As the Elephant Laughed - An evening with Peter Rodulfo

Recently I had the pleasure of an evening with the artist Peter Rodulfo. Modest and soft-spoken, Rodulfo is a gifted, prolific and visionary painter who is equally adept in portraiture as in fantasy as in landscape. His paintings are by turns graphic, witty and mystical.

While in conversation with the artist, over a bottle or two of wine, and in between reminiscing about 1970's Norwich, the setting of our youth, and while listening to recent songs by Lou Reed and Kevin Ayers, Rodulfo insists there's a strong element of the charlatan within most artists. The public these days, he states, demand a constant pulling-rabbits-out-of-a-hat conjuring act from artist's and are required to provide ready-made meanings and answers to all of life's questions. Some artists, more than others are willing to fulfil this role of conjurer, often compromising their artistic integrity with financial reward. Rodulfo's’s art however speaks strongly of independent creativity. He is indebted to nothing other than the combustive energy of his own industriousness and imagination.

There’s more than a little of the rebellious and eccentric about Rodulfo who exhibits archetypal Aquarian characteristics in his personality and art. Reticent and even downright self-depreciating at times, a casual glance at his book-case reveals favourite authors such as Honore de Balzac, who was no mean occultist and physiognomist, and the autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections by the seminal psychologist C.G.Jung. Almost all the available wall space at his home is given to a kaleidoscopic gallery of his art, recent work and older personal favourites are all mixed together - Tolkienesque landscapes, animated portraiture of sharply-observed character and dream-like imagery jostle for the viewer's attention. Such a cornucopia of paintings gives a strong impression of a life-time's productivity and testimony to an industrious and disciplined creativity.

Although he’s travelled the globe, it’s the city of Norwich which Peter Rodulfo has chosen as home for decades. Here in an ancient, almost forgotten corner of the English psyche, the mysterious east of England,  life moves at a Do Different pace. Many artists have appreciated Norwich's relative calm; its been the home to gifted artists throughout the centuries, from the days of medieval stained-glass designers to nineteenth century 'Norwich School' artists, John Crome, John Sell Cotman and Joseph Stannard, who celebrated Norfolk’s ‘bootiful’ landscape. Norwich has often quietly nurtured creative artists with it’s relatively stress-free urban living. The city is encircled by an expansive, yet intimate landscape; a not quite flat, but undulating rural county; which makes the city geographically remote and not easily accessible, to the delight and consternation of its inhabitants.

It’s easy for Rodulfo to give a nod to the art of Paul Klee, Max Ernst and De Chirico for example, while remaining very much his own man. Although his art utilizes some of the techniques and motifs associated with surrealism, as well as magical realism, he retains his artistic integrity. Labels are often misguiding and Rodulfo wisely eschews any eager and simplistic labelling of his still evolving creativity. But although comparisons can be misleading, there is one British artist whose art is worthy of note in both technique and imagination to Rodulfo's - that of the self-exiled British surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Like Carrington, Rodolfo acknowledges the role the unconscious psyche plays in his creativity. Like Carrington, Rodulfo's symbolism is home-grown and capable of striking a deep chord in its unconscious association. Finally, like Carrington, Rodulfo is equally adept at draughting a layered field of perspective to showcase his artistic vision. His paintings, like the best surrealist or magical realist painters can be a vivid encounter with the unconscious psyche, or more correctly in Rodulfo's case, a polite enquiry into the viewer's relationship to their own unconscious psyche.

Rodulfo's canvas As the Elephant laughed (above) exhibits a rich vocabulary of symbolism evoking a panorama of life on earth. The relentless march of time is depicted by the eroding cliffs of the Norfolk coast framing the composition. Its detailed brushwork includes stars and the ocean, perhaps the most common of all symbols of the unconscious psyche. Protozoan marine-life, animals and ageing humans are also depicted in a skilfully layered composition evoking the cosmic nature of time. It's a canvas lush in colouration which instantly transports the viewer to internal landscapes of the imagination where as in much of Peter Rodulfo's art, imagery, technique and imagination coagulate to form an absorbing viewing experience.

