Hunterian Musium at The Royal College of Surgeons

Part of a female cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) dissected to show the developing egg, prepared by Edward Jenner (1749-1823) and presented to John Hunter, 1788.
A post card I bought at Hunterian Museum
Copyright 2005 Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons

I visited Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons tree times (may be more). I always feel down for next one or two days every time after I visit this space. While I understand these dissected collections contributed a lot for today's advanced medical technology, it is very hard for me to avoid imagine their final scream. The enormous Hunterian collection look rather cruel to me but I have to say some of the specimens in glass cylinders are just look stunning. –This place easily makes me believe I tend to appreciate beauties more than ethics and it always annoys me.



However, I have to treat this very carefully. Why the female cuckoo in a glass cylinder looked so sad and beautiful? Instead of trying to get plausible reasoning, I made 9 sketches of another cuckoo specimen from the same angle. The sketch could be more but I stopped when I found essential lines of painful distortion in the 9th sketch. What I have seen in the glass cylinder is an evidence of her life. Though no one can help her anymore, I thought I can paint about her at least.

9th Sketch for Cuckoo

William Wordsworth loved cuckoos

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet. He was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850. I was looking for some old English poems in structures just like Japanese Haiku poem (Haiku poem has a three-line 5-7-5 syllable patterns). At the research essay tutorial with Rebecca, I told her I was looking for bricks or brocks or architectures just like cathedral which have similar visible regularities in their structures. Carl Andre’s bricks became the subject for my research essay. However, during the tutorial, Rebecca also gave me information about English poem that I thought interesting. William Wordsworth’s poem Tintern Abbey made me imagine the structure of the old beautiful building –Actually, what else could I do? I wish I could read these English poems in the true meaning. But I feel like I can cope with this feel of distance by Keat's 'Negative capability' (!??).

Anyway, I felt happy when I find William Wordsworth loved cuckoos. I learned other famous English Romantic poets had their own favorite birds: For Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), it was skylarks and for John Keats (1795-1821) it was nightingales.

TO THE CUCKOO


O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call the Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.
Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;


-TO THE CUCKOO, William Wordsworth