One of the enduring passions in my life (apart from Indian food) started through contact with Sheila and particularly, her sister Leslie. Theirs was the first house I visited where they had ‘real’ paintings on the wall. On one side of the fireplace in the sitting room, I remember a charcoal drawing of an exotic looking woman with wild, dark hair looking so like Sheila. Leslie told me she was like their real mother who was then dead and that was why their father had bought it. On the other side they had a framed print of Rembrandt’s ‘Man in Armour’. I know now that neither was a real painting, but at least they were ‘real art’, so different to the chocolate box type of things that decorated the walls in other houses I knew in the early 1960s.
The education continued in many ways. Sheila and Leslie had aunts – or rather great aunts – on their mother’s side who lived in London, all of whom seemed to have rather exotic names and ways of earning their living. One I heard much about from Leslie was Tante Lily, who ran an art gallery in South Moulton Street in London. I was a lot older before I realised that it must have been quite an upmarket gallery, although I was already getting the picture when Leslie returned from visits bearing me gifts in the form of catalogues for exhibitions in the Gallery. I had been to the Glasgow Art Gallery a few times, usually with the art group from school. I was ill prepared for the rather strange but arresting items illustrated. Later, when both Leslie and Sheila studied ‘History of Fine Art’ at University, I received further indoctrination in Art, either from visits to galleries with them or as presents of various art books. They planted the seeds and my fascination with Painting and Sculpture grew. Poor long suffering husband Jim can attest to the hours he has spent with me in various galleries round the world.
Recently we spent almost a full day at the Tretyakov in Moscow, with probably the largest collection of Russian paintings anywhere. (Jim did enjoy it also as the paintings were so different from most of what we see in the West.)
That visit nicely completed a circle of fascination by the Wilson girls. Leslie studied Russian at school and university, and through her I also have an abiding passion for Russia and things Russian. On one of her early visits to Russia, well before the Iron Curtain opened, Leslie brought me three or four posters of Russian works of art. I fell in love with them and they followed me around bed-sits and flats until they disintegrated – they were on rather flimsy paper. After the visit to the Tretyakov, I was chatting with Leslie about the visit and mentioned how much I had liked works by Shishkin. And then I reminded her of the posters; amazingly, they were by Shishkin, one of Leslie’s favourite Russian painters. So I had carried my first love of Russian painters in my heart for almost fifty years – all thanks to the Wilson girls.
I hope that the experiences that Oscar has in the course of his climb up Kilimanjaro are as enduring as those which I had, thanks to his family, and that he will still have pleasure thinking about what he did and learned when he was thirteen, half a century from now.
NB Haven’t read Jean’s first “Brideshead” post? Click here.