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William Orpen

Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish artist who mainly worked in London. Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful painter of portraits for the well-to-do in Edwardian society, though many of his most striking paintings are self-portraits.

During World War I, he was the most prolific of the official war artists sent by Britain to the Western Front. There he produced drawings and paintings of ordinary soldiers, dead men, and German prisoners of war, as well as portraits of generals and politicians. Most of these works, 138 in all, he donated to the British government; they are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. His connections to the senior ranks of the British Army allowed him to stay in France longer than any of the other official war artists, and although he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 Birthday Honours, and also elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, his determination to serve as a war artist cost him both his health and his social standing in Britain.

After his early death a number of critics, including other artists, were loudly dismissive of his work, and for many years his paintings were rarely exhibited, a situation that only began to change in the 1980s.

Early life
Born in Stillorgan, County Dublin, William Orpen was the fourth and youngest son of Arthur Herbert Orpen (1830–1926), a solicitor, and his wife, Anne Caulfield (1834–1912), the eldest daughter of the Right Rev. Charles Caulfield (1804–1862), the Bishop of Nassau. Both his parents were amateur painters, and his eldest brother, Richard Caulfield Orpen, became a notable architect. His nieces were Bea Orpen and Kathleen Delap. The historian Goddard Henry Orpen was his second cousin. The family lived at 'Oriel', a large house with extensive grounds containing stables and a tennis court. Orpen appears to have had a happy childhood there.

Orpen was a naturally talented painter, and six weeks before his thirteenth birthday was enrolled at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. During his six years at the college, he won every major prize there, plus the British Isles gold medal for life drawing, before leaving to study at the Slade School of Art between 1897 and 1899. At the Slade he mastered oil painting and began to experiment with different painting techniques and effects. Orpen would include mirrors in his pictures to create images within images, add false frames and collages around his subjects, and often make pictorial references to works by other artists in his own paintings. His two-metre-wide painting The Play Scene from Hamlet won the Slade composition prize in 1899. His teachers at the Slade included Henry Tonks, Philip Wilson Steer and Frederick Brown, all of whom were members of the New English Art Club; they ensured he exhibited there in 1899, and that he became a member in 1900. Orpen's The Mirror, shown at the NEAC in 1900, references both Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait of 1434 and also elements of seventeenth-century Dutch interiors, such as muted tones and deep shadows. Orpen depicted the 'Arnolfini' convex glass in several other paintings, including A Mere Fracture in 1901, during this period. Also in 1901, he held a solo exhibition at the Carfax Gallery in central London.

Whilst at the Slade, he became engaged to Emily Scobel, a model and the subject of The Mirror. She ended their relationship in 1901, and Orpen married Grace Knewstub, the sister-in-law of Sir William Rothenstein. Orpen and Knewstub had three daughters together, but the marriage was not a happy one; by 1908, Orpen had begun a long-running affair with Mrs Evelyn Saint-George, a well-connected American millionairess based in London, with whom he also had a child.

Early career
After he left the Slade, from 1903 to 1907, Orpen ran a private teaching studio, the Chelsea Art School, at Rossetti Mansions near the King's Road with his fellow Slade graduate Augustus John. Between 1902 and 1915, Orpen divided his time between London and Dublin. He taught at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, and his teaching influenced a generation of young Irish artists. His pupils included Seán Keating, Grace Gifford, Patrick Tuohy, Leo Whelan and Margaret Clarke. This was the period of the Celtic revival in Ireland and, responding to the growth of new literary and other cultural developments, Orpen painted three large allegorical paintings: Sowing New Seed, The Western Wedding and The Holy Well. A key figure in the Celtic Revival was Hugh Lane, who was a friend and mentor to Orpen, and who begin collecting impressionist art works with Orpen's guidance. In the summer of 1904 Orpen and Lane visited Paris and Madrid together, and some years later Lane commissioned a series of portraits of contemporary Irish figures from Orpen for the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin. From 1908 onwards, Orpen exhibited works in the Royal Academy on a regular basis. Between 1908 and 1912, Orpen and his family spent the summer on the coast at Howth, north of Dublin, where he began painting in the open air and developed a distinctive plein-air style that featured figures composed of touches of colour without a drawn outline. The most notable of these works was Midday on the Beach, shown at the NEAC in 1910.

Between 1911 and 1913, in London, Orpen painted a series of portraits, mostly three-quarter-length, of Vera Brewster, the wife of the writer Joe Horne. These included the paintings The Roscommon Dragoon, The Irish Volunteer and The Angler. John Singer Sargent promoted Orpen's work and he soon built a lucrative reputation, in both London and Dublin, for painting society portraits. Mrs St. George, (1912), and Lady Rocksavage (1913), both demonstrate Orpen's ability to produce the swagger portraits that Edwardian high society greatly valued. Group portraits of a type known as conversation pieces were also hugely popular and Orpen painted several, most notably The Cafe Royal in London (1912), and Homage to Manet (1909), which showed Walter Sickert and several other artists and critics seated in front of Édouard Manet's Portrait of Eva Gonzalies. Orpen had worked on Homage to Manet since 1906 at his studio in South Bolton Gardens in Chelsea, where Lane also had rooms. By the start of World War I, Orpen was the most famous and most commercially successful artist working in Britain.

World War One
At the start of World War One, a number of Irish people living in England returned to Ireland to avoid conscription. Among them was Orpen's studio assistant and former pupil, Seán Keating. Keating encouraged Orpen to do likewise, but he refused and committed himself to supporting the British war effort. In December 1915 Orpen was commissioned into the Army Service Corps and reported for clerical duty at London's Kensington Barracks in March 1916. Throughout 1916 Orpen continued painting portraits, most notably one of a despondent Winston Churchill, but soon started using both his own contacts and those of Evelyn Saint-George, to secure a war artist posting. Orpen knew both Philip Sassoon, the private secretary to Sir Douglas Haig, and also Sir John Cowans, the Quartermaster General of the British Army. In January 1917, the Daily Mirror reported that Haig himself had "conferred" on Orpen the title of an official artist with the British Army in France. The Department of Information, who were actually running the British war artist scheme, were given little choice but to accept the situation. While the other artists on the Department scheme remained at the honorary rank of second lieutenant and were restricted to three weeks visiting the Western Front, Orpen was promoted to major and given indefinite permission to remain at the Front. An officer from Kensington Barracks was appointed as his military aide, a car and driver were made available in France and Orpen paid for a batman and assistant to accompany him.

In April 1917, Orpen travelled to the Somme and based himself in Amiens. Orpen had arrived on the Somme three weeks after the German forces had pulled back to the Hindenburg Line. Each day Orpen would be driven to locations such as Thiepval, Beaumont-Hamel or Ovillers-la-Boisselle to sketch Allied troops or German prisoners and record the devastation left by the Battle of the Somme amid the frozen and desolate landscape. However he did not submit any work to the Department of Information nor to the military censor. When he was reprimanded for that, he had Haig's office move the officer who had issued the reprimand to other duties. In May 1917, he painted portraits of both Haig and Sir Hugh Trenchard, the commander of the Royal Flying Corps, and both of these images were widely reproduced in British newspapers and magazines. In June Orpen moved to the Ypres Salient and stayed at Cassel in the Hotel Sauvage, where he painted the self-portrait known as Ready to Start.

The Somme battlefield
Orpen returned to the Somme in August 1917 and found the landscape transformed. Writing in 1921, he described the scene:"'I had left it mud, nothing but water, shell-holes and mud – the most gloomy dreary abomination of desolation the mind could imagine; and now, in the summer of 1917, no words could express the beauty of it. The dreary, dismal mud was baked white and pure – dazzling white. White daisies, red poppies and a blue flower, great masses of them, stretched for miles and miles. The sky a pure dark blue, and the whole air, up to a height of about forty feet, thick with white butterflies: your clothes were covered with butterflies. It was like an enchanted land: but in the place of fairies there were thousands of little white crosses, marked 'Unknown British Soldier', for the most part.'"

