Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/313

 12 S. III. MAY, 1917.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

307

MILLAIS: ' CHBIST IN THE CARPENTER'S SHOP' (12 S. iii. 250). MB. BTTXTON may like to know that an admirable copy of this picture by Miss Solomon, worked on and touched up by Millais himself, hangs in the Bethnal Green Museum, or did when I last visited it. The artist modified the colour of the original, years after painting it. When exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1850, it met with unmeasured abuse, being described by the critics in language which to-day seems unintelligible as " repulsive," "" revolting," " loathsome," and " disgust- ing." These epithets were, of course, part of the current campaign against the Pre- Raphaelites.

D. O. HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B.

According to information kindly supplied lay MB. C. F. BELL (Keeper of the Fine Art Department of the Ashmolean Museum, where originals of several other pictures of Millais, presented to the University of Oxford, are preserved), Millais' s picture "* Christ in the House of His Parents ' (or " Christ in the Carpenter's Shop') is in a private collection. In 1897 it was in that of a Mr. Beer. My informant does not know, I regret to say, to whom it belongs now. H. KBEBS.

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BLESSED TRINITY (12 S. iii. 168, 231). I have a mutilated representation, of this subject in stone, of fifteenth - century work, procured many years ago from a mason's yard in Hull, no doubt a relic from the " restora- tion " of some church. It has been pur- posely mutilated, the head of the Father knocked off and a modern head stuck on, the Cross in front between His knees with most of the figure broken away, and a fracture on the right shoulder where the symbolic dove has been knocked off. Only the loin-cloth and naked legs of the central figure remain ; the feet have been repre- sented as nailed separately. J. T. F.

Winterton, Lines.

H. C. PIDGEON (12 S. iii. 211). Henry Clarke Pidgeon, artist and antiquary, was born on March 6, 1807. He was a very good painter, and exhibited at the Liverpool Academy every year from 1847 to 1857. An Associate of the Liverpool Academy in 1846, a full Member in 1847, and Secretary in 1850 ; President of the Etching Club ; in 1861 a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1839 to 1853 ; at the British Institution ; at Suffolk Street ; and at the Liverpool Society of Fine Arts in 1860.

His addresses were as follows : 1840-43, 50 Myrtle Street, Liverpool ; 1845, 6 Myrtle Street, Liverpool ; 1846, 24 Nelson Street, Liverpool; 1847, 75 Walnut Street, Liver- pool ; 1848-50, 60 Grove Street, Liverpool ; 1851, Berners Street, London; 1852-3, 2 Russell Place, Fitzroy Square, London ; 1854-5, 30 Upper Montague Street, London ; 1856-8, 3 Westbourne Villas, Harrow Road, London. He died in Fitzroy Street, London, on Aug. 6, 1880.

There are two water-colours by him in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool : ' Harlech Castle, North Wales ' (size 10| in. by 15 in.), "The Pathway to the Mill' (size 22 in. by 31 in.). There is a photo- graph of the artist (size 5 in. by 3-J in.) in the Corporation of Liverpool Library (D quarto 1101).

The Mayer Papers (vol. i.) in the same libraiy contain many letters from H. C. Pidgeon, and also materials for a biography. He is recorded by Mr. H. C. Marillier in his book ' The Liverpool School of Painters.'

References will be found in Bryan's 'Dictionary of Painters' (1904 edition), vol. iv. p. 116 ; Boase's ' Modern English Biography ' ; and ' The Dictionary of Ex- hibitors at the Royal Academy,' by Mr. Algernon Graves. Joseph Mayer was a good friend to H. C. Pidgeon.

THOS. WHITE.

Junior Reform Club, Liverpool.

CUTTING OFF THE HAIR AS A PRESERVATIVE AGAINST HEADACHE (12 S. iii. 250). Ancient medical writers and their modern followers, whose authority was not obsolete in 1691, frequently recommende 1 cutting off the hair and shaving the head in cases of headache, usually as a preliminary to cataplasms, cupping, scarifying, and red-hot irons. Celsus, ' De Medicina,' IV. ii. 2, ' De Capitis dolore,' after prescribing various remedies, proceeds thus : " Si vero in his auxilii parum est, tondere oportet ad cutem : -deinde con- siderandum est, quaa causa dolorem excitarit," and, after milder suggestions, proposes " can- dentibus ferramentis, ubi dolor est, ulcera excitare " !

Cfelius Aurelianus in I. i., ' De capitis passione, quam Graeci cephalsean nominant,' of his ' Chronicse sive tardse passiones,' translated from Soranus's Hepi ^povi^v

Owv, writes : " Turn novacula radendum caput, atque cataplasmatibus," &c.

Nicholas Piso (1527-90) in his ' De cognos- cendis et curandis prsecipue internis humani orporis morbis,' I. vii., ' De Cephalsea,' has : " Deinde capillis novacula detractis, cucur-