There has been no new work to show as I’ve not picked up a paintbrush for two months! I’m hoping to do some more music based work soon as I’ve watched the brilliant Beatles eight hours footage assembled by Peter Jackson “Get Back” covering the time leading up to the roof concert in Saville Row in January 1969. This three part film was a joy to watch and revealed the truth about what happened in that period and the personalities involved.
In the meantime, I’ve just been reminded in a conversation with my cousin about her brother’s wife and of our mutual love of Mahler’s music and various books on Mahler given to me some years ago. I became absorbed by Mahler and his relationship with Alma his wife who , before she met him, aspired to be a composer herself, and wrote a number of songs which are published and have been performed by a several singers. Some years ago I went to a recital by one of these, Bernarda Fink, singing songs by Alma and Gustav Mahler in London, after which I did an enormous amount of research on Alma and Gustav Mahler.
Alma Mahler was a highly controversial character and by some accounts a very difficult woman who married three times and had many other male followers and lovers, who adored her beauty and she was generally regarded as “The toast of Vienna”. Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoshka the artists, Walter Gropius the architect, Alexander Zemlinsky, Mahler the composers, Frans Werfel the poet were all included in the vast array of men who succumbed to her charms.
I was so captivated by my findings that I painted Gustav and Alma and studied the other men in her life. These portraits are a few years old now, and maybe not of interest to art buyers but I will continue to make them available for sale even though I know that many will not share my enthusiasm and interest in the lives of this controversial musical partnership.
Alma Mahler, although clearly a beautiful woman in her younger days who magnetically attracted the opposite sex, was by several accounts a controversial character and, at times, a very unpleasant person to deal with who tainted Gustav’s reputation after his death. Gustav’s music lives on and is still extremely popular with today’s concert goers.