Plus de Dessins de Brian Stonehouse

Self portrait

Mr. Stonehouse, the wartime Allied spy.

Angela Landsbury

Dimanche Matin: Dernières Nouvelles

Hooray, hooray, hooray… I feel so good. The morning all is calm and all is bright; it is unexpectedly sunny and it happens to be mild so I am off this morning for an early am seawall walk. And any day that I can enjoy a long, dry walk is a great one. Plus, this morning I was easily able to do my voice exercises whereas during the past few days, whilst sick, they were impossible to do.

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And… I don't think I have heard a single Christmas carol so far. (For me, that is cause to rejoice.)

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Surprise Christmas bonus: A store bought 336 of my second book (that bombed in sales).

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Another surprise Christmas bonus: Norman Browning, a fabulous and highly accomplished actor has accepted the male role in my play. I met Norman in 1948 when I was not even yet a year old, so how great is that? But he needs to be flown here from back east and that is expensive so I wonder if the director will stick with him. Tomorrow I will hear if Patti Allen (who would be perfect for the role and is a dear friend) will take the female role.

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Last night, I went (on short notice) to a lovely party and friends' David & Bryan's house where, at one point, I impressed everyone with the story of Brian Stonehouse (previous post).

It was pouring last night.

The kitchen screamed CHRISTMAS!

They gave me this variegated Pointsettia
but I forgot to bring it home. Damn.
We had hedges of Pointsettias in Trinidad.

A shelf in the kitchen.

Their beloved Pepper.

Brian Stonehouse

Alan Turing is enjoying a heyday. Britain's Prime Minister publicly apologized for the 
"appalling behaviour" of the courts for castrating him because he was homosexual. 
That led to the suicide for the famous breaker of the Enigma Code (now the subject 
of a Benedict Cumberbatch film). Reading about him had me discover
 Brian Stonehouse….

Michel Chapuis was a charismatic, French art student in Occupied France, July 1941. On board a train full of German soldiers, an old woman leaned over to him and said: "Before the War, my brother had beautiful English shoes like yours."

Luckily, none of the German soldiers overheard this conversation because Michel Chapuis was really Brian Stonehouse, a British spy and talented artist who had parachuted into France the month before as part of the famous Special Operations Executive (SOE), a clandestine espionage and sabotage unit; he was a trained clandestine radio operator.  

At that time, the life expectancy of an SOE radio operator in occupied France was six weeks! Knowing that something as insignificant as a British button on his jacket could give the game away, SOE's Camouflage Section had painstakingly made Mr. Stonehouse's clothes using French fabric, styles and techniques but for some reason, he was still wearing British-made shoes.

In October 1942, the Gestapo was able to triangulate his position Mr. Stonehouse was arrested. He spent the rest of the war in three Vichy prisons and five Nazi concentration camps, including in the notorious Dachau concentration camp. He survived only because he was able to draw the guards' wives and mistresses in exchange for extra food and shelter.

Immediately after the War, he returned to Dachau to make sketches of the crematoria, in order to "bear witness" (these drawings are currently held at the Imperial War Museum in London). He was also able to use his exceptional visual memory in other ways: Officials trying to find out what had happened to four of their female officers discovered Mr. Stonehouse was able to draw from memory four well-dressed women that he had seen being taken to their deaths by the Nazis the year before.

It was while Mr. Stonehouse was acting as a witness at the War Crimes Tribunal that he met the American socialite Harry Haller, then a major in the United States Army.

Haller persuaded Mr. Stonehouse to move to New York to join the large number of Second World War émigré illustrators who were shaping America's fashion trends.

In 1952, Jessica Davies, an editor at Vogue, made Mr. Stonehouse the first new illustrator to be taken on by the magazine since 1939. (In those days, the magazines were split evenly between photographs and illustration. It was the golden age of fashion illustration.)

And whereas fashion illustrations of the period were normally thrown away after they had been published, Mr. Stonehouse kept everything. So, six years ago, members of his family discovered his archive and had them evaluated. They were purchased by Philip Athill, managing director of Abbot and Holder Ltd art dealers.

And he was gay. I have a new, another, hero. Brian Stonehouse died of a heart attack in 1998.

The drawings of Brian Stonehouse have been brought together for the first time at Abbot and Holder Ltd, where they can be purchased. They have also been collected in a new book, "Brian Stonehouse, MBE, 1918-1998", by Frederic A Sharf and Michelle Tolini Finamore (Sharf, $24.95).

Amusez-vous Bien!

Pause: la Grippe

Baroque Obama.

Blogging and the flu are incompatible.

Déchirant

"I’m most proud of not blowin’ my head off by now. It’s just a whole lot easier if you’re dead. But that shouldn’t be your tribute to your dead friends. When they’re lookin’ down on you, they don’t want you to be livin’ in the moment that killed ‘em. You made it. You got home. You should honour their memory by livin’ the life they didn’t get to live."

Ibis Blanc en Vol.

This is a photo by James Shadle of white Ibis in migration. 

This is an image wherein nature photography and art unite.