Bellec

Le sacré coeur in Montmartre

2020

"Royal Blood" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. "When the Queen’s parents suggested she move to a quieter room away from the crowds of well-wishers heard from the front of the Palace, she refused, insisting 'I want my baby to be born in my own room, amongst the things I know.'" Prince Edward was born 10 March 1964 in the Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace, attended by midwife Helen Rowe and ob-gyn John Harold Peel. The last of Queen Elizabeth II’s children, it was the first to be active and conscious, at a time when “twilight sleep” - knocking out the mother and delivering via forceps - was beginning to phase out. All the Queen’s children were Royal homebirths. Her first birth in 1948 had already marked the end of centuries’ long tradition of Royal observation. Historically, at the birth of any potential heir to the throne, the room would be crowded with ladies-in-waiting, midwives, servants, and doctors, near crushing Marie Antoinette to death in 1778. With the birth of her fourth and final child, the Queen was said to lay down the terms for how she wanted to deliver, breaking yet another tradition by having her husband present. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, had always been a nervous expectant father and historically had chosen to spend the Queen’s labors swimming and playing squash. This time he stayed at her bedside holding her hand, the first male Royal partner to be present in the room in years. In our modern form of collective mass-observation, the whole world watched the two Royal births of Prince William and Kate Middleton...

"Royal Blood" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. "When the Queen’s parents suggested she move to a quieter room away from the crowds of well-wishers heard from the front of the Palace, she refused, insisting 'I want my baby to be born in my own room, amongst the things I know.'" Prince Edward was born 10 March 1964 in the Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace, attended by midwife Helen Rowe and ob-gyn John Harold Peel. The last of Queen Elizabeth II’s children, it was the first to be active and conscious, at a time when “twilight sleep” - knocking out the mother and delivering via forceps - was beginning to phase out. All the Queen’s children were Royal homebirths. Her first birth in 1948 had already marked the end of centuries’ long tradition of Royal observation. Historically, at a birth of any potential heir to the throne, the room would be crowded with ladies-in-waiting, midwives, servants and doctors, near crushing Marie Antoinette to death in 1778. With the birth of her fourth and final child, the Queen was said to lay down the terms for how she wanted to deliver, breaking yet another tradition by having her husband present. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, had always been a nervous expectant father and historically had chosen to spend the Queen’s labours swimming and playing squash. This time he stayed at her bedside holding her hand, the first male Royal partner to be present in the room in years. In our modern form of collective mass-observation, the whole world watched...

"Royal Blood" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. "When the Queen’s parents suggested she move to a quieter room away from the crowds of well-wishers heard from the front of the Palace, she refused, insisting 'I want my baby to be born in my own room, amongst the things I know.'" Prince Edward was born 10 March 1964 in the Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace, attended by midwife Helen Rowe and ob-gyn John Harold Peel. The last of Queen Elizabeth II’s children, it was the first to be active and conscious, at a time when “twilight sleep” - knocking out the mother and delivering via forceps - was beginning to phase out. All the Queen’s children were Royal homebirths. Her first birth in 1948 had already marked the end of centuries’ long tradition of Royal observation. Historically, at a birth of any potential heir to the throne, the room would be crowded with ladies-in-waiting, midwives, servants and doctors, near crushing Marie Antoinette to death in 1778. With the birth of her fourth and final child, the Queen was said to lay down the terms for how she wanted to deliver, breaking yet another tradition by having her husband present. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, had always been a nervous expectant father and historically had chosen to spend the Queen’s labours swimming and playing squash. This time he stayed at her bedside holding her hand, the first male Royal partner to be present in the room in years. In our modern form of collective mass-observation, the whole world watched...

"Royal Blood" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. "When the Queen’s parents suggested she move to a quieter room away from the crowds of we...

Every image in Birth Undisturbed is available to purchase as a limited edition, numbered photographic artwork. Available in 13x19, 35x47, 47x62, 59x75 as well. Inquire for more pricing and follow our storefront at Gallery 1202 for more work by Lennard. "The Whitechapel Woman" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “For the first time... I had been refused when offering chloroform... later I asked her why... shyly she turned from the window that burst the first light of dawn and said: ‘It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to, was it, doctor?’" A chance phrase by a woman in a hovel in Whitechapel in 1911, that childbirth wasn’t meant to be painful, led the young Dr. Grantly Dick-Read to explore that in the absence of fear, the body's natural endorphins can replace the stress hormones that cause pain in childbirth. He went on to write the most influential book on childbirth of the last century, 'Childbirth Without Fear' in 1942, with the passage describing the encounter becoming famously enshrined in birth philosophy. “The window was broken, rain pouring in, the bed had no proper covering… the room was lit by one candle stuck in the top of a beer bottle on the mantelshelf, my patient covered in sacks… a neighbor had brought in a jug of water and a basin”. Dick-Read’s cinematic account for the first time is here visualized, re-enacted at Dennis Severs’ House, a ‘living museum’ of Victorian London. With inspiration from the composition of painting ‘The Doctor’ (1890) by Sir Luke Fildes...

"Aquadural" is part of international artist Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. - See our storefront at Gallery 1202 for the other works in this series “The baby doesn’t co...

Every image in Birth Undisturbed is available to purchase as a limited edition, numbered photographic artwork. Available in 13x19, 35x47, 47x62, 59x75 as well. Inquire for more pricing and follow our storefront at Gallery 1202 for more work by Lennard. "The Whitechapel Woman" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “For the first time... I had been refused when offering chloroform... later I asked her why... shyly she turned from thw window that burst the first light of dawn and said: ‘It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to, was it, doctor?’" A chance phrase by a woman in a hovel in Whitechapel in 1911, that childbirth wasn’t meant to be painful, led the young Dr Grantly Dick-Read to explore that in the absence of fear, the body's natural endorphins can replace the stress hormones that cause pain in childbirth. He went on to write the most influential book on childbirth of the last century, 'Childbirth Without Fear' in 1942, with the passage describing the encounter becoming famously enshrined in birth philosophy. “The window was broken, rain pouring in, the bed had no proper covering… the room was lit by one candle stuck in the top of a beer bottle on the mantelshelf, my patient covered in sacks… a neighbour had brought in a jug of water and a basin”. Dick-Read’s cinematic account for the first time is here visualised, re-enacted at Dennis Severs’ House, a ‘living museum’ of Victorian London. With inspiration from the composition of painting ‘The Doctor’ (1890) by Sir Luke Fildes...

"Salle Sauvage" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “The bearing of children ought to become as free from danger and long debility to civilised woman as it is to the savage.”— Thomas Huxley ‘Salle Sauvage’ translates to ‘primitive room’, a term coined by renowned obstretician Michel Odent in reference to his hospital in Pithiviers, France, with rooms designed to accommodate the primal instincts of labouring women. Here, a glass Cube set within the urban landscape of London becomes a metaphor for Odent’s primitive room and a woman’s connection with nature through homebirth. It is as though the walls of a living room have become transparent admitting our spectatorship into the private space of a birthing woman, perhaps for our enlightenment as well as vicariousness. “Buscar la forma” say the women of the Yucatan in Mexico, meaning to find your style, in contrast to the Western medical model...

"Ejection Reflex" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “Attending births is like growing roses. You have to marvel at the ones that just ope...

"Creation of Man" is part of international artist Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “The human species is no more unsuited to give birth than any other of the 5000 species of mammals on the planet. The birth-giving woman is the central agent in the ancient drama of bringing forth new life.” — Ina May Gaskin. Every year we celebrate a natural birth, a story that takes place in the most primitive surroundings. Mary, giving birth to the Son of God in a stable, that infamous image portrayed recurrently in our culture, familiar to even the non-religious. Yet how is it that beyond Julius Garibaldi’s 1891 painting...