Hi Arne and Goetze,

I've been following this strand intermitently with increasing fascination.

I am very much fence sitting at the moment. Arne your latest comments have much
merit. It is, indeed, possible to use selectivity, to either arrive at a
conclusion or direct others towards a predemined conclusion. Let's face it, we
have seen this scenario so many times before!

In Goetzes' defence, I can only say that he appears to be asking questions
rather than stating conclusions. It appears to me that he is looking at
historical possibilities and asking the question, 'could this possibly be the
case'. No more than that. At least he appears to be asking, in most cases, the
right types of question.

In terms of Gheeraets, I think Goetze has provided extremely valuable
information. it certainly fits very well with Holiday's allegiance to
pre-raphaelitism and the idea of the linguistic and iconic properties of visual
art.

I must say, also, the idea of Liddel as the billiard marker is extremely
persuasive - givern the blatantly foul shot that the marker is perpetrating in
the illustration.

However, I must say that the main thing, surely, at this stage, is that Goetze
is highlighting a number of factors regarding the technical and philosophical
underpinnings of Holiday's illustrations. these seem, to me, to be valid.
Agreed, at times there apears to be occasionally a 'shotgun' element in his
approach - but give him some slack! As I say, he is very much working on his
own and seeking suppot rather than laying down dictacts!

One thing both of you seem to have missed (or forgotten) is that Holiday quite
clearly gives us two, quite distintly separate Bellmen. One with a thick bushy
beard, course featured and another with a thin, whispy beard with fine ascetic
features. I would like to see this phenomenon addressed during thos debate.

Regards

JT
--- In lewiscarroll@yahoogroups.com, Arne Moll <arnemail@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Geotz,
>
> I took the trouble of downloading your document and had a look at it.
> It's interesting, but I'm not sure if what you claim is to be taken
> really seriously or not. Here a few remarks:
>
> - You want the reader to compare pictures, but even when you enlarge
> the document to 200%, the quality of many images is extremely poor.
> For instance, on p. 10 I simply cannot compare the rectangles with
> details you provide. p. 11 is even worse. All I see is a black and
> white blob. Even accounting for that, it's not clear to me what the
> comparison should consist of. It's one thing to draw coloured boxes
> around apparent details, but quite another to show the similarities
> between them. I, for one, don't see them in most cases. In order to
> convince people, I'm afraid you need to be much more explicit here.
>
> - You seem to do a lot of 'copy pasting' from various sources in
> order to reach a certain result. For instance, on p. 12 you state
> that "the face of the Bellman is probably not Henry Lee's face". You
> seem to claim that Holiday only took a few details from Gheeraerts
> the Younger's paiting while leaving others out. However, these
> details are hardly convincing. How many paintings can be found where
> people wear feathered hats? I'm sure I can find hundreds. Why focus
> on the Gheeraerts only, and not on other potential candidates?
> Moreover, Holiday's image of the Bellman does NOT have a feathered
> hat (purple box). What is the similarity here? It's beyond me.
> Equally strange is the red circle: what is that? A bit of hair? I
> don't see how you can compare this. Most men have hair, no? Why do
> you want to compare bits of hair from one painting with another? I'm
> sure we can all agree both persons painted have hair. Are you
> implying Holiday couldn't paint hair by himself, and resorted to
> copying the hair piece from Gheeraerts the Younger's paiting?
>
> - On p. 13 you compare a photograph of Henry Liddell with the
> Billiard-Maker. However, the images are not similar at all. The
> Billiard-Maker has a round nose, whereas Liddell has a straight nose.
> Also, the Billiard-Maker has one eye closed, whereas Liddell has both
> eyes open (as far as I can see). You say that the 'white hair on the
> right side of Liddell's head' is removed, but why? Is it because
> otherwise we could conclude that the pictures might not, in fact, be
> so similar at all?
>
> -Apart from this lack of similarity in many, if not most, fragments
> you provide, this copy pasting and 'cherry picking' is a very dubious
> practice in general. For example, I could easily copy and details
> from Rembrandt or Michelangelo's works too, and mix them together so
> that they seem present in Holiday's work. On what basis did you
> decide which fragments to copy and paste? Was this done purely on
> basis of 'apparent similarity', on paintings you 'happen to know', or
> is there a pattern that you could inform us of?
>
> - I will skip the details on p. 14 and 16 since they are beyond my
> comprehension (and vision) but a simpler example was also very
> strange to me. On p. 20 you compare Darwin's study with the picture
> of the Baker's dear uncle. Here, you seem to want us to believe that
> the fact that in both images, there is a painting on the wall (blue
> box), is some kind of indication of a relatedness between the
> subjects depicted. But again, how many paintings and photographs can
> be found where there is or are paintings on the wall? Moreover, in
> Darwin's study there are THREE paintings on the wall (although you
> have only put two of them in your blue rectangle), and on Holiday's
> painting there is just ONE. I conclude there is absolutely no
> relationship between these two images.
>
> - Finally, on p. 21 you compare (I assume) the faces of Darwin and
> the Bellman. I agree both wear a beard, but then, so did almost every
> man in those days. Apart from this obvious (and therefore,
> insignificant) similarity, again the faces on both pictures are quite
> dissimilar. Darwin has a nose with a curve, the Bellman has a nose
> which is straight. Also, the Bellman has long hair, Darwin has not.
>
> Even giving you the benefit of the doubt that Holiday was perhaps
> really putting 'puzzles' in his work, I doubt those are the ones you
> have discovered. I guess it's not impossible that you're right in
> some (a very few) cases, in most cases the evidence you present is,
> in my view, very inconvincing indeed. I am curious what you think of
> my comments.
>
> Best regards,
> Arne
>
>
>
>
>
> At 07:45 6-7-2009, Goetz Kluge wrote:
>
>
> >Update 2009-07-05
> ><http://www.snrk.de/HolidaySnark.cgi>http://www.snrk.de/HolidaySnark.cgi
> >(9MB PDF)
>