I’ve always loved putting together collections of Virago cover art and I thought that it was time to put together another, to celebrate the coldest season of the year.

There are lovely wintery images to be found in green frames.

The covers are lovely, but the paintings really come alive when they are released from those frames. Sometimes just a detail has been chosen, or the painting has been cropped because it wasn’t book-shaped. That may be the best way to make a good cover for a book, but it shouldn’t be the only way we see the art-work.

 

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THE FIRST OF TWO LOVELY FIREPLACES – AND A BOOK THAT I HOPE TO BE READING QUITE SOON

Madame de Chauffe by John Callcott Horsely

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Salem Chapel by Mrs Oliphant (#228)

“Arthur Vincent, “fresh from Homerton, in the bloom of hope and intellectualism”, arrives in Carlingford to take up the reins as Dissenting minister of Salem Chapel. A mixture of hope and ignorance prompts him to imagine that he will take his place amongst the cream of Carlingford society. But a six-o’clock tea at the home of Mr. Tozer the butterman, senior deacon of the Chapel, throws cold water on the young man’s aspirations. For there he meets Mrs. Tozer and her daughter Phoebe, “pink, plump and full of dimples”, and his congregation of greengrocers, dealers in cheese and bacon, milkmen, dressmakers and teachers of day-schools. To add to his problems he falls head-over-heels in love with “a beautiful, dazzling creature”, Lady Western, only to find himself caught up in a crime most horrible to contemplate…”

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A STRIKING IMAGE FROM THE END OF THE AGE OF GREEN COVERS

Portrait of the Reverend Robert Walker Skating by Sir Henry Raeburn

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The Flint Anchor by Sylvia Townsend Warner (#435)

“John Barnard, leading merchant at a Norfolk port, is a pillar of nineteenth-century rectitude. Though stern and aloof with his indolent, tippling wife and watchful children, he is undermined by helpless love for his pretty, cold-hearted daughter Mary. The Flint Anchor subverts the rules of the historical novel and shows how family history is made – which stories can be trusted, whose voices hold influence and whose are forgotten. Wit, charm and intelligence illuminate several decades of family life and the events of small town society in this tragi-comedy of manners, the last of the author’s seven novels.”

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THE FIRST OF TWO LADIES PAINTED BY HER HUSBAND

Froanna – Portrait of the Artist’s Wife by P Wyndham Lewis

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I’m Not Complaining by Ruth Adam (#124)

“Madge Brigson is a teacher in a Nottinghamshire elementary school in England in the 1930s. Here, with her colleagues – the beautiful, “promiscuous” Jenny, the ardent communist Freda, and the kind, spinsterish Miss Jones – she battles with the trials and tribulations of their special world: abusive parents, eternal malnutrition, inspectors’ visits, staff quarrels and love affairs. To all this Madge presents an uncompromisingly intelligent and commonsensical face: laughter is never far away as she copes with her pupils, the harsh circumstances of life in the Depression, and her own love affair. For Madge is a true heroine: determined, perceptive, warm-hearted; she deals with life, and love, unflinchingly, and gets the most out of the best – and worst – of it.”

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I LOVE THIS MATCH OF BOOK AND ARTWORK

Costumes pour un ensemble by Bernard Boutet de Monvel

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The Little Ottleys by Ruth Adam (#98)

“The heroine of the three novels collected here–Love’s Shadow, Tenterhooks, and Love at Second Sight–is the delightful Edith Ottley. As we follow Edith’s fortunes we enter the enchanting world of Edwardian London. We will be bewitched by the courtships, jealousies, and love affairs of Edith’s coterie–and indeed of Edith herself–and unfailingly amused by her husband, Bruce, one of the most tremendous–if attractive–bores in literature.”

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A THREE VIRAGO AUTHOR ARTIST!

The Angel, Cookham Churchyard by Stanley Spencer

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The World, My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay (#104)

“It is 1946, and the people of France and England are facing the aftermath of the Second World War. Barbara Deniston, seventeen, has grown up in the sunshine of Provence with her voluptuous, indolent but intelligent mother, allowed to run wild with the Maquis, experiencing collaboration, betrayal – and death. Banished by her mother to England, Barbara is thrown into the ordered formality of English life with her distinguished father and conventional stepmother. Confused and unhappy, she discovers one day the wrecked and flowering wastes around St. Paul’s. Here, in the bombed heart of London, she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.”

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ANOTHER ARTIST’S WIFE AND AN AUTHOR WHOSE BOOKS I AM SPREADING OUT BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE MANY LEFT

The Artist’s Wife Mornington Crescent by Spencer Gore

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Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby (#192)

“Caroline Denton-Smyth is an eccentric, remarkable for her vivid costumes trailing feathers, fancy beads and jingling lorgnettes. Sitting alone in her West Kensington bedsitter, she dreams of the Christian Cinema Company – her vehicle for reform. For Caroline sees herself as a pioneer, one who must risk everything in the “Cause of Right”. Her Board of Directors are a motley crew; Basil St. Denis, upper crust but impecunious; Joseph Isenbaum, aspiring to Society and Eton for his son; Eleanor de la Roux, Caroline’s independent, left-wing cousin from South Africa; Hugh Macafee, a curt Scottish film technician; young Father Mortimer, scarred from the First World War; and Clifton Johnson, seedy American scenario writer on the make.”

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MY FAVOURITE OF THE TWO FIREPLACES AND ONE OF MY THICKEST GREEN BOOKS

At Home, a Portrait by Walter Crane

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Marcella by Mrs Humphrey Ward (#155)

“Marcella Boyce, a Pre-Raphaelite beauty of the 1880s, is passionately in love with the ideals of socialism. A 21-year-old art student, she lives in a Kensington boarding house until her father inherits the family estate, Mellor Park, in the Midlands. Leaving her studies, her philanthropic work in the East End, and the company of her Bohemian friends, she embarks on her new life at Mellor Park, determined to alleviate the poverty she sees around her. Then Aldous Raeburn, Tory candidate and heir to Lord Maxwell’s estate, falls in love with Marcella. But Marcella is torn between her longing to become mistress of Maxwell Court and her burning idealism. Before she can reconcile the two, Marcella must learn – through bitter experience – the real barriers that divide one human from another.”

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That’s the last painting in this collection, but spring is not too far away and it will be bringing another seasonal art show.

Between now and then, please  tell me if you have any particular favourite cover artwork, or any suggestions for future exhibitions …