When Did You Last See Your Father By William Frederick Yeames. From The World's Greatest Paintings, Published By Odhams Press, London, 1934. Poster Print (20 x 10)
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When Did You Last See Your Father By William Frederick Yeames. From The World's Greatest Paintings, Published By Odhams Press, London, 1934. Poster Print (20 x 10)
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Walter Addiego of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "This classy tearjerker is worth seeing more for its virtuoso acting than for its bare-bones tale of how a sensitive man copes with the death of his domineering father. The film is cleanly and intelligently made, and, excepting a few moments toward the end, it's moving without being mawkish. While you might leave the theater feeling the picture finally doesn't quite have the dramatic heft it should, it offers plenty of compensations along the way." [8] My mother’s fear of the chaos she’ll inherit is understandable, though I know she is really saying something else. She dreads the paperwork because paper will soon be all that remains of him.” I take the green cremation slip, the form for the DSS, the information booklets for widows, the death certificate itself, and I drive to Morrisons, the big new supermarket where the old cattle mart used to be, to shop for the wake. My father had talked warmly of Morrisons ('You can get any bloody thing you want') and bought shares in it, as if it were the family firm. I load the trolley high with drink - gin, whisky, brandy, vodka, rum, wine, lager, bitter, as much as I can get in, the booze mound, commemoration and amnesia. I have to hold the wine boxes at the top to prevent them falling out. A man in the queue behind me winks. The woman on the till gives a knowing smile: 'Now here's someone who's going to have a good Christmas.' Yeames was inspired to paint this scene by the innocent and candid nature of his nephew who lived with him. The boy also acted as a model for the painting.
The oil-on-canvas picture, painted in 1878, depicts a scene in an imaginary Royalist household during the English Civil War. The Parliamentarians have taken over the house and question the son about his Royalist father (the man lounging on a chair in the centre of the scene is identifiable as a Roundhead officer by his military attire and his orange sash [3]). I watch the Escort pull away and feel angry with myself that I didn't insist on seeing the scalpelling out of the pacemaker. I wanted to know if I could take that. I wanted to stand there while his body was opened up, his skin slit open, and not faint or be squeamish or feel that wince in the stomach that the sight of blood brings. Sang-froid: I wanted to prove that I possessed it, that I could be a doctor like him. A reviewer for The Spectator admired the toil Yeames put into the work: "In the fourth gallery there is, first, a large picture by Yeames, A., of the historical kind – a good, industrious work, chiefly concerned with clothes and accessories – And when did you last see your father? A little Royalist boy being questioned by a Roundhead, much to his discomfiture, while his sister stands by waiting her turn, and soldiers and domestics fill up the rest of the picture" (730). He is the man who has arrested the family and has brought them before the Parliamentarians for questioning. Not only applied for, paid for. I'm a doctor, you see' - he points at the stethoscope - 'and I like being near the grandstand.'I envied Blake Morrison as I read about his relationship with his elderly father. My father died in his mid forties. I was twenty. I would like to have know him into my middle-age and perhaps beyond. Morrison warns us: "don't underestimate filial grief, don't think because you no longer live with your parents, have had a difficult relationship with them, are grown up and perhaps a parent yourself, don't think that will make it any easier when they die." He is right.
W. F. Yeames fills the place of distinction in this part of the room with a capitally conceived subject representing five Roundheads – commissioners and soldiers of the Long Parliament – in a manor house, seated in solemn conclave round a table, questioning the inmates as to the whereabouts of the Royalist owner. The little boy, in pale blue dress, who is now being examined, with his little sister crying behind him, and his mother and aunt tremblingly anxious in the distance, is the scion of the house, and we know before he speaks that a clear, frank answer will ring out to the insinuating question, "And when did you last see your father?" Mr. Yeames did quite right in not making the presiding commissioner a truculent-looking man. We like the picture very much, even if the perspective is proved to be mathematically wrong. [167] A reviewer for The Illustrated London News felt this was an important picture but disliked its colouration:
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The critic of The Saturday Review was one of the few who thought Yeames had failed to reach the standard required in either his conception or execution of this work:
The bundle of books is clearly an important piece of evidence since the man in the corner has not put them down.There is irony in the book as the words at his funeral service extol him as “a loving husband and devoted father, a valued colleague in his medical profession; a caring counselor and confidant; a good friend to high and low, rich and poor.” During the social gathering afterwards, people general express good memories of him. In 1905, he painted a mural for the Royal Exchange, London The Foundation of St Paul's School, 1509. In the next room the phone goes; in here, by the bed, it's disconnected. I laugh with her about this - how we've not wanted the phone to ring and disturb his sleep, how no vacuuming has been done for the same reason, how we find ourselves whispering or low-voiced not out of grief and piety but because it would be such a pity to wake him. The GP has been fine about our holding on to the body - said that if we kept the room cold enough we could have him here right up to the funeral. We decided against that: he's going today; we don't want the house to be a morgue or chamber of rest, just to hang on to him a little longer, get used to him not being in his body. A PHOTOGRAPH of my father in his fifties. He's sitting outside our 'chalet', or caravan, in Abersoch, North Wales. Over his shoulder is a bank of marram grass and, beyond, white beach, a frill of breakers, two islands floating in the bay. In his lap is a long piece of yellow plastic which he feeds into my mother's ancient sewing machine. He is putting the final touches to his latest invention, a sleeping bag that will allow him to sleep in comfort outdoors.
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