Art & Photography

Valerie Baines' Liberation Day Parade, 2011

14th September 2015

Valerie Baines' Lieutenant-Governor's Inspection 2011, Priaulx Library Collection

The Library has received some lovely sketches of local scenes from the well known watercolourist, Valerie Baines. They are a vivid and lively depiction of Liberation Day on Guernsey in 2011, including a few more unusual scenes. The sketch featured shows the late Lieutenant-Governor, Air-Marshal Peter Walker, inspecting local cadets.

Family photographs

23rd March 2015

The index of photographs in From our family albums, Book Three (2012), edited by Julie Hargetion and Mary Vidamour of the Société Guernesiaise. Thise book and its two companion volumes may be viewed by visitors to the Library, but permission for reproduction of the photographs can only be obtained by going through the books' compilers, the Family History Section of the Société Guernesiaise, from whom copies of the books may also be purchased.

Turner's Guernsey Sketchbook

12th March 2015

In 1931 Spencer Carey Curtis, acting on a tip-off from a Jersey antiquarian, Major N V L Rybot, visited the British Museum to hunt out one of Joseph Mallord William Turner's sketchbooks, labelled 'Guernsey:'

The Mystery of the Ostrich-feather Hat

9th March 2015

Judy and Brian Harden of Gloucestershire, specialists in portrait miniatures, approached the Library for advice as to the identity of the sitters for a pair of miniatures by the Jersey artist Philip Jean, bearing the date of 1785. While researching these we noticed some striking similarities between them and other local miniatures we were familiar with.

Flouncing: July 1834

Cruikshank sketch, short dress 1834, from Priaulx Library Collection

Vive la Flounce! A comic piece in the form of a letter to the Editor of the Star newspaper of July 24, 1834, on the islands' peculiar custom of 'flouncing,' or affiancing, by a visiting wit who called himself 'Time-killer;' and a description of flouncing in Alderney, from Captain Wood's Subaltern Officer, published in 1825. The pictures are from Cruickshank's Sketchbook of 1834-6, part of the Priaulx Library's extensive collection of work by this illustrator.

Sark, 1890: A photographer's holiday

This description of a holiday in Sark was written by a well known Methodist minister, Reverend Nehemiah Curnock, for the Methodist Recorder, of which he was the editor. It was reprinted in the Star in December, 1890. Curnock was taking photographs with a 'Kodak instantaneous' camera; he was in the forefront of technology, for Eastman had only patented it in September, 1889. The box camera took a 100-exposure film; the whole camera could be returned to the company for the photographs to be developed, or equipment could be bought to develop the pictures at home without a darkroom. The photograph is from the Library Colletion and shows La Collinette in 1936.

War Pictorial News, July 9, 1945; Die Deutsche Wochenschau, August 1, 1940

War Pictorial News, which ran from 1940-46, was produced by the Ministry of Information in Cairo, for distribution to allied troops in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

Two hundred years ago, in October

From the local newspapers. Mr French, Music teacher; Lost by William Bird; Finucane; Helier Allez; Monsieur Ferey; Valet position required; Chaumontel pears; wet-nurse; Hospital-Lane; Pierre Mansell; Daniel de Mouilpied, Nicolas Robert, Susanne Le Ray; Oysters.

This week in June two centuries ago ... or thereabouts

Extracts, mostly from the Gazette de Guernesey, on this day (or thereabouts) two hundred years ago.

Rosa Brock's Sketchbook

Rosa Brock, Alpine scene, Priaulx Library collection

These lovely watercolours are the work of Rosa, the daughter of General Sir Isaac Brock's brother, Savery Brock. They have been given to the Library on long-term loan by Rosa's great-great-neice, Sally Greenaway of New Zealand.

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