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Nikolay Dubovskoy (1859-1918) was a Russian romantic landscape painter. He traveled extensively and painted landscapes of different regions. He also was active in artist salons and academia. While well known in his day, the Soviets ignored him and his works were forgotten for a period.
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| Portrait of Nikolay Dubovskoy by Vladimir Makovsky |
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During Easter I frequently post Victorian Easter cards which are, to put it mildly, rather bizarre. I decided to see what Victorian Christmas cards were like. Uhhh... that may have been a bad decision.
Above we have a young lad in a teapot, presumably the adults are brewing some ankle-biter tea. Below we have snowman's ghost with a club getting ready to waylay a pedestrian, and then Santa Claus is committing armed robbery -- I suppose that is either commentary on Christmas commercialism, or perhaps Santa raising funds to pay his elves' salary.
From there on the cards continue to be strange. I assume the cards are meant to be jokes, but, like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, time has stripped the visuals of their meaning leaving only oddity behind. At any rate, if you get one of these cards this Christmas, will it be from friend or foe?
Well, another odd TGIF post. During the Christmas season, figuring we've all heard traditional Western Christmas songs over and over by now, I always change things up by posting some Japanese Christmas songs.
While not an official Japanese holiday, Christmas is still quite popular and celebrated. Not being a Christian nation, the Japanese have jettisoned the religious elements of the holiday. However, they embrace the secular trappings: Christmas trees, Santa Claus, decorations and so forth.
On Christmas families will gather for a meal, often, and oddly enough, a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Meanwhile Christmas Eve has morphed into a couple's holiday akin to Valentines Day.
That explains Japanese Christmas music. They are either parties, lovey-dovey couple stuff, or, like the above video, both mixed together (while the band members are dancing about doing J-Pop girl group sort of stuff -- bouncing on couches, acting cute, and giggling a lot -- the singer is happy she has a boyfriend now so she doesn't have another lonely Christmas). In the video immediately below, they've changed 'jingle bells' into 'single hell', and we have the travails of a dateless salaryman.
The rest are a sampling of other J-pop Christmas tunes, with my favorite being the last which has a level of frantic insanity that is very J-Poppy in its weirdness.
In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen set out on an expedition to reach the north pole. His plan was unique; after studying arctic currents, he decided to intentionally get a boat icebound where it would then get carried by the ocean currents to the pole. He had a boat, the Fram, specially built to withstand the pressures of the ice and the cold.
They spent a long time in the ice pack but eventually determined that they would not drift to the pole. In 1895, after reaching as far north as they thought the ship would, Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen decided they would try to reach the pole on skis. They fell short (by about 170 miles), but at the time it was the farthest north reached to date.
Because the ship was drifting and would be hard to locate, the two proceeded to Franz Josef Land. It was a long trek south, and they had to build a cabin to winter in. Eventually they encountered another polar expedition and were taken the others' base camp.
Meanwhile the Fram continued to drift for months, eventually clearing the ice pack and making it to Spitsbergen where they encountered yet another polar explorer -- this one trying to reach the north pole via balloon.
Remarkably there were no casualties during the years long expedition. It was judged a success, even though it fell short of the pole. The Fram is now a museum ship.
