Author: Rupert

Reflecting Life over the Centuries

A rare Victorian silver novelty smoker’s companion, finely cast and modelled as a monkey riding a bear

Silver objects across the centuries have so often captured and reflected the society for which they were made.

Over time a delight in novelty has persisted. Dutch silver wager cups were produced from the late 16th century. The most popular of these were the windmill cups like the 1638 example you see here from Amsterdam which recently sold at Toovey’s for £10000. Its bell shaped bowl is decorated in relief with fruit and leaves. The windmill has simulated plank decoration and a dial above a miller ascending a ladder. Because the base was modelled as the sails of a windmill the cup could not be put down until the bowl was drained. Before drinking the contestant would blow through the pipe setting the sails in motion. There is some debate as to whether the dial indicated the number of beakers to be drunk if they failed to drain the cup before the sails ceased turning, or if it signified how many drinks were to be offered to the gathered company.

A mid-17th century Dutch silver windmill wager cup

Mr Punch has a special place in my heart. It was always a treat to pop in to see my Gran on the way home from primary school. A Victorian cast iron doorstop in the form of Mr Punch would welcome us as he held the door open and in the kitchen sweets were arranged on a silver dish for us to find.

A rare Victorian finely silver novelty Mr Punch mustard pot

It brought back fond memories to discover the rare Victorian silver novelty mustard pot, finely modelled as Mr Punch sitting cross-legged with pipe and goblet, a mischievous look on his face, and with the original feather handled spoon. Such wonderful quality of workmanship and design…that’s the way to do it!

Mr Punch was inspired by the Neapolitan character Pulcinella in the commedia dell’arte. Since before Victorian times the unreliable Mr Punch and his long suffering wife Judy (originally known as Joan), together with a cast of other puppet characters, have indulged in an often outrageous pantomime of familiar slapstick humour.

In the same specialist Toovey’s auction a rare Victorian silver novelty smoker’s companion was finely cast and modelled as a monkey riding a bear supporting two circular bowls with a wicker basket on its back. The monkey smoking a pipe/cigar conceals the table lighter within the detachable head cover with plumed helmet.

These beautifully worked humorous objects were made in London in 1870 and 1876 by Robert Hennell IV and realised £5500 and £5800.

Silver has captured and reflected life over the centuries.

These pieces illustrate the extraordinarily high demand and prices for silver collectors’ objects today.

Pousin and the Dance

Nicolas Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time, c.1634-6 © The Trustees of the Wallace Collection

The National Gallery’s latest exhibition examines the importance of the early works of the French artist Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665). There is a visual and chromatic splendour in Poussin’s painting. Based around dance these paintings and drawings established his reputation. The show also explores the influences which shaped and formed this remarkable artist.

In 1624 Poussin moved to Rome where we would live for the rest of his life with the exception of a brief and unhappy period in Paris.

Rome, the seat of the Renaissance, provided the closest encounter with classical antiquity in 17th century Europe. The English painter Sir Joshua Reynolds observed how Poussin’s mind was naturalised in antiquity. Poussin had visited Venice and admired Titian’s work. Although, like Milton, Poussin would move to a more serious manner with a moral preoccupation there is an underlying vibrant Venetian poetry which seems to inform these early pictures. It is in Rome that the Christian and Classical worlds meet and both would inform his art.

Poussin would find an extraordinary vocabulary giving voice to the expressive potential of the human body employing new methods of composition. He would create wax figurines to choreograph the compositions he drew and painted.

Poussin admired the classical reliefs from ancient antiquity depicting dancers. They inform the cool, abstract, formal language of Poussin’s dance pictures which contrasts with the animated scenes which they portray.

Nicolas Poussin, The Empire of Flora (detail), c.1630-1 © bpk/Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/photo Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut

The Empire of Flora is an early example of the artist’s dance pictures – Ovidian yet carefree. Flora the goddess of flowers and spring dances with a ring of putti. The mythological scene is played out beneath the sun god Apollo and his chariot. The figures are allegorical representing poverty, wealth and pleasure in a repeated cycle. Human labour, ambition and decadence are played out as the dancers move through the seasons of life and nature.

