'CALVIN & HOBBES', THE LAST GREAT NEWSPAPER COMIC

Another year that ends and another that will begin with many resolutions and hopes, but also with more uncertainty than ever.

Every year is hard because you always have to mourn the loss of loved ones, but they are also 365 more days of learning and experiences that will always be with you and that will shape your personality, your character and your way of facing life.

Like every December 31, The Grandma will congratulate Mallorcan family and friends who are celebrating the Festa de l'Estendard, Mallorca's National Day, today and will climb her most beloved peak to celebrate this passage of the year as close to the stars as possible. And once they arrive at the refuge, there will be no shortage of a good meal for dinner, a guitar, a harmonica and a violin to play and a good book to read.

Before preparing this mountain kit, The Grandma has decided to read one of the most extraordinary comics ever created, Calvin and Hobbes, a true philosophical masterpiece created by Bill Watterson that stopped being published on a day like today in 1995.

More information: Go Comics

Calvin and Hobbes is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995.

Commonly described as the last great newspaper comic, Calvin and Hobbes has enjoyed enduring popularity and influence while also attracting significant academic and philosophical interest.

Calvin and Hobbes follows the humorous antics of the title characters: Calvin, a mischievous and adventurous six-year-old boy; and his friend Hobbes, a stuffed tiger. Set in the suburban United States of the 1980s and 1990s, the strip depicts Calvin's frequent flights of fancy and friendship with Hobbes. It also examines Calvin's relationships with his long-suffering parents and with his classmates, especially his neighbor Susie Derkins. Hobbes's dual nature is a defining motif for the strip: to Calvin, Hobbes is a living anthropomorphic tiger, while all the other characters seem to see Hobbes as an inanimate stuffed toy, though Watterson has not clarified exactly how Hobbes is perceived by others, or whether he is real or an imaginary friend. Though the series does not frequently mention specific political figures or ongoing events, it does explore broad issues like environmentalism, public education, and philosophical quandaries.

At the height of its popularity, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. As of 2010, reruns of the strip appeared in more than 50 countries, and nearly 45 million copies of the Calvin and Hobbes books had been sold worldwide.

the first Calvin and Hobbes strip was published on November 18, 1985 in 35 newspapers. The strip quickly became popular. Within a year of syndication, the strip was published in roughly 250 newspapers and proved to have international appeal with translation and wide circulation outside the United States.

Calvin and Hobbes had almost no official product merchandising. Watterson held that comic strips should stand on their own as an art form and although he did not start out completely opposed to merchandising in all forms (or even for all comic strips), he did reject an early syndication deal that involved incorporating a more marketable, licensed character into his strip. In spite of being an unproven cartoonist, and having been flown all the way to New York to discuss the proposal, Watterson reflexively resented the idea of cartooning by committee and turned it down.

Watterson has expressed admiration for animation as an artform. In a 1989 interview in The Comics Journal he described the appeal of being able to do things with a moving image that cannot be done by a simple drawing: the distortion, the exaggeration and the control over the length of time an event is viewed. However, although the visual possibilities of animation appealed to Watterson, the idea of finding a voice for Calvin made him uncomfortable, as did the idea of working with a team of animators. Ultimately, Calvin and Hobbes was never made into an animated series.

The strip borrows several elements and themes from three major influences: Walt Kelly's Pogo, George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts. Schulz and Kelly particularly influenced Watterson's outlook on comics during his formative years.

Watterson's technique started with minimalist pencil sketches drawn with a light pencil (though the larger Sunday strips often required more elaborate work) on a piece of Bristol board, with his brand of choice being Strathmore because he felt it held the drawings better on the page as opposed to the cheaper brands (Watterson said he initially used any cheap pad of Bristol board his local supply store had but switched to Strathmore after he found himself growing more and more displeased with the results).

He would then use a small sable brush and India ink to fill in the rest of the drawing, saying that he did not want to simply trace over his penciling and thus make the inking more spontaneous. He lettered dialogue with a Rapidograph fountain pen, and he used a crowquill pen for odds and ends. Mistakes were covered with various forms of correction fluid, including the type used on typewriters.

Watterson was careful in his use of colour, often spending a great deal of time in choosing the right colors to employ for the weekly Sunday strip; his technique was to cut the colour tabs the syndicate sent him into individual squares, lay out the colors, and then paint a watercolor approximation of the strip on tracing paper over the Bristol board and then mark the strip accordingly before sending it on. When Calvin and Hobbes began there were 64 colours available for the Sunday strips. For the later Sunday strips Watterson had 125 colours as well as the ability to fade the colours into each other.

Reviewing Calvin and Hobbes in 1990, Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker gave the strip an A+ rating, writing Watterson summons up the pain and confusion of childhood as much as he does its innocence and fun.

More information: The Mitchigan Daily

If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, 
I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.

Bill Watterson

HELGE M. INGSTAD & THE VIKINGS IN NORTH AMERICA

After a few days of endless rain that seemed to fulfill the prophecy of the Sibyl, the sun has risen in Barcelona and it seems that we will return to our mild winters.

The Grandma is lazy after so much water and continues to enjoy one of her passions: reading.

Today, she has been reading about Helge Marcus Ingstad, the Norwegian explorer, who proved (with her wife Anne Stine Ingstad) that the Vikings settled in North America long before the arrivals of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot, and who was born on a day like today in 1899.

Helge Marcus Ingstad (30 December 1899-29 March 2001) was a Norwegian explorer. In 1960, after mapping some Norse settlements, Ingstad and his wife archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad found remnants of a Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows in the province of Newfoundland in Canada.

They were thus the first to prove conclusively that the Icelandic/Greenlandic Norsemen such as Leif Erickson had found a way across the Atlantic Ocean to North America, roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. He also thought that the mysterious disappearance of the Greenland Norse Settlements in the 14th and 15th centuries could be explained by their emigration to North America.

Helge Ingstad died at Diakonhjemmet Hospital in Oslo at the age of 101.

Helge Ingstad was the son of Olav Ingstad (1867-1958) and Olga Marie Qvam (1869-1946) in Meråker Municipality in Nordre Trondheim county.

Helge Ingstad was originally a lawyer by profession, but, ever an outdoorsman, he sold his successful law practice in Levanger and went to Canada's Northwest Territories as a trapper in 1926. For the next three years, the Norwegian travelled with the local Indian tribe known as the Caribou Eaters. After returning to Norway, he wrote the bestselling Pelsjegerliv about his time in Canada, published in English as The Land of Feast and Famine (1933).