Through decades of hard work Rodulfo has now become a grand-master of magical realism; his creativity has yet to reach its zenith. One cordially wishes the artist will enjoy many years more of painting to the delight of his growing number of admirers.

In January 2012 Peter Rodulfo released no less than twelve photographic images of new paintings to public view. I've chosen just two of his paintings from a total of over 60 in his facebook portfolio for 2011/12  alone. With such a varied and expansive back-catalogue and with many paintings quite different in subject-matter, but equal in terms of technical virtuosity, its well worth checking out more of Rodulfo's art-work.

                    An Intruder in the Forest by Rodulfo. 

See also -

Rodulfo's Mandala of Loving-Kindness

 more of Peter Rodulfo's paintings here

Wikipedia entry for Peter Rodulfo

As the elephant laughed - A panorama of evolution

Thomas Morley

Music can draw the hearer in chains of gold to the consideration of holy things.   - Thomas Morley

The 1711 Sales Catalogue of the library of Sir Thomas Browne records a copy of Thomas Morley's A Plaine and easie way to make Musicke (1597) as once shelved at the Norwich physician and philosopher's home. Morley's book remained in print for over 200 years and is a valuable document upon the music-making of his era.

From his humble background as the son of a Norwich brewer, Thomas Morley (1557-1602) rose to the heights of organist at Saint Paul's cathedral and was privileged to study music under William Byrd. Morley's era, the second half of the sixteenth century, saw a surge in music-making in England, in particular a near craze for the accomplishment of skilled lute-playing among gentlemen, especially courtiers. Morley's era also witnessed the popularity of secular verse sung to complex harmonies known as madrigals, of which he was a prominent composer. Morley's musical skills also catered for instrumental music-making when in 1599 he published The first book of Consort Lessons, arrangements of his and various other composer's music for broken consort; the six instruments of the broken consort consisting of lute, flute, bandora, cittern and two viols, bass and treble. The viol  family of string instruments are precursors to the violin family. To modern ears a viol consort of three to five players, can sound slightly and deliciously 'creaky' with their wide compass of enharmonic overtones. Elizabethan music-making also included performances of the  masque, an elaborate form of early theatre from which ballet and opera evolved. Masques were often performed at  the Royal Court and involved singers and instruments. Lavishly produced, they featured spectacular costumes and stage-effects.

Thomas Morley

Morley's era was one in which the so-called 'Golden Age' of English music flourished. From roughly the 1560's until Purcell's death in 1695, English music developed and established a distinctive voice,  a  'Golden Age' of musical talent which would not occur in England again until the second half of the 20th century. Besides Thomas Morley, other Elizabethan composers of note include 'the father of English music' William Byrd (1540-1623), the melancholic lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626) and the keyboard player Thomas Tomkins (1572 -1656) who incidentally, owned a signed copy of Morley's Plaine and easie way to make Musicke. Of the later Jacobean era, William Lawes (1602-43) and the industrious and pious John Jenkins (1592-1678) who may have been acquainted with Sir Thomas Browne when resident in Norfolk, are all rewarding to listen to. Today, with the revival of interest in music which pre-dates J.S. Bach, the early music composers of England are frequently recorded and performed. There's much in the catalogue of early English music well worth hearing, including Morley's madrigals along with his First book of Consort Lessons.


One wonders whether Morley played any part in the music-making festivities when Queen Elizabeth I visited Norwich in 1578. A contemporary reported of her visit -

Herewith she passed under the gate.....and the musicians within the gate, upon their soft instruments, used broken musick...The next night...there was an excellent princely mask brought before her after supper, by Master Goldingham, in the Privie Chamber; it was of gods and goddesses, both strangely and richly apparelled...Then entered a consort of musicke; viz. six musicians, all in long vestures of white scarcenet girded about them, and garlands on their heads, playing very cunningly.

Queen Elizabeth's 'Royal Progress' to Norwich in 1578 is included in the English composer Benjamin Britten's opera Gloriana  which was written in the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953.  Act Two of Britten's opera is set against the back-drop of the Guildhall at Norwich. Elizabeth I  is welcomed by the City Recorder and then a masque is performed which she and the Royal court watch. Six dances, including a Morris dance are performed. Personifications of Time and Concord are among the principle characters in the masque who, accompanied by a chorus of rustic country maids and fishermen conclude the entertainment with a homage to the Queen.

