followed Hamlet and the timeless romantic comedies Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, and immediately preceded the great tragedies Othello, Macbeth and King Lear, which Punch once humorously described as a play about the difficulties of raising children in a damp climate.






(Left) 'King Lear and Fool in a Storm'
 by Sir John Gilbert.

Where did William Shakespeare live in London?

The disputed 'Flower portrait' of William Shakespeare now believed
to date for the Nineteenth Century

Where did Shakespeare lodge in London? On 15 November 1597 the Petty Collectors [of Taxes] for Bishopsgate stated in their accounts the names of certain persons who had avoided, for whatever reason, payment of their taxes. Among the names for St. Helen's parish (Bishopsgate) was that of William Shakespeare, assessed five shillings on goods valued at £5, the assessment made in October 1596 and falling due in February 1597. So we can conclude that sometime before October 1596 Shakespeare was living in the St. Helen's parish of Bishopsgate, perhaps near the church which is still standing. What we don't know, however, is whether he paid his five shillings taxes.

Our next sighting of the poet was again through the tax collectors when he was assessed thirteen shilling and four pence on goods valued at £5, the assessment made on 1 October 1598. On 6 October 1660 the amount due was still outstanding, and the Court of Exchequer referred the arrears to the Bishop of Winchester who had jurisdiction in the liberty of the Clink, an area on the south bank of the Thames in the county of Surrey. So we can see that Shakespeare had migrated across the river, perhaps following his theatre which had also relocated about this time. In his accounts for 1600-1 the Bishop reported the amount collected from the names of persons referred to him, including, one images, William Shakespeare. So near the end of the decade, possibly in 1599, the dramatist had taken up residence in the liberty of the Clink in Southwark in the county of Surrey.

Winchester House, the residence in Southwick of the Bishop of Winchester.
From Hollar's View of London circa 1660

How long Shakespeare resided in Southwick is not known, but we do know that no later that 1604 he was back in the city of London residing in the house of a French Huguenot by the name of Christopher Mountjoy in Silver Street in the Cripplegate ward. Mountjoy made ornamental headgear and wigs, and he employed an apprentice by the name of Stephen Bellot. In November 1604 Bellot married Mountjoy's daughter Mary, and in 1612 undertook a civil action against his father-in-law over the amount he alleged he had been promised as his marriage-portion or dowry. On 11 May 1612 Shakespeare was called to testify, and in his deposition stated that he had known both parties 'as he now remembrethe for the space of tenne yeres or thereaboutes'. This indicates that he could have been lodging in Silver Street as early as 1602. He was also asked to state his present address which he gave as Stratford upon Avon. 

One further house in London associated with Shakespeare is the 'Blackfriars gate-house' which he purchased in March 1613 from one Henry Walker 'citizen and minstral of London'. However, the very day after the sealing of the deed he mortgaged the gate-house back to Walker, so the purchase appears to have been purely an investment.

(Silver Street circa 1570 is included in the 'Agas' map of London and can be viewed at address http://mapco.net/agas/agas.htm)

Mr Anonymous : Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604)

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger

"Here's one I wrote earlier, guv".  [Edward de Vere]

So Hollywood has a new 'Shakespeare' movie coming out. Well, well, nearly 400 years dead and still good for business! The latest well-hyped offering is titled Anonymous and is based on the life of the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere (1550-1604), whom the film hails as the ‘true author’ of Shakespeare’s plays. This is the also the view of a handful of crackpot Shakespearean actors and academics, though it may have been thought that the fact that de Vere inconveniently died before many of the plays had been written (Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus, The Tempest) might have deterred them just a little.


One of the arguments they put forward against Shakespeare's authorship is that he did not attend a university and so would not have had the classical education needed to write the plays, many of which are based on stories from the Roman writer Ovid. But Shakespeare almost certainly attended Stratford Grammar School (the school records no longer exist, but Shakespeare's father was a town councillor and it was a 'perk' of all councillors that their sons were educated at the grammar school). They were called grammar schools because what they taught was Latin grammar, and once the boys had mastered the language all the lessons were in Latin. Among the books they studied was the works of - you guessed! - Ovid, and it is estimated that when the boys left the grammar school they would have had the equivalent of a classics degree from a modern university.


