Lost and Found...

 

Some years ago, I posted on here a blog about an anonymous portrait that we’d bought, grubby and unloved, at Sotheby’s in Milan in 2004. The only information about it that we had at the time, from the Sotheby’s catalogue was that it was by John Riley, which in fact we chose to ignore, on the notably confident advice which somebody had pencilled at some time on the stretcher that in fact the picture was by Michael Dahl. And subsequent research suggested that this assertion was probably correct, since the colour palette of the portrait fits perfectly with the sub-fusc tones that were generally favoured by Dahl. But, I’m now having to row back on that one, as I think we might have succeeded in finding out the identity of the sitter, and that identification sits well with the artist having been Riley, and makes it improbable that this is a work by Dahl.

We’ve owned the portrait for a little over twenty years, during which time she has graced different places in different houses – for a long time, she looked down from a lofty position above the Drawing Room fireplace in the house at Santa Caterina, in Pisa – and she’s now come to rest in the inner entrance hall of this house, where her quietly commanding presence fits perfectly within the embrace of the stairwell. In the absence of her proper name, we’ve always referred to her as ‘Doris’.

Until now.

The TD was idly playing around with his ipad, the other day, when it occurred to him to do a Google Image Search for Doris, and he was astonished when he got an immediate hit. There, in amongst all of the many similar images of slightly chubby seventeenth century allumeuses, all with flowing robes and gracefully positioned limbs, was unmistakeably our Doris. No question about it.

The image had been displayed, years ago, on a website for something called ‘anticoantico’, which is a kind of online aggregator for italian antique dealers, and the description given for the picture was, unsurprisingly, ‘Ritratto di Dama in un Paesaggio’. Frustratingly, TD clicked on a link to something else, and then found he couldn’t get back to the anticoantico listing, and when he tried to repeat his original search, the historic anticoantico listing wouldn’t appear – such are the vagaries of Google searching! He did remember, though, that along with the somewhat generic title for the portrait, there had also been a reference to John Riley, to a sale at Christies in 1938, and to ‘Uvedale da Tomkins’. The last of which rang no bells, but it did at least provide a thread to pull on.

Uvedale Tomkins (or Tomkyns), it turns out, was a member of the Herefordshire gentry, and his dates were 1649 -1692. It’s not hugely relevant, but his parents were Lucy (nee Uvedale, before her first marriage to a Mr Neale, and hence Uvedale’s unusual christian name) and Thomas Tomkins. Uvedale married Mary Capel (or Capell, or Caple), who was also born in 1649, but who outlived her husband by a number of years, not dying until December 1728. I’ve not been able to find out when Mary Capel and Uvedale Tomkins married, but it was certainly before 1679, as in that year they were recorded, as man and wife, as having significantly re-built St Mary’s Church at Monnington-on-Wye, where the Tomkins family were lords of the manor (where, I think, they lived at a house called Moccas Court). Mary Capel also came from Herefordshire gentry, and her family had owned the manor of How Caple (or Capel) since 1289, and they lived there in a house called How Caple Court. As is clear, the various spellings of all the names are all over the place, and so any online search about this lot is fraught with peril!

If the Uvedale Tomkins reference is to be believed – and it seems so obscure that I can’t think why anybody would have made it up – then the most likely candidate to be our Doris is clearly Mary Capel. And that then informs the issue of whether the work is by Riley or by Dahl. Doris looks to be young, probably still in her twenties (although I suppose a tactful portrait-painter might have opted for an image which looked more youthful than the reality). Dahl didn’t arrive in Britain until 1682, however, by which time Mary Capel would have been 33, and Dahl didn’t then remain in Britain for long, since he was off travelling around Europe soon thereafter (he was in Paris in 1685, and in Rome after that) and he wasn’t back in Britain again until 1688. Since it would be too much of a stretch for Doris to be a woman approaching her fortieth year, then this restricts the possibility of Dahl having painted her to the suggestion that it happened in around 1683 – when she would probably have already been too old for the image we have, quite apart from any question of why Dahl and Uvedale Tomkins would have come into contact with each other at that date. Riley, on the other hand, was already active by 1670, and during the following decade he was working significantly on a whole raft of socially diverse subjects – it was only after 1680, following the demise of Peter Lely, that Riley became the go-to portrait painter for the Rich and Famous. On that basis alone, Riley is by far the stronger contender.

Further research into How Caple (or Capel, or Capell), however, revealed that in 1677 How Caple Court was sold by the Capel family (by Edward Capel, in fact, who was Mary's father) to Sir William Gregory, who was an up-and-coming figure in Westminster. And the portrait of Sir William Gregory which even now is held in the collection of the Palace of Westminster is by...John Riley.

Ok, it’s all circumstantial, and it might all just be happenstance. But, somehow, I don’t think it is. If you triangulate the connection through How Caple and through Uvedale Tomkins, then you end up with Mary Capel and with John Riley, whose dates would fit perfectly with the picture having been painted around 1675. Possibly commissioned by Mary Capel's doting new husband. For me, it works.

Uvedale Tomkins and Mary Capel had no issue, and when she died in 1728 her estate was left to her brother John, and he in turn left his estate to his only child, who was another Mary Capel, and who was married to a John Whitmore, a member of yet another Herefordshire family, who lived at a small estate called The Haywood. After Haywood Lodge was sold by the Whitmores in 1783, the immediate trail goes cold, although I think there’s good reason to believe that Doris was passed down through the same family right through until she was sold at Christies in 1938. The idea is entirely credible that it was always known within the family that the portrait – of some long-distant family connection - was in some way related to Uvedale Tomkins, and that it was by John Riley, and so when Doris was consigned at Christies in 1938, that was how she would have been described in the auction catalogue. (Without success, I’ve skimmed the record of the sales at Christies for the whole of 1938 in search of a reference to a consignor called ‘Whitmore’, but given how many times the picture could have remained within the same family but have been passed down on the distaff side, this isn’t entirely surprising). If the portrait had come adrift from the Whitmore family (or whatever their name was by then) at some point between 1728 and 1938, then the fact that it had always been known that it was of ‘Great-Great-Aunt Mary, when she was young’ and that is was something to do with Uvedale Tomkins would also have got lost (as it subsequently did before the picture was consigned at Sotheby’s in 2004).

The same sort of reasoning suggests that whoever owned it around 2000 was probably a family connection of whoever had bought it in 1938 – a grandchild, maybe? – since otherwise the fact of the 1938 purchase and the reference from the 1938 catalogue is unlikely to have been retained, and then quoted when the picture was passed for sale via anticoantico. And for it to have been at Sotheby’s in 2004, whoever bought it via anticoantico must have owned it only for a short time before they sold it again - but when they did so, they didn’t think to repeat the previous reference to Uvedale Tomkins, and so it was at that point that Doris well and truly became a nameless orphan.

How it was that she came to Italy, and who it was that wrote – in English – on the back of the frame that this is in fact a work by Michael Dahl, we will never know. Intriguing, but completely unanswerable.

For now, though, I’m content to think that every time I pass her, at the foot of the stairs, I can give a nod to Mary Capel, and feel glad that she’s got her name back, after all this time.

Tonight's dinner:

Tomato and gorgonzola tarts

Slow-cooked pork belly, with star anise; fagioli with lemon

Hazelnut souffles

Recipe: Plum Kuchen

 

Clearly, it's time for this recipe to be transcribed onto here, from the increasingly stained and scrappy bit of paper which seems to get harder to find every time I want to make the dish. The plum harvest this year was both excellent and long-lasting (I don't know if the growers have found a way to store plums for longer, but they seem to be available much later this year than I recall in the past), and this is one of my favourite go-to recipes when I've been seduced yet again into buying a punnet of the rich, dark fruit.

Plum Kuchen is quick and simple to make, and is delicious. Alarmingly high in sugar, it's not for the carb-minded, but as an occasional indulgence, served with thick cream, it rates highly. It's one of those dishes, too, which gets TD's approval, as it brings an appreciatively misty gleam to his eye!

Serves 6.

Ingredients:

Base: 2 tbs butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 3 medium eggs; 1 cup flour; 1 tsp baking powder; generous pinch salt; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 6 ripe plums, halved and stoned.

Topping: 1 cup sugar; 1/2 cup flour; 3 tbs butter (melted); 1/2 tsp cinnamon.

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 175 degrees C. Grease a baking dish, approx 12" x 6".

2. For the base: beat together the butter and sugar, then mix in the eggs, and then the flour, baking powder and vanilla. 

3. Pour the batter into the baking dish, spreading it as necessary into the corners, and then arrange the plum halves cut-side-up over the batter.

4. Mix together the topping ingredients, and spoon them over the plums, more-or-less to cover. 

5. Bake for 35 minutes, and allow to cool for ten minutes or so before serving. (Although it's also excellent sneaked cold, the following morning!)

Progress on the project...

 ...has been slow over the past few month, for obvious reasons, but in practice we're now very close to being able to move in (and continue the work in-situ, rather than at the end of a commute).

The Lower Stairs: the railings have now been painted, and the doors stained (walnut - it looks quite handsome), while - mirabile dictu! - the upper door, which leads to the outside, now actually closes and seals. 

A view of the Salone: pictures, mirrors, hangings are still all to come. When I can get my head round how best to transport them.

More Salone: the famous stove-from-Torino. Which is not yet plumbed in, but we have at least  worked out with Sandro how it's to be done. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Yet more Salone: a rather dull picture, but justified by the fact that I'd finally managed to get that bloody curtain pole properly installed!

The Master Bedroom: the uneven-ness of the 

 floor means that the bed-frame is treachorous, if left to its own devices, and instead has to be held in place by that relatively discreet chain, which is attached to the roof beam....

In the woodstore-to-be, looking out to the entrance`courtyard, with the security gate for the archway waiting to be installed.

A corner of the kitchen, looking through into the Pranzo...

...and its almost-mirror-image, from the other side of the arch.

The four-footed, waiting to meet and greet at the entrance to the Pranzo from the stairs.

And more kitchen, with a Derby & Derby hearthside chair arrangement.

A view into the office (with the inevitable hand-drill and pot of paint in the foreground).

We're almost there!

Recipe: Lemon Bundt

 

I finally got round to researching Bundt recipes, recently, and was surprised (and, in a way, quietly impressed) to find that, as an idea, they are nothing more than a commercial construct. Even more so than the famous Ploughman's Lunch, which at least had something edible as its baseline. The concept of 'Bundt' it turns out was created by a company in the US, sometime in the fifties I think, as a way of promoting a series of interestingly shaped baking pans..and nothing more. Distantly, the idea was related to the traditional Guglhopf, or rather it was from the idea of the shape of the Guglhopf that the Bundt was derived, but it's at that point  that any connection with tradition of any kind definitively finishes. The word 'Bund' was apparently adopted as a nod to the idea of a 'group' or a 'party', and the 't' was added to the end of the word for no more complicated a reason than that it allowed the manufacturer to patent their product. So, out of the window go all those half-formed ideas of old cobbled streets and the charm of medieval towns somewhere in central Europe...to be replaced instead with the uncharming reality of a modern industrial complex somewhere in ...Pittsburgh, I think it is. 

And, along with all of that comes the recognition that Bundt cakes have no base theme in the sense of a recipe, and variations that flow from it. A Bundt cake is a cake which is made using a Bundt pan, and therefore any version of a sponge format which will reliably hold the shape of the pan once unmoulded will happily fit the bill. This particular recipe produces a dense, but not heavy cake, with good texture and  flavour. 

Ingredients:  4 medium eggs, separated; 160g butter; 250g sugar; zest and juice of 1 lemon; 500g ricotta; generous pinch of salt;1 tsp baking powder; 200g semola flour (or semolina); icing sugar (to decorate).

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 170 degrees C; grease your bundt mould.

2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

3. In a separate bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg yolks, lemon juice and zest; add to this the ricotta and salt, and mix in well.

