Rhubarb
James M Grainger is a British artist, who specialises in oil paintings of vicars and Morris Dancers in curious and surreal situations, some of them involving rhubarb.
What a great thing for an artist to be known for. Not for landscapes or portraits, nor for abstracts. But vicars and Morris Dancers. And aren’t Morris Dancers curious and surreal enough without making their situations so?
-Hey George, let’s dress in white, with knee breeches, and put colorful ribbons on our shoulders and bells on our legs and arms. We can wear wire frameworks around our waists, and decorate them to suggest horses. Oh yeah, and we can use burnt corks to blacken our faces. Then we can dance around with sticks, or swords!
And to top that all off with rhubarb? Genius.
I’m not a dessert man. Chocolate repulses me in the way that eating mud would, even mud with sugar and milk. And I’ve just spent almost a decade in a country which for some absurd reason eats desserts for breakfast. Presumably to differentiate the desserts that you eat for breakfast from the desserts that you eat for, well, dessert, sugar is added to everything that is already sweet. And to most things that aren’t.
So America didn’t convert me to desserts. For me, “Mom and Apple Pie” mostly referred to Mom buying a readymade pastry from a large supermarket chain, and filling it with apples and sugar. And cake was never just cake. It was cake with extra sugar, so that you’re eating raw sugar with a cake-like texture. But it needs to look pretty so a fluorescent extra-sweetened gick is pasted on top. And it’s all served with dollops of cream. Cream with sugar added.
But this is the end of March. It is the time for rhubarb to appear:
No, not Roobarb - rhubarb.
This is mine. It was given to me by my parents several decades ago. All I had to do then to look after it was, well, nothing. Our rhubarb is indestructable you see. Back then my parents had 7 rhubarb clumps. I would pick whatever stalks were ready each week, keep whatever the family needed, and sell the rest to the local supermarket which in truth wasn’t very super.
108 stalks was the most I sold in a single go. In the supermarket they would sell out in minutes, because you couldn’t get better rhubarb. The stuff that they ordinarily sold was skinny limp things more deserving of the word flog than stalk.
As you can see from the picture it won’t be long now and I’ll be getting to eat some rhubarb again. For dessert that is, not breakfast. I’m looking forward to rhubarb pie right now.
And who doesn’t like rhubarb and custard?
(When Roobarb Didn’t See The Sun Come)
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
God bless you blissful this day, Eolai, for finding that Roobard and Custard cartoon. And Richard Briars narrating! It’s like being 5 again. I’m showing this to my kids this afternoon.
And you deserve a good blessing for pointing us towards the Rhubarb Compendium as well.
I love this post!
Me auld fella grew the deadliest ever. No messing! I would be lifted over the hedge into the field with a bucket and small shovel to collect cow shite. Fresh sloppy stuff, mind, not the dried and caked variety. (The dried stuff we’d use for spuds.) He’d lean over the hedge and lift me back in then - after he’d taken the bucket from me - it was more important. It would then be poured (yes, poured) about the stalks of rhubarb and on the tomato roots too. I haven’t tasted rhubarb as nice since then.
Am I talking shite here?
i’ve always been a city boy so i’ve no concept of how many ’sections’ my maternal grandfather’s farm comprised.
every august i spent a month on the place. i preferred to meander about bareback on Ben, one of the rather tame draft horses that dotted the farm (you would find them, quitely munching hay or simply flicking flies with their tails, in the oddest places), but there are an amazing number of chores that an eight year old can accomplish on a farm, most of them seemingly designed to wear his young ass out.
my favourite was rhubarb patrol. it wasn’t a cash crop on the farm - it grew wild in the roadside ditches. but my grandfather had a wicked taste for it so I would sit Ben and find as much as ran along his property lines. later i would retun on my bike with a sack and collect it. my grandmother would have already had the bottom crust spread out and tamped down in a pie tin, strawberries reducing in water atop the old wood fed, cast iron stove; once cleaned and chopped, the rhubarb was added. merged just right, the innards were spilled onto the tin and covered with the chicken tracked top crust and slid into the oven.
a late dinner, the sun going down, while grandad listened to the grain and hog reports on the AM. then, with the stars as clear as my conscience, the pie would be done, a slice slid onto my plate, topped with fresh made ice cream…
weren’t they the days though?
when i was ten i discovered ditch weed. which, in turn, really, enhanced the flavor of those strawberry/rhubarb pies, as well as gave a different tone to my summer days. i would guess, judging from his paintings, that perhaps Grainger was also a fan of ditchweed but saw to reason limn it…
i mean, good rhubarb grows everywhere - not so ditchweed…
I have never tasted rhubarb and I have no explanation.
I think this is my favourite collection of comments on a post.
Sam - In the days before YouTube I searched long and hard for such gems - because it mattered - and got there. Mr Benn had a profound influence on me, and like Briars with Roobarb who can’t hear the voice of Bernard Cribbins when picturing the Wombles?
Primal - Our rhubarb grew in our compost heap. It was a big heap. I too have never tasted better.
Doc - I suspect like beer consumption that rhubarb eating goes som e way to defining the quality of a person. Only 3 paintings of Grainger have I managed to track down.
Medbh - It’s great that we just don’t have an explanation for some things. When I was in England a few months back somebody bought me a 4-pack. Of Yogurts. One each of prune, fig, cranberry and rhubarb. Spot the common link.
Hi I am the British artist to whom you refer and its true I do specilaise in paintings involving rhubarb vicars and morris men.
I thought you might like to know about a fantastic eccentric British group called Stackridge, whose fans bring sticks of rhubarb along to gigs and thrash each other with them. The fans are known as “Thrashers”.
Now strangely enough I produce a monthly podcast on their behalf called Lummy Days which not only features a mix of eclectic music but also has more than the occasional reference to Rhubarb
The latest edition can be found here
Hope you get round to having a listen