Ingstad was the governor (Sysselmann) of Erik the Red's Land in 1932-1933, when Norway annexed that eastern part of Greenland. The Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague decided that the lands belonged to Denmark, and so the official Norwegian presence had to end. Following the verdict, Ingstad was summoned by the government to the job as governor of Svalbard (Spitsbergen and the surrounding islands) -a position suiting him uniquely, considering his profession of law and his experience in Arctic living.

In 1960, he discovered the remains of what later proved to be a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows at the northernmost tip of Newfoundland in Canada.

It is the only known site of a Norse or Viking village in Canada, and in North America outside of Greenland. Dating to around the year 1000, L'Anse aux Meadows remains the only widely accepted instance of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact and is notable for its possible connection with the attempted colony of Vinland established by Leif Ericson around the same time period or, more broadly, with Norse exploration of the Americas.

Archaeological excavation at the site was conducted in the 1960s by an international team led by archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad (Helge Ingstad's wife) and under the direction of Parks Canada of the Government of Canada in the 1970s. Following each period of excavation, the site was reburied to protect and conserve the cultural resources.

The settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows has been dated to approximately 1,000 years ago, an assessment that tallies with the relative dating of artifact and structure types. The remains of eight buildings were located. They are believed to have been constructed of sod placed over a wooden frame. Based on associated artifacts, the buildings were variously identified as dwellings or workshops. The largest dwelling measured 28.8 by 15.6 m and consisted of several rooms. Workshops were identified as an iron smithy containing a forge and iron slag, a carpentry workshop, which generated wood debris, and a specialized boat repair area containing worn rivets.

Besides those related to iron working, carpentry, and boat repair, other artifacts found at the site consisted of common everyday Norse items, including a stone oil lamp, a whetstone, a bronze fastening pin, a bone knitting needle, and part of a spindle. The presence of the spindle and needle suggests that women were present as well as men. Food remains included butternuts, which are significant because they do not grow naturally north of New Brunswick, and their presence probably indicates the Norse inhabitants travelled farther south to obtain them. Archaeologists concluded that the site was inhabited by the Norse for a relatively short period of time.

Helge Ingstad was an honorary member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He also held honorary doctorates at the University of Oslo, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, and at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav (in 1991; previously Knight 1st class in 1965, and Commander in 1970), Knight of the Order of Vasa, and he was presented with the Norwegian Red Cross Badge of Honour for his efforts in Finnmark during World War II. He received a lifetime government grant from the Norwegian government from 1970. He was the subject of a 1981 National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary The Man Who Discovered America, and subsequently appeared along with his wife in the 1984 NFB film, The Vinland Mystery.

In 1986, he was presented Arts Council Norway's honor award. HNoMS Helge Ingstad (F313), the fourth of the five Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates of the Royal Norwegian Navy was named after Helge Ingstad.

The inner main-belt asteroid 8993 Ingstad, discovered by Danish astronomer Richard Martin West at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile in 1980, was named in his memory.

The Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad Building on the St. John's Campus of Memorial University is named after him and his wife. It houses the University's Print and Mail Services.

More information: Fred Olsen Cruises

It was very clear that this was a very, very old site. 
There were remains of sod walls. 
Fishermen assumed it was an old Indian site. 
But Indians didn't use that kind of buildings and houses.

Helge Ingstad

M'ARRIBA UN MOCADOR ENLLAGRIMAT D'ABSÈNCIES...

Ara m'escrius molt més sovint
i és sempre trist el missatge
sent allunyar-se aquells matins
que em duien les teves cartes.

Si vols escriure un cant d'ocells,
entre les teves lletres,
a mi m'arriba un mocador
enllagrimat d'absències.

Anem a escriure't tot el món
posarem flors al sobre:
un poc d'espígol, de fonoll,
tres margarides blanques,
un glop de mar i un tros de cel,
un tremolor dels arbres,
una misèria, uns records:
tots els que tu em deixares.

Un glop de mar i un tros de cel,
un tremolor dels arbres,
una misèria, ja ho sabem,
el que podem donar-te.

Nu schrijf je me veel vaker
en de boodschap is altijd droevig
het gevoel dat die ochtenden
die me jouw brieven brachten, langzaam verdwijnen.

Als je een vogelzang wilt schrijven,
bereikt tussen je brieven
een zakdoek
met tranen van gemis mij.

Laten we jullie over de hele wereld schrijven
we doen bloemen in de envelop:
een beetje lavendel, venkel,
drie witte madeliefjes,
een slokje zee en een stukje hemel,
een trilling van de bomen,
een treurigheid, wat herinneringen:
al die je me hebt nagelaten.

Een slokje zee en een stukje hemel,
een trilling van de bomen,
een treurigheid, we weten,
wat we je kunnen geven.

Now you write to me much more often
and the message is always sad
feeling those mornings
that brought me your letters are fading away.

If you want to write a bird song,
among your letters,
a handkerchief
with tears of absences reaches me.

Let's write to you all over the world
we'll put flowers in the envelope:
a little lavender, fennel,
three white daisies,
a sip of the sea and a piece of sky,
a tremor of the trees,
a misery, some memories:
all the ones you left me.

A sip of the sea and a piece of sky,
a tremor of the trees,
a misery, we know,
what we can give you.

 

 Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. 
Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, 
his friends are everything.

Willa Cather

CARL-GUSTAF ROSSBY, MODERN WEATHER FORECASTING

The sun has risen after days of endless torrential rain. It seems that it is only a short break and that the rain will return in a few hours, but the joy of seeing a single ray of light is so great that it cannot be described.

The Grandma is enjoying the Christmas holidays with her friends (Joseph, Claire, Tina, Tonyi and Jordi) and on Sundays it is tradition to have breakfast at Can Déu, in Les Corts and walk to the Pedralbes Monastery built in the 14th century thanks to Elisenda de Montcada and a jewel of European Gothic.

The Monastery is a place of public access where you can enjoy the peace and spirituality that this magnificent building produces and visit the cloister and the interior gardens. A pleasure for the senses and a refuge for philosophical but also scientific thought.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon, is a great follower of meteorology and he has been talking about the figure of Carl-Gustaf Arvid Rossby, the American meteorologist who was born on a day like today in 1898 and who contributed some fundamental studies to meteorology from the University of Bergen in Norway.

Carl-Gustaf Arvid Rossby (28 December 1898-19 August 1957) was a Swedish-born American meteorologist who first explained the large-scale motions of the atmosphere in terms of fluid mechanics. He identified and characterized both the jet stream and the long waves in the westerlies that were later named Rossby waves.

Carl-Gustaf Rossby was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the first of five children born to Arvid and Alma Charlotta (Marelius) Rossby. He attended Stockholm University, where he developed his first interest in mathematical physics. Rossby came into meteorology and oceanography while studying geophysics under Vilhelm Bjerknes at the Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen in Bergen, Norway, during 1919, where Bjerknes' group was developing the groundbreaking concepts that became known as the Bergen School of Meteorology, including theory of the polar front.

He also studied at the University of Leipzig and at the Lindenberg Observatory (Meteorologisches Observatorium Lindenberg) in Brandenburg where upper air measurements by kite and balloon were researched.

In 1921, he returned to Stockholm to join the Meteorological and Hydrographic Office (which later became the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute) where he served as a meteorologist on a variety of oceanographic expeditions. While ashore between expeditions, he studied mathematical physics at the Stockholm University (Filosofie Licentiat, 1925).

In 1925, Rossby was granted a fellowship from the Sweden-America Foundation to study the application of the polar front theory to American weather. In the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, DC, he combined theoretical work on atmospheric turbulence with the establishment of the first weather service for civil aviation.

In 1928, he became associate professor in the Aeronautics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Shortly after this MIT launched the first department of meteorology in the US.

In 1931, he also became a research associate at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His interests during this time ranged over atmospheric thermodynamics, mixing and turbulence, and the interaction between oceans and the atmosphere.

On 9 January 1939, he became an American citizen and in that same year, assistant director of research at the U.S. Weather Bureau. His appointment as chair of the department of meteorology at the University of Chicago in 1940 began the period in which he turned his attention to large-scale atmospheric motions. He identified and characterized both the jet stream and Rossby waves in the atmosphere.

During World War II, Rossby organized the training of military meteorologists, recruiting many of them to his Chicago department in the post-war years where he began adapting his mathematical description of atmospheric dynamics to weather forecasting by electronic computer, having started this activity in Sweden using BESK.

In 1947, he became founding director of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) in Stockholm, dividing his time between there, the University of Chicago and with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. After the war he visited an old friend Professor Hans Ertel in Berlin. Their cooperation led to the mathematical formulation of Rossby waves.

Between 1954 and his death in Stockholm in 1957, he championed and developed the field of atmospheric chemistry. His contributions to meteorology were noted in the December 17, 1956, issue of Time magazine. His portrait appeared on the cover of that issue, the first meteorologist on the cover of a major magazine. During this period he considered the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and its potential warming effect.

More information: Physics Today

Perhaps I occasionally sought to give, or inadvertently gave, 
to the student a sense of battle on the intellectual battlefield. 
If all you do is to give them a faultless and complete 
and uninhabited architectural masterpiece, 
then you do not help them to become builders of their own.

 Carl-Gustaf Arvid Rossby

LLUÍS DOMÈNECH I MONTANER SEEN FROM THE 21ST C.

It's still raining in Barcelona. It seems like the rain we haven't had in ten years is falling in five days.

After attending another year a wonderful performance by the Orfeó Català at the Sant Esteve Concert at the Palau de la Música Catalana, today, The Grandma is reading a very interesting book about the life of the brilliant architect who built this fascinating and magical UNESCO World Heritage Site. The book is written by Lluís Domenech i Girbau, his grandson, and talks about the work and idea of​​ architecture of this universal architect, a key figure of Catalan Modernism, who passed away on a day like today in 1923.

Lluís Domènech i Montaner (21 December 1850-27 December 1923) was a Catalan architect who was very much involved in and influential for the Catalan Modernism, the Art Nouveau/Jugendstil movement. He was also a Catalan politician.

Born in Barcelona, he initially studied physics and natural sciences, but soon switched to architecture. He was registered as an architect in Barcelona in 1873. He also held a 45-year tenure as a professor and director at the Escola d'Arquitectura, Barcelona's school of architecture, and wrote extensively on architecture in essays, technical books and articles in newspapers and journals.

His most famous buildings, the Hospital de Sant Pau and Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, have been collectively designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As an architect, 45-year professor of architecture and prolific writer on architecture, Domènech i Montaner played an important role in defining the Modernisme arquitectònic in Catalonia. This style has become internationally renowned, mainly due to the work of Antoni Gaudí.  

Domènech i Montaner's article En busca d'una arquitectura nacional (In search of a national architecture), published 1878 in the journal La Renaixença, reflected the way architects at that time sought to build structures that reflected the Catalan character.

His buildings displayed a mixture between rationalism and fabulous ornamentation inspired by Arabic architecture, and followed the curvilinear design typical of Art Nouveau. 

In the Castell dels Tres Dragons in Barcelona (built for the World's Fair in 1888), which was for many years the Zoological Museum, he applied very advanced solutions (a visible iron structure and ceramics). He later developed this style further in other buildings, such as the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona (1908), where he made extensive use of mosaic, ceramics and stained glass, the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, and the Institut Pere Mata in Reus.

Domènech i Montaner's work evolved towards more open structures and lighter materials, evident in the Palau de la Música Catalana. Other architects, like Gaudí, tended to move in the opposite direction.

Domènech i Montaner also played a prominent role in the Catalan autonomist movement. He was a member of the La Jove Catalunya and El Centre Català and later chaired the Lliga de Catalunya (1888)and the Unió Catalanista (1892). He was one of the organisers of the commission that approved the Bases de Manresa, a list of demands for Catalan autonomy. He was a member of the Centre Nacional Català (1889) and Lliga Regionalista (1901), and was one of the four parliamentarians who won the so-called candidature of the four presidents in 1901. Though re-elected in 1903, he abandoned politics in 1904 to devote himself fully to archeological and architectural research.

He died in Barcelona in 1923 and was buried in the Sant Gervasi Cemetery in that city.

Born in Carrer Avinyó in Barcelona, he was the second son of Pere Domènech i Saló, a prestigious publisher and book-binder, and Maria Montaner i Vila, a member of a prosperous family from Canet de Mar, where Domènech i Montaner spent much time in his home/office, now converted into a museum.

Having completed his studies, he travelled through France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Austria to gain experience of trends in architecture.

In 1875, as soon as the Barcelona school of architecture opened, he joined it, along with his friend Josep Vilaseca, as a teacher of topography and mineralogy. 

In 1877, he became professor of Knowledge of materials and the application of physiochemical science to architecture. 

In 1899, he was appointed professor of Architectural Composition and project teacher. 

In 1900 he became director of the school of architecture, and between 1901 and 1905 he was substituted by Joan Torras i Guardiola but he returned to the post from 1905 to 1920.

His teaching career lasted 45 years, and he exercised a considerable influence on what was to become Modernisme in Catalonia. With his colleague Antoni Maria Gallissà he subsequently set up a workshop for advanced work on the decorative arts applied to architecture.

Domènech i Montaner's buildings combine structural rationality with extraordinary ornamentation inspired by Hispano-Arabic architectural tradition and by the curves typical of Modernisme. They were in the architectural vanguard at the time, with the use of structural steel and the total utilization of exposed brickwork, and incorporated a profusion of mosaics, ceramics and stained glass, arranged in exquisite harmony.

As director of the School of Architecture he promoted a style that was adopted by many of his pupils. Puig i Cadafalch regarded him as a man of a certain period and of a certain artistic school, who was a sounding-board for developments in other countries, adapting them to his own character in an innovative way.

As the years went by, unlike many Modernist architects, Domènech i Montaner's buildings tended to become lighter, reducing the amount of structural material but retaining ornamentation as a primary element.

No sooner had Domènech graduated than he set out on a tour of Europe in the company of Josep Vilaseca, and was attracted by Prussian architecture. This, as well as Vilaseca's personality, had an influence on his subsequent work.

This influence can be seen in a number of Domènech's works from before 1878 (the year when he published his manifesto En busca d'una arquitectura nacional): the Clavé family tomb and the Casa Montaner on the Ronda de la Universitat, as well as a project for the provincial education institutions that was never built. These works can be regarded as pre-Modernista.

The building for the Editorial Montaner i Simón (1879-1885) was in fact his first work after the manifesto and it employs Mudejar decorative solutions while not abandoning Germanic influence and symbolism.

Domènech went beyond European manifestations, employing a forthright new language to implement an architectural approach founded on a new, integrated concept of all the arts. It was commissioned by his uncle Ramon Montaner i Vila, who also had him build his town house in Barcelona, the Palau Ramon Montaner, and remodel the Castell de Santa Florentina, his residence in Canet de Mar.

Domènech received a number commissions associated with the Exposición Universal de Barcelona (1888). The best-known of these works are undoubtedly the construction of the Hotel Internacional, which no longer exists, but which was put up in a record time of 53 days, and the cafe-restaurant known as the Castell dels Tres Dragons (now the Museu de Zoologia de Barcelona), the building that best expresses these new trends and is considered to mark the beginning of the Modernista period.

At the height of his professional career, Domènech i Montaner took on his largest and most complex works, the ones for which he is most widely recognized. His work on these projects overlapped in time, and he was able to take advantage of the experience gained on each one. Much of the knowledge gained and many of the technical innovations employed on the Expo restaurant (the Castell dels Tres Dragons, now the Geology Museum) were later used in the design and construction of the Palau de la Música, and the avant-garde concepts applied in the Institut Pere Mata were later adopted and improved on at the Hospital de Sant Pau.

The Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau both won awards in the annual architectural competition organized by the Barcelona City Council, in 1905 and 1913 respectively. More recently UNESCO has declared them to be World Heritage.

Domènech contributed to the leading Catalan publications: La Renaixença, Lo Catalanista, Revista de Catalunya, El Diluvio and La Veu de Catalunya. 

In 1904, after falling out with Francesc Cambó, he ceased to contribute to La Veu de Catalunya and founded the weekly El Poble Català. He was also the author of many books, some technical works and some political and social essays. 

In an article entitled En busca d'una arquitectura nacional (In search of a national architecture), published on 28 February 1878 in La Renaixença, he set forth the guiding principles for a modern, national architecture for Catalonia.

He chaired the assembly that drew up the Bases de Manresa, a document that laid the foundations for the return of the historic rights acknowledged by the Catalan constitutions.

More information: Catalan News

Si poséssim a disposició d’un arquitecte del segle XII o XIII 
la perfecció de la indústria moderna, no construiria 
un edifici com en l’època de Felip August o de sant Lluís, 
perquè això seria falsejar la primera llei de l’art 
que és conformar-se amb les necessitats i costums dels temps.

If we were to place at the disposal of an architect of the 12th or 13th c. 
the perfection of modern industry, he would not construct 
a building like in the time of Philip Augustus or Saint Louis, 
because that would be to falsify the first law of art 
which is to conform to the needs and customs of the times. 

Lluís Domènech i Montaner

L'ORFEÓ CATALÀ, FROM 1908 IN EL PALAU DE LA MÚSICA

Today is December 26, Sant Esteve, and like every year The Grandma will not miss her appointment with the Orfeó Català Christmas Concert at the Palau de la Música Catalana.

It is an extraordinary appointment that allows her to enjoy the best choral singing voices in a majestic and incomparable setting such as the Palau, one of the most symbolic modernist works by Lluís Domènech i Montaner.

The Orfeó Català is a choral society based in Barcelona, Catalonia, which was founded in 1891 by Lluís Millet and Amadeu Vives.

The Palau de la Música Catalana, a major Barcelona landmark, was commissioned for the choral society in 1904, and completed in 1908.

Designed in the Catalan modernista style by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, it was built between 1905 and 1908 for Orfeó Català, a choral society founded in 1891 that was a leading force in the Catalan cultural movement that came to be known as the Renaixença (Catalan Rebirth). It was inaugurated on 9 February 1908.

The construction project was mainly financed by Orfeó Català, but important financial contributions also came from Barcelona's wealthy industrialists and bourgeoisie. The palace won the architect an award from the Barcelona City Council in 1909, given to the best building built during the previous year.

Between 1982 and 1989, the building underwent extensive restoration, remodeling, and extension under the direction of architects Oscar Tusquets and Carles Díaz.

In 1997, the Palau de la Música Catalana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with Hospital de Sant Pau. Today, more than half a million people a year attend musical performances in the Palau that range from symphonic and chamber music to jazz and Cançó (Catalan song).

The Palau de la Música Catalana was designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. 

The palace is located in the corner of a cramped street, Carrer Palau de la Música, and Carrer de Sant Pere Mes Alt, in the section of old Barcelona known as Casc Antic. Most of the other prominent modernista buildings, those designed by Antoni Gaudí, for example, are located in the chic 19th-century extension of the city known as the Eixample.

The design of the palace is typical of Catalan modernism in that curves predominate over straight lines, dynamic shapes are preferred over static forms, and rich decoration that emphasizes floral and other organic motifs is used extensively. In contrast to many other buildings built in the modernisme style, however, it must also be said that the design of the palace is eminently rational. It pays strict attention to function and makes full use of the most up-to-date materials and technologies available at the beginning of the 20th century.

The wealthy citizens of Barcelona, who were becoming ever more sympathetic to the Renaixença at the time the palace was built, asked its architect for building materials and techniques that symbolized the Catalan character. In response, he commissioned and gave great creative freedom to a variety of local artisans and craftsmen to produce the fabulous ornamentation, sculpture, and decorative structural elements for which the palace is famous.

The rich decoration of the façade of the palace, which incorporates elements from many sources, including traditional Arabic architecture, is successfully married with the building's structure. The exposed red brick and iron, the mosaics, the stained glass, and the glazed tiles were chosen and situated to give a feeling of openness and transparency.

Two colonnades enjoy a commanding position on the second-level balcony of the main façade. Each column is covered uniquely with multicolored glazed tile pieces in mostly floral designs and is capped with a candelabrum that at night blazes with light. Above the columns are large busts of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Ludwig van Beethoven on the main façade and Richard Wagner on the side. The top of the main façade is graced by a large allegoric mosaic by Lluís Bru that represents the members of the Orfeó Català, but it is impossible to see it clearly from the narrow street below.

Originally, guests entered the palace from the street through two arches supported by thick pillars that opened into the vestibule. The former ticket windows, which are located in the center pillar, are beautiful concentric arches adorned with floral mosaics of various materials created by Lluís Bru.

The ceiling of the vestibule is decorated with glazed ceramic moldings that are arranged in the shape of stars. From the vestibule, on the left and right, grand marble staircases ascend from between crowned lamps on columns to bring visitors to the second floor. The balustrades of the staircases, also marble, are supported by unusual transparent yellow glass balusters. The underside of the staircases is covered with tiles that form gleaming canopies on either side of the vestibule.

Today, guests generally enter the palace through the foyer, which was created in the renovations of Tusquets and Díaz from what originally were the headquarters of the Orfeó Català. The large space of the foyer is more soberly decorated than the rest of the palace, but the wide exposed brick arches with their marvelous glazed green, pink, and yellow ceramic flowers recapitulate the ornamentation of the rest of building. The foyer features a large counter where tapas and beverages can be served to concert-goers or visitors who are touring the building. The bar is situated between massive pillars of brick and is illuminated from behind by expansive stained-glass panes that are suspended above it. A glass case in the foyer displays the Orfeó Català's banner, which bears its crest embroidered on fabric in the modernisme style.

From the opening of the palace in 1908 special attention was given to the promotion of local composers and artists. After World War I the Orquestra Pau Casals performed at the Palau, and among composers featured gave presentations of the music of Enrique Granados from 1921 onwards. Pau Casals and Alicia de Larrocha are among the many soloists and singers who have performed there.

More information: Palau de la Música

 Què li darem a n'el Noi de la Mare?
Què li darem que li sàpiga bo?
Li darem panses amb unes balances
Li darem figues amb un paneret.

What shall we give to the Boy of the Mother?
What shall we give Him that will taste good to Him?
We will give him well-weighed raisins
We will give him figs with a basket.

El Noi de la Mare

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ, SURREALISM & CATALAN PRIDE

What do Pompeu Fabra, Francesc Macià, Charles Chaplin and Joan Miró have in common?

All four were great personalities: linguist, politician (president of the Generalitat de Catalunya), actor and painter, and all four passed away on the same day, Christmas Day.

We are living in a very turbulent time where instead of moving forward as a society we are regressing in rights and freedoms and all in the name of a supposed progress that is nothing more than an involution orchestrated by a power that claims to serve the citizens when what it does is use them, nullify them and lead them to disappointment, contained anger and frustration.

It is not new. History is cyclical because humans always make the same mistakes and culture and art have always served as a catalyst for social change.

More than one hundred years ago, one of these catalysts was Joan Miró, the Catalan, sculptor, painter and ceramicist.

Joan Miró i Ferrà (20 April 1893-25 December 1983) was a Catalan sculptor, painter and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma in 1981.

Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an assassination of painting in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

Born into a family of a goldsmith and a watchmaker, Miró grew up in the Barri Gòtic neighbourhood of Barcelona. The Miró surname indicates Jewish roots, the terms marrano or converso describe Iberian Jews who converted to Christianity.

His father was Miquel Miró Adzerias and his mother was Dolors Ferrà. He began drawing classes at the age of seven at a private school at Carrer del Regomir 13, a medieval mansion. To the dismay of his father, he enrolled at the fine art academy at La Llotja in 1907.He studied at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc and he had his first solo show in 1918 at the Galeries Dalmau, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. Inspired by Fauve and Cubist exhibitions in Barcelona and abroad, Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris, but continued to spend his summers in Catalonia.

Miró initially went to business school as well as art school. He began his working career as a clerk when he was a teenager, although he abandoned the business world completely for art after suffering a nervous breakdown. His early art, like that of the similarly influenced Fauves and Cubists, was inspired by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. The resemblance of Miró's work to that of the intermediate generation of the avant-garde has led scholars to dub this period his Catalan Fauvist period.

More information: Fundació Joan Miró

A few years after Miró’s 1918 Barcelona solo exhibition, he settled in Paris where he finished a number of paintings that he had begun on his parents’ summer home and farm in Mont-roig del Camp. One such painting, The Farm, showed a transition to a more individual style of painting and certain nationalistic qualities. Miró annually returned to Mont-roig and developed a symbolism and nationalism that would stick with him throughout his career. Two of Miró’s first works classified as Surrealist, Catalan Landscape (The Hunter) and The Tilled Field, employ the symbolic language that was to dominate the art of the next decade.

In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealist group. The already symbolic and poetic nature of Miró’s work, as well as the dualities and contradictions inherent to it, fit well within the context of dream-like automatism espoused by the group.

Much of Miró’s work lost the cluttered chaotic lack of focus that had defined his work thus far, and he experimented with collage and the process of painting within his work so as to reject the framing that traditional painting provided.

This antagonistic attitude towards painting manifested itself when Miró referred to his work in 1924 ambiguously as x in a letter to poet friend Michel Leiris. The paintings that came out of this period were eventually dubbed Miró’s dream paintings.

Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma (Majorca) on 12 October 1929. Their daughter, María Dolores Miró, was born on 17 July 1930.

In 1931, Pierre Matisse opened an art gallery in New York City. The Pierre Matisse Gallery, which existed until Matisse's death in 1989, became an influential part of the Modern art movement in America. From the outset Matisse represented Joan Miró and introduced his work to the United States market by frequently exhibiting Miró's work in New York.

More information: Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró

Until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Miró habitually returned to Catalonia in the summers. Once the war began, he was unable to return home. Unlike many of his surrealist contemporaries, Miró had previously preferred to stay away from explicitly political commentary in his work. Though a sense of Catalan nationalism pervaded his earliest surreal landscapes and Head of a Catalan Peasant, it was not until Spain's Republican government commissioned him to paint the mural, The Reaper , for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exhibition, that Miró’s work took on a politically charged meaning.

In 1939, with Germany’s invasion of France looming, Miró relocated to Varengeville in Normandy, and on 20 May of the following year, as Germans invaded Paris, he narrowly fled to Spain, now controlled by Francisco Franco, for the duration of the Vichy Regime’s rule.

More information: The Art Story

In Varengeville, Palma, and Mont-roig, between 1940 and 1941, Miró created the twenty-three gouache series Constellations. Revolving around celestial symbolism, Constellations earned the artist praise from André Breton, who seventeen years later wrote a series of poems, named after and inspired by Miró's series. Features of this work revealed a shifting focus to the subjects of women, birds, and the moon, which would dominate his iconography for much of the rest of his career.

In 1974, Miró created a tapestry for the World Trade Center in New York City together with the Catalan artist Josep Royo. He had initially refused to do a tapestry, then he learned the craft from Royo and the two artists produced several works together. His World Trade Center Tapestry was displayed at the buildingand was one of the most expensive works of art lost during the September 11 attacks.

In 1977, Miró and Royo finished a tapestry to be exhibited in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

In 1981, Miró's The Sun, the Moon and One Star -later renamed Miró's Chicago- was unveiled. This large, mixed media sculpture is situated outdoors in the downtown Loop area of Chicago, across the street from another large public sculpture, the Chicago Picasso. Miró had created a bronze model of The Sun, the Moon and One Star in 1967. The maquette now resides in the Milwaukee Art Museum.

In 1979 Miró received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Barcelona. The artist, who suffered from heart failure, died in his home in Palma (Majorca) on 25 December 1983. He was later interred in the Montjuïc Cemetery in Barcelona.

More information: Artsy

His early modernist works include Portrait of Vincent Nubiola (1917), Siurana (the path), Nord-Sud (1917) and Painting of Toledo. These works show the influence of Cézanne, and fill the canvas with a colorful surface and a more painterly treatment than the hard-edge style of most of his later works. In Nord-Sud, the literary newspaper of that name appears in the still life, a compositional device common in cubist compositions, but also a reference to the literary and avant-garde interests of the painter.

Starting in 1920, Miró developed a very precise style, picking out every element in isolation and detail and arranging them in deliberate composition. These works, including House with Palm Tree (1918), Nude with a Mirror (1919), Horse, Pipe and Red Flower (1920), and The Table-Still Life with Rabbit (1920), show the clear influence of Cubism, although in a restrained way, being applied to only a portion of the subject. For example, The Farmer's Wife (1922–23), is realistic, but some sections are stylized or deformed, such as the treatment of the woman's feet, which are enlarged and flattened.

The culmination of this style was The Farm (1921–22). The rural Catalan scene it depicts is augmented by an avant-garde French newspaper in the center, showing Miró sees this work transformed by the Modernist theories he had been exposed to in Paris.

The concentration on each element as equally important was a key step towards generating a pictorial sign for each element. The background is rendered in flat or patterned in simple areas, highlighting the separation of figure and ground, which would become important in his mature style.

Miró made many attempts to promote this work, but his surrealist colleagues found it too realistic and apparently conventional, and so he soon turned to a more explicitly surrealist approach.

In 1922, Miró explored abstracted, strongly coloured surrealism in at least one painting.  From the summer of 1923 in Mont-roig, Miró began a key set of paintings where abstracted pictorial signs, rather than the realistic representations used in The Farm, are predominant. In The Tilled Field, Catalan Landscape (The Hunter) and Pastoral (1923–24), these flat shapes and lines, mostly black or strongly coloured, suggest the subjects, sometimes quite cryptically. For Catalan Landscape (The Hunter), Miró represents the hunter with a combination of signs: a triangle for the head, curved lines for the moustache, angular lines for the body. So encoded is this work that at a later time Miró provided a precise explanation of the signs used.

More information: Fem Turisme

Through the mid-1920s Miró developed the pictorial sign language which would be central throughout the rest of his career.

In Paris, under the influence of poets and writers, he developed his unique style: organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn with a sharp line. Generally thought of as a Surrealist because of his interest in automatism and the use of sexual symbols , for example, ovoids with wavy lines emanating from them, Miró's style was influenced in varying degrees by Surrealism and Dada, yet he rejected membership in any artistic movement in the interwar European years. André Breton described him as the most Surrealist of us all.

Miró's surrealist origins evolved out of repression much like all surrealist and magic realist work, especially because of his Catalan ethnicity, which was subject to special persecution by the Franco regime. Also, Joan Miró was well aware of Haitian Voodoo art and Cuban Santería religion through his travels before going into exile. This led to his signature style of art making.

In the final decades of his life Miró accelerated his work in different media, producing hundreds of ceramics, including the Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun at the UNESCO building in Paris. He also made temporary window paintings, on glass, for an exhibit. In the last years of his life Miró wrote his most radical and least known ideas, exploring the possibilities of gas sculpture and four-dimensional painting.

More information: The Guardian

The works must be conceived with fire in the soul

but executed with clinical coolness.

Joan Miró

THE SONG OF SIBYL, ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN CULTURE

The night of December 24th is a very special night because you can enjoy the Song of the Sibyl, Intangible Heritage of Humanity (UNESCO) and one of the oldest artistic expressions in the Mediterranean.

The Grandma has never missed this appointment. Whether for many years in Santa Maria del Mar or the church of Bonanova in Barcelona, ​​in the cathedral of Palma or even in the Cattedrale dell’Immacolata Concezione in l'Alguer, but this year she had the opportunity, with her friends, to listen to it in one of the most magical and impressive places: the crypt of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona.

In times where there are attempts to erase traditions and attack culture so fiercely, the Sibyl always rises as the voice of all humanity, appealing to with a truth that is above time and gender and making a direct appeal to conscience.

You don't have to be a believer to enjoy this majestic song that reminds us that everyone will pay for their actions: the just and the unjust.

Bon Nadal / Merry Christmas

El jorn del judici
parrà el qui haurà fet servici.
Jesucrist, Rei Universal,
homo i ver Déu eternal,
del cel vindrà per jutjar
i a cada un lo just darà.

Ans que el judici no serà,
un gran senyal se mostrarà:
La terra gritarà suor
i tremirà de gran paor.

Terratrèmol tan gran serà
que les torres derrocarà;
les pedres per mig se rompran
i les muntanyes se fondran.

Los puigs i plans seran igual.
Allà seran los bons i mals.
Reis, ducs, comtes i barons,
que de sos fets retran raons.

Gran foc del cel devallarà
mar, fonts i rius tot cremarà.
Los peixos donaran gran crit,
perdent son natural delit.

El sol perdrà la claretat,
mostrant-se fos i alteral;
la lluna no darà claror
i tot lo món serà tristor.

Humil verge qui haveu parit
Jesus infant en esta nit,
vullau a vòtron Fill pregar
que de l'infern vulga'ns lliurar.

El jorn del judici
parrà el qui haurà fet servici.

El jorn del judici
parrà el qui haurà fet servici.

APSE OF SANT CLIMENT DE TAÜLL, 'EGO SUM LUX MUNDI'

Christmas is a time for reunions, especially for those friends who live far away and you don't get to see them very often. Tonyi Tamaki and Joseph de Ca'th Lon are already in Barcelona. They have arrived from Auckland and Basel to spend the holidays with their friends. One of their favourite traditions is to make Tió poop. Traditionally, Tió (who you've been feeding for many weeks) poops on Christmas Eve, but they always celebrate it on the night of December 22nd.

The Grandma is absolutely in love with all the gifts that Tió has pooped her and wants to thank all her friends who have thought of her, and once again, they have been completely right, although, as we already know, beyond the gift itself, the most wonderful thing is the time you can spend with them and the moments you enjoy that will never come back.

All the gifts have been wonderful -the Harry Potter books in Latin, Agatha Christie's Trivia, Robert Graves' Mallorcan fables, Jane Austin's memory game and the Pantocrator puzzle of Sant Climent de Taüll, which reminds us every day that he is the light (EGO SUM LUX MUNDI), a light that the rest of us will take care of so that it never stops shining in present and later generations.

In this world, increasingly difficult to understand and where surviving becomes a revolutionary act of resistance, it is extremely important to always position ourselves on the correct side of history -the side of light, culture, science, critical thinking and humanities. 

The Apse of Sant Climent de Taüll, in Catalan l'Absis de Sant Climent de Taüll, is a Romanesque fresco in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona. 

The fresco is one of the masterpieces of the European Romanesque, from which the unknown Master of Taüll takes his name. It was painted in the early 12th century in the church of Sant Climent de Taüll in the Vall de Boí, Alta Ribagorça in the Catalan Pyrenees. 

The mural covered the apse of the church. In 1919-1923 it was moved, along with other parts of the fresco decoration, to Barcelona, in an attempt to preserve the murals in a stable, secure museum setting.

The mural was replaced by a replica, but some original decorations remain on the church walls. MNAC Barcelona also has the paintings from the triumphal arches, a side apse, the consecration inscription and an earlier window.

Its genius lies in the way it combines elements from different Biblical visions (Revelation, Isaiah and Ezekiel) to present the Christ of the Day of Judgement. Christ appears from the background causing a movement outwards from the centre of the composition, which is presided by the ornamental sense of the outlines and the skilful use of colour to create volume. The exceptional nature of this work and its pictorial strength have reached out to modernity and fascinated twentieth-century avant-garde artists like Picasso and Francis Picabia.

The round surface beneath Christ's feet represents the earth and the halo on his head represents divinity. Christ's right hand symbolizes blessing, and in his left hand he holds a book with the words EGO SUM LUX MUNDI, which translates in English to I am the light of the world. 

The symbols of Alpha and Omega hanging like lamps on either side of Christ, symbolize the beginning and end. The fourfold images represent four evangelists. To the right, an angel is seen beside the lion holding one of its hind legs, which is a symbol of St. Mark. To the left, an angel holding the tail of the bull is a symbol of St. Luke. The other two evangelists fit into the triangular space on either side of the mandorla. An angel holding the Gospel Book represents St. Matthew, and the other angel is St. John holding an eagle in his arms. Below the mural painting of Christ in the mandorla is St Thomas, St Bartholomew, Mother of God, St. John the Evangelist, St. James and San Felipe. The Mother of God holds a bowl where red rays emerge from it, which symbolize the blood of Christ.

The paintings in the central apse of Sant Climent in Taüll are the most emblematic in the Museum's collection of Romanesque art and make up one of the most representative and one of the finest works of Romanesque art.

The central theme of the apse is a Theophany, or vision of God, at the end of time, based mainly on the text of Revelation. In the middle, Christ in Majesty inscribed in a mandorla, seated on the arc of Heaven and with the Earth at his feet, blesses with his right hand, while his left holds a book with the inscription EGO SUM LUX MUNDI (I am the light of the world). On either side are the Alpha and the Omega, symbols that God is the beginning and the end of all things. He is surrounded by the four Evangelists. Saints, apostles and the Virgin Mary occupy the semi-cylinder and several scenes from the Old and New Testaments are depicted on the arches over the entrance to the apse. One scene that stands out is of Lazarus the beggar at the door of the rich man Epulon's house, on the intrados of the arch, and at the top, the hand of God and the Agnus Dei (the Lamb of God), symbolising the death and resurrection of Christ (Rev 5, 6-14).

The style combines the geometricisation of forms and the general symmetry of the composition with the decorativism in the details and ornamental elements.

The volume of the pronounced drapery is geometrical, emphasised by coloured lines and glazing, contrasting with the flat tones of the background. In addition, the symmetry, frontality, hieratic nature and the very representation of God could derive from Byzantine art, possibly via Italy. The bands of colour in the backgrounds, present in many Catalan Romanesque paintings, could remind us of what is known as Mozarabic illumination in tenth-century Hispanic manuscripts.

The exceptional artistic nature and the high quality of these paintings have been corroborated by the study of the pigments, which are of better quality and preparation than in other Catalan churches. Some imported pigments have even been found. Through the use of superimposed layers, the painter obtains more intense chromatic effects. Thus blue, obtained from aerinite, is applied over a layer of black, and cinnabar is applied over haematite to get red.

Painted on one of the columns of the nave is the church's inscription of consecration by bishop Ramon de Roda from Ribagorça on 10 December 1123. This reference is fundamental for dating the paintings, of which there are still remains in situ.

More information: MNAC

Externally nothing much is altered for the present; 
the basic tendency of Romanesque art 
remains anti-naturalistic and hieratic.

Arnold Hauser

BEATRIX POTTER, THE ENGLISH WRITER & ILLUSTRATOR

Today, The Grandma has been at home preparing Christmas soup. 

 

Christmas is a time of reunions but also of absences. It is a very beautiful time when you are a child, but much harder when you are an adult and you feel that you have lost a little of that magic that these days had. That is when reading children's literature becomes an obligation to try to find that child that we all carry inside and that, in reality, has never abandoned us.

The Grandma is a great follower of literature in general and can affirm that children's literature is a very difficult genre because the public is demanding and requires an adequate vocabulary and reasoning to be understood by these very special readers. In Catalan literature, her favourite author is Joana Raspall and in English, authors such as Roald Dahl, J. K. Rowling or Beatrix Potter, the author who passed away on a day like today in 1943.

Helen Beatrix Heelis (née Potter; 28 July 1866-22 December 1943), usually known as Beatrix Potter, was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was her first commercially published work in 1902. Her books, including The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck and The Tale of Tom Kitten, have sold more than 250 million copies. An entrepreneur, Potter was a pioneer of character merchandising.

In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.

Born into an upper-middle-class household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. Potter's study and watercolours of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology. In her thirties, Potter self-published the highly successful children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Following this, Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full-time.

Potter wrote over sixty books, with the best known being her twenty-three children's tales. In 1905, using the proceeds from her books and a legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, a village in the Lake District. Over the following decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape.

In 1913, at the age of 47, she married William Heelis (1871-1945), a respected local solicitor with an office in Hawkshead. Potter was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write, illustrate, and design merchandise based on her children's books for British publisher Warne until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue.

Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease on 22 December 1943 at her home in Near Sawrey at the age of 77, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now constitutes the Lake District National Park. Potter's books continue to sell throughout the world in many languages with her stories being retold in songs, films, ballet, and animations, and her life is depicted in two films -The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1983) and Miss Potter (2006).

Potter's family on both sides were from the Manchester area. They were English Unitarians, associated with dissenting Protestant congregations, influential in 19th-century Britain, that affirmed the oneness of God and that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Potter's paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter, from Glossop in Derbyshire, owned what was then the largest calico printing works in England, and later served as a Member of Parliament.

In the Victorian era, women of her class were privately educated and rarely went to university. Potter's parents encouraged her higher education, but the social norms of the time limited her academic career within Britain's institutions.

Beatrix Potter was interested in every branch of natural science except astronomy. Botany was a passion for most Victorians, and nature study was a popular enthusiasm. She collected fossils, studied archaeological artefacts from London excavations, and was interested in entomology. 

In all these areas, she drew and painted her specimens with increasing skill. By the 1890s, her scientific interests centred on mycology. First drawn to fungi because of their colours and evanescence in nature and her delight in painting them, her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and amateur mycologist, during a summer holiday in Dunkeld in Perthshire in 1892. He helped improve the accuracy of her illustrations, taught her taxonomy, and supplied her with live specimens to paint during the winter. Curious as to how fungi reproduced, Potter began microscopic drawings of fungus spores (the agarics) and in 1895 developed a theory of their germination. 

Through the connections of her uncle Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, a chemist and vice-chancellor of the University of London, she consulted with botanists at Kew Gardens, convincing George Massee of her ability to germinate spores and her theory of hybridisation. She did not believe in the theory of symbiosis proposed by Simon Schwendener, the German mycologist, as previously thought; instead, she proposed a more independent process of reproduction.

As a way to earn money in the 1890s, Potter printed Christmas cards of her own design, as well as cards for special occasions.

On 2 October 1902, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published and became an immediate success. It was followed the next year by The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester, which had also first been written as picture letters to the Moore children. Working with Norman Warne as her editor, Potter published two or three little books each year: 23 books in all. The last book in this format was Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes in 1922, a collection of favourite rhymes. Although The Tale of Little Pig Robinson was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier. Potter continued creating her little books until after the First World War when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding, and land conservation.

She visited Hill Top at every opportunity, and her books written during this period (such as The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, about the local shop in Near Sawrey and The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, a wood mouse) reflect her increasing participation in village life and her delight in country living.

The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of Tom Kitten are representative of Hill Top Farm and her farming life and reflect her happiness with her country life.

In one of her diary entries whilst travelling through Wales, Potter complained about the Welsh language. She wrote Machynlleth, wretched town, hardly a person could speak English, continuing Welsh seem a pleasant intelligent race, but I should think awkward to live with... the language is past description.

Potter continued to write stories and to draw, although mostly for her own pleasure. 

In 1922, Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes, a collection of traditional English nursery rhymes, was published. Her books in the late 1920s included the semi-autobiographical The Fairy Caravan, a fanciful tale set in her beloved Troutbeck fells. It was published only in the US during Potter's lifetime, and not until 1952 in the UK. Sister Anne, Potter's version of the story of Bluebeard, was written for her American readers, but illustrated by Katharine Sturges. A final folktale, Wag by Wall, was published posthumously by The Horn Book Magazine in 1944.  

Potter was a generous patron of the Girl Guides, whose troops she allowed to make their summer encampments on her land, and whose company she enjoyed as an older woman.

Potter died on 22 December 1943 at Castle Cottage, and her remains were cremated at Carleton Crematorium, Blackpool.

More information: Beatrix Potter Society

Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, 
as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells 
and rough land seeing every stone and flower 
and patch of bog and cotton pass 
where my old legs will never take me again.

Beatrix Potter