Shakespeare also seemed to reminisce on his grammar school days in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which we see a boy, appropriately called William, being given an amusing Latin lesson by his Welsh school master, called in the play Evans. It is known that when Shakespeare was a boy there was indeed a Welsh master teaching at the grammar school.

Shakespeare's dedication in
The Rape of Lucrece to his
patron, the Earl of Southampton

De Vere was a minor poet and writer of song lyrics. Among his lyrics was Come hither, shepherd swain, which was published under his own name: Earle of Oxenforde. So if he published poems under his name, why not plays, too? It is contended by his supporters that the writing of plays was regarded as a lowly profession and certainly not one to which a man of noble birth could associate his name. But Shakespeare also wrote poems. Is it not strange that the earl should acknowledge his authorship of his own trivia, but not of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, which are regarded as poetic masterpieces?


The fact is that no one in Shakespeare's lifetime ever doubted that he was the author of the plays. Not the Stationer's Office, which approved books for publication; not the Master of the Revels, the booking agent for court performances of plays; not  his friends and partners in his theatre company; not rival dramatists, such as Ben Jonson, a man famed at the time for his learning and erudition (though like Shakespeare he had no university education). The authorship fashion only arose in the Nineteenth Century, over 200 years after Shakespeare's death, when the Victorians, in search of a national hero, lauded him as a universal genius and a man of family values (yes, it's a good joke!), indeed as a demi-god. But if you put someone up on a plinth in that manner then sooner or later someone's going to want to knock you off. The more so if there's money to be made (conspiracy theorists, publishers, film makers, Mein Herr academics, etc., etc., etc., etc.)


The film also casts de Vere as the incestuous lover of Queen Elizabeth, so it obviously has its tongue firmly in its cheek. But how many Oscars will it win, that is the question.

Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille

View from the Gare St Charles down le Grand escalier with the  basilica on the far horizon

Atop the highest point in the city, overlooking the Vieux Port (Old port), stands Marseille's most striking landmark, the majestic neo-Byzantine basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde.


Arriving in the city by train, your first sight of the edifice is from the top of le Grand escalier, the broad steps that lead down from the station to the city spread at its feet. From this viewpoint the basilica is a mere silhouette on the horizon, and between you and it, hidden in a cove, is Marseille's Old Port and the site of the original Greek settlement from circa 600 BC.

Descend the steps with their striking sculptures and follow the Boulevard d'Athènes until it reaches a crossroads with La Canebière, the famous road which English sailors in the early 20th century dubbed 'the can o' beer', by virtue of the large number of bars that could be found there. La Canebière leads straight to the Vieux Port, and then onwards and upwards to the 'guardian and protector of the city', the name given to the basilica by the good folk of Marseille.

Le Vieux Port with the basilica on the hill

The basilica was constructed between 1853-1864. Although not among the largest of Catholic basilicas, what distinguished it, aside from its stunning location, is the height of its statue of the Virgin Mary, which stands at 23.7 metres (approx. 78 feet) including the pedestal, and which weighs around 10,000 kilos. To get there it's either a hard slog up the steep streets, a tourist ride in le petit train, or a municipal bus ride on the number 60 from Cours Jean Ballard.

Looking out from the basilica towards the Château
d'If, the small island on the left

And once there the views are magnificent! You can look down onto the Vieux Port and onto Marseille's other basilica, the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie-Majeure de Marseille. You can see the fort of the French Foreign Legion with its images of Beau Geste. And looking out across the white statue of St. Veronica and the Passion of Christ you can see in the distance the Château d'If, the island prison of Edmund Dantès, the romantic hero of Dumas' classic novel of revenge and justice, The Count of Monte Cristo. 

Not to be missed also is the enormous vaulted crypt measuring 30.15 metres x 13.60 metres (99 ft x 45 ft) and which houses a multi-coloured crucifix dating from the 16th Century, and a sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin with its golden mosaics. 

"Quick! Quick! The Mona Lisa. I'm double-parked!"

Whether or not the Louvre art museum in Paris is the best in the world is a matter of debate and local pride and prejudice, but it is apparently the most visited, and many visitors will be there for one reason only, to see it's most famous attraction, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.


