Jan and Cora Gordon

 Jan Gordon's WW1 involvement in the design of dazzle patterns for ships in WW1 has been discussed several times here (see references below, also https://pbase.com/hajar/jan_gordon_dazzle).  On a recent visit to the Manx Museum in Douglas, Isle of Man, I came across this dramatic painting featuring a dazzled 'King Orry' steam packet. The dazzle is in blues and black. The ship is leading the surrendered German ships into the Firth of Forth at the end of WW1. This was on the 21st November 1918. There's an airship and two aeroplanes in the sky above. The painting is  by Arthur James Wetherall Burgess R.I. and was completed in1919. The King Orry was the only merchant vessel selected to lead a flotilla of German ships that day. In WW2, she was bombed and sunk at Dunkirk. References Gordon, J.G. Lieut. R.N.V.R. 1918. The Art of Dazzle Painting. Land & Sea, December 1918 Smith, R.D.A., 2013.  Jan Gordon: Dazzle Camouflage in Nature and War.  February 01, 2013 ...

Many years ago, I bought a volume of ' The Apple of Beauty and Discord ", which contained a reproduction of a woodcut by Cora Gordon of Sennen Cove in Cornwall. Today, I looked again and read an article by Jan Gordon on ' The Future in Paris ', a discussion of the fading of Paris as a centre of invention in art after the end of WW1. I have transcribed the article here below.  ' Since 1800 Europe has looked to France for inspiration in Art. France emerging from the throes of the Revolution began the series of developments which in themselves constituted a revolution in Art. Even though the principal leaders in some of the later developments were not French, such as Picasso, a Spaniard, Boccioni and Severeni, Italians, the whole movement from A to Z was French in character, French in inspiration, and the foreign assistants were usually of Latin origin; though some impetus was given by the oriental element contributed by the younger Jewish painters.  The question uppe...

Jan Gordon left a rich legacy of art works , in oils, gouache, watercolour and etchings. He wrote about the practicalities of these techniques in his book ' A Stepladder to Painting ' and its American edition, ' Painting for Beginners '. One painting (a gift from my cousin Mags) is a mystery, showing an overcast scene in a location experiencing strong winds, with some swamp-like water bodies and two devices, one approximately square and the other a triangle, suggesting warning signs. There are traces of an earlier placement of the triangle with curved supporting pole to the left of the eventual representation of this feature. The colours, mainly greens and browns with patches of yellow and blue, are subdued, giving the appearance of an autumn or winter day. Small branches, bare of leaves, make reflections in the standing body of water. The painting is signed "Gordon" in blue paint, the last colour added to the picture, on the shadow side of the plants in the l...

Blackwoods Magazine for March 1923 (pages 60-82) has a story by Jan Gordon called "Mr. Brown's Brigand." Gordon makes abundant use of his experiences in Paris and Serbia and alludes to common themes of his - personal freedom and the trials and tribulations of artists. It's a long and laboured tale. It begins with John Brown the painter entering the café Rotonde, famous and popular haunt of artists of the time. Brown's extravagant persona is described as a new phenomenon, "Le Roi Charles." He had a high-pitched drawling super-Oxford accent, in general appearance "a sort of fair-haired, anaemic, modern translation of one of Vandyke's posed portraits." Brown was followed by a "huge companion" met in Serbia and staying with him in Paris. He was dressed in a coarse overcoat and a pointed sheepskin cap. He had a dark face "carved out into muscular shapes, deep-set morose eyes, and a long black moustache." Jan Gordon had first ...

A century ago, Jan Gordon published an entertaining short story set in a Parisian cafe. It's in Blackwoods, volume 213, pg. 362-387. The story is about a serving maid who had cut her thumb, roughly bandaged it and cheerfully continued with her duties. Gordon paints a vivid word picture of the cafe, its patron and his Madame, the characters of the various customers and contrasts the experience of dining in London and Paris. He also weaves in elements of his experience in Serbia during the First World War. It begins with, “ The girl had hurt her thumb and had it tied up in a piece of rag which had already become soiled and grimy from contact with the dishes. " She carried the plates coiled in her left arm and handed them out with her uninjured left hand. " She ran happily to and fro, now slicing a piece of bread from the metre-long French roll, which stood in its tall basket ; now seizing a chopine of red or white wine from the “zinc” ; now crying an order to the kitchen at...

In the July 1920 volume of "The Strand," Jan Gordon published a short story called "Haunted Houses," illustrated by Chas. Crombie.  The story describes an encounter between a musical country vagabond and a hungry London orphan girl in an abandoned house and muses on the meaning of freedom. The tramp concludes that "if you live in brick boxes, you pay for it, that's all. Haunted - all houses are haunted, haunted by what man could a been and wasn't, by dreams left to rot - we're all haunted - every bloomin' one." The vagabond asks the girl about her home ("Brixton") and parents (no father and mother dead, looked after by her aunt when not drunk). He offers to teach her the flute and when she doesn't respond he sets off alone, playing a tune. She makes her decision and runs after him. Jan Gordon later developed this story into a novel, "Piping George," published in 1930. The book starts with the motto " Alterius no...

"The Honest Man" is a clever very short story in a 1916 issue of Reedy's Mirror (from the New Witness). It begins with a lengthy sentence to set the scene: " In Montenegro, those high bare mountains between Rica and Grahavo - in the midst of which Cettinje nestles nestles in its fertile cup so ill-supplied are the farms with soil that from one acre a man might carry away on his back all the arable land available in one single journey. " Cetinje, founded in 1482, is indeed situated in an area of limestone mountains on a karst plain at about 650 m elevation. Late 19th C view of Cetinje Gordon continues with, " Hunger and the Montenegrin are sons of the same soil to which liberty has a near cousinship ." Hence the need to seek work in other lands. A protagonist in the story travels across the region, enriching himself by a robbery, eventually marrying and settling in Russian Galicia. The couple prospered, but died without any offspring, leaving an " ...