East Meets West in Satsuma Ceramics

A Japanese Satsuma earthenware vase by Ryozan for the Yasuda Company
A Japanese Satsuma earthenware vase by Ryozan for the Yasuda Company

During the Meiji period (1868-1912) Japanese Satsuma captured the imaginations of Western collectors with its opulent, jewel-like decoration.

For more than two hundred and fifty years Japan had lived in relative isolation from the outside world. American gunboat diplomacy, instigated by Commodore Perry in 1853, opened up Japan for trade with the West. The Japanese did not wish to be a subjugated nation and turned to their rich tradition of arts and crafts to articulate their place in the world as a civilized nation. It was from these traditions that Japanese manufacturing began to emerge alongside the desire to benefit from trade.

Satsuma ceramics met with great success at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867. In contrast to earlier pieces Satsuma from the Meiji period was elaborately decorated and predominately produced for export. After its success in Paris this finely conceived style was adopted by the ceramic artist, Kinkōzan Sōbei VI (1824-1884). He brought it to Kyoto and the Awata district became the centre of Satsuma production. The wares produced here were similar in style and taste to the Satsuma produced in other towns and cities like Osaka and Yokohama. The extravagance of these designs contributed to its popularity in Western markets.

A Japanese Satsuma earthenware vase by Kinkōzan
A Japanese Satsuma earthenware vase by Kinkōzan

Satsuma had become an aesthetic term rather than denoting place. However, the personal styles of the leading painters was articulated through their skilful use of palette and brushwork. Amongst these artists were Kinkōzan, Ryozan and Kōzan, whose work can be seen here.

These three richly ornamented vases capture the essence of Meiji Satsuma. Borders and details are lavishly defined in raised gilding. The detail of the painting is jewel like.

Ryozan’s depiction of elegant women, known as bijin, and children playing in a landscape is typical of the scenes commonly found on Satsuma objects, as are the brocade borders. The vase was decorated for the Yasuda Company. The Kinkōzan vase of baluster square form is similarly decorated with figurative and coastal landscape panels.

A Japanese Satsuma earthenware gourd shaped vase by Kōzan
A Japanese Satsuma earthenware gourd shaped vase by Kōzan

What was new in this Satsuma genre was the manner in which landscape imagery was employed to convey a narrative about Japan. Here bijin, and children play in realistic depictions of landscapes. These scenes intentionally capture Japanese life – past and present. They open a window onto an exquisitely serene world inhabited by the Japanese educated classes. These vases were 23.5cm high and sold at Toovey’s for £950 and £1100 respectively.

You often find bold depictions of Samurai heroes and rakan on Satsuma pieces like the reserve panels of the gourd shaped vase by Miyagawa (Makuzu) Kōzan (1842-1916). The opulent floral vignettes, simulated brocade borders and flowerheads are typical Satsuma motifs. Measuring 25cm in height the vase realised £1200 at Toovey’s.

The Meiji period witnessed Japan’s evolution from a feudal, closed society, under the rule of the military shoguns, towards its manufacturing modern era. Satsuma ceramics are a quintessential expression of the Meiji period which continues to delight the imaginations of western collectors and our sense of the exotic.

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.

Goodwood Review

The Bernardi Music Group in the music room at Goodwood
The Bernardi Music Group in the music room at Goodwood

The Shipley Arts Festival was launched with a remarkable concert given in the company of their Graces the Duke and Duchess of Richmond and Gordon in the music room of their Sussex home, Goodwood House. The concert was held in aid of the Friends of Sussex Hospices and raised some £24,000.

The Lord High Sheriff of West Sussex, Mark Spofforth., OBE, and Mr Andrew Bernardi
The Lord High Sheriff of West Sussex, Mark Spofforth., OBE, and Mr Andrew Bernardi

Proceedings were opened by The Lord High Sheriff of West Sussex, Mark Spofforth. He spoke movingly of his experiences and respect for the hospices of Sussex and the work that they do. He said “I have been impressed not only by the standard of care for the patients, but also for the time and consideration shown to the family, particularly when youngsters are involved.” Mr Spofforth went on to praise those who had come together to support the Friends of Sussex Hospices giving particular thanks to the charity’s volunteers and founder, Kathy Gore, the gathered audience, the Artistic Director of the Shipley Arts Festival, Andrew Bernardi, as well as the sponsors, Buxted Construction, Toovey’s and Spofforths.

Honouring Goodwood the concert was titled ‘Speed and Flight’. The program was wittily interspersed with musical references to the activities of this important Sussex estate. Goodwood is a remarkable English treasure house which combines stunning collections and dramatic interiors with unexpected intimacy.

It is always a treat to hear Bruce Martin on flute His interpretation of Vivaldi’s Flute Concerto, ‘La Notte’, RV439, brought to life the wonderful invention, drama, tone and instrumental virtuosity of the piece.

The pianist Maria Marchant combines restraint, intensity and passion in such a way that your heart and mind is bound to the music – perfect qualities for Mozart’s Piano concerto K414 no.12.

The tone and range of Andrew Bernardi’s 1696 Stradivarius seems to grow every time I hear him. His joyous and passionate rendition of Vittorio Monti’s ‘Czardas’ was a delight.

The English operatic baritone and composer, Roderick Williams premiered his beautiful and profoundly moving ‘Goodwood Variations’ before singing three songs by John Ireland with a rare richness of tone.

Mrs Cathy Gore., OBE, and the Revd. Rupert Toovey
Mrs Cathy Gore., OBE, and the Revd. Rupert Toovey

During the interval came the auction. My gavel rose with the generosity of bidding and fell to applause. Unsurprisingly the dearest lots of the night were the opportunity to have Andrew Bernardi play the 1696 Stradivarius in private company. Donated by this ever generous musician they realised £2000 and £1700 respectively!

The concert concluded with J. S. Bach’s Concerto for two violins in D minor. It is widely considered to be amongst the finest examples of Baroque music. The Baroque, they say, is music for the heart and the soul. Soloists, Andrew Bernardi and Andy Laing, on his 1810 Cerruti violin, captured the subtle, yet expressive fugal, relationship between the two instruments wonderfully.

If, like me, you love J. S. Bach’s music there will be a rare opportunity to hear his Mass in B Minor at St Andrew’s Church, Steyning, on Sunday 29th May 2016, to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. Steyning and Shipley Arts Festivals are combining with Steyning Parish Church to put on a performance of one of the finest classical works ever written. The Bernardi Music Group and The Choir of Our Most Holy Redeemer St Thomas More will be conducted by David Bevan.

For more information on this and all the forthcoming Shipley Arts Festival concerts go to www.bmglive.com Tickets are on sale at The Capitol, Horsham box office. Telephone 01403 750220 or go to www.thecapitolhorsham.com. Demand is expected to be strong for these concerts so don’t delay!

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.

Edgar Holloway, a Life Recorded in Print

Edgar Holloway in his studio at Woodbarton by Bernard Mitchell © Bernard Mitchell, 1996
Edgar Holloway in his studio at Woodbarton by Bernard Mitchell © Bernard Mitchell, 1996

It is with some excitement that Toovey’s are offering for sale selected works from the studio of Edgar Holloway (1914-2008). The sale provides an important overview and insight into the life and work of this talented, Sussex-based artist.

Lot 12 ‘Self Portrait no.18 (The Etcher II)’, circa 1979
Lot 12 ‘Self Portrait no.18 (The Etcher II)’, circa 1979

Holloway was at the heart of a revival of printmaking in the 1920s and 1930s. In the various phases of his creative life he combined the Arts and Crafts ideal of the artisan artist, influenced by Eric Gill, with the pursuit of fine art. His work is represented in many of our national collections, including the British Museum, the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum and the National Museum of Wales. Further afield, his work is even to be found in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Lot 62 ‘T.S. Eliot’, etching by Edgar Holloway
Lot 62 ‘T.S. Eliot’, etching by Edgar Holloway

Edgar Holloway was born in Mexborough, near Doncaster, on 6th May 1914. His father, a former Yorkshire miner, sold art through his shop, including watercolours by Edgar. In January 1930 Edgar persuaded his father to buy him a small etching press and a supply of copper plates and would later write: ‘I like to say I learned to draw on copper plates.’ There is an immediacy and life to Edgar Holloway’s etchings, born of his particular gifts of observation and draughtsmanship. The influential author, journalist and art critic Malcolm Salaman reproduced a landscape print in the art magazine The Studio. By November 1930 the Twenty-one Gallery had agreed to handle his prints and would hold a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions at their Mill Street premises in Mayfair, London. His family had since moved to Essex and then Harrow, so that Edgar could be closer to the London art market.

Holloway obtained a pass to the print room at the British Museum, where he met the Keeper of Prints, Campbell Dodgson, who bought the young artist’s prints personally and for the museum’s collection. The Scottish etcher Ernest Lumsden had influenced the young Holloway and he now invited him to join the Society of Artist Printers in Edinburgh. During this period ‘Eastcote’ (Lot 36) and ‘Self-Portrait, 1932’ were among a series of successful prints.

Holloway’s gift for portraiture is expressed in his beautifully observed self-portraits. These introspective works gift us with a particular insight into the artist and the man. They chart a human procession through life with a piercing directness and integrity, which commands the viewer’s attention. These same qualities inform all of his portraits.

Lot 76 ‘Latton Priory, Essex (interior)’, from 1936
Lot 76 ‘Latton Priory, Essex (interior)’, from 1936

His family returned to Doncaster but in 1934 Edgar Holloway moved to Hampstead and studied at the Slade. The illustrator Alec Buckels introduced Holloway to T.S. Eliot, Herbert Read and Stephen Spender. There is such maturity in his portrait of ‘T.S. Eliot’ (Lot 62) that it is hard to remember that Holloway drew and etched it when he was just nineteen. Holloway would capture the portraits of many of T.S. Eliot’s circle.

Throughout his career, as well as portraiture, Holloway continued to record buildings, landscapes and the world around him. The 1936 etching of a barn interior, titled ‘Latton Priory, Essex (interior)’ (Lot 76), illustrates his command of the medium.

Ill health exempted Holloway from military service during the Second World War. In 1941 he became a Roman Catholic. In 1943, suffering with depression, he visited Capel-y-ffin, the monastery near Abergavenny, which had been home to Eric Gill in the 1920s. There he met Daisy Monica Hawkins, Gill’s last model. Within just a few weeks Edgar and Daisy were married. That she was his muse and inspiration is apparent in his sensitive studies of her, many of which are included in the sale. The couple lived at Capel and Doncaster with their growing family.

An invitation from Philip Hagreen to join the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling resulted in their move to Sussex. For the next twenty years Holloway worked exclusively as a letterer, cartographer, illustrator and designer. Edgar Holloway could not foresee his return to printmaking. He sold all but eleven of his etched copper plates in the 1950s to a scrap-metal dealer. Many of the early prints included in the sale are, therefore, very rare. However, this event gifted Holloway with the opportunity to revisit and record the memory and image of earlier subjects. The artist’s depth and layers of experience allowed him to recapture the voice and spontaneity of his earlier work.

In 1972 a series of commissions for portraits and landscapes from the United States allowed him to return to his love of printmaking. Among these is ‘Self-Portrait no. 16: Prospect of America’ (Lot 51). In 1979 Daisy Monica died. In the years that followed, retrospective exhibitions were held at the Ashmolean Museum, the National Library of Wales, in London and across the country.

In 1984 Edgar Holloway married the artist Jennifer Boxall. Together they purchased Woodbarton, which was designed by Eric Gill for Desmond Chute. When the Holloway’s arrived, there was no plumbing and only an outside toilet and single cold-water tap. This artistic couple set about modernising the house to create a comfortable home and studio in which to live and work. Jennifer inspired and encouraged Edgar in these years. Edgar Holloway was the last Chairman of the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling, which was dissolved in 1989.

In 1991 Holloway was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers.

Alongside Holloway’s prints are a number of paintings, which demonstrate his love of watercolour as a medium from his earliest years. This remarkable collection of works by Edgar Holloway provides a rare opportunity to understand and acquire works by this gifted artist, whose prints and watercolours are rightly represented in our national collections.

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.

A Wealden Artist Goes to War

A watercolour, ‘Destroying Saddam’s Weapons, Iraq 2004’
A watercolour, ‘Destroying Saddam’s Weapons, Iraq 2004’

A selling exhibition titled ‘A Wealden Artist Goes to War – Paintings of Gordon Rushmer’ has just opened at the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery

The exhibition was opened by the Tate Gallery’s Lead Curator of British Art to 1900, Alison Smith. She spoke celebrating the artist’s precise draughtsmanship, acute powers of observation and delicate use of colour.

Artist Gordon Rushmer
Artist Gordon Rushmer

Gordon Rushmer follows in a long tradition of British War Artists. There is a seriousness, restraint and dignity in the man and his work which is unexpected and humbling.

Gordon describes how he seeks to memorialize a particular moment in time so that it can continue to live in and through his paintings. He remarks “It is history being worked through.”

I ask him about his working method in bringing a picture into being. He says “It starts with an idea which can take a year to come together.” I begin to understand that the stillness evident in many of his paintings comes out of a process of reflection. Once Gordon has discerned what it is he wants to convey he works from his photographs and sketches made in the field. The pictures record the memory of a particular moment which transcends time and the purely visual.

I ask whether the proliferation of images of war in the news, on our televisions and in our newspapers, is in danger of desensitizing the public. Gordon replies “I have to find another way in. It’s what you don’t say which allows the public to be involved – to be questioning.”

A watercolour, ‘Flying into Lashkar Gah, Helmand, Afghanistan, 2007’
A watercolour, ‘Flying into Lashkar Gah, Helmand, Afghanistan, 2007’

My eye is taken by a watercolour titled ‘Flying into Lashkar Gah, Helmand, Afghanistan, 2007’. Whilst the painting is very obviously Gordon’s the palette and delicate handling of paint is reminiscent of the 20th century British War artist, Eric Ravilious. Like Ravilious’ paintings there is a reflective stillness; that sense of a sense of a moment out of time. The composition connects the viewer with the scene. It is as though we are seated in the row of soldiers. Gordon comments “They’re tuckered out with the fatigue of being in combat. It’s really noisy in a chinook. Even with the earplugs in you can hear the boom, boom, boom of the rota blades.”

Tate Gallery Lead Curator of British Art to 1900, Alison Smith with Jeremy Knight, Curator of the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery
Tate Gallery Lead Curator of British Art to 1900, Alison Smith with Jeremy Knight, Curator of the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery

Gordon talks about how his insight as a war artist has informed the huge respect in which he holds the British service men and women he accompanies. He says “You are one of the troops, unarmed, but one of their own. There is a real camaraderie. They won’t take you into firefights unless they know you’re ok.”

The watercolour ‘Destroying Saddam’s Weapons, Iraq 2004’ once again firmly places Gordon Rushmer’s art in the procession of British War artists. The cloud of the explosion and palette reminds me of Paul Nash’s work in the Second World War. Gordon reflects “In my opinion this was an ill judged war. Iraq is still a country in turmoil with little sign of a peaceful outcome.” However, this gifted artist is keen to stress the remarkable role of our armed forces, even in this situation, as they seek to make life better where they serve. I comment on the difficulties that they must face in distinguishing between what is right and what is wrong in the theatre of war. I have always admired the discipline of our soldiers and ask if this lends their task honour. Gordon agrees and explains the soldiers’ deep sense of service, fighting for Queen, country and their comrades.

The precise draughtsmanship, acute powers of observation and delicate use of colour, which are apparent in Gordon Rushmer’s studies of war, are also employed in the counterbalance of his paintings of Sussex and the Weald which make up half of the pictures in this show.

The depth and layers of experience in this reflective artist’s work is exceptional and clearly visible in this important exhibition. Curator, Jeremy Knight is once again deserving of our thanks. I am delighted that Toovey’s are supporting this show.

‘A Wealden Artist Goes to War – Paintings of Gordon Rushmer’ runs at the Horsham District Council Horsham Museum & Art Gallery, The Causeway, Horsham, until 28th May 2016. Entrance to the Museum and exhibition is free. It provides a rare opportunity not only to see, but also to acquire the work of an artist who is represented in the collections of Tate and The Imperial War Museum. For more information go to www.horshammuseum.org or telephone 01403 254959.

By Rupert Toovey, a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington. Originally published in the West Sussex Gazette.