Joseph Mallord William Turner House beside the river, with trees and sheep ca. 1806-1807 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
John Constable East Bergholt 1808 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
John Constable Shoreham Bay near Brighton 1824 oil on paper, mounted on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Richard Parkes Bonington Landscape with a pond ca. 1825-26 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath
In payment for those mornings at the mirror while,
at her
expense, I'd started my late learning in Applied
French Braids, for all
the mornings afterward of Hush
and Just stand still,
to make some small amends for every reg-
iment-
ed bathtime and short-shrifted goodnight kiss,
I did as I was told for once,
gave up
my map, let Emma lead us through the woods
"by instinct," as the drunkard knew
the natural
prince. We had no towels, we had
no "bathing costumes," as the children's novels
call them, and I
am summer's dullest hand at un-
premeditated moves. But when
the coppice of sheltering boxwood
disclosed its path and posted
rules, our wonted bows to seemliness seemed
poor excuse.
The ladies in their lumpy variety lay
on their public half-acre of lawn,
the water
lay in dappled shade, while Emma
in her underwear and I
in an ill-
fitting borrowed suit availed us of
the breast stroke and a modified
crawl.
She's eight now. She will rather
die than do this in a year or two
and lobbies,
even as we swim, to be allowed to cut
her hair. I do, dear girl, I will
give up
this honey-colored metric of augmented
thirds, but not (shall we climb
on the raft
for a while?) not yet.
– Linda Gregerson (1996)
Richard Parkes Bonington Les Salinières near Trouville ca. 1827-28 oil on panel National Galleries of Scotland |
Samuel Palmer View of Lee, North Devon 1834-35 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot La Châtaigneraie ca. 1830-40 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot The Dyke ca. 1865 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Gustave Courbet La Ronde Enfantine ca. 1862 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Camille Pissarro Les bords de la Seine à Bougival 1864 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Auguste Renoir The gust of wind ca. 1872 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Lawrence Alma-Tadema 94 degrees in the shade (Henry Francis Thompson, age 17, in cornfield at Godstone, Surrey) 1876 oil on canvas, mounted on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Vincent van Gogh L'Allée en automne 1885 oil on canvas, mounted on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Richard Roland Holst Orchard at Eemnes ca. 1888-95 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
Eugène Boudin The bridge over the Touques at Deauville 1895 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |