6. Our Lady of the Cow Parsley – Nautilus Puzzles

Assembly and review of an absolutely beautiful puzzle, research about the image and its artist, and a very long digression about Cow Parsley and Poison Hemlock (about 3000 words; 17 pictures)

laser-cut    Nautilus Puzzles    no puzzle designer identified
artist  -  Elisabeth Sonrel
367pieces    15” x 11” (38 x 28 cm)      5mm 5 ply   printed on semi-gloss paper

About a month after I began assembling wood jigsaw puzzles in January I joined a  Facebook group called Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles Club. It has a few hundred active members from all over the world, but mostly in the United States.  As the name suggests, discussion is only about wooden jigsaw puzzles but it covers the full gamut of price and quality, from very inexpensive laser-cut “no name” puzzles (mostly made-in-China) on up to extremely-expensive bespoke hand-cut ones that begin at over $1000.

For me, one of the best things about the group is that it introduces me to many puzzles and brands of puzzles that I would not otherwise stumble across on the internet, and the discussion and pictures let me know what to expect from those puzzle makers. In one sense though, that is also the worst part about participating in this group: I learn about many beautiful, well-made puzzles there and end up wanting (and sometimes buying) more puzzles than I can afford from companies that I otherwise would never have heard about. It was from that group that I learned about Nautilus Puzzles and this is my first purchase from them.

Nautilus puzzles

I know very little about the Nautilus Puzzles company other than that they are based in San Luis Obispo, on California’s coastal Highway 101 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, just south of the Big Sur.  Judging by the large number of puzzles in their catalog, and their diversity in both types of images and cutting styles, I get the impression that they are a fairly large company rather than an artisanal workshop, and that they were already well-established before the pandemic began.

Nautilus puzzles are regularly priced in the upper tier of laser-cut puzzles, although they are not quite as expensive as the Liberty or Mosaic brands.  That means that based on the puzzles that I have assembled so far my standard of comparison should be Puzzle Lab and Stumpcraft.  I have assembled multiple puzzles from each of those companies and they set a high quality standard for this puzzle to meet in all aspects of their design and production.

[Note: This particular puzzle design is being discontinued by Nautilus and as I write this it is currently on sale for $67.96 USD).]

The puzzle – first impressions

Nautilus puzzles come in an attractive sturdy black box, with the type of magnetic closure that seems to have become the standard for premium-quality jigsaw puzzles.  (Actually, Nautilus’ box raises the standard a bit by adding a ribbon-loop to make it easier to open it.)  Inside the box the pieces are in a black satin-like bag, and there is a large poster with the image, in addition to the picture on the cover of the cover of the box.

Those pictures are unnecessary for my puzzle-assembly style (although I do appreciate the thumbnail pictures that Stumpcraft and Puzzle Lab both put on ends of their boxes) but I know that reference images are used and important for some people, and for them a large poster can be more useful than a smaller image on the box cover.  

Opening the box I got a strong waft of campfire smell.  For me, that is a positive feature but I know (also from the Facebook group) that smokiness is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of thing. The scent faded over the hours as I assembled the puzzle, but interestingly, it has remained fairly strong coming from the satin-like fabric of the bag.

The initial sorting confirmed what I expected from the Facebook reviews.  The colours are vibrant and there are a LOT of figural pieces, including one very large graceful one.  The pieces are 5 ply birch, about 5 mm thick.  This is slightly thinner than the ¼ inch (6mm) material used by Stumpcraft and Puzzle Lab but still thick enough to give a rich-feeling experience.  

Assembly

I had taken care to minimize my chances of accidently glimpsing the picture on the box but this is a fairly familiar image from when Art Nouveau was re-discovered in the 1960s. Basically, what I remembered were that the woman’s face was off-centre on the right side of the painting and that she was surrounded by a lot of puffy-looking blossoms.

I began with the edges and their adjacent colour patches.  It somewhat threw me off that there were no blue sky pieces along the top edge.

I would have begun the face as an island earlier but other than the lips (which were distinctively-coloured and went with a whimsy) the face was surprisingly difficult to assemble.

It always makes a big difference once the eyes are in place:

Overall, this was a fairly easy puzzle to assemble.  The edge pieces were not duisguised and the colour patches were distinct.  The yellow “sky” is a gradient – darker/brighter on the bottom.   However, challenge isn’t the only thing I appreciate in puzzles. In this case, the “fun” aspect more than made up for its easiness. It was a very enjoyable build because the cutting design suited the image perfectly, and the image itself is so attractive

The quality of this puzzle shows in every aspect of its manufacture. Unfortunately, the photos in this review/essay (taken with the tiny camera in my iPad) do not really do justice to the quality of the printing. The colours are truly vivid and made assembly a summertime joy to complement the time I have been spending nurturing my balcony-garden.

The artist and painting

The image of this puzzle is from a watercolour and gouache painting by the French artist and illustrator Élisabeth Sonrel (1874-1953). 

