Back to the 18th Century - three post lockdown battles to look forward to

 I'm a very lucky man. Guy Barlow and Ken Marshall have been plotting with me (to keep us a bit sane during lockdown since last October's  Battle of Ellenbach ) on what to do this year. Rules for post lockdown get togethers were unclear till late February so we planned a cautious approach at first. We settled on a weekend in late May for the three of us to have a game on each day but we'd use the same hills,  road and river basics of a sculpted battlefield and just change the add-ons - buildings, woods etc. The aim was to minimise the time taken to change the scene to give more gaming time (Oh, well to be honest, I mean more time for a leisurely dinner and drinks at the  The Butchers Arms which will be fully open by then!)

Our eventual battlefield for The Battle of Brampton

Guy was first in with a great suggestion to try a "what if?" scenario based on the idea that Prince Charlie's rebel, sorry loyal Jacobite, Army marched out of Carlisle to meet an approaching Government force under General Wade somewhere near the village of Brampton in late November 1745. He characterised the little town as being in a moorland of undulating hills with some "scrubby trees" and the odd farm. Not much to go on but all I needed to get the creative juices flowing. I checked Google maps round Brampton for some clues and ground level photos and found there were some rivers and streams there but I had to use imagination to place the hills to be useful to us in a game. So I came up with this sketch map. Apologies to any readers who know the area - but this is 276 years ago - that's my excuse!

Plan for the 8 foot x 6 foot table

I was looking forward to the opportunity to make a winter battlefield that was basic moorland, yet I knew I'd have to use it for a Central European game or two as well. I had some good brown hills I made years ago from polystyrene and certainly they would save me the time and mess of making new ones but the colour would be wrong.  So I used their shapes as the basis to work on the sketch and after Guy approved it I set to work.

Choosing from my stock of brown hills 

I was trying to take advantage of some fine Spring weather we had in the Cotswolds in April so my idea was to use the outdoor space to flatten lots of pre-loved cardboard packing boxes and glue them together with PVA, strengthened underneath by some simple wooden batons glued in place, and all weighted down to stop warping, or blowing away till it was sufficiently dry to store in the garage overnight.  I will let the photos tell the step by step construction

My driveway is a nice place to "work" with native logs and
 antique weights. All the materials would have been sent to recycling 
 if I hadn't used them, I didn't buy anything but the glue.

This shows a cross section - wooden batten at edge supporting 2 or 3
overlapping layers of cardboard smoothed out with brown packing paper
 stuck with PVA glue in my usual papier mache style.

I measured a rough grid from the map and drew in the features to scale with marker pen. Then added the hills to show where they go. Ex Falklands War shell case used as a weight now (courtesy of my nephew Mark,  ex Royal Anglia Regiment)

Now using thin acrylic paint to secure the locations

I used my markings to show where to raise the edges of the streams slightly with rolled up paper or small pieces of cardboard. When they were dry I mixed up some gunge to apply to the stream sides and where the hills meet the board, in order to smooth the transitions of surfaces.

As usual my gunge is made up of varying quantities of dry plastering/filler powder; sawdust and/or sand or similar texture: water; acrylic paint (from the cheap big pots for schools or end-of-line decorators paint deals); PVA glue. Then applied to taste with old brushes of various sizes.

I also did the roads, tracks and wooded areas with similar mixtures of slightly different colours. The recesses marking the water courses were painted with sloshy dark acrylic paint mixes and light highlights - remember this is English Winter moorland - no blue refections on this day of drizzle in November 1745.

Later a coat of Acrylic Gloss Varnish on the water.
The first of about 4 or 5 coats laid over successive days

 

While the gunge was drying off I went along the roads with two coffee stirrers to leave wagon ruts. When dry they were scraped back down with a neat Surform tool. The same scraper can be used to get rid of any awkward irregularities over the whole surface.

Now the big, slightly tedious, task of mixing a suitable gunge for the overall moorland. I opted for a dull green, which had a Winter feel but would also be acceptable for the Continental settings in brighter weather. The old toothbrush is to stipple large swathes of it while wet to create extra texture.

