March 2025 – Toovey’s Blog

The Alain Presencer Single Owner Collection

Alain Presencer’s passion for Tibetan and Buddhist culture began at the age of 13 in Canada, when he first started learning about Buddhism. This early curiosity grew into a lifelong pursuit of knowledge, particularly into the mystical and ritualistic aspects of Tibetan traditions.

Since the early 1970s, Alain has undertaken numerous journeys to Tibet, gaining rare access to remote lamaseries and other locations across the Himalayas and uncovering valuable insights into Tibetan spiritual and social practices, despite not speaking local dialects. Alain’s adventures and extensive research has helped to cultivate a deeper appreciation and broaden the understanding of Tibetan art and culture in the West, earning him widespread recognition, such as a Fellowship at the Royal Asiatic Society.

Beyond his academic contributions, Alain has also introduced many to the mesmerising sounds of Tibetan singing bowls; his album, The Singing Bowls of Tibet, has sold over a million copies and has over eighteen thousand monthly listeners on Spotify.

Alain has built a significant collection of Tibetan art and ritual objects over nearly 60 years of researching, understanding and sharing his wealth of knowledge. His wife Sheila has shared his passion and supported the collection’s growth over their lifetime together.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of getting to know Alain and Sheila, and I am deeply grateful for the stories and knowledge he has shared with me. His passion for Tibetan culture and Buddhist art is truly inspiring, and his insights have enriched my own career in countless ways. I am so thankful to have the opportunity to present this remarkable collection, one that reflects an enduring commitment to preserving and sharing the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of Tibetan and Buddhist art.

This single owner collection will be offered at Toovey’s across two auctions on the 10th of April and 26th of June 2025.

Thomas Rowsell

Rupert Toovey Sussex Heritage – Christ’s Hospital 500

Christ’s Hospital Curator, Laura Kidner, in the newly refurbished Christ’s Hospital Museum

This week I am in the company of Laura Kidner who is the curator of the Christ’s Hospital Collection and Museum which has just completed a major refurbishment and restoration.

I have long admired Laura’s work. Throughout her career she has embraced the importance of art and objects in telling our common story. In her celebration of the procession of history, art and objects her work has sought to rebalance the narrative and tell the often forgotten, untold stories of women.

This is apparent in the restored galleries at Christ’s Hospital Museum which are now light and immediately give the impression of Laura’s vast knowledge of the school’s history. The dramatically revised layout, beautifully conceived displays and re-hang of the paintings take you from Christ’s Hospital’s beginnings to the present day. The story of Christ’s Hospitals ‘Old Blues’, both men and women, past and present are all celebrated.

Laura explains “The school has had a museum since 1994, but when part of the ceiling collapsed in 2019, it provided the unexpected opportunity to re-think and update the … displays.”

Who Do You Think We Are? at Christ’s Hospital Museum

She continues “The refurbishment project proved to be Herculean. It took four years. 40,000 artefacts had to be moved between rooms as the space was repaired alongside fundraising and planning how to showcase the school’s 500-year-old history. This involved choosing from over 100,000 historic objects to best reflect the facts, themes and stories relating to over 67,000 students educated at CH since 1552, let alone the extensive social history, traditions, and Royal links.”

Christ’s Hospital was founded in 1552 by King Edward VI. Initially 280 boys and girls were lodged and fed in the buildings of the former Grey Friars Monastery and schoolmasters were amongst the staff from the very beginning. Girls were educated at Christ’s Hospital from 1552 making it the oldest girls’ boarding school in the country.

Christ’s Hospital inhabits a unique place in the nation’s education sector providing a private school education, often without charge, to students who come from every possible ethnic and socio-economic background. Of the 900 students at Christ’s Hospital some 630 attend free or at reduced costs continuing the traditions seeded in 1552.

Laura concludes “The restoration has been a huge labour of love, but it’s already fulfilling its main objective which is to be at the heart of the school, being used and enjoyed by current CH students of all ages, Old Blues and the wider community.”

To arrange your appointment to see their new displays celebrating 500 years of Christ’s Hospital history contact Laura and her team by emailing chmuseum@christs-hospital.org.uk.

2025 Sussex Heritage Trust Awards Launched at Saltdean Lido

The restored Saltdean Lido, Brighton © Richard Fraser

More than 100 people gathered in the company of The Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex, Andrew Blackman, as the 2025 Sussex Heritage Trust Awards were officially launched at Saltdean Lido, Brighton.

