Building and Supporting Communities through the Arts

From left to right: Andrew Bernardi, Maria Marchant, Jonathan Few and George Robinson
From left to right: Andrew Bernardi, Maria Marchant, Jonathan Few and George Robinson

The 2019 Shipley Arts Festival opened with a concert at the Grade II listed mansion at Leonardslee Gardens.

The concert, hosted by headline sponsors of the 2019 Horsham District Year of Culture, Leonardslee House & Gardens, was accompanied by an auction and a game of heads and tails which raised £2300 for the important Sussex charities Chestnut Tree Hospice and the Sussex Arts Academy.

Guests arrived to enjoy a tour of the recently reopened Grade I listed gardens and drinks before returning to the magnificent hall where the musicians, framed by the sweeping staircase, performed a program of international music which included the Argentine composer Astor Piazzola’s series of four tango compositions ‘Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’.

It was a treat to see the Stradivarius Trio with Andrew Bernardi, Maria Marchant and Jonathan Few returning to Sussex joined by a young talent, the classical guitarist George Robinson.

I arrived to find the audience gathered in the company of Shipley Arts Festival patron, the Lord- Lieutenant of West Sussex, Susan Pyper and her husband Jonathan. The music was at once exciting and sublime.

As the first session of music concluded the auction began. The audience were in generous form and the bidding rose and my gavel fell to applause.

Both of the charities benefiting from this fund-raising, care for and create opportunities for our young people.

Chestnut Tree House is the children’s hospice for the whole of Sussex, Brighton, Hove and South East Hampshire. It has in its care some 300 children and young adults from 0-19 years of age with progressive life-shortening conditions.

Chestnut Tree House Fund Raising Development Manager, Juliette MacPherson explained how important events like this are to the Hospice, not only for vital fund raising but also in building relationships and awareness of their work in our communities. It often means that families who need their help become aware of their vital services whilst others choose to make Chestnut Tree House their charity of the year.

The Sussex Arts Academy is a charity which provides access to the very best in arts and cultural education to children and young people in schools and colleges across West Sussex. They also support disadvantaged young people who would otherwise not be able to engage with these opportunities.

I have long been a passionate advocate of building and supporting communities through arts and heritage and I am therefore delighted that together with Kreston Reeves, Nyetimber, Rossanna, Wakefields and NFU Mutual, Toovey’s are once again supporting the 2019 Shipley Arts Festival series of concerts.

For more information on all the forthcoming Shipley Arts Festival concerts go to www.shipleyartsfestival.co.uk Tickets are on sale at The Capitol, Horsham box office, telephone 01403 750220 or go to www.thecapitolhorsham.com. Demand is always 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.

Landscapes, Ancient and Modern

Gordon Rushmer’s watercolour of Coombes Church
Gordon Rushmer’s watercolour of Coombes Church

Horsham Museum & Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, Accents on The Landscape – Ancient Churches of West Sussex, comprises a canon of watercolours by the celebrated British watercolourist Gordon Rushmer.

I catch up with Gordon as I open the exhibition and ask him about the inspiration behind his latest body of work. He replies “I am nostalgic for the past – my childhood in the South Country of fifty or sixty years ago.” Gordon’s comments resonate with Hilaire Belloc’s famous poem The South Country and the writer’s yearning for Sussex, her people and landscape.

Gordon’s paintings provide a valuable contemporary record of these churches continuing in the British watercolour tradition, but there is something more to these rich watercolours. He depicts these ancient, sacred places in perfect harmony with the Sussex landscape. Like this gifted artist the churches appear rooted in the landscape. Gordon says “When I paint it’s a spontaneous response to what I perceive – the meanings often reveal themselves later. My paintings often start 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.

Gordon Rushmer’s detail of an 11th century fresco at Coombes
Gordon Rushmer’s detail of an 11th century fresco at Coombes

Gordon’s journey around the ancient churches of Sussex has been one of returning, of bridging the ancient to the modern. It has been a journey of the interior emotionally and spiritually, as well as in the physical world.

These qualities can be seen in Gordon’s study of Coombes Church which you approach through a farm yard nestling in the lee of the Downs. It is often surrounded by grazing sheep. Inside there are a number of fragmentary 11th century frescoes which Gordon has illustrated.

Gordon Rushmer is an acclaimed war artist. He reflects “I have witnessed both the best and the worst in life. My time in Afghanistan and abroad [with British forces] has informed my perspectives. The stillness of these churches is amplified for me – that contrast between the war and the peace.”

I comment on how his work always seems hope filled and Gordon smiles and agrees.

Artist Gordon Rushmer
Artist Gordon Rushmer

This exhibition has only been possible thanks to the patronage and vision of Horsham Museum & Art Gallery’s Curator Jeremy Knight. The limited edition book by Gordon Rushmer which accompanies the exhibition is beautifully illustrated and will provide an important legacy to the Horsham District Council’s 2019 Year of Culture.

I am delighted that Toovey’s are supporting ‘Accents on The Landscape – Ancient Churches of West Sussex’. It runs at the Horsham District Council Horsham Museum & Art Gallery, The Causeway, Horsham, until 1st June 2019. 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.

Harold Gilman at Pallant House

Harold Gilman – Canal Bridge, Flekkefjord, c.1913, oil on canvas © Tate London, 2018

The Harold Gilman exhibition currently on show at Pallant House Gallery is visually stunning.

Harold Gilman (1876–1919) has been described as an English Post-Impressionist. His portrayal of life in the early 20th century combines the gritty formality of the Camden Group of artists with the vitality of post impressionism.

Harold Gilman was a founder member of both the Camden Group and the Fitzroy Street Group. He enrolled at the Hastings School of Art in 1896 and in 1897 moved to the Slade School of Fine Art in London where he received a traditional training.

Gilman was influenced by the artists Walter Sickert and later Spencer Gore and Lucien Pissarro, all of whom had connections with and worked in Sussex. Gilman’s paint became more textural, a little more broken and opaque in texture. By 1912 he was being grouped with the Post Impressionists.

In 1912 and 1913 Gilman visited Sweden and Norway where he experimented with vivid colours often employing a patchwork of flat, simplified areas of paint as can be seen in his depiction of the Canal Bridge at Flekkefjord painted in 1913. Gilman’s work was never slavish to the current vogue – he took only what was necessary to his own needs. Even during his periods of experimentation Gilman would often work in a traditional way from drawings squared-up for transfer with colour notes. It was this practice which allowed him to present a complex subject like the scene at Flekkefjord in a painterly and coherent way with beautifully articulated compositions.

Harold Gilman – Interior with Mrs Mounter, c.1916/17, oil on canvas © Ashmolean Museum

Amongst the most famous of Harold Gilman’s pictures are those he painted in his lodgings at 47 Maple Street, Camden Town, London between 1914 and 1917. There is often an underlying discipline to the depiction of these interior scenes which lends them an internal dissonance contradicting the richness of his tone and palette. He revels in the mix of patterns, colours and objects – symbols of his middle-class upbringing. They are at once joyful and forlorn.

His paintings of women, whether nude or clothed, of whatever age or class, reveal a rare tenderness which is apparent in Interior with Mrs Mounter. Mrs Mounter was his housekeeper. Her apron, headscarf, the cloth covering the washstand in the background and her pose create a scene which seems ill at ease with itself. Gilman expresses the physical and social separation between Britain’s classes in the early 20th century as society changed. This was especially poignant for women and the issues of suffrage.

In 1919 at the age of just 43 Gilman fell victim to the flu epidemic and died. This exceptional exhibition gives a wonderful insight into the heights that this extraordinary and very British artist reached in the last years of his life. You must treat yourselves and go.

Harold Gilman – Beyond Camden runs until the 9th June 2019. The exhibition can be seen at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. For more information go to www.pallant.org.uk.

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 Georgian Bureau Makes the Perfect Home Office

Rupert’s virtual study – a Georgian bureau

Fine English antique furniture still represents remarkable value for money and provides the opportunity to own something made of the finest materials, combining beauty with practicality. With rising interest in traditional furniture the time has come to reassess how it can work in our contemporary homes where space is so often at a premium.

The bureau is amongst my favourite pieces.

The famous Georgian furniture designer Thomas Sheraton in his Cabinet Dictionary of 1803 stated that in England the term bureau has ‘generally been applied to common desks with drawers under them, such as are made very frequently in country towns.’

There is such delight in a bureau. As you open it, the fall flap hinges downwards to form a writing surface. It reveals pigeonholes, drawers, a cupboard and sometimes even secret compartments. The sloping sides gather you as you sit at it, whether reading, working or just taking time to imagine.

Good vernacular examples from the 18th century are a real pleasure to own. Indeed, my own bureau is a typical example of this type. Crafted in precious mahogany it lives in the corner of our spare room – a virtual study for our virtual age.

It was made in England around 1770, during the reign of George III. As the world’s first industrial revolution gained its head of steam, a skilled country cabinetmaker set about making it. The drawer interiors are of cedar, the dovetails cut by hand. His eye was good and the proportions are just right. It is layered with prompts to fond memories; a family photograph, a drawer full of pebbles from a favourite beach, a little cupboard for my communion set, books and the odd column all vie for space with my laptop. Best of all I can shut the flap on it all when I’ve done enough or if Aunt Enid comes to stay!

The personal computer with its bulky boxes, screens, cables and keyboard could not be accommodated by the gracious bureau and values were undermined.

But the pleasures of a bureau are finding renewed favour in our wireless age of clouds, ‘iThings’ and laptops. They are once again proving to be the perfect home office or virtual study earning their space in the modern home.

A good George III mahogany bureau like mine can still be bought for a hundred or two at auction. This bureau is almost two hundred and fifty years old and will grace any sitting room, or spare bedroom! It makes no demands on our world’s finite resources and will continue to be a pleasure to generations to come. Perhaps, in the end, antique furniture is green, not brown. You should be buying a bureau for your children and grandchildren whilst you still can – the perfect 21st birthday present!

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.

Mary Crabb at the Oxmarket

The Sussex based artisan artist Mary Crabb, exhibiting at the Guildhall, London as a Yeoman Member of The Worshipful Company of Basketmakers

This week I am in the company of the Sussex based artisan artist, Mary Crabb, as she prepares to run a series of workshops in the art of Basketry at the Oxmarket Gallery, Chichester. These one and two day creative workshops run from Tuesday 26th to Sunday 31st March.

Mary’s own making has developed out of a grounding in traditional basketry techniques and hours of exploration and experimentation. Mary explains “I like to offer workshops to cater for a range of learning – for those interested in the destination, the completing of a made object, and those wishing to make a creative journey where the process is more important than a finished piece of work. Of course sometimes there is an overlap and I always like to be flexible. Workshops can often throw up unexpected ideas!”

Mary’s workshops are in demand across the UK. I ask her what draws people to them. She answers “People come for lots of different reasons, not necessarily just to learn a new skill or develop their practice. Those who join these workshops are engaging in open minded creative thinking which can be quite courageous.” There is a sense in which Mary is building communities through her work bringing people together and providing them with a shared narrative, a common story.

As a practical, practising basket maker Mary was honoured by The Worshipful Company of Basketmakers when she was elected as a Yeoman Member. Yeoman must spend the majority of their time basket making or teaching and are required to demonstrate a high standard of workmanship and skill in the Craft.

My eye is taken by a colourful coiled basket. Mary says “I’m running a day on coiled baskets. We start by looking at the structure of a coiled basket to identify the core and stitching material. Then I teach the techniques for hand stitching around the core to wrap and join threads and begin the basket. I explore a basic stitching technique and suggest how patterns can be added with colours and the placing of each stitch. When you make a small basket it’s important to learn how to place the core material to build a form, and how to finish the basket off. It’s a skills based day to try out a new technique or perhaps as a refresher. All students take a piece home at the end of the day.”

Mary’s enthusiasm is infectious. These exciting workshops will be held at the Oxmarket Gallery, St Andrews Court, off East Street, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1YH, from Tuesday 26th to Sunday 31st March 2019.

To find out more and to book your place visit www.marycrabb.co.uk then click on Events and Workshops. And you can follow Mary Crabb on social media @crabbbaskets