[Note: I am torn as to whether I should follow academics’ and critics’ distinction between “artists” and “illustrators”.  As far as I can tell, the only real distinction is that illustrators’ works are specifically intended for a commercial purpose, and the folks that art critics and academics call artists make pictures for, … well, …, who knows why?

Sometimes they are obviously not motivated by any desire to please others, and their output may or may not be considered to be “art” by anyone other than themselves. Occasionally non-commercially-intended artwork does prove to resonate with others during their lifetimes to the extent that they can make a living (or even get rich) by doing whatever meets their inner needs for expression.  But often it only much later that the works of poverty-stricken individuals get recognized to be artistic masterpieces (e.g., Van Gogh and most of the impressionists.)  

On the other side, often people who are hailed as artists in their own time are at least partly motivated by the need for money, and their makers can be as willing to shape their work to their prospective buyers’ wants as any mere “illustrator". Wasn’t the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel made for a large profitable enterprise, and its content dictated by a demanding client?  So why isn’t Michelangelo classified as being an “illustrator”? End of Note]

Élisabeth Sonrel was successful and prolific painter throughout her 60 year career – a rarity for female artists of her time. Her early art training came from her amateur painter father. From him she developed sufficient skill to be accepted as a student by the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.  There, she studied under Jules Lefebvre, an acclaimed painter in the classical style whose work specialized in figures and portraits of beautiful women.

Her formal education was supplemented by tours to Florence and Rome to study the Italian Renaissance painters, especially Botticelli. She was also greatly influenced by the English Pre-Raphaelites, and especially by the most fashionable artistic style in Europe at the time – Art Nouveau.  Her works when that style was in fashion were favourably compared with those by the Czech painter Alphonse Mucha whose paintings and posters are now considered iconic for Art Nouveau.

This painting originated from the height of the that era, although I would argue that it isn’t Art Nouveau in its own right.  Certainly the proportions of the image are very tall as was common for Art Nouveau and Nature dominates the image, but it doesn’t have the characteristic shaping of all human-made elements into gentle naturalistic lines.  The decoration around lady’s dress neckline is allowed to appear square, and the spare yellow background is not filled in with sensuous nature-inspired scrolling.

Flora, 1899 photo credit; right – Our lady of the Cow Parsnips, 1923? photo credit

Actually, Our Lady of the Cow Parsnips is a repainting by the artist of her Flora that had been painted in 1899.  I found one reference online to it having been painted by Sonrel in 1923 but I haven’t been able to find anything to confirm that date. By that time the very tall proportions of the original painting had gone out of fashion even though the subject matter had not.

[Note:  As with impressionism, Art Nouveau and the pre-Raphaelites had been rebellions by young artists against the classicism that dominated 19th century artistic tastes. Those movement, in turn, established their own stylistic “rules” and soon young modern artists rebelled against those.  These late 19th century styles that are so highly regarded now were actually quite short-lived. They went out of style and were mostly forgotten until they were re-discovered in the 1960s. Our current artistic tastes generally now value the impecunious young rebels’ paintings much more than the classicist artists who thrived during their lifetimes. This painting of a young woman with flowers in her hair and a loose-fitting dress became an icon for the 1967 “summer of love”]

Actually, I prefer the reworked 1923(?) version of the painting.  It assumed the familiar “golden rectangle” 1:1.5 proportions but maintains the unusual composition of having the face – the focal point of the picture – in the upper right quadrant of the painting. This is accentuated by moving the large flower cluster to the dead-centre of the image, and the close-up accentuates the prominence of that face as well as the perfectly vertical stem that bisects the image.  Sonrel has also softened the face (note the bridge of the nose) giving the lady a more serene expression.

However, I don’t like the change of the name from Flora to Our Lady of the Cow Parsley. Flora suggested that the lady depicted is the relatively-minor Roman goddess of flowers. The new name conveys that the lady in the picture is the Christian uber-saint and goddess-surrogate Mary. (The name change was not done by Nautilus – there are many prints of this painting available online that pre-date this puzzle and all called Our Lady of the Cow Parsnips. I presume that the new name was given by Sonrel.) 

Personally I would rather think of this lady as being a more abstract personification of nature’s fertility and beauty (who just happens to be named Flora) rather than her being either a Roman goddess or a Christian object of devotion.

[Very long digression:  Cow Parsley and Poison Hemlock

Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), more commonly known as Queen Anne`s Lace, wild carrot, or by many other vernacular names, is a common plant native to Europe and Asia.  It is a member of the carrot family (Apiaceae) which contains other edible plants that look similar to it such as parsnips and celery, but also poisonous plants including hemlock (which is famous as the poison that killed Socrates.)  Both cow parsley and poison hemlock are now introduced plants that have gone feral here in North America, where they are both considered to be harmful invasive species in many jurisdictions.

