On 21 November, to Singer museum in Laren, the Netherlands.
Last year, bronze sculpture in its garden, by Rodin and others, had been stolen. It has been replaced with recent sculpture, like the “Braamboot” (blackberry boat), by Maria Roosen.
There are two exhibitions inside the museum with related themes. One is about nineteenth century painter Anton Mauve, who became well known by painting sheep and other subjects around Laren. The other exhibition is about art owned by the local authorities in Laren, and Eemnes and Blaricum villages close to it. There is a link to a third exhibition as well. That exhibition is in Teyler’s museum in Haarlem. Its subject is Mauve, before he first came to Laren in 1882. The Singer museum Mauve exhibition is especially about 1882 to 1888, when the painter died while living in Laren, fifty years old.
Mauve is an interesting artist in various ways. Not just because of his works. Also because he gave his relative Vincent van Gogh his first lessons in painting. And because the links of his art to society, in the Netherlands; and also in other countries like the USA.
That the Singer museum is here today should be seen in a context of economical and social changes in the Netherlands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More specifically it is here, because its founder William Singer (1868-1943), being an admirer of Mauve, wanted to live where Mauve had worked.
This video says about itself:
Final version (mainly by Linda van der Plas) of a docufictionary about the Dutch artists’ colony Laren. Made as part of a programme for primary schools.
The village of Laren is in a sandy hilly region, going from the southeast of Noord-Holland province to the southeast of Utrecht province. These hills arose during the Ice Age.
Traditionally, farmers’ and others’ incomes on this sandy soil were lower than in clay and/or peat regions surrounding the hills.
In the late nineteenth century, something changed. There was an influx in the hilly regions of het Gooi and Utrechtse heuvelrug of rich people; and, in some villages like Laren, also of artists. Ever since 1882, Laren had an advantage over other villages in that the tramway from Amsterdam stopped there.
Until then, rich people usually lived in the centres of cities like Amsterdam. And, if they lived in the countryside, along the Vecht river in the marshy region west of the hills.
During the nineteenth century, appreciation arose for the scenery of the sandy regions, partly stimulated by artists’ works. The sheep farming of a village like Laren so far had been a sign that farmers could not afford the cows of their richer colleagues. Now that painters saw those sheep as picturesque, rich people might want to build mansions near the scenery depicted by the artists. Some rich new immigrants to villages like Laren might buy works of art by other new immigrants, artists. In Eemnes, traditionally a richer, “cow”, not sheep village, not hilly, not sandy, this hardly happened. Today, Eemnes local authorities possess fewer works of art than their Blaricum and Laren colleagues.
The influx brought a rise in average income for villages here. However, an average not necessarily reflecting itself in better situations for local poor farmers and farm workers. Some individuals might make some money by occasionally posing as painters’ models.
William Singer to a certain extent might be included in both categories of immigrants. He was the son of a rich steel plant owner in Pittsburgh in the USA. However, he preferred art to steel. With his wife Anna, he went to Europe. In 1901, they settled in Laren. In 1911, there they had built the mansion De Wilde Zwanen, the core of the museum (and concert hall) buildings of today.
Singer did paint himself, though he became better known as an art collector than as an artist.
Some of the artists were unaware of poverty in a village like Laren where they worked, or at least did not show it in their work. Here, one is reminded a bit of the fictional stage character Clementine Bos, as written about by Herman Heijermans in 1900. Clementine, an artist, is sympathetically interested in poor fisherfolks’ lives as a subject for her art; but does not really understand them. Anton Mauve had a view of the village poverty being romantically picturesque. His depictions of poor farmers, farm hands, shepherds and loggers show this. It was a problem for Mauve to identify with poor people, as he himself was far more commercially successful than most artists. He often had trouble keeping up with demand for his work. Rich people in the Netherlands, like Queen Emma, and in the USA, like steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, bought his art (”Forestry workers”, in Carnegie’s case). Both in views on poor people and in success while still alive, Mauve differed from Vincent van Gogh. Like with many other artists, after Mauve’s death even more money was made from his paintings. One was sold in the early twentieth century at an auction in the USA, for more money than a Rembrandt at the same auction.
