"St. Leonard's Abbey, near Tours" by Sir Frank Brangwyn

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St. Leonard's Abbey, near Tours

Sir Frank Brangwyn RA, 1867-1956

Etching

Source: Sparrow, Prints and Drawings by Frank Brangwyn, 80.

Formatting and text by George P. Landow.

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Commentary by Walter Shaw Sparrow

Brangwyn employs popular life as annotations to his etchings of great architecture. Wit, humour, irony, satire, burlesque, pathos, tragedy, terror, with other condiments from the frequent hash that nations make of their opportunities, are present among the foreground figures whenever Brangwyn desires to place in quite normal opposition the littleness of ordinary men and the varied genius that venerable buildings represent from age to age.

In "St. Leonard's Abbey, near Tours" (No. 206), an etching to be studied again and again, some tagrag and bobtail — caddish moments of humanity — enjoy fuddled high jinks at the foot of a noble but neglected piece of architecture whose style seems to date from the twelfth century. This satirical humour is justified by much illtreatment which so many ancient abbeys have received from bigots, tourists, reformers, farmers, and other ideal persons, all too selfimprisoned to notice the proud thoroughness that the Middle Ages treasured up in beautiful masonry, though everyone's life was threatened by many a disease uncommon nowadays. Is there anything more touching than the contrast between the brevity of medieval lives and the astounding endurance of medieval craftsmanship even when great ruins are neglected ? [150-51]

Bibliography

Sparrow, Walter Shaw. Prints and Drawings of Frank Brangwyn with Some Other Phases of His Art. London: John Lane, 1919. Internet Archive version of a copy in the Ontario College of Art. Web. 28 December 2012.

Last modified 12 June 2020