Orpen was well aware that this landscape was a vast graveyard. Throughout the summer of 1917, other than Orpen and his driver and assistant, the only people on the empty battlefield around Thiepval were the British and Allied burial parties working to identify and inter the thousands of bodies left in the open or in abandoned trenches and dugouts. As he travelled across this landscape Orpen frequently encountered dead bodies and human remains, often little more, he wrote, than "skulls, bones, garments". On the Somme, Orpen pushed himself to find artistic and pictorial strategies adequate to the situation. He stopped using half-tones and half-shades and adopted a new palette of colours, characterised by the extensive use of weak purples, mauves and bright green, with large white spaces representing the effect of bright sunlight on the chalk soil, all under a strong cobalt blue sky.

In Dead Germans in a Trench his use of blue-green for the bodies indicates putrefaction, while the bright colouring of the trench increases the disturbing sense of the picture. Amid the derelict trenches, Orpen claimed to have encountered soldiers who had been traumatised and shell-shocked by the fighting and made, at least, two paintings, A Man with a Cigarette and Blown Up, Mad, based on these meetings.

Others regard the two figures as purely allegorical representations of sacrifice and suffering. In particular, the soldier in Blown Up, Mad has been likened to early Renaissance depictions of the risen Christ emerging from the tomb.

Following the success of his Haig and Trenchard portraits, Orpen was asked to paint portraits of several pilots in the Royal Flying Corps. He spent part of September 1917 visiting airfields and during October 1917 he was based with No. 56 Squadron near Cassel. His portrait of Lieutenant Reginald Hoidge, MC and Bar, was painted a few hours after the young pilot had been in a dogfight and Orpen was greatly impressed by his calmness. Orpen's portrait of Arthur Rhys-Davids, DSO MC, is also crisply drawn with rich colours and lush shadows.

Rhys-Davids was killed in combat within a week of sitting for Orpen, whose portrait of him was used as the cover illustration of the next edition of War Pictorial magazine and widely reproduced elsewhere after that.

The Refugee

Late in 1917, Orpen spent two weeks in hospital with blood poisoning. There he met a young volunteer Red Cross worker from Lille named Yvonne Aubicq. The two began a relationship that was to last ten years and Orpen painted several portraits of her. Two of these he submitted to the official censor early in 1918. Orpen named both paintings A Spy and in March 1918 was interviewed by A. N. Lee the military censor responsible for the war artists. Lee made it clear that if the title was intended as a joke it was in very bad taste coming so soon after the execution of Mata Hari but if the subject really was a spy then Orpen could be facing a court-martial. Orpen gave Lee a fantastical story that the woman in the picture was a German spy who had been executed by the French but who, in an attempt to save herself, had at the last moment revealed herself naked in front of the firing squad. Lee had Orpen recalled to London to be reprimanded at the War Office. There, Orpen retracted the firing squad story but was ordered to remain in London. Orpen ignored this and, quite illegally, made his way back to France. There he contrived to receive a phone call from Haig's private office, within earshot of several of Lee's colleagues from Army Intelligence, inviting him to dinner with Haig to discuss what he would like to paint next. Lee dropped his objections to Orpen working in France, and Orpen agreed to rename the two pictures The Refugee.

As the war progressed, Orpen and Lee became good friends; Orpen painted two portraits of him, and they went drinking together in London and maintained a lively correspondence until Orpen's death. It is not clear how well known this friendship was during their lives but if it was known of in Dublin it would have caused consternation and real pain in several quarters. Not only had Lee been the brigade major sent to Dublin to put down the 1916 Easter Rising, but had been the officer in charge of arranging several of the executions that followed the fighting, including that of Joseph Plunkett, the husband of Grace Gifford, Orpen's star pupil from his teaching days. In fact, between enlisting in the British Army in 1915 and his death in 1931, Orpen spent only a single day, in 1918, in Ireland.

In May 2010, a third version of The Refugee surfaced on the Antiques Roadshow television programme. The Imperial War Museum had assured its owner that it was a copy by someone other than Orpen, but the programme's art expert, Rupert Maas, determined it was painted by Orpen himself as a 'thank-you' present to Lord Beaverbrook for helping him avoid being court-martialled in March 1918. The picture was estimated to be worth £250,000.

Recognition
In May 1918, 125 of Orpen's war paintings and drawings were displayed at Agnew's Gallery in Old Bond Street in London. The exhibition was a great success with 9000 paying visitors in its four weeks. Highlights of the exhibition included nine of Orpen's 'khaki portraits' and several of his works from the Somme such as Highlander Passing a Grave and Thinker on the Butte de Warlencourt. There was much press discussion as to why the censor had passed Orpen's Dead Germans in a Trench as suitable for display, after his refusal to allow Christopher Nevinson's Paths of Glory to be displayed two months previously. In fact Arthur Lee had refused to pass nearly all of the paintings shown at Agnew's but Orpen appealed to the Director of Military Intelligence, General George Macdonogh, and had him overruled. After Agnew's, several museums and galleries wanted to host the exhibition and it was taken to the Manchester City Art Gallery and then the United States. Whilst the exhibition was in London, it was announced that Orpen was donating all the works on display to the British government on the understanding that they should remain in their white frames and be kept together as a single body of work. They are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. In the King's 1918 Birthday Honours list that summer he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

1918
Orpen returned to France in July and spent a second summer painting on the old Somme battlefield and making frequent trips to Paris to complete a series of portraits of Canadian commanders. Later he painted the immediate aftermath of the fighting at Zonnebeke that had taken place during the Fifth Battle of Ypres. Orpen made it clear he wished to remain in France and was keen to work in the newly liberated towns. By the end of the summer of 1918, Orpen was mentally exhausted and his works became increasingly theatrical, less realistic and more allegorical. In Harvest (1918), which shows women tending a grave covered in barbed wire, he used a garish palette of colours to emphasize the unreal nature of the scene. While Bombing: Night and Adam and Eve at Peronne seem somewhat flawed compositions, other paintings were far more successful. Most notably, The Mad Woman of Douai is a harrowing depiction of the aftermath of a rape. When Orpen met the woman some time afterwards she was 'silent and motionless, except for one thumb which constantly twitched'. The two soldiers in the picture are both figures borrowed from other paintings of his, as is the grave in the foreground. Orpen had been shocked to see a number of such burial mounds with, as he wrote, "arms and feet showing in lots of cases".

As the war entered its final stages Orpen witnessed scenes which he found increasingly macabre. One day, even the broad-minded Orpen was shocked to encounter three young French prostitutes offering their services next to a burial party at a gravesite. Towards the end of the war, he painted a handful of 'parable paintings', such as Armistice Night, Amiens and The Official Entry of the Kaiser, that used black humour to re-imagine the coming victory. Most of these paintings were never displayed in public after the war. In November 1918, Orpen collapsed and became seriously ill. Yvonne Aubicq spent two months nursing him before he moved to Paris in January 1919 to begin work on his next commission.