Mauve was not the first painter who had discovered Laren, though his moving there was influential. The first painter there had been Josef Israëls in 1874. Mauve then still lived in The Hague, as part of the The Hague school. However, urbanization around The Hague limited Mauve’s choice of subjects for landscape painting there. Albert Neuhuys had followed Israels. He influenced Mauve’s work: so far, Mauve had either painted no, or small, human figures in his landscapes. In Laren, Mauve started to paint larger (romanticized) human figures, including inside buildings. Another influence here was Jean-François Millet from France, the only Barbizon school painter to depict many human beings.
Mauve himself was depicted too: by Wally Moes (1856-1918), one of just two female artists I saw at these two exhibitions. Another painting by her depicted girl pupils at the Laren seamstresses’ school. According to the exhibition, Ms Moes was one of the few artists genuinely interested in the fate of the poor people of Laren.
Another one was Chris Beekman (1887-1964). This communist artist, also represented in the Singer museum, depicted poor people of Laren in works like Drie figuren met handkar, from 1917. He also painted a portrait of famous Dutch anarchist Domela Nieuwenhuis, and was a co-founder of the De Stijl artistic movement, with links to abstraction and Dadaism.
Back from the museum, across the heath so often depicted by Mauve and his colleagues. Porcelain fungus in woodland not far from the Laren heath.
In 2005, fossilized mastodon remains were discovered in Pratt’s Wayne Woods Forest Preserve in Wayne. During the course of a habitat-improvement project, a contractor for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County made an initial discovery – teeth from a mastodon. With help from the Illinois State Museum, a science team visited the site to search for more fossils. This search unearthed a partial rib and pieces of bone and tusk. Watch the video to learn about the initial discovery.
Dear Discover Magazine, was it mastodon dung or mammoth dung? Though both are related to elephants, they are not the same species or genus. The BBC is also confused about this.
is providing scientists with clues about how the large ancient mammals collectively known as megafauna went extinct. The fungus, Sporormiella, produces spores in the dung of large herbivores. These are then preserved in the layers of mud and can provide an index of the number of these animals, or megafauna, that roamed the environment at a particular time [BBC News]. For a new study, researcher Jacquelyn Gill collected and analyzed spores in sediment samples from an Indiana lake and several sites in New York.
From Gill’s analysis, published in the journal Science, she concluded that North American megafauna began a slow decline around 15,000 years ago and vanished about 1,000 years later. The data suggests megafauna started going extinct much earlier than previously though, which basically wipes out two theories of their extinction.
There are several theories surrounding the extinction of North American megafuana, but there are a lot more questions than answers. Much of the uncertainty surrounding the extinction of the North American megafauna, which includes mastadons, saber-tooth tigers and giant ground sloths, is due to a scarcity of evidence and difficulty pinning down the timing of events. Several major events occurred around the same time the animals disappeared: Major environmental upheaval associated with the end of the Ice Age; an asteroid explosion over North America; and the arrival of man [Wired.com]. But the new data points to an extinction culprit other than an asteroid or comet impact, because the impact is believed to have occurred long after the megafauna began their decline.
If humans were responsible for the extinction, it would have to be settlers that came along before the Clovis people, which is another debate in itself. The Clovis culture is thought to have been the first civilization to take hold in North America around 13,300 years ago–after the bulk of the megafauna extinctions, according to the new analysis. But some researchers believe that earlier settlers walked the land before the Clovis people, and could have hunted the mastodons and mammoths. The new study adds crucial info to the fossil record, but it is likely to kindle, rather than quench, the debate over megafauna extinction.
