For the first time in Western art a painter looked at the

For the first time in Western art, a painter looked at the sky as more than just a backdrop to the land; it became a subject in itself.Constable took his easel and paints out to Hampstead Heath, where he lived, and to the Devon coast, and painted the weather in a way that meteorologists still applaud for its accuracy and critics for its beauty. Flying in the face of received opinion, he insisted that Britain’s weather was fascinating and beautiful at all times of year, and particularly in winter The problem was our way of looking at it. Then there’s the famous beginning of Bleak House: “Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth .. Fog everywhere Fog up the river .. fog down the river .. fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights … Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards…”
But there is someone to whom we might turn in the depths of winter – John Constable (1776-1837).

Writers have been similarly fixated on the misery of the weather. Explaining why he was first driven to take opium, De Quincey wrote; “It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy London Sunday.” “Our weather is very bad and slobbery,” knew Swift. While the Impressionists celebrated springtime in France, artists working in these isles have mostly painted the fog, the gloom and the nights that begin at three Think of Turner, Whistler or the engravings of Gustave Dore. Artistic representations of Britain have long confirmed the gloomy view of its climate.

IoS readers can purchase the book for the special price of pounds 16.99 (including p&p); to order call 0135 827 750 and quote reference `50 Immortal’. I’VE BEEN sad thinking about how much worse the weather will get before it improves. The last leaves will go, nights will start at three in the afternoon, and the earth will harden so that it’ll be inconceivable that anything ever grew from it – that there were once flowers and kisses and picnics in the meadows. Today, however, people are taking pride in their preserved ancestors again, and the likes of Roberto are seen as an important part of the national heritage. “People are always drawn to preserved human beings,” says Reid, who has just published a book about global mummy culture.

“It is about cheating death.”`In Search of the Immortals: Mummies, Death and the Afterlife’, by Howard Reid is published by Headline, price pounds 18.99. “Having your granddaddy still around was like having a title deed to the family land.”Many Peruvian mummies were destroyed by the conquering Spanish, who, as Christians, found the cult idolatrous. “Ancestors were preserved as go-betweens between the spirit world and the everyday,” says Reid. “While the climate was benign much of the time, periodically there would be disasters like volcanic eruptions, with flooding, landslides and tsunamis El Nino would pass through every 30 years or so. Many believe the mummies were supposed to intercede on behalf of the people in the face of natural disasters.” Mummies were also part of social continuity, he adds.

“The South Americans used the most elaborate mummification techniques ever,” explains Reid. “They would skin the bodies, remove the organs, make stick frames, fill them out with mud and padding, and then put the skin and hair back on.” Some were wrapped in elaborately woven cloth, with gold and jewellery tucked into its folds. The Chiribaya would include scale models to show the trade of the mummified person – perhaps a miniature sea-going raft for a fisherman.South American mummies served several purposes. His elaborate plaits and cap of feathers mark him out as a person of consequence; he died at around the age of 40, about 1,000 years ago.Roberto owes his survival partly to the local environment – extreme aridity and nitrate-rich soil – but also to a sophisticated system of preservation. They were preserving their dead in this way from 7-8,000 years ago, millennia earlier than the Egyptians.
The mummy pictured here was a member of the Chiribaya tribe, and was recently excavated from the Ilo region in southern Peru. Nicknamed Roberto by the archaeologist who excavated him, he is sitting on the side of the road while awaiting transportation to a local museum.