The Peace Conference
When the war ended, the Imperial War Museum commissioned Orpen to stay in France and paint three large group portraits of the delegates to Paris Peace Conference. Throughout 1919 he painted individual portraits of the delegates to the Conference and these formed the basis of his two large paintings, A Peace Conference at the Quai d'Orsay and The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors. In both pictures, the architecture overwhelms the gathered politicians and statesmen whose political wranglings and vainglory had diminished them in Orpen's eyes. Orpen considered that the whole conference was being conducted with a lack of respect or regard for the suffering of the soldiers who fought in the war, and he attempted to address this in the third painting of the commission. This picture was to show the delegates and military leaders as they entered the Hall of Mirrors to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Orpen sent Evelyn Saint-George a letter detailing the original layout and composition of the work. Haig and Marshal Foch were at the centre with the other delegates on either side of them. Among the delegates, Orpen included two additional figures, a Grenadier Guards sergeant and Arthur Rhys-Davids, the young fighter pilot he had painted the week before he was killed in 1917. After working on this composition for nine months, Orpen painted over all the figures and replaced them with a coffin covered by the Union Jack and flanked by a pair of ghostly and wretched soldiers clothed in rags, actually the figure from the painting Blown Up, Mad, with two cherubs above them supporting garlands of flowers. This painting, now known as To the Unknown British Soldier in France, was first exhibited in 1923 at the Royal Academy. The public voted it picture of the year, but almost all of the critics who reviewed the picture condemned it; and, from a handful of critics and newspapers, Orpen received sustained abuse and was accused of bad taste, technical ineptitude and, for the two figures either side of the coffin, sacrilege. Orpen did receive some letters of appreciation from ex-servicemen and from family members of soldiers who had died in the war, but he still felt the need to issue a statement explaining the picture and his intentions. However, it was clearly not the group portrait the Imperial War Museum had commissioned, and the Museum refused to accept it. The picture remained in Orpen's studio until 1928 when, on his own initiative, he offered to paint out the cherubs and the soldiers if that would make it acceptable to the Museum. The then Director of the IWM replied that he would be happy to accept the picture as it was, or however Orpen wished to present it. Orpen painted out the soldiers and the painting was accepted by the Museum in 1928.

Later life
After the war, Orpen returned to painting society portraits and enjoyed great commercial success. He was never short of portrait commissions to work on and throughout the 1920s often earned £35,000 per year and could easily charge 2,000 guineas for a picture. Throughout the 1920s he exhibited at the Royal Academy each year and maintained homes and studios in both London and Paris, where he lived with Aubicq.

Orpen continued to drink heavily and although he was separated from his wife, they never divorced. Eventually, he and Aubicq separated and she later married William Grover-Williams, Orpen's former chauffeur. His 1921 Royal Academy submission was a portrait of the head chef at the Hotel Chatham in Paris. The Tate Gallery were keen to acquire the painting using funds from the Chantrey Bequest. After Orpen assured the Tate that the picture met the conditions required by the Bequest and that he had painted the picture entirely in Britain, the Tate announced the purchase. Several people then came forward to say that they had seen Orpen paint the picture in Paris. Orpen withdrew from the purchase and gave the Tate a portrait of Sir William Symington McCormick instead. Orpen subsequently submitted Le Chef de l'Hotel Chatham, Paris to the Royal Academy as his diploma painting.

Orpen's wartime memoir, An Onlooker in France, 1917–1919, was published in 1921 and all the proceeds donated to war charities. In 1925, Orpen painted Sunlight, a brilliant depiction, in dappled sunlight, of a nude woman on a bed, behind whom hangs The Seine at Marly, the 1874 painting by Monet which Orpen owned. In 1922, Orpen was reported to be receiving treatment in London for 'tobacco poisoning'. In 1923 Arthur Lee introduced Orpen to Edward, the Prince of Wales, and secured Orpen a commission to paint the Prince for the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. A long series of disagreements followed between the Prince's advisors, who wanted a formal portrait, and Orpen, who wanted to paint Edward in his golf clothes. Orpen got his way but it was not until 1928 that the R&A put the painting on display. In 1927, Orpen accepted a commission to paint a portrait of David Lloyd George but the completed work was rejected as being too informal for such a senior politician. The painting remained with Orpen and was only purchased by the National Portrait Gallery after his death. In 1928 Orpen stood for election as President of the Royal Academy but lost to Sir William Llewellyn. His work was also part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.

Death
Orpen became seriously ill in May 1931, and, after suffering periods of memory loss, died aged 52 in London, on 29 September 1931, and was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery. A stone tablet in the Island of Ireland Peace Park Memorial at Messines, Belgium, commemorates him.

Self-portraits
Orpen created many self-portraits during his lifetime. He often portrayed himself in the act of painting and often created multiple images of himself. Whilst at the Slade he painted a double portrait of himself and Augustus John in the Nell Gwynne Tavern in London. In 1913 Orpen painted himself with a golden version of his painting Sowing New Seed as a background. Self-portrait as Chardin, from 1908, shows Orpen as the painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin at an easel painting the same image. A year earlier he had painted a head-and-shoulders self-portrait after Chardin's 1776 work Self-Portrait with Pince-nez.

Orpen's 1910 self-portrait Leading the Life in the West has been read as a reference to the 1907 play The Playboy of the Western World, by John Millington Synge, whom Orpen knew and greatly liked. During World War I, Orpen painted at least three self-portraits, that ranged from the optimistic tones of Ready to Start, in June 1917, to more sombre depictions painted only a few months later. Bruce Arnold noted Orpen's interest in self-portraiture: his self-portraits are often searching and dramatic and seem to meet a deep personal need for frequent self-analysis. He once painted himself as a jockey, and in his The Dead Ptarmigan – a self-portrait in the National Gallery of Ireland he scowls from the frame while holding a dead ptarmigan at head height. Orpen's later self-portraits were less successful. Writing in 2005, Kenneth McConkey attributed the shallowness of Orpen's later portraits to emotional exhaustion, resulting from his experience as a painter of war. He wrote of Orpen's post-war activity:
 * "Now the portraits were done with mechanical efficiency, and without pause for reflection, save when he scrutinised himself and found a face he could no longer understand ... his face... grimaces, it squints, it scowls; in the 1920s it papers over the inner turmoil left by the long pathetic queues of gas-blinded tommies".

Legacy
A memorial exhibition of Orpen's work was held in New York in 1932 and the Royal Academy also held a memorial exhibition in 1933, part of which travelled to the Birmingham City Art Gallery. Orpen's former friend Augustus John vilified him after his death, and an account in Wyndham Lewis's 1937 autobiography of an encounter between the two in Cassel during the war further tarnished Orpen's reputation. In 1952 the then Director of the Tate Gallery, John Rothenstein, who was related to Orpen by marriage, published Modern English Painters which, despite its title, included a chapter on Orpen that comprehensively criticised every aspect of his work and personality. This had a huge influence, and for many years Orpen was largely forgotten. Other than the collection of his war paintings in the 'Orpen Gallery' of the Imperial War Museum, only two of Orpen's works were regularly on display in Britain, The Mirror in the Tate and A Woman in Leeds City Art Gallery. A major retrospective of his work was held at the National Gallery of Ireland in 1978 but was not shown in Britain. Bruce Arnold's 1981 biography revived interest in Orpen among scholars, and in 2005 a major retrospective which also included his peacetime work was held at the Imperial War Museum, and led to a reappraisal of his place in British and Irish culture.

Bruce Arnold, writing in Irish Art a Concise History in 1969 stated:"... while at times his portraits are rather shallow, he was capable of excellent and sympathetic work, particularly in family and group portraits." As noted by his biographer, H. L. Wellington,"Orpen was fond of painting women sitters against a black background, lighting the figure from two sides, an arrangement which gave luminosity and a certain ethereal appearance to his unfaltering but matter-of-fact statement…"

Memberships
Orpen was a member or affiliated with the following organisations:
 * 1900: Member, New English Art Club
 * 1904: Elected associate of Royal Hibernian Academy
 * 1908: Elected member of Royal Hibernian Academy
 * 1908: Member, National Portrait Society
 * 1919: Elected associate of the Royal Academy
 * 1921: Elected member of the Royal Academy
 * 1921: President, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers

title: William Orpen


text: User talk:80.133.60.70

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:80.133.60.70


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Victoria Falls Bridge

The Victoria Falls Bridge crosses the Zambezi River just below the Victoria Falls and is built over the Second Gorge of the falls. As the river forms the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, the bridge links the two countries and has border posts on the approaches to both ends, at the towns of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and Livingstone, Zambia.

History
The bridge was the brainchild of Cecil Rhodes, part of his grand and unfulfilled Cape to Cairo railway scheme, even though he never visited the falls and died before construction of the bridge began. Rhodes is recorded as instructing the engineers to "build the bridge across the Zambezi where the trains, as they pass, will catch the spray of the Falls". It was designed by George Andrew Hobson of consultants Sir Douglas Fox and Partners, assisted by the stress calculations of Ralph Freeman, who was later the principal designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The main central arch is a parabolic curve.

The bridge was prefabricated in England by the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company, before being shipped to the port city of Beira in Portuguese-ruled Mozambique, and then transported on the newly constructed railway to the Victoria Falls. It took just 14 months to construct and was completed in 1905.

The bridge was officially opened by Professor Sir George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin and President of the British Association (now the British Science Association), on 12 September 1905. The American Society of Civil Engineers has designated the bridge as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

Constructed from steel, the bridge is 198 m long, with a main arch spanning 156.50 m, at a height of 128 m above the lower water mark of the river in the gorge below. It carries a road, railway and footway. The bridge is the only rail link between Zambia and Zimbabwe and one of only three road links between the two countries.

The Victoria Falls Bridge did not bring the first train or the first railway to Northern Rhodesia (called Zambia since 1964). To push on with construction of the railway north as fast as possible, Cecil Rhodes insisted that the Livingstone to Kalomo line be laid before the bridge was finished. Then a locomotive was conveyed in pieces across the gorge by the temporary electric cableway used for the transportation of the bridge materials and nicknamed the 'Blondin' by the construction engineers. The locomotive was re-assembled and entered service months before the bridge was complete.

For more than 50 years, the bridge was crossed regularly by passenger trains as part of the principal route between the then Northern Rhodesia, southern Africa and Europe. Freight trains carried mainly copper ore (later, copper ingots) and timber out of Northern Rhodesia, and coal into the country.

The age of the bridge and maintenance problems have led to traffic restrictions at times. Trains cross at less than walking pace and trucks were limited to 30 t, necessitating heavier trucks making a long diversion via the Kazungula Ferry or Chirundu Bridge. The limit was raised after repairs in 2006, but proposals for more fundamental rehabilitation or construction of a new bridge have been aired.

The toll on the bridge was abolished in 1906.

During the Rhodesian UDI crisis and Bush War, the bridge was frequently closed (and regular passenger services have not resumed successfully). In 1975, the bridge was the site of unsuccessful peace talks when the parties met in a train carriage poised above the gorge for nine and a half hours. In 1980, freight and road services resumed and have continued without interruption except for maintenance.

Today, one of the Victoria Falls Bridge's main attraction are historical guided tours focusing on the construction of the bridge and include a walking tour under the main deck. On the Zambian side there is a small museum about the bridge which is free to enter and contains a café selling refreshments. Also located on the bridge is the Shearwater 111 m bungee jump including a bungee swing and zip-line. Concerns about safety of the attraction were raised in late 2011 after the bungee's cord snapped and a young Australian woman fell 24 m into the fast-flowing river (she survived).

The bridge was originally referred to as the Great Zambesi or Zambezi Bridge, later becoming known as the Victoria Falls Bridge.

Map
The Location of the bridge and surrounding area by Openstreetmap

title: Victoria Falls Bridge


text:
Talk:Airport novel

Anecdote
not sure if it is worth mentionning on the main article. What is called an Airport novel in the States is a Railway Station Novel (roman de gare) in France. I personnally find the parallel amusing. Hachette, the French publishing house started its activities selling in railway stations' newly created bookstores.

 * By all means, it is indeed worth mentioning. Thanks.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 02:06, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

tom wolfe has his critics. but airport novel? hardly

Tom Wolfe is not an "airport novelist". He has only written three novels, and they aren't that popular. How would one equate the Day of the Jackal with A Man in Full? Mauvila 11:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Porn?
This excerpt puzzles me: ''Whatever the genre, airport novels typically contain pages of explicit description of sexual encounters, often to the point of pornography; unlike pictorial pornography, an elaborate sexual fantasy that appears only in text can be enjoyed by the reader without making it too obvious to the other passengers what is being read. The cover of an airport novel is often a painting that depicts a collage of attractive women and action scenes.''

As a freqent traveler and avid reader of this genre I have yet to see anything that describes this. Is this a subgenre of Airport Novels? My personal feeling is that it is another genre altogether and has nothing to do with this one. Erotica, like Horror and Sci Fi do not fall into this category. --Laveaux 19:23, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * No, it's not a subgenre (well, maybe romance novels are...), but describes the often-mechanistic (some would say clumsy) way writers of this sort portray sex in their books. I'm not saying you don't read much, but it's hard not to notice a difference between an author who usually just alludes to a sexual encounter occurring and one who writes about the full event. Like Mr. Ludlum and his one-sentence paragraphs. :) Shadowrun 05:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I love this article
Packed full of original material, and seemingly aimed at authors rather than the general reader... But it's just a nice bit of writing. Bravo! Don't let the Wikipedia fascists wear you down!

I also think that Wikipedia desperately needs an article like this, but this one needs to be revamped.

 * I'm not sure if the above comment is meant to be genuinely positive or sarcastic. Nevertheless, I do not consider the following good writing, and if that is too subjective, I think we can all agree its tone is not encyclopedic:

 * "'Wizards and space explorers do not seem to make the airport novel reader's heart beat faster; spies, government and military officials, and powerful business executives do.'"

 * I don't mind that this article exists, but I imagine it will be a challenge to source it, even if the stilted writing is fixed. VectorPosse 09:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Serious sourcing problems
Because of the derogatory nature of what we're describing here, we need reliable sources for any authors whose names are to be listed here. Listing an author as writing in this genre without having somebody to quote as a source for the assertion is inviting a libel suit. See WP:BLP. JulesH 13:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

 * FWIW, I wouldn't call describing a novel as an "airport novel", or an author as writing airport novels, "libellous". It doesn't besmirch anyone's character, attribute a loathsome disease, or even call the writer professionally incompetent.  If so, the reviewers who toss around the phrase would have been sued long before this article was written.  Airport novels are useful things.  Not all fiction has to contain fancy writing or deep insight.  It is possible for a book to be a good airport novel. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Untagging or changing the tags
I have tried to find some sources for this article. It isn't really easy: a lot of people toss the phrase "airport novel" around, but relatively few say more than a couple sentences about what they consider airport novels to be. It apparently isn't a genre that invites analysis.