Smoother patches, much scraped, for the bases
 of Built Up Areas (BUAs)

Over half covered now. I use an old plastic kitchen sieve to grade the sawdust or other crumbly bits of texture

All covered and you can see the rough toothbrush-stippled effects, particularly at bottom left where it is still a bit wetter and darker. I have blended the brown hills in to be less obtrusive.

Now the detailed areas need attention

Very useful marsh tuffs from such as Warlord Games
bring the Marshy Beck to live up to its name 

A mixture of sawdust and commercial woodland floor scatter
 helps to mark out the woods......

.....and dried tea leaves for the more organised farmyard "mud".
Multiple shades of commercial foliage scatter on the banks help
 bring the beck alive

Quarry Beck got an extra special helping of small stones,
dry brushed with off-white highlights. You can see my standard
green board still intact under this special moorland one

Difficult artistic choices now. This is a yellow ochre acrylic dry brush
mixture for selected areas, but I also added lighter highlights
of different sympathetic tones all over the surface to unite the features
and help cover irregularities

The hills have come out a browner shade, which is good for game purposes and still fit in to the overall effect

These three photos help you get down nearer the water level. It's at this point I try hard not to
 imagine I'm following the charming Julia Bradbury on one of her TV Pennine hikes!

Above and below: The finished terrain with trees and buildings added

The buildings are just out of the toy box for the sake of illustration, most will be replaced by Guy's own Scottish-style crofts. The trees I made specially, more on them later.

I had now got far enough to take some birds eye view photos for Guy to use as our player map. Really looking forward to it, he has made me the Jacobite player and I can't say more at the moment, Ken may be watching!

Guy's border country stone cottages will look the perfect thing on the day.

 In the next post I will be showing how I'm converting this basic terrain for Ken's Imagi-nations SYW game and how I did the trees for both different terrains.

Please leave a comment and let me know if any of this is of use, thank you.

Chris

PS> I joked about Julia Bradbury but a bit of idle curiosity led me to this JB Cumbria walk - mind you that is Summer in the northern hills - brrrr!

"Lady at rest - Countess Natasha Gruzinskaya 1755", or "My Homage to Boucher"

By 1755 even Sir Joshua Gregg RA himself was surprised by how far his fame (or notoriety if you prefer)  had spread. He was in Paris on one of his many European tours when the letter arrived from what we now call Georgia requesting him to paint certain notables in the court of Count Gruzinsky on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Ever seeking adventures and new challenges our artistic hero jumped at the chance, and the large fee being offered by this senior official of the Russian Royal Court. 

The Count referred in particular to his 20 year old daughter, Natasha, the Countess Gruzinskaya (his wife having unfortunately died 3 years earlier) and his desire to have a tasteful portrait with which to attract an eligible suitor in Saint Petersburg, as she was long past marriageable age in aristocratic circles.

With that in mind Sir Joshua added to his portfolio a sketch given to him by his friend Francois Boucher a few years earlier. This was a pose Joshua had long admired (as he did all Monsieur Boucher's many paintings of ladies). It was a beautiful drawing sketched from life of a young girl on the fringes of the French Royal Court called Marie-Louise O'Murphy and whom Boucher had been commissioned to paint in 1752 for no less than King Louis himself. Josh also chuckled as he found the sketch he had done of Francois working on the painting.  Maybe this trip would offer a chance to use it as inspiration.......

Life sketch of Miss O'Murphy

Boucher at work 1752. Pen and ink sketch by Sir Joshua Gregg
(tongue in cheek - actual artist unknown)

So that Summer he found himself getting acquainted with the charming, intelligent and humorous Natasha. She was unlike Boucher's well endowed young teenage blonde of the French Court but was dark, slightly Asiatic in appearance, mature for her years and with a beautifully proportioned figure. Like all aspiring Russian noblewomen she was keen to improve her knowledge of France and French language and Sir Joshua was very happy to give her his insights during the posing sessions. He gained her confidence to such an extent that, soon after the official portrait was completed, he had little difficulty in persuading her to give Boucher's pose a go. The Black Sea coastal Summer weather added to her enthusiasm to disrobe for an artist. The Georgian palace was well equipped with French style furniture, plump cushions and silk drapes and Natasha joined in keenly with arranging them..... 

Lady at rest - Countess Natasha Gruzinskaya, 1755. Oil on board, 22 inches x 16 inches
 by Sir Joshua Gregg RA

.............choosing a long blue hair ribbon and plucking some roses from the garden to scatter in some semblance of how Sir Joshua described Boucher's original touching scene........

He also told her there needed to be a book in the foreground and so she found the well-thumbed first edition of Moliere's "L'ecole Des Femmes" which her father had insisted she read as he seemed to think (despite being written 100 years earlier) that it contained useful advice for a young wife in sophisticated society.

However, anyone familiar with their classic French literature will view the pensive look on Natasha's face and wonder....She was not to be the ugly and stupid, but honest, bride desired by Arnolphe in the play; she was already a headstrong, free spirited, highly intelligent and capable young woman. She was her father's daughter....an expert horsewoman and already a match with the sabre for any officer in her father's regiment - the Gruzinsky Hussars. This time with Sir Joshua at least gave her an opportunity to show her softer side and indulge in some intellectual conversation away from the rough horseplay of the officer's mess...............

                                                         XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Well thank you, dear reader, for indulging me thus far!

Many followers of this blog  will, like me, be admirers of the style as well as the military history and costume of the 18th century and Francois Boucher embodies that decadence in much of his work.  When I first met Yaroslavna in 2014 and discussed with her the kind of posing she wanted to do, apart from Hussarettes and the other fantasy subjects, we thought something tasteful by Boucher would be good.

I'm indebted to that noted wargamer-blogger and art connoisseur Legatus Hedlius for his research on this painting of Marie Louise O'Murphy and can do no better than quote some extensive pieces from his blog. Please enjoy the different renditions of the original painting under various titles, and his information.

Ruhendes Madchen

"Mary-Louise O'Murphy de Boisfaily by François Boucher (1703-1770).   She was the fifth daughter of an army officer of Irish extraction, Daniel O'Murphy de Boisfaily.  She was born in Rouen on October 21st 1737. After her father died her mother took her to Paris where the widow traded in second hand clothes whilst finding work for her daughters. Mary-Louise became a dancer at L'Opera and a model. Casanova knew her (she is mentioned in his diaries) and she may have been his mistress, briefly. Casanova certainly introduced her to Boucher who painted this picture of her in 1752 and also had an affair with her (33 year age difference not withstanding). It has been argued that the picture was produced as a direct invitation to Louis XV; demonstrating that she was available to be his mistress

Louise O'Murphy

Marie-Louise O'Murphy

She quickly became one of Louis' second tier mistresses and stayed so for two years. Louis had an official mistress, of course, Madame de Pompadour. Mary-Louise bore the king an illegitimate daughter, Agathe Louise de Saint-Antoine (1754-1774), but she tried to oust Madame de Pompadour from top mistress spot and was soon kicked out of the court and married off to Comte de Beaufranchet, who must have been very cheered by this development, as Mary-Louise was still only 17. He didn't get to enjoy her for very long, though, as he was killed at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757, where Frederick the Great smashed a combined Franco-Austrian army. Mary-Louise subsequently had two more husbands, including one who was thirty years younger than her who she married at the age of 61! Although she was imprisoned for a time during the French Revolution she survived The Terror and died in 1814 at the age of 77. The painting now hangs in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.  It is a comparatively small picture: about 24" by 29" and was just the sort of sized picture Boucher would turn out for the cabinets of his wealthy gentleman collectors.