It was a neat device of Benjamin Britten's to include a visit to Norwich by 'good Queen Bess' in his opera Gloriana. It  must be nearly 40 years ago now, when a teen-age school-boy, if I remember rightly, that our rehearsal of Noye's Fludde, a medieval  mystery play set to music by Benjamin Britten was interrupted. It was the composer himself, who dropped in to thank the boys and girls for all their hard work rehearsing his work. Britten's cantata for mixed ensemble of amateurs was first performed in Orford church in June 1958, the composer insisting that no future performances were to be made in a theatre, but only ever in churches or Halls.

Its worth noting that Browne's edition of Morley's primer on music (Sales Catalogue Page 45 number 47) is a first edition when in fact a modern edition could have been easily acquired, evidence of Browne being the consummate bibliophile and collector of rare books.  One cannot resist noting that the frontispiece illustration  to Morley's book (pictured above) depicts not only the various muses associated with  music and learning, but also the sun and moon as deities. Finally, also at the very bottom of the frontispiece illustration  holding a staff-like caduceus, there can be seen the elusive god of travel and communication, ruler of traders and thieves alike and patron of alchemy, Mercurius.

Joseph Stannard

Today is the birth-date of Joseph Stannard, the Norwich artist who died tragically young of tuberculosis aged just 33. Joseph Stannard ( Sept. 13th 1797- Dec. 5th 1830) was one of the most gifted artists who exhibited collectively under the banner of  Norwich School from 1803 to 1833, the city being the home of the first regional art movement in British art. Such was the precocious development of the young Joseph  that he began exhibiting his paintings aged 14 in 1811. He looks confident and aware of his talents in his teacher Robert Ladbrooke's portrait of him.

Joseph Stannard's life is exemplary of  the romantic notion of a struggling  artist. Living in the turbulent era of  the early nineteenth century, he was often in financial difficulties and in poor health. In addition to his artistic skills he was, like his younger brother Alfred, a strong rower. He was also an  accomplished ice-skater who entertained the locals with his skill during cold winters. Stannard's era was also that of the Napoleonic wars which were prohibitive to travel  in mainland Europe. When stability returned to Europe, Stannard took the opportunity to visit Holland. In Amsterdam in 1821 he viewed paintings by seventeenth century Dutch landscape masters Ruisdael, Berchem and Hobbema which deepened his interest in marine and seascape subjects. He married in 1822 and in 1824 his fortune changed when the Norwich manufacturer John Harvey commissioned him to paint what is his master-work, Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon. Harvey's agenda was to establish Norwich as a sea-port for the export of his merchandise. After visiting Venice and witnessing festivities held on the water there he organised a similar event for Norwich society which promoted his idea of Norwich returning to its sea-port status.

In many ways Stannard's  Thorpe Water Frolic is an important social document of a rare day off work for Norwich's textile workers who are depicted upon the right bank of the river Yare. The growing middle-class, civic dignitaries and aristocracy of Georgian England are located on the opposite river-bank.

Joseph Stannard has used a fair amount of poetic licence in his capturing the mood of the event, complete with musicians playing Schubert, courting couples, naval officers, rugged seamen and city loom workers  all enjoying a work-free day on the river. Particular attention to weather conditions and a vigorous cloudscape frames the lively water-event.

Stannard's own boat the Cytherea is on the extreme right of the canvas. Joseph can be seen shielding his brow with his hand looking toward his patron Harvey standing in a gondola. He certainly entered into the spirit of the event which attracted 20,000 people in 1824, his boat is described thus-

'its colour is purple; the inside is adorned with an elegant gilt scroll, which completely encircles it; on the back-board where the coxswain sits, is a beautiful and spirited sea-piece, representing a stiff breeze at sea, with vessels sailing in various directions, painted in oils, and the spoons of the oars are neatly covered with gilt dolphins'.