Toovey’s was proud to sponsor the launch with RH Partnership Architects.

Through its work and awards the Sussex Heritage Trust promotes and encourages best practice in our county’s built environment and landscape.

London architect, Richard W. H. Jones, designed Saltdean Lido in the International Style, an architectural movement that developed in Europe following the First World War. Importantly, it’s ‘Streamlined Moderne’ international Art Deco design encapsulates Britain’s own modernist and social aspirations for creating seaside architecture for the enjoyment of the masses. Embracing modernity Saltdean Lido’s architecture is considered to be one of the best surviving examples of lido design in the UK. In 2018 it was named by English Heritage as one of the Seven Wonders of The English Seaside.

Visitors today are left with the same impression of being on a large ocean going ship which bathers would have experienced between the wars.

Sussex Heritage Trust Chairman, David Cowan and the Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex Andrew Blackman at the launch of the 2025 Sussex Heritage Awards © Love Heart Photography

But the magnificent restoration, overseen by RH Partnership Architects, belies the fact that this beautiful building was in a terrible state and at risk despite being the only Grade II* listed lido in the country. In 2010 it was threatened by plans to develop the site into flats. The local community campaigned against this and took on the lease for the site themselves. By 2017 they had restored the pool. With support from the National Heritage Lottery Fund RH Partnership Architects and the volunteer team took on the major restoration and repair of the dilapidated building. This included the reinstatement of original features like the neon-lit signage, the chimney and spiral staircase connecting the café.

The project received a Sussex Heritage Trust Award the judges noting the quality and scale of the task of renovation and that “The project [had] succeeded in turning the building into a magnet for the community and a source of much local pride.”

The Sussex Heritage Trust’s work is as important today in promoting best practice in our county’s built environment and landscape whilst encouraging and supporting talented young people into careers in conservation, building and horticulture. I am delighted that Toovey’s, remain long-term sponsors and supporters of their important work, alongside a number of Sussex businesses including headline sponsors Thakeham.

The closing date for entries for this year’s Sussex Heritage Trust Awards is 28^th March. To find out more visit sussexheritagetrust.org.uk.

Rupert Toovey DL with David Cowan © Love Heart Photography

Maggi Hambling and the Call of the Nightingale at Pallant House Gallery

Simon Martin and artist Maggi Hambling at Pallant House Gallery © Pallant House Gallery/Sam Stephenson

The friendship between Pallant House Gallery Director, Simon Martin and the important contemporary British artist, Maggi Hambling (b.1945), was apparent in the joyous tone of their conversation as they shared the stage to launch Maggi Hambling – Nightingale Night.

Maggi is famous for the directness of her piercing gaze and insight. These qualities are apparent in her series of predominately large scale painted variations which capture the wonder of her encounter with a Nightingale.

Writing in the accompanying catalogue James Cahill describes how as part of a great friend’s birthday celebrations Maggi Hambling and a number of other guests ventured into a forest in darkness and pouring rain to a place where Nightingales were known to sing. There the Nightingale responded to the voice of folk musician Sam Lee accompanied by violin in song.

Speaking with Cahill Maggi would later recall ‘I felt touched by the sublime.’ And how she wanted to recapture ‘that sense of awe at the contemplation of bigger things.’

The qualities of strength and the ethereal are held in tension in her series of variations on the theme of the Nightingale’s song in bold abstract gold brushwork against the black ground of the night. Their strength and delicacy mirroring the Nightingale’s full throated serenade with its extraordinary variation of tone combined with an array of repeated phrases punctuated by the recurring single note of the bird’s call.

Maggi Hambling, Nightingale Night II, 2023, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches © Maggi Hambling

There are migratory Nightingales in the fields next to me where I live in Storrington in the Spring. But, I have only encountered the Nightingales’ song in the gentle half-light of dawn and dusk so I was unprepared for the drama and scale of Hambling’s work with their distinctive black grounds.

In these predominately large, bold, hope-filled canvases Hambling’s abstract brushwork gives voice to the music and tone of the Nightingale’s song in our imaginations – the bird unseen, its song hanging in the damp night air.

Maggi Hambling’s career spans more than six decades. Throughout she has remained provocative and prolific. She is equally renowned for her public sculpture, her numerous portraits, and paintings in which the diverse themes of nature or war, the climate emergency and self-reckoning converge.

This season’s current exhibitions at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester major on female artists including Dora Carrington, Maggi Hambling, both of which run until 27th April 2025, and Rana Begum’s exquisite installation which can be seen until the end of July.