The Committee of Public Safety (Comite du Salut Public) was a body elected by the French Convention on the 6th of April, 1793 from among its own members, at first having very limited powers conferred upon it - that of supervising the executive and of accelerating its actions. Subsequently, however, its powers became extended; all the executive authority passed into its hands, and the ministers became merely its scribes. It was at first composed of nine, but was increased to twelve members: Robespierre, Danton, Couthon, St-Just, Prieur, Robert-Lindet, Herault de Sechelles, Jean-Bon St-Andre, Barrere, Carnot, Collot d'Herbois, and Billaud Varennes. The severe government of this body is known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with the execution of Robespierre and his associates in July, 1794. During the commune (March to May, 1871) a similar committee was established in Paris. Research Committee of Public Safety
Genre painting is a type of painting concerned with the realistic depiction of scenes from everyday life. Originally the term was applied to all paintings that were factual representations of nature (animals, fruit, and landscapes), as well as scenes of ordinary life, rather than to works of imagination, such as religious and historical paintings. Genre paintings deal with ordinary life, including family life, sports, street scenes, picnics, festivals, and tavern scenes. They are usually characterised by human interest and by the care and finish with which they are executed.
Genre painting originated in ancient times. Many of the scenes painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs represent the daily life of the people of ancient Egypt. Excavations in the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum have revealed many genre paintings, both conventional and erotic. In the late Middle Ages genre painting reappeared, represented chiefly in the religious calendars that formed part of the illuminations, or illustrations, of manuscript books; the calendars show people going about the occupations appropriate to each season of the year.
In Italy during the early Renaissance, many of the religious and historical pictures of such painters as the 15th-century Florentines Ghirlandaio and Benozzo Gozzoli and the later Venetians Giorgione and the Bassano family are considered genre paintings because of their contemporaneous backgrounds and costumes as well as their use of people of the times as models. In 17th- century Italy, Mannerist painters such as Caravaggio executed genre paintings of extreme realism and dramatic power. In the 15th century the Flemish painter Petrus Christus in some of his religious paintings represented scenes from ordinary life, and in the following two centuries genre painting rose to its highest level in history with the work of the Flemish artists Pieter Brueghel the Elder, David Teniers, and Adriaen Brouwer. The greatest national school of genre painting was that of the Netherlands in the 17th century. Probably never before or after was the ordinary life of a nation depicted so fully as was the Dutch life of this period. Not only the great masters but also the less outstanding Dutch painters excelled in it.
The most important of the Dutch genre painters were the so-called little masters, including Gerard Ter Borch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard Dou, and Adrian Van Ostade. The three leading 17th-century Dutch masters, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Vermeer, also created genre paintings of unrivalled beauty. French genre painting showed a vital development in the work of Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, Jean Baptiste Chardin, and Jean Honore Fragonard. One of the most noted English genre painters was the great satirist William Hogarth. In the 19th century, genre painting was widely practised in both Europe and the USA Among the outstanding European painters in this style were the French painters Jean Leon Gerome and Jean Meissonier, the English painter William Powell Frith, and the American painter William Sidney Mount, known as the 'JanSteen of Long Island.' Among the many 19th- and 20th- century American painters whose work included genre painting were Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Wesley Bellows, George B Luks, Charles E Burchfield, Reginald Marsh, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton. Research Genre Painting
Infant schools have changed little in their objectives and guides since then. They were established in Britain to teach children between the ages of three and six, and while this is now five to seven years, the basic premise that the schools should 'amuse, interest and instruct' has little changed. When established it was realised that elementary instruction should be simple, pleasing and as much as possible imparted by means of models, pictures and singing. Research Infant School
The Tennis Court Oath was a dramatic incident which took place at Versailles in the first stage of the French Revolution. On the 17th of June 1789 the Third Estate of the States-General under the presidency of Jean Bailly, a representative of Paris, declared themselves the National Assembly, claiming that they were the only Estate properly accredited and that the First and Second Estates must join them. On 20 June they found their official meeting- place closed and moved to the TennisCourt, a large open hall nearby. The Oath bound them not to separate until they had given France a constitution. Research Tennis Court Oath
The Theatre of the Absurd was a movement in the 1940s to 1960s that expressed existentialist philosophy through theatrical style. Absurdist plays are filled with non-sensical dialogue and plot, which convey the inability of people to communicate with each other and the irrationality of existence. Principal figures in absurdist theatre were Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet. Research Theatre of the Absurd
Robinia is a genus of trees of the family Leguminosae. The genus is named after Jean and Vespasien Robin who were royal gardeners in Paris in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. They have pink or white flowers borne in pendulous racemes and pinnate leaves. The chief species is the American locust tree which yields a valuable hard wood. The false acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia) is often planted in Europe. Research Robinia
Tobacco is the name given to the leaves of those varieties of the Nicotiana which are prepared in different forms for use as a narcotic. It is generally manufactured for smoking, but also for chewing and as snuth.
The word tobacco is probably derived from tobaco, the name given to a peculiar Y-shaped instrument used by the old inhabitants of the island of Santo Domingo for inhaling tobacco-smoke through the nostrils. Other authorities claim that the name of the herb is derived from the Mexican word tabacco. Columbus and his party made the earliest European reference to tobacco on their return from the voyage to Cuba in 1492. The tobacco plant was first brought to Europe in 1558 by Francisco Fernandes, a Spanish physician. The wonderful healing properties which the plant was supposed to possess caused the habit of smoking and snuff-taking to spread with great rapidity over almost the whole of Europe. Jean Nicot, French ambassador to Portugal, who gives his name to the genusNicotiana, sent a present of tobacco seeds to Catherine de'Medici, and she initiated in France the snuff-taking habit as a cure for headache. This habit soon spread to Scotland and Ireland, where it remained popular long after the smoking habit had become established in England.
The smoking of tobacco was really started by English example. In 1586, Ralph Lane, the first governor of Virginia, and Sir Francis Drake brought smoking materials and implements to Sir Walter Raleigh, who very rapidly popularised the custom.
Most of the tobacco used in the 17th and 18th centuries was grown in Virginia by English colonists, whose industry was carefully protected by laws prohibiting the production of tobacco in the British Isles.
There are about 50 species of Nicotiana, most of them indigenous to America. Of these, three varieties are in general use by smokers: (1) Nicotiana tabacum, the Virginian variety, originally derived from the South or Central American seed, and now cultivated in almost all temperate and warmer climates. (2) Nicotianarustica, grown principally in Turkey, Syria, and India. This is milder in flavour, and is principally used for the manufacture of cigarettes. It burns too quickly for a pipe tobacco. (3) Nicotiana Persica, or Persian tobacco, which is good for pipe tobacco, but not sufficiently uniform for the manufacture of cigars.
The tobacco plant is a coarse, rank-growing annual. Its stem is simple and unbranched, and grows to a height of about two meters, terminating in a bunch of yellow or rose-coloured flowers. The East Indian variety is slightly different, producing a green tobacco from a smaller plant. It is derived from the Mexican seed, and is also cultivated in Southern Germany and Hungary.
The tobacco plant can be cultivated in every part of the world, but with widely varying measures of success. It is grown in British gardens for the sake of its flowers. Clayey, moist soils produce tobaccos which are dark brown or reddish in colour when cured. Bright and yellow tobaccos are grown on sandy soils, and the leaf of this variety is thinner. The bright tobacco produced in Virginia and North Carolina is all grown in loose sandy soil with a clay subsoil.
The tobacco seeds are generally sown in nursery beds, and set out later. About 3OOOOO to 4000000 go to the ounce, and this produces about 40,000 plants, for which 50 square yards of nursery bed are sufficient. The seeds are sown at the end of March or beginning of April, in rich, heavy soil which has been carefully prepared and fertilised. The seedlings remain in the nursery from fifty to sixty days, during which time the fields are well tilled and manured. Transplanting is done on a warm, rainy day, and the young plants set in ridges varying from one to four feet in width. Ridges of one to one and a half feet are most usual in Cuba and Sumatra, as the wider ridge produces a leaf which is too coarse for the purpose of cigar-making.
The crop takes another two months until it flowers, and at this stage the buds are pinched off or 'topped', and some of the leaves pruned, so that only a certain number are left to ripen. For cigar-tobacco, from 15 to 20 leaves are left on the plant; for the best smoking tobaccos, 10 to 12 leaves. Plants which have been topped form suckers, and in Florida these are left to produce a second, although inferior, sucker crop.
The leaves take about 35 days to ripen after the plants are topped and pruned. The ripening leaf changes from a dark to a lighter yellowish-green colour, and is often mottled and becomes gummy. The ripe leaf cracks and creases when folded. The lower leaves ripen first, and for the best tobaccos the leaves are picked singly ;
as they ripen. For the bulk of the tobaccos, however, the whole plant is cut when the middle leaves are ripe. Warm, cloudy days are best for cutting, and the plants are not gathered in hot sunshine or when they are wet from rain or dew.
After harvesting the plants are left in the open to wilt, and are then conveyed to the drying-house or ventilating-barn, where they are straddled across tiers of poles and dried in a temperature which is raised to 170° F for four to five days. On damp days the moisture is allowed to penetrate into the drying-house to make the leaves pliable.
