Beaux Arts Bath

MORE SUMMER SUN

 

It is properly hot in Bath today, a day of summery torpor. Better to be relaxing by the banks of a river.  The river Wye for example….

Wye VIII, Oil on Canvas 120 x 100 cm. £3,800.

 

 

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798   by William Wordsworth

 

Meanwhile up on higher ground, the soft mist is a cool balm for the face. There is a lovely sense of place in Daniel Crawshaw’s depiction of this Welsh mountainside, part of our Summer offering.  Beaux Arts is a gallery where a person can come out of the heat and feel instantly soothed by the atmosphere within…

 

Llynnau Mymbyr III, Oil on Canvas 120 x 100 cm. £3,800

 

Being in the gallery for long hours and, meeting lots of people, especially in the summer, I sometimes think of this poem

 

Two lovers went to a museum and wandered therooms. He saw a painting and stood in front of itfor too long. It was a few minutes before sherealized he had gotten stuck. He was stuck lookingat a painting. She stood next to him, looking at hisface and then the face in the painting. What do yousee? she asked. I don’t know, he said. He didn’tknow. She was disappointed, then bored. He waslooking at a face and she was looking at her watch.This is where everything changed. There was nowa distance between them. He was looking at a facebut it might as well have been a cabbage or asugar beet. Perhaps it was something about yellownear pink. He didn’t know how to say it. Years laterhe still didn’t know how to say it, and she was gone.Richard Siken Two Lovers

 

 

In this summer heat, the below is what happens to most people who grew up going on holiday to Donegal.

 

No 2, Oil on board 15 x 21 cm £1200

 

And finally….You have to love The West Ccountry on a summer evening…..

 

Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean —the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?The Summery Day by Mary Oliver

 

Thank you again for reading. Please click on the images above for links to webpages.Contact the gallery by phone or email to purchase, or for any further information.We ship worldwide.Best wishes,Aidan.