The exceptional painting A Dance to the Music of Time is set as Dawn scatters flowers in the heavens heralding both a new day and Apollo who is once again depicted with his chariot.

The hues of the dancers’ flowing garments heighten the conflicting sense of stillness and movement. The dancers’ steps are measured responding to the chords of the winged representation of Father Time. This poetic dance is unending. The light and shadows appear real rather than imagined.

Poussin’s patrons were as serious as the artist himself. The literary, musical and choreographic elements of A Dance to the Music and Time are informed by the poet-patron Giulio Rospigliosi (1600-1669), who would later become Pope Clement IX.

This beautiful exhibition offers a fresh perspective on this exceptional classical French Baroque artist and displays the visual and chromatic splendour in Poussin’s dance paintings. Poussin and the Dance runs until the 2nd January 2022. To book your tickets visit www.nationalgallery.org.uk .

The Nation Remembers

The Revd. Rupert Toovey, Chaplain to the Royal British Legion, Storrington Branch, leading a service of remembrance accompanied by the local Guides

Next week we will once again reflect upon the costs of defending righteousness, freedom and liberty, giving thanks not only for our allies but also for reconciliation and peace.

Across Britain, Europe and America the common story and Christian heritage which unites us will be expressed in services of Remembrance and thanksgiving. In churches and beside War Memorials across Britain these familiar bidding words will be heard:

“We have come to remember before God those who have died for their country in the two world wars and the many conflicts of the years that have followed. Some we knew and loved: we treasure their memory still. Others are unknown to us: to their remembrance too, we give our time…With thanksgiving we recall services offered and sacrifices made…”

In Storrington the Royal British Legion are celebrating their 100th Anniversary and will be leading the local community in acts of remembrance and the Poppy Appeal. Each year poppies are sold to raise vital funds to help today’s Armed Forces community and this year in Storrington the Guides are assisting.

A short act of remembrance will take place on the 11th November at 11.00am in Storrington High Street at the Roll of Honour by The White Horse Inn.

Remembrance Sunday falls on the14th November this year and a service of remembrance and thanksgiving will be held at St Mary’s Parish Church, Storrington at 2.50pm uniting our community across the generations. The standards of the Royal British Legion, the Royal Navy Association and the youth organisations will be on parade as wreaths are laid at the War Memorial and during the service.

The Royal British Legion, Storrington Branch, and Royal Navy Association standard bearers, Des Knight and Richard Shenton

Families, communities and nations are bound together by their shared stories; stories of both joys and sorrows. Where these memories are embraced with open hearts they seed compassion, hope, empathy and a desire to work for the common good – something which our armed forces know intuitively. And our nation is once again united by the evolving story, the shared experience of Covid-19.

I hope that in the coming week of remembrance each of us will be able to find time to reflect, offering thanks and prayers for the courage of successive generations who have been called, and continue to be called, to defend the greater cause of justice and concord.

Hogarth and his Contemporaries

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Tête à Tête, 1743/45 © The National Gallery, London

William Hogarth (1697-1764) has been described as one of Britain’s most important artists. His work is the subject of a major exhibition at Tate Britain which opens next week. This beautifully conceived show places Hogarth’s work in the context of his British and Continental contemporaries.

Hogarth’s satirical commentary on the excesses of dissolute lives in 18th century English society are defined by the strength of their pictorial narratives, and though the figures depicted are often caricatures they are also examples of portraiture of the highest order.

Hogarth’s own father underwent periods of mixed fortune and at one time was in debtor’s prison. This experience perhaps lends Hogarth’s work its uncompromising edge in his series of satirical social commentaries which included A Harlot’s Progress, A Rake’s Progress, and Marriage A-la-Mode, a scene from which you see here titled The Tête à Tête.

