View of Kinchinjunga from Tonglo. Marianne North (1830-1890). c. 1878. Oil on board. H 35.5 x W 44.4 cm. Marianne North Gallery, Kew. Accession no. MN261, given by the artist, 1882. Photo credit: The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
North wrote of her great good fortune in being able to paint this scene over a number of days:
The next day took me over the most glorious road, among forests and mountains, to Darjeeling, the finest hill place in the whole world; and I brought my usual luck with me, for Kinchinjanga uncovered himself regularly every day for three hours after sunrise during the first week of my stay, and I did not let the time be wasted, but worked very hard. I had never seen so complete a mountain, with its two supporters, one on each side. It formed the most graceful snow curves, and no painting could give an idea of its size. The best way seemed to me to be to attempt no middle distance, but merely foreground and blue mistiness of mountain over mountain. The foregrounds were most lovely: ferns, rattans, and trees festooned and covered with creepers, also picturesque villages and huts. [I: 28]
She had very much in mind here the work of her good freind Edward Lear — "I saw Mr. Lear's subject, "The Plains of Bengal," even the very trees he had put into the foreground" (II: 28), and it may be that she had also seen one of his recent (1877) versions of Mount Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling. Lear has found a different and more dramatic way of suggesting the mountain's grandeur, by exaggerating their height in the distance and leading up to it by majestically tall, straight, almost stylised trees either side.
One of Lear's versions of Mount Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling.
North, on the other hand, has paid her usual attention to the flowers and trees in the foreground, the twisted and gnarled trunks far more natral than Lear's but also somewhat prettifying the picture — she often used framing devices on this way. The end resuit is picturesque rather than majestic. This in fact is true to her own vision, for she saw the scene with its little settlement as precisely that ("The foregrounds were most lovely: ferns, rattans, and trees festooned and covered with creepers, also picturesque villages and huts.")
Image download, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. be shared and re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Bibliography
The Gallery of Marianne North's Paintings of Plants and Their Homes, Royal Gardens. Kew. Descriptive Catalogue Designed by W. Botting Helmsley, ALS. London: 1882. v-vi. Google Books. Free to read.
View of Kinchinjunga from Tonglo. Art UK. Web. 29 August 2023.
North, Marianne. Recollections of a Happy Life: being the autobiography of Marianne North. Vol. II. London and New York, Macmillan, 1893. Internet Archive, from a copy of a book in the Wellcome Library. Web. 29 August 2023.
Created 29 August 2023