4. In a third bowl, combine semola flour and baking powder, and then fold this into the lemon mixture, making sure everything is thoroughly amalgamated. 

5. Fold into the mixture the beaten egg white, and then pour this into the greased mould, levelling the top afterwards. Bake for 50 minutes (usual test - if a skewer inserted comes out clean, the cake is done).

Leave the baked cake to stand for ten minutes, outside the oven, before you un-mould it, and, finally, sift icing sugar over the top, to accentuate the lines of the pattern.

The Pomiane Notebook

 

This is shameless self-promotion! I realised recently that many of the earlier recipes which I posted on here are probably merely gathering dust in some outer circle of the internet, since there's no reason that  anybody would access them these days unless they already knew they were there, and knew to go directly to them.

And so: a book. As illustrated above, in fact. A collection of some of the best of...

In truth, there was a secondary motive in compiling the thing, which was as a distraction from the TD's recent and rather grim health crisis: he's now in hospital with a broken back, and  recovering from emergency heart surgery (just over a week ago), while they try and isolate the underlying infection which has caused all of this. Anyway, late at night, and in between hospital visits, it's been cathartic just to edit a few more recipes, and to work on the draft for the book. It's now gone live, and can be found here

Lemon Meringue Pie

 

Not something I make frequently enough that I don't need to remind myself of the recipe, my go-to resource for Lemon Meringue Pie has for years been Michel Roux (the elder). Which has always slightly surprised me, since LMP isn't something you'd exactly think of as 'French' - but, then, perhaps it's a reflection of the fact that his wife was australian. 

Anyway. Having decided on this for dessert this evening, I then discovered that I've already packed the relevant volume, and that the recipe is right now out of reach and probably at the bottom of a box somewhere deep in the recesses of the house in Pieve. Necessity, and the Mother of Invention, prompted a search elsewhere, and I discovered an alternative version, which is quite different from the Roux recipe, but which is very straightforward, and the result was excellent.

For One 8" pie.

Ingredients: 8" shortcrust pastry shell; 3 eggs, separated, plus 2 whole eggs; grated zest of 3 lemons, and the juice of 4 lemons; 400g sweetened condensed milk; 150 ml cream; 90g sugar.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 180 degrees C, and blind bake the pastry shell - 10 minutes with the baking beans inside, and 10 minutes more after the beans have been removed

2. Meanwhile, beat the 3 egg yolks together with the 2 whole eggs; use a little of this beaten egg to brush the base of the pastry shell at the end of the 20 minute blind-baking, and return to the oven for a couple of minutes, to set the egg layer.

3. To the remaining beaten eggs, add the lemon zest and juice, the condensed milk and the cream. Mix thoroughly, and then pour into the blind-baked pastry shell (almost certainly, you'll have more mixture than the shell can hold, so pour any leftover mixture into a ramekin and put it in the oven alongside the filled shell as the latter cooks).

4. Bake the filled tart shell for about thirty minutes, until the filling is no longer liquid.

5. While the base is cooking, beat the egg whites until stiff, and gradually add the sugar as the whites stiffen. 

6. Once`the base of the pie is cooked, remove the pie from the oven, and turn the temperature up to 200 degrees C. You can just slather the meringue on top of the lemon base, but I prefer to pipe it onto the surface, in a layer of rosettes - either way, once the egg meringue has been added to the pie, return it to the oven for about ten minutes, until the meringue has decently coloured.

Let the pie stand for about an hour before serving it (or leave it for much longer, and serve it properly cold).

As the evenings draw in…

 There’s much to be said for some indoor heating: 

The fireplace, newly installed in the library -
having travelled from a village on Lake Como

And the woodstove, now doing its stuff
in the master bedroom (and at least this one only
had to come from Pietrasanta!)

Sandro - having manhandled all of the various stoves and fireplaces into their new positions, and performed miracles in constructing new (and perfectly functioning!) chimneys for each and every one has now declared: Enough Stoves!!

He may have a point.

Tonight's dinner:

Garlic Shrimp

Hamburgers, with Poulette sauce

Dutch Apple Turnovers