13,400 species on RSPB reserves – Less than 3% are birds
18/11/2009 10:34:25
RSPB reserves not just for birds, says new report.
November 2009. Less than three per cent of the species recorded on RSPB reserves are birds, according to a new report.
For the first time the RSPB’s annual report on its 200 reserves across the UK has collated records of all species together - and come up with some surprising results. Of the 13,400 species recorded on our reserves, more than half are insects, almost a quarter are fungi and 12 per cent are plants.
140,000 hectares
RSPB reserves cover 140,000 hectares across the UK - just 0.6% of the area of Britain - yet this land features 68% of Britain’s native plant species, 78% of its spiders, and all of its resident reptiles and dragonflies. …
Nationally important fungi sites - New species?
Gurney added “The RSPB’s woodland reserves are great places to go to discover fascinating fungi, and now is the perfect time of year to do it. Our reserves at Abernethy in Inverness-shire and Tudeley Woods in Kent are nationally important sites for the rare tooth fungi. Surveys there have already revealed two species new to Britain and experts believe another species may prove to be entirely new to science.
“And while our reserve at Minsmere in Suffolk is a mecca for birdwatchers, mycologists have found over 1,500 species of fungi there, including the endangered bearded tooth fungus. We are grateful to all the dedicated enthusiasts like these, who have helped us record wildlife on our reserves.”
41 mammal species, 500+ spiders
The 3,136 recorded fungus species on RSPB reserves are only 21% of the total number of known UK fungi. However our reserves do have 75% of Britain’s vascular plant species (1,137), 77% of grasshopper and cricket species (23), 78% of spider species (505) and 93% of land mammal species (41). All the native British species of cockroaches (3), earwigs (4), dragonflies (45), lampreys and hagfish (3), and terrestrial reptiles (6) can be found on RSPB reserves.
However, the archaeological record suggests that people did not arrive in Ireland until after the last Ice Age, after most giant deer had disappeared.
There is also little evidence that the deer had any predators in Ireland. …
Stressed out
The ratios of isotopes revealed that the ecosystem in which the deer lived became stressed by drought.
As a result it changed from being covered in forest to being more open and tundra-like.
“There’s an overall trend of general vegetation decline,” says Ms Chritz.
The deer also appeared to be born in spring or early summer. But at the time of their extinction, temperatures dropped.
“Giant deer would probably have had a hard time coping with cooler mean annual temperature and a shortened growing season,” says Ms Chritz.
That would be particularly bad news for young deer. Most young animals are born in spring precisely because temperatures are warmer and there is more food available.
“It would be very difficult for young deer to cope with all these changes brought on by the Ice Age, as well as support the energetic demands of their growing bodies,” concludes Ms Chritz, who is now studying for her PhD in palaeoecology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, US.
Data from the cementum, which grows each year much like tree rings, indicates that the deer lived from 6.5 to 14 years old, and they possessed mature antlers by autumn, similar to other living deer species.
Last refuge
Though often called the Irish elk, Megaloceros giganteus is actually a deer species.
Though most abundant in Ireland, it was not confined to the island, with populations living across Europe and Western Asia from 400,000 to 10,600 years ago.
The last Ice Age stretched from 100,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago, containing periods of greater and lesser glaciation.
The deer rapidly disappeared across most of the range at the end of the last glacial transition, though giant deer remains have been uncovered in Siberia that date to around 7,000 years before present.
“That means that mainland giant deer had some sort of refugia from the Ice Age before they met their ultimate extinction; they were able to move to a better environment and survive later,” says Ms Chritz.
But those giant deer in Ireland “had the misfortune to be trapped on an island with nowhere to go.”
Deep under the ocean, there is a species of crab that eats trees.
The crab survives by eating wood that has sunk to the ocean floor, comprising trunks and leaves swept into the sea, as well as the odd shipwreck.
Inside the stomach of the crab, also called a squat lobster, are bacteria and fungi that help digest the wood.