At any rate, I don't think this is described as "unreferenced" anymore, and I've tried to pare down some of the statements that might be called original research. I'd propose to remove the "multiple issues" tag at minimum. If someone else thinks it still merits a cautionary tag of some sort, please let me know. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Unanswered Questions?
Is this the only genre defined by where it is read? Or is "beach book/beach read" also a genre? Where and when was the term "airport novel" coined? If you have a Dan Brown in hardbound is it an airplane novel? Nitpyck (talk) 22:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

yet another phony genre
The article is just another example of a kind of game many editors like to play with Wikipedia. I call it "metastasizing genres." Nitpyck's questions above are right on the mark. (I might ask, can they really be "airport novels" if most of their sales occur outside of airports? Or if many of their most avid readers might rarely set foot in airports?) I don't recall ever hearing the term "airport novel", but then again, I've never spent much time in airports. "Beach read" is a much more common term (in the US, anyway) -- but it's not as narrowly and arbitrarily defined in terms of theme and quality (or implied lack thereof) as the examples given here. The article doesn't belong in a general-interest encyclopedia. Bacrito (talk) 03:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

romans de gare
> "writers in France were aware of this potential market at an even earlier date"

French writers don't necessarily make up marketing terminology. In France train travel was not deliberately killed off as it was in the US, and high-speed train travel developed from the 1960's, largely in parallel with air travel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spamhog (talk • contribs) 19:31, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Airport novel


text:
Lehigh Line Connection

The Lehigh Line Connection connects Amtrak's Northeast Corridor (NEC) with the Conrail Lehigh Line 2 miles south of downtown Newark, New Jersey. It leaves the NEC at Hunter Interlocking, and the line is sometimes called the Hunter Connection. Used by New Jersey Transit (NJT) Raritan Valley Line trains since 1997 when it replaced an older connection, it splits from the NEC just north of the former connector, with wider radius curves with a maximum speed of 45 mph, compared to the 15 mph of the original alignment.

The old connection had a single track with older overhead wire and Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) signaling. Until 1961 Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV) passenger trains bound to/from New York Penn Station, such as the Black Diamond, used the connection to reach their own railroad from the PRR main line. At the top of the hill at NK interlocking, LV diesels exchanged the train(s) with PRR electric locomotives. Despite the lack of electrification on the line past the connection, the new trackage is also equipped with catenary wire.

Amtrak and NJT have proposed constructing the Hunter Flyover, which would carry Newark-bound Raritan Valley Line trains up and over the six-track NEC main line. Currently, Raritan Valley trains heading toward Newark have to cross three or four tracks at grade to access the eastbound tracks at Newark. This flyover would remove many directional conflicts between trains and reduce delays on the NEC. The project would cost $250 million and is currently undergoing environmental analysis.

title: Lehigh Line Connection


text:
Georg C. F. Greve

Georg C. F. Greve (born 10 March 1973 in Helgoland, Germany) is a software developer, physicist, author and currently co-founder and president at Vereign. He has been working on technology politics since he founded the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) in 2001.

Greve has been working full-time as president for FSFE since early 2001. In June 2009, he handed over the presidency of the FSFE to Karsten Gerloff. His responsibilities for FSFE included coordination of the general assembly, supporting local representatives in their work, working on political and legal issues as well as projects and giving speeches or informing journalists to spread knowledge about free software.

In addition, Georg Greve also worked as a consultant, representing Google in the OOXML standardisation process at ISO and as a project reviewer for the European Commission.

Greve is married and lives in Switzerland.

In 2010 Greve was awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstkreuz am Bande).

Career
Greve has a degree of physics in biophysics, with physical oceanography and astronomy as minor fields of study from the computer science department of the University of Hamburg. His interdisciplinary diploma thesis was written in the field of nanotechnology on scanning probe microscopy.

Greve's first software development was when he was 12 years old. His first publication of a program was in a professional journal in 1992. He partly financed his studies when he managed the software development to evaluate SQUID-sensor data in the biomagnetometic laboratory at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.

In 1993 he came across free software, the GNU Project and Linux. In 1998, he was the European speaker for the GNU Project and began writing the "Brave GNU World", a monthly column on free computer software featuring interesting GNU projects each month. It was published on the Internet in as many as ten languages, and in international printed magazines including the German Linux-Magazin. The name Brave GNU World is a reference to Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World.

In early 2001, he initiated the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE or FSF Europe), the first Free Software Foundation outside the United States of America and,, the only transnational Free Software Foundation. Greve was invited as an expert to the "Commission on Intellectual Property Rights" of the UK government, and represented the coordination circle of German civil society during the first phase of the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as part of the German governmental delegation. He has also networked with civil society working groups at the European level as well as for the thematic working group on patents, copyrights, trademarks (PCT) and free software.

Between 2010 and 2017, he was CEO as well as president and, later, member of the board for Kolab Systems AG in Küsnacht, Switzerland, the developers of the Kolab server. In late 2017, Greve co-founded a company called Vereign to enable authentic communication through blockchain federated networks with Claus H. Bressmer.

title: Georg C. F. Greve


text:
Jacques Grévin

Jacques Grévin (c. 1539 – 5 November 1570) was a French playwright.

Grévin was born at Clermont, Oise in about 1539, and he studied medicine at the University of Paris. He became a disciple of Ronsard, and was one of the band of dramatists who sought to introduce the classical drama in France. As Sainte-Beuve points out, the comedies of Grévin show considerable affinity with the farces and soties that preceded them. His first play, La Maubertine was lost, and formed the basis of a new comedy, La Trésorière, first performed at the college of Beauvais in 1558, though it had been originally composed at the desire of Henry II to celebrate the marriage of Claude, duchess of Lorraine.

He got engaged to the writer Nicole Estienne and he celebrated her in his collection L'Olimpe. The engagement was broken for unknown reasons.

In 1560 followed the tragedy of Jules César, imitated from the Latin of Muret, and a comedy, Les Ébahis, the most important but also the most indecent of his works. Grévin was also the author of some medical works and of miscellaneous poems, which were praised by Ronsard until the friends were separated by religious differences. Grévin became in 1561 physician and counsellor to Margaret of Savoy, and died at her court in Turin in 1570.

Le Théâtre de Jacques Grévin was printed in 1562, and in the Ancien Théâtre français, vol. iv. (1855–1856). See L Pinvert, Jacques Grévin (1899).

Works

 * Hymne à Monseigneur le Dauphin sur le mariage dudict seigneur et de Mme Marie d'Estevart, royne d'Escosse, 1558
 * Les Regretz de Charles d'Austriche, empereur, cinquiesme de ce nom. Ensemble la description du Beauvoisis et autres œuvres, 1558
 * Chant de joie de la paix faicte entre le roi de France Henri II et Philippe, roi d'Espagne, 1559
 * L'Olimpe de Jacques Grévin. Ensemble les autres œuvres poëtiques dudit auteur, 1560
 * Le Théâtre de Jacques Grévin. Ensemble, la seconde partie de l'Olimpe et de la Gélodacrye, 1561 ; 1562
 * Palinodies de Pierre de Ronsard, sur ses Discours des misères de ce temps, with Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, 1563
 * Seconde Response de F. de La Baronie à Messire Pierre de Ronsard prestre gentilhomme Vandomois, evesque futur ; plus Le temple de Ronsard où la légende de sa vie est briefvement descrite, 1563
 * Anatomes totius, aere insculpta Delineatio, cui addita est Epitome innumeris mendis repurgata, quam de corporis humani fabrica conscripsit clariiss. And. Vesalius, eique accessit partium corporis tum simplicium tum compositarum brevis elucidatio, 1564
 * Discours de Jaques Grévin sur les vertus et facultez de l'antimoine, contre ce qu'en a escrit maistre Loys de Launay, 1566
 * Cinq livres de l'imposture et tromperie des diables, des enchantements et sorcelleries, pris du latin de Johann Weyer et faits français par Jaques Grévin, 1567 ; 1569
 * La Première et la seconde partie des dialogues françois pour les jeunes enfans. "Het Eerste ende tweede deel van de françoische t'samensprekinghen, overgheset in de nederduytsche spraecke", with Christophe Plantin, 1567
 * Deux livres des venins, ausquels il est amplement discouru des bestes venimeuses, thériaques, poisons et contre-poisons. Ensemble les œuvres de Nicander, traduites en vers français, 1567-1568
 * Les Portraicts anatomiques de toutes les parties du corps humain, gravez en taille douce. Ensemble l'Abrégé d'Andreas Vesalius et l'explication d'iceux, accompagnée d'une déclaration anatomique, par Jacques Grevin, 1569
 * Les Emblesmes du S. Adrian Le Jeune, faits français et sommairement expliqués par Jacques Grévin, 1570
 * De Venenis libri duo, gallice primum ab eo scripti et nunc tandem opera Hieremiae Martii, in latinum sermonem conversi. Quibus adjunctus est praeterea ejusdem auctoris de antimonio tractatus, eodem interprete, 1571
 * Cesar, tragedy, 1578
 * Les Preceptes de Plutarque, monstrant la maniere comme il faut se gouverner en mariage, translatez selon la verité du grec par Jacques Grevin, de Clermont avec une Chanson de la femme vertueuse & bonne ménagère, s. d.
 * Le Second Discours de Jaques Grévin sur les vertus et facultez de l'antimoine, pour la confirmation de l'advis des médecins de Paris et pour servir d'apologie contre ce qu'a escrit M. Loïs de Launay, s. d.
 * In 1578, part of his odes is set in musique by Antoine de Bertrand.

Modern editions

 * Sonnets d'Angleterre et de Flandre, publiés par Léon Dorez, Paris : H. Leclerc et P. Cornuau, 1898
 * Théâtre complet et poésies choisies de Jacques Grévin, with notice et notes by Lucien Pinvert, Paris : Librairie Garnier frères, 1922
 * De l'Imposture des diables, by Jean Wier, translation by Jacques Grévin de De praestigiis daemenum et incantationibus ac venificiis, Paris : Théraplix, 1970
 * César, édition critique with introduction and notes by Ellen S. Ginsberg, Genève : Droz ; Paris : Minard, 1971
 * César, édition critique with introduction and notes by Jeffrey Foster, Paris : A.G. Nizet, 1974
 * La Trésorière. Les Esbahis, comédies, édition critique with introduction and notes by Élisabeth Lapeyre, Paris : H. Champion, 1980
 * La Gélodacrye et Les vingt-quatre sonnets romains, texte établi et annoté par Michèle Clément, Saint-Étienne : Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne, 2001

title: Jacques Grévin


text:
Jeri Ellsworth

Jeri Janet Ellsworth (born August 14, 1974) is an American entrepreneur, computer chip designer and inventor. She gained fame in 2004 for creating a complete Commodore 64 emulator system on a chip housed within a joystick, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. It runs 30 video games from the 1980s, and at peak, sold over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel.

Ellsworth was hired by Valve Corporation to develop augmented reality hardware, but was terminated in 2013. She co-founded castAR to continue the work—with permission—but the company shut down on June 26, 2017 without completing development. She started another company, Tilt Five, to create AR hardware based on the same principles.

Ellsworth has publicly talked about various homebrew projects, such as how to manufacture semiconductor chips at home.

Early life
Ellsworth was born in Georgia and grew up in the towns of Dallas, Oregon and Yamhill, Oregon. Her mother died when she was one. Ellsworth was raised by her father, Jim, a car mechanic and Mobil service station owner.

When she was eight years old, she disassembled her toys to learn how they worked. In response her father stopped buying toys, put an empty box at his work saying "bring your broken electronic gizmos", and every few weeks, gave them to her. She started making simple modifications to them. She persuaded her father to let her use a Commodore 64 computer which had been purchased for her brother. She taught herself to program by reading the manual. She earned spending money working for her father, pumping gas, cleaning wrenches, replacing oil filters, and other "mechanical things".

In high school, she drove dirt track racing cars with her father and began designing new models in his workshop, eventually selling custom race cars. She dropped out of high school to continue the business.

Computer stores
In 1995, at the age of 21, Ellsworth tired of race track social atmosphere, so she and a friend started a business assembling and selling computers based around the Intel 486 microprocessor. When she and her partner had a disagreement, Ellsworth opened a separate business in competition. This became a chain of four stores, "Computers Made Easy", selling consumer electronics services and equipment in the Willamette Valley towns of Canby, Monmouth, and Albany, Oregon.

When profit margins shrank, she sold the chain in 2000 and moved to Walla Walla, Washington to attend Walla Walla College, studying circuit design. She left after a year because of a "cultural mismatch". Ellsworth said that questioning professors' answers was frowned upon.

Hardware design

In 2000, Ellsworth unveiled a prototype video expansion for the Commodore 64 at a Commodore Exposition. Ellsworth then began designing digital circuits that mimicked the behavior of the C64. In 2002, she designed the chip used in the C-One as an enhanced C64 which could also emulate other home computers of the early 1980s, including the VIC-20 and ZX81. She and a fellow developer displayed the C-One at a technology conference, which led to Mammoth Toys, a Division of NSI International, NSI Products (HK) Limited hiring her to design the "computer in a chip" for the C64 Direct-to-TV C64-emulating joystick. She began the project in June 2004 and had the project ready to ship by that Christmas. It sold over a half-million units, in the US, Europe, and elsewhere. She didn't receive payment, nor the commission she was owed, but a story in the New York Times brought her to the public eye.

On December 3, 2010 Ellsworth released information on how to build a TSA "naked" scanner using repurposed satellite antenna parts. Ellsworth has worked on numerous subjects as diverse as homemade semiconductors (2009), homemade electroluminescent (EL) displays (2010), EL phosphor manufacture from common ingredients and ways to make transparent EL backplanes and phosphor without using expensive indium-tin-oxide coated glass and hard-to-obtain chemicals.

Ellsworth was named "MacGyver of the Day" on February 25, 2010 by Lifehacker.

Ellsworth is a freelance ASIC and FPGA designer.

Augmented reality
In early 2012, Ellsworth and other hardware hackers were hired by Valve to work on gaming hardware. Along with several other Valve employees, Ellsworth was terminated the following year.

On May 18, 2013, Ellsworth announced that she had developed an augmented reality development system named castAR with fellow ex-Valve engineer Rick Johnson, with the blessing of Valve's Gabe Newell, and would be funding it via Kickstarter later in the year. Her start-up company, Technical Illusions, started developing castAR.

Ellsworth later revealed she had been secretly working to make castAR have "true VR and true AR" in addition to the previously announced projected AR capabilities. The castAR Kickstarter, launched on October 14, 2013, reached its goal of $400,000 in 56 hours and finished with $1.05 million, 263% of the original goal. The project didn't deliver the devices and paid back the funds to backers before shutting down the company in 2017.

In September 2019, Ellsworth initiated a Kickstarter for a new device based on the same principles of the castAR, called Tilt Five. This Kickstarter exceeded the previous one, hitting its initial target of $450,000 in 17 hours, and eventually gaining $1,767,301. Initially scheduled to deliver Kickstarter product by June 2020, the manufacturing was delayed by the Covid pandemic, but has continued to sign gaming contracts.

Public speaking and webcasts
Ellsworth was a keynote speaker at the Embedded Systems Conference on May 5, 2011.

From December 2008 until March 2009, Ellsworth hosted a weekly webcast, Fatman and Circuit Girl, together with musician George Sanger. On May 30, 2009, Ellsworth demonstrated her Home Chip Lab at Maker Faire Bay Area 2009.

Personal life
Ellsworth is a pinball aficionado and owns over 80 pinball machines. In 2016, she became a licensed amateur radio operator, holding an Extra Class license with callsign AI6TK.

title: Jeri Ellsworth


text: User talk:4.156.99.72

title: User talk:4.156.99.72


text:
User talk:Tlahtopil

Welcome to the Wikipedia
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Feel free to contact me personally with any questions you might have. The Village pump is also a good place to go for quick answers to general questions. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~.

Be Bold!

