Artist

Clarence’s inspiring fritillaries

In our regular postings on Facebook, occasionally here, we have featured at least three times Clarence’s watercolour designs based on the fritillary. It’s an extrordinarily beautiful bell-shaped brightly-patterned wild flower of the Alps – all its varieties inspired Clarence to exceptional artistic creations.This article brings his various fritillary creations on one page, and photos by […]

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The Book of Guests in Esperanto – text published

The Book of Guests in Esperanto by Clarence Bicknell is published today in text form. We provide a transcription of the Esperanto original and the English translation. A reproduction of each page is available to students and researchers on application (info@clarencebicknell.com). Clarence wrote in this small vellum-bound album his notes in Esperanto on guests who

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David Roberts and the Royal Academy, by Ian Fraser

We are pleased to be able to publish this interesting paper by my cousin Ian Fraser. David Roberts was his great great great great grandfather ands his daughter Christine (1821-1872) married Henry Sanford Bicknell (1818-1880) who like his father Ehanan loved collecting art. Ian recovered Roberts’ lost journal of 1851-1860 from among his father’s papers

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Collecting

Clarence Bicknell, the Collector.    What is it about the human brain which makes collecting so compulsive? Many people find delight in hobby collecting; certain types of antiques, Toby jugs, Fabergé eggs, medicine jars, French pochoir fashion prints of the 1920s or garden gnomes. Children (and grown-up children) like to collect toys, especially when they make

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Painting & Drawing

Although Clarence is known as a painter of botanical water colours, he painted and drew sketches all his life. The Bicknell family collection and the Museo Bicknell have many examples of architecture, landscapes and images which Clarence observed on his travels. His watercolour of Florence, left, is dated 1885, the same year as the publication of

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Arts and Crafts

Clarence’s painting and drawing was not limited to his water colours of plants. He sketched landscapes, architectural detail, and other subjects especially when he was walking or travelling. Much of his illustration is enhanced into patterns, such as the repetitive use of the stem of a flower and its blossom to create a frame for

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Casa Fontanalba

In the summer of 1886, Clarence Bicknell rented a house at Castérino on the gentler slopes of Mount Bego, where he could combine his studies of alpine plants and the rock engravings. Increasingly his summers were spent in amassing his collection of drawings, rubbings, and photographs, on which he based his first papers in Italian

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