The plants are then taken down and stripped, and the leaves sorted into firsts, seconds, and lugs - the name given to the inferior leaves. They are formed into hands containing ten to twelve leaves, and these are left in heaps and fermented at a temperature of about 130° F for from three to four weeks. The heaps are shuffled from time to time, to allow all the leaves to assume a uniform brown tint. This process is called the fermenting or sweetening process. In the non-fermenting processes the leaves are simply sun-cured, or sun-dried, and this tobacco is used chiefly for chewing tobaccos. In the fermenting process the starch and sugar in the leaf are decomposed, but they are retained in the sun-dried process. Lastly, the leaves are packed carefully in hogsheads for shipment.
Tobacco leaf is used for making into various smoking mixtures, roll tobacco, cake or plug, cigars, cigarettes, and snuff. For snuff the leaf requires very careful fermentation during several weeks. It is ground up and flavoured so as to produce the greatest possible amount of free ammonia, free nicotine, and other aromatic scents. Syria produces and manufactures a smoking tobacco which is known as Latakia. It is similar to Turkish-grown tobacco, but differently treated. The plants are not topped. The seeds as well as the leaves are included in the curing, this taking place in the smoke of a fire of evergreen-oak, which gives a black colour and a peculiarly strong flavour to the tobacco.
Tobacco for pipe-smoking is mostly grown in the USA, the chief states being Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. Louisiana grows a dark, almost black, and very strong tobacco known as perique. Cigarette tobaccos are principally imported from Virginia, and Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes are also in great demand. The Egyptian cigarette is made from Turkish leaf, as the cultivation of tobacco in Egypt was prohibited in 1891. The best cigar tobaccos are grown in Cuba. A very good cigar leaf is also produced in Jamaica, Sumatra and North Borneo.
Since the introduction of tobacco into England, it has been subject to continuous legislation and import duties. In the early days a certain quantity of tobacco was grown in England for domestic consumption, and quite a considerable trade was done with Turkey, which, at that time, imported her tobacco supplies from England. Queen Elizabeth imposed a tax of 2d per Ib on imported tobacco. In 1621 James I increased this to 6s. lOd. per Ib.
During the American War of Independence, England's source of supply and the revenue there from were temporarily suspended, and tobacco was again widely planted in England, although the prohibition laws had not been repealed. These laws had never applied to Scotland, and to reimburse themselves for the loss of revenue during the non-importation of American tobacco, the Government purchased the Scotch tobacco crops at the fixed price of 4d. per Ib., thus temporarily creating a Government monopoly in tobacco. The ban on the growing of tobacco in the British Isles, renewed in 1782 in England, and in 1830 in Ireland, was modified later in the 19th century, and tobacco can now be cultivated under licence.
During the late 20th century an American-led ban on tobacco smoking supposedly because of the connection with lung cancer, but more likely under pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby, in public places slowly extended to Britain, with Scotland banning the smoking of tobacco in pubs and clubs in 2005. Research Tobacco
Adrien Francois Boieldieu was a French composer. He was born in 1775 at Rouen and died in 1834 of pulmonary disease. He early displayed great musical talent, his first opera, La Famille Suisse, being well received in 1795 at Rouen. In 1795 he repaired to Paris, and rose rapidly in reputation, producing several operas, of which the best was Le Calife de Baghdad (1799). Domestic difficulties drove him in 1802 to Russia, where he became musical director to the emperor.
On his return to Paris in 1811 he produced, among other works, his two masterpieces, Jean de Paris (1812) and La Dame Blanche (1825), which place him in the first rank of composers of French comic opera. For some years he was professor of composition and the piano-forte at the Conservatoire. Research Adrien Boieldieu
Sir Alfred East was a British painter and etcher. He was born in 1849 at Kettering and died in 1913. He studied art at Glasgow School of Art and at Paris under Tony Fleury and Bouguereau. He became a landscape painter of pronounced individuality, though with a strong sympathy with Jean Corot. Sir Alfred East was elected ARA in 1899 and RA in 1913. In 1906 he was chosen as president of the Royal Society of British Artists and in 1910 was knighted. Research Alfred East
BARON Antoine-Jean Gros was a French historical painter. He was born in 1771 at Paris and died in 1835 by committing suicide. He studied art under David, and subsequently became a staff officer in the French army. In this position he produced his picture of the Victor of Arcola, by which he secured the favour of Napoleon. In 1804 he produced his Plague at Jaffa, tvith Napoleon visiting the sick, a work which was crowned at the Louvre. He painted various battle scenes; but his chief work is probably the Cupola of St. Genevieve at Paris, exhibiting the saint protecting the throne of France, represented by Clovis, Charlemagne, St Louis, and Louis XVIII. The artist received for it 100,000 francs and the title of baron. The rise of the romantic school deprived him of his popularity, and he drowned himself in the Seine in 1835. Research Antoine-Jean Gros
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Abbreviations
Research Committee of Public Safety