Resting Girl

Boucher also painted another version of the painting, which is in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, but it doesn't quite have the plump pliancy of the original.   Boucher was a prolific artist, producing over 10,000 drawings during his life, and at the time was criticised for churning out paintings for the money."

The blonde odalisque

I certainly did not "churn this out for the money" and I hope its new owner will think the painting good value for a modest outlay. Like Legatus I just admired the simplicity and supposed innocence of the subject and it was a bit of surprise later to find out about her questionable life! I did not know that when Yara and I set out on this mini-adventure. My Russian model proved to be enthusiastic and most supportive, setting up the scene with drapes, sheets and cushions. Here we are making adjustments to try to fit the photos of the original painting.

As  more than one version of Marie-Louise O'Murphy was painted I did not feel obliged to be totally authentic and the colours of Yara's furnishings sets off her skin so well I absolutely loved the effect. I hope you do too.

I used the full blown classic techniques of outline sketch, grisaille underpainting then colour underpainting and finally many layers of oil colour to get  the richness this subject needs.  I had cut the canvas board to fit a lovely 18th Century style frame I had already. It was gilt and a bit garish for modern tastes so I repainted it in thinned acrylic and then dry-brushed all the raised Rococo style detail in gold acrylic paint.  I think the result is smart, elegant and slightly "edgy", and sympathetic to the painting without overpowering; which is what a frame should be. This painting of Natasha needs to dry thoroughly and then have several coats of gloss varnish. When finished it will have the feel of a 250 year old oil painting - but look fresh of course!

As if I was not already lucky enough to have done the photoshoot and then the painting, the first client I showed some photos of it to snapped it up!  That is Colin Ashton, an avid collector and so far has about a dozen of my paintings. So it will be wending its way "up north" in June. Many readers will know Colin in person  or through his wonderful and prolific blogging Carryings on up the Dale .

And for the wargamers - some reminders of Natasha's other exploits.

In 1756 dispatching a drunken Hungarian Hussar while on a diplomatic mission in Prague

After the battle of Zorndorf as a prisoner of Count Gregorius in 1758 she managed to prove her usefulness to the Count that she became a General commanding his Household Brigade of cavalry.

She got the chance to show off in the Battle of Pepperoni on 22nd June 1760. This was a game which took place in January 2018 and I never blogged about it for some reason. Count Gregorius had been charged by the Empress to lead an expeditionary force of the Grunburg Contingent to attack Savoy from the southern borderlands with Italy. He caught a French and Savoy force defending high ground near the village of Pepperoni. I will spare you a full report (it's a long time ago for my memory!) but I've tried to concentrate on Major-General Countess Natasha Gruzinskaya and her cavalry brigade:

The Grunburg Dragoons (in haute couture for 1760 Grecian style helmets)

The 1st Grunburg Hussars (red and white Hussar uniform with black colbacks)

The 1st Grunburg Leib Uhlanen (red and white Bosniak lancer uniform)

And you can generally spot Natasha as she is the Hussar commander with the yellow pelisse and the um....er...flesh coloured breeches!

Grunburg Household Cavalry Brigade

Grunburg Hussars take on the French Royal Dragoons while the Orleans dragoons are taken by surprise in the rear by Black Hussars

Major General Natasha brings up the Heavy Grunburg Dragoons

But her brigade is split up by the ebb and flow of cavalry action

Causing Count Gregorius (on this day played by South London Warlord extraordinaire Martin Gane) to think really hard.

The Grunburg Dragoons have seen off the other French cavalry and turn on the Orleans Dragoons who are now trapped by the Grunburg Uhlanen and some allied Freicorps infantry

The Freicorps move off but the French Dragoons are trying to fight their way out

After a further round of melee Major General Natasha claims the entire Orleans regiment as prisoners in her first battle for Gregorius. Next time a Division or Wing commander?

As usual with these specialist images, if you post elsewhere you must give me credit as the artist and owner of the copyright, and link back to this blog, thank you.

And if that is not enough please see loads more of my art as well as Military and Hussarette subjects on my new Art website Chris Gregg Art