Jean claude russet biography of rory

The painter Rory McEwen, who died on 16 October, was born, the fourth of seven children, on 12 March The family was Catholic, and his father a Conservative politician. His childhood was spent at the beautiful house of Marchmont, set in the storied countryside of the Merse in Berwickshire. The landscape is apparent if we go, as Rory did, to the work of another local talent, Alexander Hume, who flourished four hundred years earlier. In his poem, ‘Of the Day Estivall’, the natural world is seen in a state of trance:

All trees and simples great and small,
That balmy leaf do bear,
Nor they were painted on a wall,
Na mair they move or stir.

There would come a time when these leaves and herbs would indeed be painted on a wall.

Rory was a boy of wonderfully nimble fingers, typed as the craftsman – the origamist, electrician, fly-tier, trout-guddler, model aeroplane-maker, puppet theatre-master – of this household of rival capacities, of &l

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Rory McEwen was born in Scotland on March 12th , the fourth of seven children, and was educated by a governess who “instructed us in drawing from nature. I still have some of those drawings They conjure up freedom and fine weather, tickling trout, bare feet in cool water.”

 

At 13 he was sent to boarding-school at Eton, where he stayed for five years, until entering the army at 18, for two years of National Service with the Cameron Highlanders. This was immediately followed by Trinity College, Cambridge where he read English, and it was at here that he first began performing in public, writing and appearing in the Cambridge Footlights Revue.

 

In Rory and his younger brother Alex, travelled to America where they played from coast to coast, recorded Scottish Songs and Ballads for the Smithsonian’s Folkways Records and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show twice.

 

After returning to Britain, Rory began to make regular appearances on the BBC’s T

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I've now visited the Rory McEwen: The Colours of Reality Exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood galleri of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens three times!  I might just try and passform in a fourth visit before it closes on 22nd September.

Rory McEwen with Auricula, at the Andre Weil Gallery, Paris () (Copyright D. Staughton)

Having posted earlier about: The Colours of Rory McEwenand A day in the life of botanical artist Rory McEwen I neglected to complete my review of the exhibition.

In part it was because inom wanted to let the exhibition settle in my head - to see what inom remembered best about if after inom left.

That's in part because of being so blown away with the quality of his work.

Regular readers will also recall the exhibition opened just after I had surgery for cataracts and I was still adjusting to life with new lenses in my eyes but no new glasses (until July) - and the impact that had on my blogging.

Rory McEwenstarted painting flower