It was painted some time between 1503 and 1519 and is variously known as La Gioconda, La Jaconde, and Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Though now regarded as the most famous painting in the world, it was not generally known until the middle of the Nineteenth Century, since when its reputation has soared, and is now an unmistakable icon of western art.


In 1911 the picture was stolen and suspicion fell on two of the leading artistic figures of the time, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the painter Pablo Picasso. In the event the culprit was discovered to be someone much more banal, a certain Vincenzo Peruggia, an employee at the Louvre and an Italian patriot who wanted to see the painting returned to its native land. He was only discovered when he tried to sell the work to the Uffizi in Florence.


If you're planning on visiting the Louvre to see Leonardo's masterpiece please remember that many, many other people will have had the same idea, so don't expect to rub noses with the enigmatic Florentine lady. It's also very small, only 30 inches x 21 inches (77 cms x 53 cms) so those opera glasses may come in handy when you're peering at it from 50 feet distance.

"Out of the way! I've only got half a day and I've got the Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Centre Pompidou whatever that is still to do!"
[picture Wikipedia]

Biker Babes Goin' Wild in Valence

200 kms from Valence a starlet poses at the Cannes Film Festival

A look at Valence (Drôme, France) from a political, economic and social standpoint, and definitely not dumbed down.

In order to respond to a mean, nasty, malicious and low-minded comment that this blog is dumbing down, we are now presenting this wholly serious posting on the French town of Valence, where I once spent 15 miserable hours due to the rain which never stopped the whole time, with the result that I left the place as ignorant as when I arrived.  So I'm now going back, digitally speaking, with the help of information and images graciously borrowed from the Internet, for a serious look at the socio-politico-economic activity of this important and vibrant community.

Anne-Sophie Lapix

We'll begin with the geography. Valence is a commune in the south-east of France and a prefecture in the department of the Drôme in the Rhône-Alpes region. It is the fifth most populated commune of the region with a population of 64,484 at the 2008 census. It is often referred to as 'the gateway to the South of France'. The current mayor is Alain Maurice of the P.c.f., the French Socialist Party, and the party of the beautiful Ségolène Royale, who I recently saw being interviewed by the ravishing Anne-Sophie Lapix. Mlle Lapix is a political science graduate, a trained and highly professional journalist and interviewer, with a sweet smile and a terrific pair of boobs.

Biker Babe contemplates 
what more she can do to 
help her community

The economic activity of Valence is primarily in the metal, textile, jewellery and agricultural sectors and many high-tech companies have facilities in the region. It has a highly developed transport infrastructure including a central train station which is served by the TGV high speed train from Paris to the Mediterranean. The city also has a popular bike sharing scheme. And in common with many continental cities, particularly in the south, there are lots of sexy, young biker babes wending their way through the traffic astride motor bikes and scooters, anxious to do their bit to ease their city's traffic congestion and thereby aid the economy of the community in which they live.

Ursula Andress, one of
Valence's most
famous non-natives

The commune has a lively and extensive intellectual and educational fabric which includes an engineering school, an Institute of Technology, as well as annexes to three universities, and various miscellaneous specialised schools. Among its most famous natives are Sébastien Chabal of the national rugby team; Bertrand and Guillaume Gille of the national handball team; and Jacques Tardi, comic strip artist. Not native to the commune is Ursula Andress, who was born in the Swiss city of Ostermundigen in the canton of Bern, and who gained overnight fame as Honey Ryder in the Bond film Dr No, in one of movie history's most iconic and memorable scenes in which she emerges from the sea looking stunning in a white bikini. 

The city also has a rich history, being ruled variously by Romans, Alans, Franks, Arabs of Spain, emperors of Germany and counts of Valentinois and of Toulouse. It has a cathedral with an apse that was rebuilt in the 11th century and consecrated in 1095. So it is a place with a fascinating past, but one which also has an active and important role to play in the present socio-politico-economic drama being enacted in the crisis-ridden world around it. So let's hear no more talk of dumbing down. This is a serious subject we've been discussing here. That's what we think, and Betty Boop does, too. Right, Betty?