Matisse, guitars, marionettes and Robinson Crusoe ... and how not to be ashamed of returning

HMS Victory (c) Tony Gillam 2019

When I was about ten years old I realised I would never be any good at football. Instead, I switched my attention to two new interests: guitar-playing and puppetry. I suppose growing up with Thunderbirds and Stingray on TV, in a 1960s childhood where there was a constant soundtrack of pop music, this is all very understandable.  I wanted to learn to play guitar and write pop songs of my own. Meanwhile, my modest, prized collection of marionettes produced by Pelham Puppets provided a small taste of theatre on a scale perfectly suited to the introverted. I should also mention that The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, with its stirring theme music, did give me a fleeting desire to sail the seven seas …but an inability to swim would have made this simply foolish.

Two recent visits to art galleries connected me with these early passions of guitars and puppetry. In February, we visited The Ashmolean (the University of Oxford's museum of art and archaeology.) The Egyptian mummies were impressive enough, and I was surprised how many famous paintings were on display by pre-Raphaelites and Impressionists, but what really caught my eye and my imagination was a collection of early Italian, French and English citterns and guitars. I was mesmerised by the evolving design of the instruments and the apparently trial-and-error approach to the number of strings and frets. It was like seeing the modern instrument take shape before my eyes.

Then, a few days later, we were in Worcester City Art Gallery after hearing about two concurrent exhibitions there. One display told the story of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes alongside a second touring exhibition, Matisse: Drawing with Scissors. The Ballets Russes was a famously spectacular and, indeed, rather scandalous ballet company of the early 1900s. Matisse was one of many artists who created costumes and scenery for them. Again, seeing these artefacts, including the dazzlingly bright cutouts Matisse made in his final years, was remarkable but what really captivated me was a pair of carved wooden marionettes made in 2018 by Stephen Foster, depicting dancers in the ballet costumes of the Firebird and Kashei.

HMS Warrior (c) Tony Gillam 2019

And, if these visual and historical feasts were not enough, we found ourselves, a few days later, in the historic dockyard of Portsmouth, to see the amazing recovered 16th century ship the Mary Rose, along with the 18th and 19th century HMS Victory and HMS Warrior ...which brings us back to sea-faring. But, after all of this travel and sight-seeing, we landlubbers were happy to return home for, as Robinson Crusoe himself reflected: “I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth ... that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.”