[[User:Sam Spade|Sam]] Spade wishes you a merry Christmas! 22:13, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Untagged image
An image you uploaded, Image:LogoGuion.png, was tagged with the coatofarms copyright tag. This tag was deleted because it does not actually specify the copyright status of the image. The image may need a more accurate copyright tag, or it may need to be deleted. If the image portrays a seal or emblem, it should be tagged as seal. If you have any questions, ask them at Media copyright questions. -- 01:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tlahtopil


text: User talk:65.160.148.192

title: User talk:65.160.148.192


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Achitz thomas

Achitz thomas
Somewhat cleverly disguised vanity. --Ld 22:13, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Delete--ZayZayEM 00:53, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Mary J. Blige is a drummer for German grunge bands? That would be notable or... something. No web hits for "Dommsch De Lounge"; the only relevant hit for +Achitz +rock shows that our subject went to school with Vanessa Rock. Delete, but good luck. Samaritan 01:01, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Vanity. utcursch 10:27, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete.-gadfium (talk) 07:22, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)


text:
Selle Français

The Selle Français (SF) is a breed of sport horse from France. An athletic horse with good gaits, it is usually bay or chestnut in color. The Selle Français was created in 1958 when several French riding horse breeds were merged into one stud book. The new breed was meant to serve as a unified sport horse during a period when horses were being replaced by mechanization and were transforming into an animal used mainly for sport and leisure.

Bred throughout France, the Selle Français has been exported worldwide, with additional stud books formed in Great Britain and the United States. Horses registered with the stud books must undergo inspections which judge their conformation, gaits and performance. Horses of other breeds who pass the inspections, including those of Thoroughbred, Arabian, Anglo-Arabian and French Trotter bloodlines, may be used for breeding, with the progeny able to be registered as Selle Français.

Selle Français have proven successful at the international level of competition in many equestrian disciplines. They are most commonly seen in show jumping, eventing and dressage, although they are also seen in combined driving, equestrian vaulting and competitive trail riding competitions. Selle Français and their riders have won numerous medals in the Summer Olympics and World Equestrian Games, including making up the entire gold-medal French teams in show jumping at the 2002 World Equestrian Games and eventing at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Breed characteristics

Because of the diversity of the breeds that contributed to the Selle Français, there are not set breed standards. It can range from, although, because they are used as sport horses, most Selle Français usually stand a relatively tall. It is an athletic horse with balanced, harmonious and powerful gaits. Some morphological traits remain the same throughout the breed. The forehead is broad, and the facial profile is straight or convex. The neck is strong and rather long, well connected to the withers, and the back straight. The croup is elongated, muscular and slightly oblique, and the powerful hindquarters are an asset in show jumping. The chest is deep, and the shoulders long and sloping. The legs are strong and muscular with wide joints and hard hooves.

The Selle Français is generally bay or chestnut in color, the latter being a legacy of its origins in the Anglo-Norman breed. Gray is much less common, with its origins in the Thoroughbred and Anglo-Arabian horses that contributed to the breed. White markings, such as white on the lower legs, are fairly common within the breed, and are again inherited from its Norman ancestors. The temperament of the Selle Français is highly variable from one horse to another. This is due to the selection criteria for breeding stock, which since the beginning of the breed have been based on physical ability. In recent years, however, the ANSF and breeders have been working to create selection criteria that focus on temperament. The vast majority of Selle Français have good temperaments, quiet but energetic, patient and friendly. The breed is reputed to be intelligent and quick to learn.

History
The origins of the Selle Français begin with native French horses. In 19th century Normandy, native mares were crossbred with Thoroughbred or Norfolk Trotter stallions. The most common crosses were between native mares used by the military, or those bred for pulling carriages, and Thoroughbred stallions. In 1914 these types were recognized as demi-sang or "half-blood" horses. Half-blood horses were found in many French regions, and different types were usually named after the regions in which they were bred. The three main types of French saddle horses were the Anglo-Norman (bred around Caen), the demi-sang du Centre (bred around Cluny) and the Vendéen (bred around La Roche-sur-Yon).

In 1958, "Selle Français" or French Saddle Horse was created by merging all of the regional half-blood horses in France under one name. The merged types included the Anglo-Norman, the Charolais (from the Charolles region), and the Vendéen. The merger was done to create a sport horse that would meet the needs of a mechanized society where horses were used for leisure and sport. The first Selle Français were not homogeneous in type, but offered a wide genetic diversity, due to the wide variety of local horses crossed with Thoroughbreds, Anglo-Arabians and French Trotters. Norman origins, however, were the most widely represented, as the Anglo-Norman had been used for breeding throughout France.

Since its creation as a breed, the Selle Français has been selected solely as a sport horse. Because of this, the breed has homogenized and refined, and since its creation has been a successful competitor in international equestrian sport. In July 2003, the Association nationale du selle français (ANSF or National Association of French Saddle Horses) was approved as the breed association. The ANSF plays an advocacy role with stakeholders and partners in the equine world and ensures a proper orientation of selection and genetic improvement within the breed. Breeding of Selle Français is centered in Normandy, mainly due to its origins in Norman-related bloodlines. As of 2009, there were 7,722 farms that reported breeding activity of Selle Français, although the vast majority (around 77 percent) were very small operations with only one mare. In 2008, there were 7,638 Selle Français foals born, which made up 57 percent of the total saddle horses bred in France. In 2009, over 13,500 Selle Français mares were bred, of which 11,830 were mated to approved stallions to produce Selle Français offspring. In the same year, there were 505 active Selle Français stallions.

The Selle Français is bred throughout France and abroad, and artificial insemination plays an important role in the dissemination of the breed. The Selle Français has also contributed to several other breeds in Europe, including the Holsteiner, Zangersheide and Oldenburger warmblood breeds. The ANSF has branches in several countries. The United Kingdom organization, called Equicours, led to the opening of a British stud book for the Selle Français, and the ANSF-US manages the stud book for the breed in the United States. Brazil, Argentina and Morocco have agreements with the French stud book to register horses bred in those countries.

Registration and stud book selection
The Selle Français stud book has long allowed crossbreeding with four other breeds: the Thoroughbred, Arabian, Anglo-Arabian and French Trotter. Today, restrictions exist to harmonize the stud book with directives for other European warmblood breeds. For a Selle Français to be registered, it must be from two registered Selle Français parents or from a cross between a Selle Français and a facteur de selle français (non-Selle Français horse that has passed stud book selection procedures). Stallions must pass through a selection process before their progeny is allowed to be registered as Selle Français. The process involves an approval committee that judges stallions on criteria based on the age, breed and nationality of the horses. The qualification criteria involve the conformation, gaits, performance and are scored against national indices.

Mares can be of several origins and be listed as facteur de selle français. Thoroughbred, AQPS, pure or crossbred Anglo-Arabians and French Trotting horses may also qualify under this designation, as do mares that are the product of two facteur de selle français horses. Mares belonging to other saddle horse breeds recognized by the European Union (EU) are also listed in this category. Pure and crossbred Arabians, saddle breeds not recognized by the EU and some other mares may be listed on an individual basis by performing at a high level in show jumping, three-day eventing or dressage competition. If mares come from countries or territories that do not have access to high-level competitions, they may be granted special listing status.

In 2003, the stud book was divided into two parts: a section for pure Selle Français from two registered parents and a section for horses with one facteur de selle français parent. In 2009, this distinction was abandoned and the two sections were recombined into a single stud book.

