Valentine's Day Greetings

The Kiss - Gustav Klimt

 Love Messenger - Marie Spartali Stillman  
This painting reveals a 'double edged sword' by showing the dependable love and beauty of the goddess Venus in the form of two symbols - a dove and a single red rose. Her love is compared to the unpredictable love of her son Cupid, whose image appears on the embroidery. Cupid holds a bow and arrow, loaded and ready to shoot, but the omens look uncertain as he is blindfolded.

The Kiss - Francesco Hayez 

The Black Brunswicker - John Everett Millais   
It is the eve of the battle at Waterloo, but the soldier's sweetheart, wearing a ball gown, restrains him and tries to push the door closed, whilst he gently but firmly pulls it open.
The Black Brunswickers were a special troop raised by Frederick William Duke of Brunswick (1771-1815) in 1809. The regiment consisted of the best German gentlemen and was known as the ‘Death or Glory’, a name derived from their distinctive death’s head hat badge and their apparent devotion to duty. The troops suffered severe losses at the battle of Quatre Bras, Waterloo in 1815.  Millais used Kate, Charles Dickens daughter, as the model.

The Garden of Love - Peter Paul Rubens 
This painting celebrates Rubens marriage to Helena Fourment, his second wife, who was sixteen years old when they married and Rubens was fiftythree. She was deemed 'the most beautiful women in Antwerp'. In the painting she is shown on the left being nudged along by a cupid.
The scene shows a group of people frolicking around in an idealised garden where cupids carry symbols of marital love including a pair of doves. The fountain showing Venus nursing a baby and a sculpture of the three Graces all signify fertility and nuptial happiness. The peacock symbolises the goddess Juno, protector of marriage.

Love stamp (1973) designed by Robert Indiana - an American artist associated with the pop art movement

The Kiss - Edvard Munch

April Love - Arthur Hughes
A young woman looks down at fallen rose petals as her hidden suitor bends to kiss her hand. The petals symbolise the fragility of young love. 
This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1856, and following the exhibition it was bought by William Morris. He narrowly beat John Ruskin to the purchase who also desired it
paintings via wiki

Cornwall

We have just been away for a few days escaping the hurly burly that is Christmas

to a hotel that holds a special affection for us, and is just a short coastal headland walk to St. Ives 
Alternatively you can take a little train that trundles along below the footpath every hour to

St. Ives

Silvanus Trevail was the architect of The Carbis Bay Hotel built in 1894. He was a prominent Cornish architect who rose to become Mayor of Truro and nationally, President of the architects' professional body, the Society of Architects.
The hotel was immortalised by the author Rosamunde Pilcher when it was featured as The Sands Hotel in her novels 'The Shell Seekers' and 'Winter Solstice'.
Although the hotel has changed over the years it still retains much of its character and houses a wonderful very large original oil painting by Sir Claude Francis Barry - as a young painter he studied first with the Newlyn School of realist painters and then under Alfred Bast with the St. Ives group of painters 

St. Ives - painted in 1910 - Claude Francis Barry
He was known for his great love of colour and for developing his style continuously during his lifetime

We left home in typically December weather only to discover warmer, sunnier climes had blown in to Cornwall from the continent. It is this special light that attracted the colonies of famous painters to Newlyn and St.Ives at the end of the c19th.

The late afternoon sun is slipping away rapidly - time to hasten back over the headland for our eagerly anticipated evening meal

 This is not an advert or recommendation for the hotel, it is simply a place that we know and love

 A Christmas thought

Why have we allowed ourselves to be manipulated into thinking that Christmas needs weeks of preparation and shopping?

When I was small Christmas arrived hardly more than a week before the event. On the morning of Christmas Eve our turkey would be delivered from the farm along with a box of fruit and vegetables, and father would go out into the garden with his spade and dig up our Christmas tree. Myself and siblings would spend the afternoon decorating the tree, and then just before we climbed the stairs to bed, the lights would be ceremoniously switched on, filling us all with great excitement and anticipation.