Picking blackberries

Yesterday, I picked blackberries for the first time this year and there will be further occasions as the fruits ripen. This foraging is always something I look forward to and I’ve often thought about why I enjoy the activity so much. 

My first memory of brambling comes from childhood, just as in the paintings above by Elizabeth Adela Forbes [(1912) Blackberry Gathering oil on canvas (84x100cm) Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool] and Walter Bonner Gash [(1905/15) Two Girls Picking Blackberries oil on board (18x24cm) Alfred East Art Gallery, Kettering], The hanging branches in the work by Gash are a reminder of the ability of brambles to “strike back” and I was careful when reaching for those really juicy-looking berries that were just beyond my reach, for fear of over-balancing and becoming “entrapped” by thorns. Of course, there will always be scratches and my grandfather had the excellent idea of taking a walking stick with him when we ambled along lanes, so that fruit-bearing branches could be pulled down to allow much easier capture by us children. I don’t carry a walking stick now, but I respect the defence mechanism of the plant – the thorns being also a means of allowing the plant to climb and to extend its growth laterally. They are good at competition. 

Those childhood adventures stick in the mind and their joy is described by Seamus Heaney in his poem “Blackberry Picking”: 

“Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full…” 

One of the pleasures of picking blackberries for me is that I am able to linger alone in nature and take a close look at what is around me. From when I was young, I always preferred being on my own; not, I hope, because I am anti-social, more that it was a form of escape from difficult times [1]. In that, I unknowingly copied Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and possibly for similar reasons. Russell Goulbourne writes in his Introduction to Reveries of the Solitary Walker [2]: 

“From the demands of corrupt society Rousseau turns to the world of nature. Walking alone in nature guarantees and even intensifies his sense of self.. ..His happiness comes in part from his being at one with nature, which was a refuge for Rousseau from the anxieties of life, providing him with relative solitude and a rich source of distractions, both of which offer him peace of mind.” 

I empathise with that statement and there’s an added dimension. Brought up as a Christian, I had some belief that everything was created by God and that country walks gave ample opportunities to see His work. The developing atheism of my early teenage years coincided with my learning much more about nature and showing that there was something deeply impressive in the way that different organisms had evolved to be successful in a range of habitats. In that sense, nature replaced God, inducing an equal sense of wonder, making solitary walks a form of “worship” that was never boring. 

Of course, brambles are part of the overall wonder, although that is putting it a bit grandly, as I’m collecting their berries (an excess built-in to the plant’s biology) to then make jelly or crumbles. Bramble jelly is a way of preserving the essence of the fruit for winter months and beyond, and spreading the jelly thickly on toast on a cold day always brings back memories of summer collecting days. 

That blackberries have been harvested as food for centuries has resulted in folklore, examples being provided by Steve Roud [3]: 

“The most widespread belief about blackberries is that the Devil ruins them on a certain date each year. A few other miscellaneous beliefs have been noted, including several medicinal uses. The only one that seems to have been at all widely known is that horses, cats. and babies are often not well when the blackberries are ripe.” 

This negative view of blackberries comes through in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Blackberrying”, perhaps reflecting the pressures of her life: 

“Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,   
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; ….” 

Quite different in tone to Seamus Heaney’s poem and both are different again to my own, rather complex, feelings in going out to pick blackberries. 

[1] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse Kindle Edition

[2] Jean-Jacques Rousseau (in 2011 translation by Russell Goulbourne) Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Oxford, Oxford University Press

[3] Steve Roud (2006) The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. London, Penguin Books

 

 

When a flower painter encountered a Suriname Toad

 

Rachel Ruysch is one of the most well-known painters of flowers in the history of art (one of her paintings is shown above) and exhibitions of her work are held today in major art galleries [1,2,3]. Born in The Hague in 1664, but growing up in Amsterdam, she was the oldest daughter of Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), a professor of anatomy and botany at the Hortus Medicus in Amsterdam. This famous institution had many rare and exotic plants shipped in from the Dutch colonies and Rachel was fascinated by them - and not just plants, as animals also arrived in shipments.

Clare Bucknell writes [4] : "According to the art historian Marianne Berardi, [Rachel] wanted to impart ‘something about the nature of the nature she was painting’. Her only picture that doesn’t primarily feature flowers or fruit is of a fat Surinam toad, a creature much studied by contemporary scientific societies for its curious reproductive process. Ruysch painted a female of the species with toadlets popping out of its back”. Her illustration is shown below.

The Suriname Toad (Pipa pipa) is a flattened frog (see brlow) that, despite its name, is found widely in the northern part of South America. Living on the bottom of pools, rivers and lake margins where there is much silt and detritus, their flat shape allows them to remain stationary in the muddy substratum and catch passing prey by ambush. Although their appearance has stimulated the curiosity of observers, it is the reproductive strategy of the frog that has provided most interest, as Clare Bucknell [4] points out.