There's an interesting inter-play between Stannard the sailor who depicted the rigging and canvas sails of boats with every rope in its correct place and the medium of canvas on which he painted. Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon is dominated by a canvas sail catching the breeze. The large-scale oil on canvas painting itself measures 108 x 172 cms and  is a jewel in the crown of the Crome and Cotman  galleries in Norwich Castle Museum.

Although the artists of the Norwich School  had the inspiration and natural beauty of the Norfolk landscape and its waterways upon their door-step, the tragedy many artists suffered from was a distinct lack of local patronage, obliging many talented members to engage in much drudging, teaching work in order to make a living, such was J.J.Cotman's frequent fate; worse still,  it also suffered from an  intense rivalry between leading families.

Ever since the young Joseph Stannard had enquired about lessons from the founding father of the Norwich School 'Old Crome'  John Crome (1768-1821) a bitter hostility existed between the two families. Crome quoted an extortionate sum which was in effect a snub to the Stannard family. The hostility between the Crome and Stannard families seems to have persisted throughout the nineteenth century, even to the grandchildren of the two masters of  'Old Crome' and Stannard, both families producing several generations of artists.

In some respects Joseph Stannard's biography comes across as the consumptive poet of romanticism not unlike Keats. In his finest paintings, Stannard's paintings burst beyond the confines of restrained Classicism into a lyrical, early Romanticism.There's also an equal balance between landscape and realistic portraiture of people who are active and integral to the landscape in Stannard's painting, unlike Crome's landscapes in which people are often incidental, or present only for emphasis of scale and perspective.

Throughout the 1820's Stannard  had intermittent bouts of poor health and resided at various Norfolk coastal resorts in order to recuperate. His later works include several highly original beach scenes which include activities of working fishermen. However in December of 1830 he died of tuberculosis aged 33. A memorial stone commemorating Joseph Stannard can be seen in the church of Saint John Maddermarket, Norwich.

Wikipedia has a page on Joseph  Stannard which links to a number of his paintings.  

Thorpe Water Frolic

The masterwork of Joseph Stannard (1797-1830). The Norwich School of painters lost one its greatest artists with his early death.

The Thorpe Water Frolic was an idea of the wealthy merchant Thomas Harvey from his witnessing water-festivities at Venice while on the Grand tour of Europe. Begun in 1824 the Thorpe Water-Frolic attracted crowds of over 30,000 when the population of Norwich was at that time little more than 10,000. A welcome day of rest for the many weavers of Norwich who often worked in cramped conditions, the Water-frolic was enjoyed as a rare day of recreation in the fresh air.

The division of the social classes was maintained throughout the event with gentry and aristocracy upon the left-bank, and workers to the right-bank of the canvas. Harvey who commissioned the painter Joseph Stannard to record the events of the Water-Frolic can be seen standing centre-left as if wading. Stannard has placed himself in the painting wearing red, shading his eyes and looking towards Harvey.

There appears to be several weather conditions depicted in the bright and busy sky-scape. A storm may be just clearing and better weather arriving. In any event its been suggested that Stannard was influenced by the writings of Berchem and his observations upon light and clouds. Stannard had also traveled to Holland in 1821 and and may well have seen the master-works by Dutch painters such as Ruisdael and Hobbema.

Water frolics held a special interest for Stannard beyond the aesthetics and social. He was a skilled oarsman and owned a prize-winning boat, the Cytherea, a four-oared skiff...It was certainly on view at the frolic of 1824, steered by an urchin and rowed by four youths in a uniform of blue-netted waistcoats, scarlet belts, white trousers and yellow straw hats with a laurel leaf and Cytherea in gold...If the Thorpe water frolics were really great pageants , as the Norwich Mercury suggested, and if the multitudes who attended were all actors, then Stannard played his part thoroughly. The Cytherea in 1825 appeared richly transformed:

'its colour is purple; the inside is adorned with an elegant gilt scroll, which completely encircles it; on the back-board where the coxswain sits, is a beautiful and spirited sea piece, representing a stiff breeze at sea, with vessels sailing in various directions, painted in oils are nearly covered with gilt dolphins.....

(from article by Trevor Fawcett-Roper in Norfolk Archaeology 1976)