Uses
The Selle Français is a French sport horse, now recognized internationally as a top breed for show jumping and three-day eventing. Selection criteria for breeding stock focuses on their jumping abilities. Show jumping is a technical sport, calling for lively and responsive yet powerful horses. Horses with more Thoroughbred blood in them have also been very competitive in three-day eventing, where speed and stamina are needed to be successful in all three portions (dressage, three-day eventing and show jumping) of the event. Thanks to these qualities, the Selle Français is seen on international show jumping and three-day eventing teams, both in France and elsewhere. In dressage, the Selle Français has gradually improved, but has faced stiff competition from northern European breeds, which often have more active gaits. In addition, many French breeders guide their horses to the more popular and profitable sport of show jumping, which sometimes deprives the dressage system of good horses. The World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH) ranks warmblood stud books based on their success in eventing, show jumping and dressage. In 2013, the ANSF was ranked as the 3rd best show jumping stud book in the world, topped only by the Dutch Warmblood and Belgian Warmblood breeds, and a Selle Français horse was ranked first in the world. The stud book was ranked at 6th in the world in eventing, with the top horse placed at 25th. The ANSF was ranked 19th in dressage, beaten by many of the more popular dressage breeds, including Dutch Warmbloods, Hanoverians and Westphalians.

The Institut français du cheval et de l'équitation (French Institute of Horse Riding), the École nationale d'équitation (National Riding School) and the Cadre Noir all use mainly Selle Français. Young horses are selected according to their skills and are trained by students within the schools. Horses representing the Cadre Noir are selected at the age of three and are trained according to their abilities, with some reaching the highest levels of haute ecole dressage. Selle Français are also used for combined driving, equestrian vaulting and competitive trail riding, and have competed at the international level in all three sports.

Selle Français are also used for the production of race horses in France. By crossbreeding them with Thoroughbred and Anglo-Arabians, horses are produced which are competitive in steeplechase (racing over obstacles). These horses are generally registered as AQPS (meaning "other than Thoroughbred") in France. The AQPS studbook in France was created in 2005; before this, some successful French racehorses, especially those raced in steeplechase races, were registered as Selle Français. These include Neptune Collonges, winner of the 2012 Grand National race, and Quevega.

International success

Many Selle Français compete each year in international competitions in many equestrian disciplines. Some have been particularly successful:

Almé Z (1966–1991), while not a successful international competitor himself, was a sire of huge importance to the international show jumping world. Among his numerous successful progeny were I Love You (a World Cup winner) and Galoubet A (1972–2005), part of the gold-medal winning French show-jumping team at the World Championships in 1982. Galoubet A, in turn, is known for both his competition career and the success of his offspring. He is the sire of Baloubet du Rouet (b. 1989), who with rider Rodrigo Pessoa won the gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics and was a three-time winner of the World Cup.

Flambeau C (b. 1971) became a pillar of the French show jumping team in the 1980s. He participated in the 1984 Summer Olympics, where he took 7th individually, and the 1988 Summer Olympics, winning the bronze medal with the French team. The 1980s also saw the rise of Jappeloup (1975–1991). A small black horse with a conformation and gaits that were considered disadvantageous for show jumping, Jappeloup was an unusual cross between a Throughbred mare and a French Trotter sire, and was registered as Selle Français. Despite this, he had an impressive jumping style, and won two French championships in 1982 and 1986, a European championship in 1987, several team medals at the European and World Championships, and a gold medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics with rider Pierre Durand, Jr.

In the 1990s, several Selle Français rose to prominence in international competition. Quidam de Revel (b. 1982), was on the French bronze medal winning show jumping team at the 1992 Summer Olympics, ridden by Hervé Godignon, and Quito de Baussy (b. 1982) was a European champion, world champion and another member of the French team in 1992, ridden by Éric Navet. Rochet Rouge (1983–2008) was a show jumping European champion in 1999 and an individual bronze medalist at the 1996 Summer Olympics. The 2000s saw Selle Français among the world leaders in both show jumping and three-day eventing. Four stallions made up the champion show jumping team at the 2002 World Equestrian Games, while four more Selle Francais made up the winning three-day event team at the 2004 Summer Olympics. In 2003, a Selle Francais became the European champion in vaulting, and another was named the world champion in competitive trail riding.

The Selle Français continued to lead international show jumping competitions in the 2010s, with Swiss rider Steve Guerdat riding a member of the breed, Nino des Buissonets, to individual gold at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Most recently, Totem de Brecey (b. 2007) placed fourth in the 2019 Continental/Regional Championships Luhmühlen and was ridden by French rider Christopher Six at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.

title: Selle Français


text: User talk:12.73.18.30

title: User talk:12.73.18.30


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Koxbox

Koxbox is a Danish musical group formed in 1990 that produced psychedelic trance. It consisted of Peter Candy and Frank É Madsen. Ian Ion, their studio producer, is also sometimes mentioned as part of the group.

History
After publishing a few singles, the group was discovered by DJ Sven Väth, and soon, they published their first album Forever After (under his record label Harthouse). The group later produced another two albums: Dragon Tales, and The Great Unknown. In 1998, Peter Candy left the Koxbox.

This marked the end of the original Koxbox lineup, but Frank É Madsen and Ian Ion continued to produce. Already in 1997, they had renamed their own musical group Psychopod to Saiko-Pod, adopting a somewhat different style (perhaps best described as slower and funkier). In 2006, six years after the release of The Great Unknown, Koxbox returned with U-Turn, released on Twisted Records. This most recent album contained collaborations with some of psychedelic dance music's best established artists including Joie Hinton and Merv Pepler (Eat Static, Ozric Tentacles), Frederic Holyszewski (Deedrah, Dado, Cypher, Transwave) and Serge Souque (Total Eclipse) as well as others.

Music
The Koxbox gained considerable popularity within the psytrance scene. Their work was of exceptional quality and differentiated them from most groups of the time. They used innovative sounds that make the Koxbox music characteristic to trained ears. They had a preference for rich, melodic tunes, and this was much appreciated at a time when the Goa subgenre was the most popular psytrance style.

They have remixed tracks by Juno Reactor and Slinky Wizard.

Their tracks Fuel On, Ambivalentino, and Midnight Till The End appear in the Danish movie Pusher. The latter track was produced especially to be used in the movie.

There exists a video clip for the track Life is..., but nobody knows how to obtain it. A truncated (2 minutes, 33 seconds long) lo-fi RealMedia version of the clip was available for free download at the Blue Room Released website, under the band's section. The domain blueroom.co.uk is now owned by the M.E.L.T record label and the old Blue Room pages, along with the clip, are unavailable. However, this rare file is still circulated on file sharing networks.

Albums

 * Forever After Double Vinyl & CD album (1995, Harthouse)
 * Dragon Tales Double Vinyl & CD album (1997, Blue Room Released)
 * The Great Unknown Triple Vinyl & CD album (2000, Liquid Audio Soundz / Global Trance Network)
 * U-Turn CD album (2006, Twisted Records)
 * The Scanner CD album (2015, Zero One Music)

Singles/EPs

 * Acid Vol. 3 & Birdy 12" Vinyl single (1993, Outloud Records)
 * Crystal / World Of Illusions 12" Vinyl single (1993, Where's the Party records)
 * Flashback 12" Vinyl single (1994, Harthouse)
 * Acid Vol. 3 10" Vinyl single (1994,Harthouse)
 * Insect / Insect Bite 12" Vinyl single (1994, Harthouse)
 * Re-Oscillation 12" Vinyl & CD single (1995, Harthouse)
 * Insect Bite EP 12" Vinyl single (1995, Harthouse)
 * Tribal Oscillation (Remixes) 12" Vinyl single (1995, Harthouse)
 * Stratosfear Vinyl & CD single (1996, Blue Room Released)
 * Life Is... Vinyl & CD single (1997, Blue Room Released)
 * Too Pure Vinyl & CD single (1997, Blue Room Released)
 * Forever E.P. 12" Vinyl single (1999, Matsuri Productions)
 * A Major Problem In Australia EP Triple Vinyl & CD (2000, Liquid Audio Soundz / Global Trance Network)

title: Koxbox