Under the tree

Heathcliff under the Tree, the wood engraving by Fritz Eichenberg will be exhibited at the Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, Nebraska), starting today, January 24. The piece belongs to the new Wood exhibition:

Picture: Heathcliff Under the Tree, from Wuthering Heights, wood engraving on japan paper, Museum purchase with Funds Provided by Sally Lusk, Lenore Polack, E. James and Norma Fuller, Sara Foxley, and Bert W. and Renee Mehrer, in honor of Penelope Smith, 2007, Collection of Joslyn Art Museum.

On January 24, Joslyn Art Museum will open Wood, an exhibition celebrating the history and unique characteristics of the woodblock print. The exhibition brims with no less than 80 prints, blocks, and books from the Museum’s collection and private lenders — most on public view for the first time. Wood spans an incredible 550 years of printmaking, from a half-page, hand-colored woodcut from the life of Saint John (from the Apocalypse Blockbook, ca. 1460) and 15th century works by the great German printmaker Albrecht Dürer, his teacher, Michael Wolgemut, and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, to contemporary works by Americans Brett Anderson, Karen Kunc, and Jay Bolotin. Dozens of artists from the United States and European nations, as well as Japan, Holland, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia, are represented. The Wood exhibition inaugurates a series of three annual exhibitions — Wood, Metal, and Stone — highlighting the history and aesthetics of woodblock prints, intaglio, and lithographs. Wood will remain on view through May 24 in Joslyn Art Museum’s print gallery. (Artdaily)

More information can be read on The Reader:

[Penelope] Smith, the assistant curator, discussed each print installed in the show in depth, chronicling the changes and fads in prints throughout the ages. Highlights included contributions from Fritz Eichenberg, a political cartoonist who fled Germany after lampooning Hitler. His print “Heathcliff Under the Tree” from Wuthering Heights is an iconic image using dramatic darks and lights. (Sarah Baker)

The Guardian uses Heathcliff for discussing why alcoholic man do well with women (!):

You know what I think? I think some women are alcoholic-oholics. What are they getting out of it? What's their "hit"? Well, there's drama. There's the alluring notion of "rescuing with their love". There's the flood of verbal emotion that men don't do, but drunk men do, do and do again. A skinful turns many a man into that female vote-grabbing romantic hero Heathcliff. True. Read Wuthering Heights. Actually read the book. Heathcliff's a twat. (Anonymous)

Maybe he is... but a sober one.

Modern day Jane Eyres are the subject of an article about tutoring in England in Financial Times:

Some of these, at the top end of the market, may see themselves as the direct descendants of the Jane Eyre-like governesses who took care of the offspring of rich families in previous centuries. (Emma Jacobs and Miranda Green)

Also in the Financial Times we read an interview to the writer Jenny Diski:

What is the first novel you read? Jane Eyre, or the first third of it – repeatedly. (Anna Metcalfe)

The San Mateo County's Daily Journal Know It All section summarises the original Jane Eyre as follows:

In the classic novel “Jane Eyre” (1847), by Charlote Brontë (1816-1855), Jane works as a governess at Thornfield Manor and falls in love with her employer Mr. Rochester. On their wedding day Jane discovers she cannot wed Rochester because he has an insane wife, Bertha Mason, that he hides in the attic. (Kerry McArdle)

Books and Movies has finished reading Wuthering Heights, Porcelain didn't enjoy reading Jane Eyre (in Spanish).

Illustratio posts several illustrations by Jacques Pecnard of a 1967 French translation of Jane Eyre (on the right). Spectatia publishes another illustration from a Swedish edition of Wuthering Heights. The Charleston Stage Company has uploaded to flickr a set of pictures of their last year's production of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre.


Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontëites, Illustrations, Jane Eyre, References, Wuthering Heights