The couple are clearly disinterested in each other. The wife sits in an un-ladylike pose. Her attire and the look on her face implies her infidelity. In contrast her husband sits dolefully and impotent whilst the steward, dressed as a pious Methodist, walks away with a look of disapproval and a ledger under his arm which we are to presume is full of unpaid accounts. The picture is filled with hidden references to the couple’s dissolute lives and its emerging consequences.

William Hogarth was not only a painter but a printmaker and it was through his prints that his popularity grew making him perhaps the most significant English artist of his generation.

The exhibition highlights the influence of French and Italian painting and engraving on Hogarth’s work.

William Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug, 1745 Tate

I love the indifference of Hogarth’s pug as he sits before his master’s self-portrait. It gently illustrates Hogarth’s wit and realism.

Hogarth objected to slavishly pandering to his patron’s demands which he called phizmongering. The remarkable un-finished sketch Heads of Six of Hogarth’s Servants is my favourite in this rich exhibition. It illustrates the artist’s absolute gift and delight in portraiture at a democratic level. There is such insight into the sitters’ characters and concerns, reverence without caricature. Mrs Hogarth kept the painting in her possession at their Chiswick home until her death.

William Hogarth, Heads of Six of Hogarth’s Servants, c 1750/5, Tate

This welcome exhibition at Tate Britain provides a refreshing narrative for William Hogarth, his times, his contemporaries and his work. To book your tickets visit www.tate.org.uk

Picasso at Vallauris

A collection of Picasso Madoura editions ceramics, from left to right: ‘Bunch with Apple’, ‘Bull and Picador’ and ‘Two dancers’, all made in 1956

In the summer of 1946, Pablo Picasso decided to visit the annual potter’s exhibition in the provincial village of Vallauris whilst staying with his friend, the engraver Louis Fort. There he met Suzanne and Georges Ramié, the founders of the Madoura workshop, who were keen to persuade him to come to Vallauris.

Picasso returned in July 1947 bringing his extraordinary imagination and creative energy to ceramics. He was first attracted by the large, almost rectangular dishes in the workshop. Here Picasso took the everyday and transformed it in to high art, painting and incising with a richness of expression which still causes my heart to race. Favourite themes included figures, bullfights and still lifes as depicted on the jug and plates illustrated here. In each you see the free, graphic rhythm which typifies Picasso’s ceramics.

These pieces are Picasso Madoura editions. They were made in two ways. The first involved making an authentic replica of an original work by exactly repeating the size and decoration. The second method transferred an original subject by means of an engraved, hardened plaster mould, to a fresh ceramic sheet which would be applied in order to take a clay impression. These editions are authenticated by a stamp to the base. Their close connection with Picasso’s hand, like a handmade print, attracts the attention of an international group of collectors. Picasso’s relationship with Madoura and the Ramiés grew and between 1948 and 1955 Picasso lived at Vallauris before moving to Cannes.

Picasso resurrected the ancient tradition of the all-round artist exploring painting, sculpture, graphic art, engraving and ceramics.

Picasso delighted in the craft of the ceramicist and quickly began to talk with the Ramiés using the technical language of the potter. The Ramiés, for their part, indulged the often extremely unorthodox practices of the artist which included his methods of firing, glazes and form. Take as an example the plate ‘Bunch with Apple’, made in 1956, in an edition of 400, it was decorated with oxidized paraffin.

Rupert Toovey in the square outside the Musée National Picasso, Vallauris

You approach the Musée National Picasso at Vallauris in Provence through a square filled with shops and restaurants. Amidst the life of the village stands the bronze L’homme au mouton given by the artist in 1949. Inside the museum there is a jewel like array of original ceramics made by Pablo Picasso which is guarded fiercely by the museum staff. The pieces capture the spirit of Provence in a way which speaks of a joy and freedom after the artist’s years under Nazi occupation in Paris. You sense the effect that the light and warmth of Provence had on Picasso which he expressed in his ceramics in the post-war years.