The discovery, published in the journal Marine Biology, adds to evidence that these so-called ‘wood falls’ help support special underwater communities.
“At first sight, it seems improbable,” says PhD student Caroline Hoyoux of the University of Liège, Belgium.
“Munidopsis andamanica is a species only found in the deep sea and yet it eats ‘terrestrial food’,” she says.
Ms Hoyoux and colleagues based at the University of Liege and at the Natural History Museum and Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France made the discovery while studying which animals colonise wood falls.
Among worms, bivalves and a host of crustacean species they found Munidopsis andamanica, a species known as a galatheid crab, or squat lobster.
Further investigation of the crabs mouthparts and gut contents revealed they feed exclusively on wood.
“We were surprised, because crustaceans are often regarded as predators or scavengers. The fact I found M. andamanica consistently feeding on vegetal remains, especially wood, instead of eating molluscs or [worms] breaks with the general a priori about the diet of squat lobsters,” says Ms Hoyoux.
Sunken treasure
The importance of wood falls and the communities they host are only just being appreciated.
Although first discovered in the late 19th century, it was not until the late 1970s that scientists began to study the animals that colonise them.
Until this century, these were mainly thought to be wood-boring molluscs.
“However, crustaceans are the second most important group, according to the number of species and individuals,” says Ms Hoyoux.
It sounds like a classic horror story - eyeless, mouthless worms lurk in the dark, settling onto dead animals and sending out green ‘roots’ to devour their bones. In fact, such worms do exist in the deep sea. They were first discovered in 2002 by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), who were using a robot submarine to explore Monterey Canyon. But that wasn’t the end of the story. After ‘planting’ several dead whales on the seafloor, a team of biologists recently announced that as many as 15 different species of boneworms may live in Monterey Bay alone. After years of study, the researchers have begun to piece together the bizarre story of the boneworms, all of which are in the genus Osedax: here.
This morning, on my way to the railway station, many shaggy ink cap fungi.
In the Naardermeer reserve, a great egret.
Later, from the train near Sassenheim, Egyptian geese and great cormorants.
This report presents an enlarged set of population trends and indices of 136 common bird species in Europe which have been produced by the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) in 2009.
It was by Kars Veling, about Butterflies and dragonflies in cities: more than food for birds.
There are quite some butterfly species in Dutch cities and towns. For one category of butterflies, that is not surprising. These are the species who are not so selective about environments. Caterpillars of species like red admiral, peacock, and small tortoiseshell are dependent on stinging nettles, plants which grow even in city centres.
With some luck, one may also see more selective butterfly species in urban environments, like the comma, and meadow brown.
There are also some really specialized species in Dutch cities. As far as we know, the white-letter hairstreak in the Netherlands lives only in Heerlen city. The brown hairstreak numbers are going down in the countryside, but are stable in cities like Wageningen and Zwolle.
Kars Veling once saw 700 common blue butterflies in the ancient town Naarden. He had never seen so many together. Their caterpillars eat bird’s-foot trefoil, abundant in Naarden.
Essex skipper butterflies may also flourish in urban environments. Provided that lawns are not mown, destroying the eggs.
Brown argus butterflies also thrive in cities sometimes, especially on temporarily fallow land.
In an oak tree, there may be 50-70 butterfly or moth caterpillar species.
Dragonflies and damselflies in cities, like elsewhere, are dependent on clear water. In muddy water, their larvae will not be able to see far enough, and will die. If you want willow emerald damselflies in your city, you need trees as well as clear water: because the adults deposit their eggs in autumn in trees standing close to water. If the larvae hatch in spring, they drop straight into the water. So, don’t cut down all trees near the water. But also don’t let big trees grow all along the water, for then the water becomes too shady. Try to find a balance.
What’s a city-dweller to do — you want to help fight climate change, but does planting trees in the city really make a difference? Can urban forests help sequester carbon and offset emissions? Here.