Botanical drawings of cow parsley (picture credit) and poison hemlock (picture credit)

The ancient Celts and peasants in medieval times used cow parsley as both a food (hence, wild carrot) and as a medicinal herb. However great care must be taken in identification of it to avoid accidently harvesting one of its poisonous cousins.  In general, Queen Anne’s Lace’s stems are hairy and all-green while the stems of Poison Hemlock is smooth and have purple blotches.

But there are many similar-looking plants in the Apiaceae family, and there are even cautions about pregnant women and people with certain sensitivities using cow parsley itself. I would definitely advise doing further research before considering gathering and using Cow Parsley from the wild as an edible or medicinal. Many wild-gathering herbal and food reference sources recommend avoiding it since other plants are as-well or better suited for its uses and they are not as susceptible to being confused with poisonous plants.     

Queen Anne’s Lace is a biennial, staying small and bushy in its first year, and sending up its tall flowers in the second year.  Its leaves and roots are considered edible only in the first year.  This wild carrot’s thin roots were used in soups and stews, and its leaves chopped and eaten raw as in a salad.  Fresh flowers can also be tossed into salads, or clusters can be deep-fried to make a carroty-flavoured dish. In a pinch, its roots can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute.

Cow parsley is well-documented as an herbal remedy for many ailments in medieval times, although for the above-stated reasons it is no longer as popular in modern herbalism.  Here is one website that identifies its medicinal uses (some of which have been confirmed by scientific research) and you can find other information online.  But I’ll repeat my warning - only ingest or use cow parsley as an herbal if you are absolutely confident in its identification.

Perhaps the most interesting role I had during my career as a British Columbia bureaucrat was representing my ministry (called a “department” in most jurisdictions) on the Inter-ministry Invasive Species Steering Committee.  I got the role because dealing with invasive species was only tangentially related to our ministry`s responsibilities, I worked in a policy-oriented branch that was often assigned miscellaneous tasks, and no one senior to me wanted the assignment.

The inter-ministry committee was mostly made up of people who were above my pay grade.  They were from what we bureaucrats called dirt ministries, being responsible for managing land (parks, agriculture, mining, highways, etc.) On the committee those ministries were represented by the leaders of programs to actually prevent or limit expansion of invasive species on lands under their jurisdiction.  They were used to managing large budgets and implementing programs under current legislation and policies. 

I was the only person on the committee who wasn’t an expert about invasive species and how to eradicate them, and also the only one who thought in terms of changing current legislation and policy rather than working within it. It turns out that because of my different orientation, despite my lack of knowledge about our subject matter I proved to be useful to my colleagues, but that story would be a digression too far for a website about jigsaw puzzles. What I especially enjoyed about that assignment was that it introduced me to the totally unfamiliar world (for me) of invasive species and what can and cannot be done to deal with them.  That is a fascinating topic indeed.

It was through that committee that I learned about cow parsley – mainly because of its similarity to poison hemlock which was a priority species for eradication in BC.  Hemlock (Conium maculatum) is both invasive and dangerous to people. Besides being poisonous if ingested, many people, especially children, are highly sensitive to it and can develop a bad (and even life-threatening) rash if their bare skin even brushes against it.

Both cow parsley and hemlock were introduced to North America through the garden nursery trade.  In the case of poison hemlock the introduction was inadvertent – stowaway seeds.  But Queen Anne’s Lace was purposely brought here because these European weeds were also considered to be lovely low-maintenance garden flowers (especially after they were featured in Art Nouveau paintings such as this one.)

In the case of poison hemlock the spread is still spotty, in only a few communities, and therefore local eradication is still considered possible.  One of those areas is Victoria, the city where I live.  Because of its danger to humans, hemlock is one of the species that is targeted for local eradication and while I was on that inter-agency there was (and still is) a program asking people both to remove it from their properties and to report sightings of it to invasive species management authorities. Here and here are local online circulars about poison hemlock.

Having learned from the committee how to distinguish poison hemlock from Queen Anne’s Lace proved useful to me back in the early 1990s. It was then that I noticed some attractive new plants beginning to grow tall and stately in an untended corner of my back garden.

Their seeds had clearly come from over the fence, where the same pants were abundant. I thought that I recognized them as the dreaded poisonous plants but with a bit of research I was able to identify them as being Queen Anne’s Lace.  Even so, because it is an invasive weed I carefully removed them from my garden before they went to seed, and for the next few years both weeded them that corner and planted other things there that would out-compete them.

My involvement with that committee, and with invasive species in general, ended when I retired about eight years ago. But while researching for this essay I learned that Queen Anne’s Lace, common cow parsley, is now also considered to be a serious invasive plant in some parts of British Columbia, in particular, recovering grasslands.  End of very long digression]

keep going

Possible spoiler images

In general, I enjoy discovering the whimsies while I am sorting the pieces and assembling, so I haven’t highlighted them in the above pictures or text.  This puzzle has a lot of them, mostly flowers and birds, including one very large one that I think of as Flora dancing among them.

Other than the large dancing girl I think this was my favourite whimsy, and its puzzle context:

Here is the back of the assembled puzzle: