Ophelia's travels in space and time...

Hello my friends

Ophelia has traveled from the United Kingdom (I bought her from Vanallan Miniatures) to the Netherlands. But first she traveled from the tropical island of Mauritius to the UK ofcourse. Ophelia's remains are a birthday gift to myself. But coming halfway around the world is not the end of her travels yet. Oh no!

As you can clearly read on this label she walked the beaches of Mauritius in 1662. From 1662 she traveled through time and space to Victorian England and ended up in this beautiful dark brown Victorian display case. Let's say she now stands here in the year 1890. 

However, a Victorian display case? That won't work for me. Huis ter Swinnendael is set in 1806 so we have turn the clock back some 84 years to make her fit into my chosen period. Let me tell you how I did that.

Ophelia needed a new background to start with. The original one shows an aged scenery of the Mauritian woods with another dodo in the background. All very naturalistic and Victorian. Pretty! But wrong for my time period.

Around 1800 naturalism was simply not (yet) in vogue. Just look at this painting (made in 1776) depicting some of the animals from the private zoo of Prince Willem V, depicting his prized urangutang. Even though it shows a tree, grass, soil and fences, the composition is litteraly composed and the depiction of the elements are romantically idealised. Not the true depiction of the prince's zoo. 

This female ape was given to Willem V as a gift and she was so prized by him that he had this 'portrait' painted of her. Unfortunately she died only 7 months after she had arrived in the Netherlands. 

They had taken a lot of care to feed her well, but they simply had no knwoledge on what an Urangutang ate. She was given mainly white bread, roots, carrots and fruits. It is said that she particularly liked strawberries. She drank mainly water but was also given sweet Malaga wine because she loved it. Her caretakers taught her how to eat with knife and fork, but that was only for the amusement of those who visited her. This lack of knowledge on their part is probably the reason the urangutang died 7 months after arriving in Holland. Sad but true.

However, I did not choose this picture because of the beautifully painted animals. For Ophelia's display case I will only use the background of this painting. Removing the animals in the fore- and background took some time but I managed to get a convincing result in the end. And if that is not all I cut off the entire foreground up to the bottom of the wall for it would not fit the background of the case.   

Here we are, testing the new background in situ. I do not feel that Ophelia finds it an improvement, but she was quite indifferent to the first background too. I think so at least. It is quite difficult to read her face...  

I left the ferns she came withas they are. It is quite large but that helps creating the illusion that the stone wall stands further back than it actualy does. The cut stone wall with the sandstone urn gives it enough of the "18th century" vibe I am looking for. 

Then it was time to hide her from the world for a short while. Well mostly that is. I left her a small peep hole in the big front glass pane of her case. I covered the glass panels with masking tape in order to paint the dark brown gold. As soon as the paint had dried I removed the masking tape to see the result.

And there we have it. Ophelia's new home. To me this looks much more 1790 than 1890 with the gold and the new background. And perhaps it is just me, but I think I do see the hint of a smile of aproval around her beak. ;-)

But her new home is still not finished she still needs a structure to stand on. That will be for a next post, for I have not decided how that will look. It could be in the form of table legs to make it look like a cabinet on a stand. Or a chest of drawers that houses a collection of some kind. Fossils, shells bones? 

As soon as I have decided what goes under it I can decide on really gilding it with gold leaf or not. We'll see.

Take care.

Huibrecht