When I saw the title of Alain Corbin's recent book, La Douceur de L'Ombre, I thought that it was relevant to a Mediterranean country - where trees are planted for shade, where people go to great lengths to avoid the heat of the midday sun - but not to Britain, where we are constantly trying to make the most of wherever sun and warmth is available. However, reading Victorian texts, and looking at paintings by artist such as Richard Redgrave (this is his watercolour of Parkhurst Woods, 1865) I am not so sure.
Nineteenth-century art critics, and writers on trees and woodland, constantly refer to the delicious coolness of the woods. Titles of paintings - A Cool Spot on a Summer's Day, Rest in the Cool and Shady Wood - stress the relief such scenes provide from the claustrophobic crowds and heat of a London summer. Artists, poets and picnickers evidently liked to find shady glades, nooks, glens (all rather old-fashioned words) - whereas today, I would suggest, we are more likely to go to open spaces on sunny days, to the Ridgeway or the South Downs or a beach.
Nineteenth-century art critics, and writers on trees and woodland, constantly refer to the delicious coolness of the woods. Titles of paintings - A Cool Spot on a Summer's Day, Rest in the Cool and Shady Wood - stress the relief such scenes provide from the claustrophobic crowds and heat of a London summer. Artists, poets and picnickers evidently liked to find shady glades, nooks, glens (all rather old-fashioned words) - whereas today, I would suggest, we are more likely to go to open spaces on sunny days, to the Ridgeway or the South Downs or a beach.
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