Scientific Technical Writer, Artist:
Blog:
https://markpickles.wordpress.com/
Blog mainly covers antisemitism, philosophical theology and the philosophy of science.
In spare time fighting anti-Semitism/anti-Israelism, and writing book that synthesises monotheistic, philosophical and scientific worldviews.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mark_Pickles
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This scene depicts Shambles Square, Manchester, on a hot and sunny evening in August in a week-long heatwave two years ago. I decided to get the tram into Manchester at lunchtime to do sketches and take photos. I waited until evening for the shadows to lengthen to take most of my reference photos.
This painting presented many technical problems. The first was getting the stretched canvas from an art supplier – Fred Aldous Ltd in Manchester – to my studio in south Manchester! The canvas was too large to fit in my car, and so I carried it to the tram, which was not easy on breezy day. Fortunately the tram wasn’t crowded because I needed the space of two whole seats and part of the aisle. Of course, I could have had the canvas delivered, and next time I paint a canvas of this size or larger I will do so!
Detail, bottom left
The painting looks down, up, right and left. This presents perspective problems which only through experimental sketches could I resolve to create a single satisfying and realistic image. For reference photos I use a 50mm SLR lens, which has the closest resemblance our eyes. A shorter focal length would exaggerate perspective and cause bulging. Therefore, the painting is made up from around 12 sections.
The other problem photographers have when confronted with this scene is that it’s not possible to stand far enough back to get the whole scene in view without an extremely short – or “fisheye” – focal length, as can be seen on this small screenshot of a photo I found on the Internet. Despite the use of a fisheye lens, and all the severe distortions of straight lines, the photo still only manages to take in about half the scene that I have painted, i.e. it does not look nearly as far up or down. And horizontally it only captures about 70% of the scene in my painting, missing the two pubs on the left.
Looking up. High and right from Shambles Square.
Looking down. Low and right from Shambles Square.
And so although my painting (and my other panoramic paintings) could be described as realism, it is in a sense unreal. In reality we wouldn’t be able to look down and left at the bicycle and at the same time look right, up the hill towards the yellow tram, not even with peripheral vision.
David Hockney has done similar experiments with perspective for his Bigger Picture picture landscapes (first exhibited in 2012), overcoming what he calls a ‘single static view’, both in his painting and photography/filming. For his filming, he employed a team to rig up 9 cameras in array on the bonnet of a Land Rover, each pointing in a slightly different direction. Personally, I find the results of Hockney’s Bigger Picture series beautiful, both his sombrely-coloured and intensely-colour paintings. The largest of his paintings are created on multiple canvasses. Hockney is one of the few modern artists I like. He is a fellow Yorkshireman too: we were even born in the same hospital (St Luke’s in Bradford), and, as Hockney says of West Yorkshire, we “spent our childhood in the gloom”.
Hockney and “Winter Trees”. Screenshot from YouTube.
I would love to paint a huge cityscape, of the scale, or even half the scale, of Hockney’s Winter Trees, using a ‘moving’ perspective that requires multiple canvases. It would have to be in a looser style than my Manchester paintings, and I could only feasibly do it to commission for a corporation that could host such a big piece. I could not indulge the immense overheads that would be required for a highly-speculative work of this scale. And frankly, painting a city scene of buildings and human figures, in a realism style with shifting perspectives, would be a lot more challenging than painting trees and grass! It would be very time consuming too, perhaps a full year.
Incidentally, my figurative painting that I’ve titled The Yorkshire Muse is set in Shipley Glen, a popular beauty spot near Bradford, only several hundred yards away from Salt’s Mill in Saltaire, which houses the largest permanent collection of David Hockney’s artworks. In deference to the Yorkshire maestro, I painted the trees in a Hockneyesque style!
The Yorkshire Muse, Pastel on board, 70cm x 50cm (Original and prints available)
I developed a deep interest in the City of London following my commission to paint the City from the offices of Silicon Valley Bank (41 Lothbury, overlooking the Bank of England). As an ardent monarchist who served in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, I looked forward to the Queen’s Jubilee Pageant on Sunday 3rd June 2012 in anticipation of a celebratory sense of the living history of London and the ‘royal river’ that shaped its creation and evolution.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the gloomy and wet weather! I arrived at the Thames to join friends in the morning. It really was a dirty grey day: very uninspiring for an artist normally attracted to big skies and the effects of light on a subject. My only hope was that the colour in the flotilla and the crowds would enable me to bring some life into my painting. Of course, I could have introduced sunlight, but the nimbostratus clouds were relentless for the whole eight hours or so we spent on the bank of the Thames. Although I have used much artistic license throughout this painting, the flat greyness and rain, I felt, had to be retained in order to capture the atmosphere of the day, and our very British spirit of patience, resilience and good humour – come what may!
Below, detail of the left of the painting. Click to enlarge.
The vantage point
The vantage point is an imaginary one, based on sketch studies and reference photographs I had made a fortnight before the event from the south of the Thames. In fact there isn’t a good view across the river to St Paul’s Cathedral from the southwest because of a long line of vessels and pontoons anchored on the centreline of the Thames between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, as shown in my reference photographs. (And indeed these vessels increased in number on June 3rd.)
My reference photos, showing some of the clutter that I edited out of the Thames
On the day of the pageant I stood on the north bank, near the stern of HMS President, to join in the fun and get my reference photographs of the flotilla.
Changes to the London Topography
I removed a few eyesores. These include Blackfriars’ Pier and the works on Blackfriars’ Rail Bridge (which otherwise would have dominated the centre of the painting). I’ve simplified or even removed some of the nondescript modern buildings in the City, whilst hoping to retain a convincing cityscape.
The Blackfriar Pub. It is the shape of an old flat iron, jammed between a railway bridge and a tree. I stood on a traffic island to do this quick sketch.
I twisted Unilever House slightly clockwise to bring into view its curved art-deco facade, which on 3rd June hosted a neat row of large and stately union jacks. Some further edits I made in that area of the painting allowed me to bring the Black Friar pub into view – a curious little building both externally and internally, which the poet laureate John Betjeman thankfully saved from demolition in the 60s. (Betjeman is better known for his love of English churches, and he did indeed help save St Paul’s, as part of a team of volunteer fire watchers during the Blitz.)
I’ve brought more of the Justice Statue into view than is usually visible from Southbank. Similarly, I juggled things around a bit to give emphasis to Saint Bride’s Church (the attractive steeple on the extreme left of the painting).
I had to ‘edit’ the shape of the Thames to bring in a glimpse of Southbank and the crowds. And I decided not to paint the trees that compete with the dolphin lamp posts on Queen’s Walk.
In general, tackling any ‘realistic’ painting in a panoramic format presents all kinds of decision-making and technical problems, and it’s really an exercise in determining how the human eye takes in a scenario: unlike the camera lens, the eye constantly adjusts and edits: in a fraction of a second it can receive information from foreground, background, left, right, up, down… constantly re-focusing and compensating for lights and darks. However I believe it’s worth the effort. As an artist I have in this painting, in a single ‘realistic’ image, depicted details of the boats, the crowds, the city buildings, the river and the sky. The camera lens simply cannot do this for all kinds of reasons. For me, the camera is an excellent tool, but it doesn’t have the last word in realism. A traditional painter with imagination and skill can do a lot more.
The Flotilla
The flotilla in my painting is of course ‘edited’ and transposed reality, partly because, as discussed, the Thames is cluttered with stationary vessels and pontoons. Furthermore, I wanted to give emphasis to the boats of the City-of-London livery companies. Apart from being attractive boats, they really gave the event its link to the great river pageants of the past, not only to the Lord Mayor’s pageant depicted in the Canaletto painting, but to events before and since, including Anne Boleyn’s Coronation in 1533, and a Restoration pageant in 1662 for King Charles II and Queen Catherine of Braganza.
Canaletto painting of the Lord Mayor’s Procession, 1752
My painting includes two of the “Great Twelve” livery companies, whose history goes back more than eight centuries. The companies, ancient and modern, whose boats feature in the painting are:
The Salters’ Company The Drapers’ Company The Tallow Chandlers’ Company The Information Technologists’ Company The Scientific Instrument Makers’ Company
The commercial, religious and social history of London’s merchants and manufacturers is largely the history of its livery companies.
Naturally, the royal barge Gloriania is depicted leading the flotilla, as she was on 3rd June.
The Depicted Scene
For readers not familiar with London it’s worth pointing out that the depicted scene is the City of London, also known as the ‘Square Mile’. It is the original part of London, founded by the Romans, and is now towards the east of the great metropolis that is contemporary London.
The backdrop extends from Saint Bride’s Church on the left, to the ‘Gherkin’ at St Mary Axe and the other skyscrapers that symbolise London’s status as the world’s principal centre of finance.
