An Arts Fuse regular feature: the arts on stamps of the world.

By Doug Briscoe

I did not suffer too much mental anguish over selecting today’s First Place Artist. David Oistrakh was born 30 September (O.S. 17 September) 1908 in Odessa into a Jewish family. He gave his first concert when he was six. In 1927 he played the Glazunov concerto under the composer himself. At the Moscow Conservatory his pupils included Gidon Kremer, Oleg Kagan, Emmy Verhey, and his son Igor Oistrakh. He premièred the violin concertos of Miaskovsky and Khachaturian and the two sonatas of Prokofiev, as well as the two concertos and the late sonata of Shostakovich. He succumbed to a heart attack on October 24, 1974. Oistrakh has no stamp, but it the subject of two postal cards, the first from the USSR, the second from Russia for the violinist’s centenary in 2008. These cards serve as the backdrop for most of today’s other offerings.

For the rest we resort to the usual chronological regimen. Born in Kyoto in 1559, the Japanese painter Kanō Sanraku died on this date in 1635. His father, Kimura Nagamitsu, was also a prominent painter. Our man’s birth name was Kimura Heizō, and he is known also by the names of Shūri, Mitsuyori, and Sanraku. He was adopted by Kanō Eitoku of the long-established Kanō school of painting, and thus Sanrako took on the name of his mentor as well as eventual control of the school. (He also married Eitoku’s daughter.) We have two stamps showing Sanraku’s exquisite work: Plum Trees and Fowl from a 1981 stamp and on one from 2012 we see one of two folding screens, on the other of which is a painting of a dragon and a tiger. The complete screen can be see here.

The nobly born 18th-century Polish thinker Stanisław Konarski (30 September 1700 – 3 August 1773) is of greater historical moment as a teacher, an educational and legal reformer, a political writer, and the founder of the first public-reference library on the European mainland (Warsaw, 1747) than he is as an artist, but he’s here today because he was also a poet and dramatist. He helped set the stage for the coming Enlightenment in Poland. The stamp is a good deal earlier than most of the ones we see on these pages, coming from 1921.

Our next creative gentleman (it’s all men today) is the very important English architect Decimus Burton (30 September 1800 – 14 December 1881), who left his mark all over England, along with the redesign and layout of Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Indeed parks were a mainstay of Burton’s output. He created the gates, buildings, and plans for several of them in London, Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, and perhaps most significantly, Kew Gardens, which has twice been celebrated on British stamp sets. From the first group, from 1990, which was issued for the gardens’ 150th anniversary, I’ve drawn two that are specifically related to Burton’s designs: they give just a hint of the Waterlily House (1852) and the Palm House (1844–48), which at the time was the largest greenhouse in the world. This same building reappears, more to the fore, on the newer set. Burton was also responsible for the disposition of the gardens and paths, the original Main Gate (1846; since 2012 the Elizabeth Gate), the Museum (1857, expanded 1881), and the Temperate House (1859-63). Among many, many other structures, Decimus Burton built the original Charing Cross Hospital (1831-34), the London Colosseum (1823-27, demolished 1875) and residences (e.g. Clarence Terrace) in Regents Park, the Wellington Arch and Screen for Hyde Park, various buildings for the London Zoo, and the clubhouse of the Athenaeum Club, of which Burton was a member.

Norwegian composer Johan Svendsen (30 September 1840 – 14 June 1911), also a conductor and violinist, received first prize in composition on his graduation from the Leipzig Conservatory. An incident that took place during his stormy marriage was used by Ibsen in Hedda Gabler: Svendsen’s wife was said to have thrown the manuscript for his Third Symphony into the fire; but in all likelihood only some sketches were lost. As it turns out, sketches for a symphony turned up in 2007. These were completed and orchestrated and performed in 2011.

Jehan Georges Vibert (30 September 1840 – 28 July 1902) was the son of an engraver but was himself more interested in painting. He attended the the École des Beaux-Arts from the ages of sixteen to twenty-two. During the Franco-Prussian Was he served as a sharpshooter and was wounded. Vibert’s inclination was for genre pictures with a humorous, gently mocking bent, typically poking fun at the clergy, as in The Preening Peacock and The Marvelous Sauce (c1890). On the Cuban stamp of 1986 we see Sed (presumably the Latin for “but,” as in sed non intellego iocum). Here’s a link to an enlargement of the image; perhaps you can enlighten me.

Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was probably more important as a teacher (though I enjoy just about everything I’ve heard from his pen, including seven fine symphonies, a series of orchestral Irish Rhapsodies, chamber works, and sacred music). He was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music and over the course of his career taught a generation or two of the best known British composers: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Arthur Bliss, Herbert Howells, George Butterworth, and Ivor Gurney were among them. He was a demanding teacher and an irritable sort of fellow.

We come next to the Greek actor Orestis Makris (September 30, 1898 – January 29, 1975). He performed on stage before appearing in his first film in 1932, not returning to the genre until well after the war, but going on to take part in some forty movies between 1950 and 1968. Never a leading man, he tended to play drunkards and frowning fatherly types. He also sang tenor.

Another man who made his mark in film, but in this case from behind the camera, was the Indian director Hrishikesh Mukherjee (30 September 1922 – 27 August 2006), popularly known as Hrishi-da. He, too, was involved in the making of about forty films. He was born in Calcutta and taught math and science for a time. His beginnings in the film industry were as a cameraman and then editor. His career as a director lasted from 1957 to 1983.

There are so many Mozart stamps in the world that I found four that deal specifically with The Magic Flute. The first performance was given in Vienna, at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden, on September 30, 1791, just two months before Mozart’s death.

Also born on this day (but with no stamps) were English film director Michael Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) of Powell and Pressburger, Scottish actress Deborah Kerr (30 September 1921 – 16 October 2007), who starred in their masterpiece Black Narcissus (1947), and Truman Capote (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984).

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a B.A. in English, Doug Briscoe worked in Boston classical music radio, at WCRB, WGBH, and WBUR, for about 25 years, beginning in 1977. He has the curious distinction of having succeeded Robert J. Lurtsema twice, first as host of WGBH’s weekday morning classical music program in 1993, then as host of the weekend program when Robert J.’s health failed in 2000. Doug also wrote liner notes for several of the late Gunther Schuller’s GM Recordings releases as well as program notes for the Boston Classical Orchestra. For the past few years he’s been posting a Facebook “blog” of classical music on stamps of the world, which has now been expanded to encompass all the arts for The Arts Fuse.