Reproduction in frogs results from external fertilization and that is so in the Suriname Toad. After making clicking calls to attract a female, a male then grips the female in what is called amplexus. This act stimulates the female to lay eggs into the water, where they are fertilised by sperm released the male, but then something extraordinary happens. Aided by the actions of the male frog, fertilised eggs are transferred to the back of the female where they become embedded when the tissue on her back grows to engulf them. When tadpoles emerge from the egg, they utilise reserves from the yolk sac and then feed on particulate material from the surrounding water, while remaining in their individual “pouches” on the female frog’s back. They only leave at the “froglet stage” to lead an independent life (see below).

One can imagine Rachel Ruysch’s amazement.

[1] https://www.pinakothek.de/en/exhibition/nature-into-art

[2] https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/rachel-ruysch-artist-naturalist-and-pioneer

[3] https://thekleschcollection.com/loans/past-loans/nmwa-washington-dc/

[4] Clare Bucknell (2025) On Rachel Ruysch London Review of Books 47 https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n17/clare-bucknell/on-rachel-ruysch

 

The remarkable portraits by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) was the son of an artist in Milan and worked on the design of stained-glass windows in Milan Cathedral and on frescos and tapestries for the cathedrals in Monza and Como. He moved to Prague in 1562 and for the next twenty-five years was employed by the Holy Roman Emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II, working in both Vienna and Prague and painting portraits of them and their families. An example - Maximilian II, His Wife and Three Children – is shown below (upper). He also painted religious subjects and drew an excellent self-portrait that makes us puzzle about what he might be thinking about (below, lower). 

It is not these works for which Arcimboldo became famous, but his series of portraits that ingeniously, and strangely, used fruits, vegetables and fishes to represent facial features, jewellery and clothing (The Admiral is shown at the head of this article). In Vertumnus [Emperor Leopold II]  of 1591 (below, upper), that was painted two years before Arcimboldo’s death, we see that every feature is made up of vegetables, whereas the earlier portrait of a woman in Water of 1566 (below, lower), is made up of marine organisms. This was one of four paintings of the elements; the others being Air, Earth and Fire. We can assume that, as this style of painting was used by Arcimboldo for so many years, it must have been celebrated by the Court of the Holy Roman Emperors. 

As Kriegeskorte writes [1]:

The documents of the time bear witness to the fact that monarchs and his contemporaries in general were quite enthusiastic about his art. We do not know why there was a sudden turning point.. ..during his time at the Imperial Court, these tendencies were undoubtedly reinforced by his acquaintance with pictures by Bosch, Brueghel, Cranach, [Hans Baldung] Grien and Altdorfer.”

Many fishes in Water are easily identified and beautifully, and accurately, painted, although there is no consistency of scale between them, and we can assume that they were available in fish markets, were known to Arcimboldo from visits to coastal regions, or brought to Prague as curiosities [1]:

Prague had now become a major European cultural centre. But Rudolph II’s interest lay mainly in his Art and Wonder Chambers.. ..[that] contained everything that was regarded as exotic at that time, all sorts of unusual objects and animals:.. ..stuffed birds (from the world as it was known then), gigantic mussels, sword- and saw-fish, precious stones, demons imprisoned in blocks of glass, mummies, objects from the newly discovered continent of America, precious things from India and a whole zoo of exotic animals

If we look closely at Water, there are two animals that capture our attention, a walrus and a spouting fish (below, upper). These are very unlikely to have been seen by Arcimboldo and his inspiration must have come illustrations that he had come across, but what were these? The walrus may have been influenced by Dürer’s (1521) illustration (below, mid), especially in the prominence of the nostrils and the eyes. The jets coming from the partially-hidden spouting fish are very similar to those in the representation of a whale in Olaus Magnus’ (1539) Carta Marina (below, lower). Arcimboldo probably saw copies of both, as they are likely to have been talking points in artistic circles in the decades before he produced Water in 1566. This is my speculation, of course.

There is nothing quite like Arcimboldo’s “still life portraits” in the history of art and their strangeness, and skill of execution, had an influence on Surrealist painters centuries later, Salvador Dali basing his Le grand paranoïaque (below, upper) on paintings by Arcimboldo, after conversations about the artist with Josep Maria Sert, who designed sets for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe [2]. Perhaps Dali was especially inspired by Eve and the Apple (below, lower)?

[1] Werner Kriegeskorte (2000) Arcimboldo Taschen, Köln

[2] Marijke Peyser: https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/artworks/4293/le-grand-paranoiaque