Saint Bride’s is my favourite Wren church in the City, and has the highest steeple. Located on Fleet Street it is known colloquially as ‘the Journalists’ Church’ or sometimes ‘the wedding-cake church’. The site of this place of worship has a fascinating 2000-year history.
Blackfriars
The area depicted to the left of St Paul’s Cathedral is Blackfriars, from which the bridge takes its name, and so called because it was the site of a Dominican priory until the English Reformation, shortly after which the area became the haunt of some of the greatest names in British theatre, including Shakespeare, Johnson, Marlowe and Burbage. One of Shakespeare’s shipwreck plays, The Tempest, was first performed to the public in 1612, exactly 400 years before the Thames Pageant, in one of two theatres that were built in the former priory grounds. But the depicted scene reminds me rather of the famous words penned by Christopher Marlowe:
Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss
St Paul’s Cathedral
“St Paul’s must be saved at all costs” Winston Churchill , 29 December 1940
I placed the cathedral exactly in the centre of this depiction of a royal and nautical pageant. A cathedral is a city throne (from the Latin cathedra) and it’s also metaphorically a ship carrying souls through the storms of time, which is why the main body of a cathedral usually resembles an upside-down ship and is called the ‘nave’ – after the Latin word for ship. The word ‘navy’ shares the same etymology.
Paul the Apostle, to whom the cathedral is dedicated, was himself shipwrecked during a storm near Malta on his way to Rome. Thankfully, since the original cathedral was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, 1666, Sir Christopher Wren’s cathedral has weathered the firestorms of two world wars, including what became known as the Second Great Fire of London of 29/30 December 1940.
I also like the fact that our alternative name for the Thames is Isis, the Egyptian goddess whose name means woman of the throne (although the etymology of the Latin Thame-isis, which we still meet in the French La Tamise, has long been a subject for debate).
The Diamond-Jubilee long weekend included a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, including a reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, to celebrate the Queen’s 60 years on the throne and position of Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
Contact me if you are interested in purchasing an archival-quality fine-art print of this image.
The painted image is essentially a panoramic montage of the scenes around the Deansgate and Castlefield areas of Manchester UK that I have pulled together into a single convincing and realistic image.
Beginning with experimental sketches, I played around with the topography, perspective, and distances (shortening the platform for instance to bring the trams closer). I removed some nondescript features and constructions that were obscuring the distant view.
This area of the city developed rapidly in the 19th century, but its history goes back to the Romans’ colonisation of much of Britain. There are ruins of a Roman fort in Castlefield.
The title ‘Rainand Cotton’ sums up the city of Manchester: its notoriously wet climate and the cotton industry that brought Manchester, and ultimately much of the world, into Industrial Revolution. Manchester was nicknamed ‘Cottonopolis’ in the 19th century, a time of phenomenal industrial growth but also extreme pollution and harsh living and working conditions for the average worker.
Today Manchester remains a significant exporter of cotton goods, although substantially less than at its industrial peak. The young commuters wearing cotton jeans add to the living-history narrative of the painting.
The four new tower blocks on the left – ‘Deansgate Square’– of the painting are luxury apartments. The recent proliferation of tall buildings in Manchester has attracted the nickname Manc-hattan. I like the juxtaposition in the painting (that could not have been achieved with photography) of the old and the new. We see the history of the evolution of transport since the Industrial Revolution: canal, rail, road, and – my favourite means of getting into Manchester city centre from my home in south Manchester – tram, or ‘Metrolink’. The tram has transformed Manchester and surrounding regions since its introduction in the 1990s, and its subsequent ongoing expansion.
I live quite close to a synagogue in south Manchester, where I have several Jewish friends. Since 2023 I have done frequent security duties as a volunteer at the synagogue. Members of the congregation know that I am an artist, and a member of the committee ‘volunteered’ me for a commission. The brief was quite challenging: the idea was to present the rabbi, who was moving on to pastures new, with a surprise gift: an image representative of his many years of service at two local synagogues.
I decided on a montage of images. And I decided that the best medium was pen-and-ink with watercolour wash, despite this not being a medium I normally work in. The completed work was presented at a large event to show gratitude and best wishes to the departing rabbi.I couldn’t be at the even due to other commitments, but was pleased to learn that that the rabbie and the community were delighted with the artwork.
Detail showing the Ner Tamid (Eternal Light) and the Ark
