When collecting information about Terry’s ten year cutting career in Jan 21, I was sent photos of an example Terry cut in 2014 by Nicki. The first time I saw a jigsaw by Terry of this image was on display at the BCD Feb 2020 House Party and marked for sale, so presumably cut recently in 2019. It is interesting to compare these two versions- spaced about five years apart for alterations in Terry’s style.
Upper right: Grandpa TJ 550pc A Village Choir by Thomas Webster, 3D-enhanced line-cut jigsaw in mixed cutting style in 3 or 4 levels, cut c 2019-20. The background interlocking cutting is very similar as is the use of almost all the colour-line boundaries. Different patterns are used in the choirmaster’s coat, but the treatment of the front pew woodwork is dramatically different, creating architectural patterns and fielded panels with the cutting. Two of the heads at the front have also been raised above the level of their chests.
Other photos: Cut 2014 no 1363 Grandpa TJ 581pc A Village Choir by Thomas Webster, cut for Nicki. The colours in this jigsaw are fresher (although this could be the illumination and photography). The interlocking cutting used for the front pew is more like the style in Salmon Academy mixed cuts, and throws the focus onto the choir more than in the later example. Interestingly Terry has cut part of the second pew frontal woodwork in an architectural pattern he developed in the later example. The complex treatment of the choirmaster signals his importance and distinguishes him from the figure leaning forward to whisper in his ear. In the later example these two figures run together more.
home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/gallery.html
This well-known oil painting by Thomas Webster (1800-1886) in the Victoria and Albert Museum depicts an English village choir from the time depicted in the novels of Thomas Hardy (written later). Painted in 1847, the scene is inspired by "Christmas Day," a literary vignette from The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1820) by American author Washington Irving (1783-1859). Known for his portrayal of Connecticut singing-master Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving wrote a satirical account of a visit to a rural parish in England on Christmas morning.
In Webster’s painting, the choir, led by Master Simon, the singing-master, with upraised hand, stands in the west gallery of the parish church. The choristers in the foreground are grouped behind the gallery rail, apparently organized by voice part. The singing-master, equipped with a large book containing music notation, sings the lead or tenor part, as does the group of men surrounding the tailor playing the clarinet. Another group of men, obviously singing the bass part, is gathered near the bassoon and "bass viol." The three young women to the leader’s right are reading from psalm books which apparently do not contain notation; they are presumably singing the treble part. The two boys on his left are probably singing the "counter." Other singers in the background may be singing various parts, including the young man and woman sharing a psalm book. In an undated steel engraving of this painting, engraved by Herbert K. Bourne (1825-1907), the composition is simplified: most of the background singers are omitted, along with the archway in which they stand.
Thomas Hardy’s depictions of ‘Wessex rural life’ draw upon his father’s and his own childhood music-making. ‘Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School’ was published anonymously in 1872. It was Hardy’s second published novel, and the first of what was to become his series of Wessex novels. Critics recognise it as an important precursor to his later tragic works. Hardy himself called the story of the Mellstock Quire and its west-gallery musicians "a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of [the 1850s]."
For more information about depictions of West-gallery choirs in art from the period see:
www.wgma.org.uk/Resources/WG in Art.htm
It includes a preliminary sketch for this work.
