Rupert – Page 93 – Toovey’s Blog

Nation’s Remembrance Marked by Reverance and Thanksgiving

The Lord Mayor of Westminster, the Lady Flight, her Chaplain, the Revd. Rupert Toovey, and the Lord Flight, preparing for the service of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey

“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…”

These solemn and familiar bidding words were spoken at the Service of Commemoration and Thanksgiving on Remembrance Sunday by the Dean, The Very Reverend John Hall, at Westminster Abbey. The night before Her Majesty the Queen, senior members of the Royal Family, and the Prime Minister came together with veterans and members of the public to remember the nations fallen and wounded at the Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance. The same bidding prayer had resonated amongst the testimonies during the evening. Paul Jacobs, who had lost his sight whilst helping to save others in Afghanistan, recited a moving citation that he had written. Kathryn Williams, Michelle Stead and Sheila Griffiths-Gibson told of how they had all been widowed when a Hercules had been shot down in Iraq. They acknowledged the value of their friendship, bound together by their shared story. These contemporary tales of the costs of standing up for righteousness were united with the past as 95 year old Squadron Leader, Tony Pickering, spoke of his experience flying Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain, saying “We never gave up control of the sky…we never gave it up.”

The Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall

Last weekend I found myself at the heart of the nation’s acts of remembrance in London as Chaplain to The Lord Mayor of Westminster, Lady Christabel Flight. The wife of former Arundel and South Downs MP, Lord Flight, Christabel is bringing her undoubted energy, talents and qualities to the role of Lord Mayor of Westminster.

On Sunday morning Lady Flight joined with leading military figures in laying wreaths of remembrance in a private ceremony. We entered the Abbey passing before the assembled ranks of veterans and serving service men and women.

Westminster Abbey beneath the grey skies of Remembrance Sunday

There seems to have a been a particular poignancy to the Remembrance celebrations throughout this year as we have commemorated the 70th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and 75 years since the Battle of Britain was fought over the skies of southern England.

We gathered in the west end of the Nave of Westminster Abbey standing beside the grave of the Unknown Warrior, whose body was brought from France to be buried there on 11th November 1920. The grave, which contains soil from France, is covered by a slab of black Belgian marble from a quarry near Namur. On it is an inscription, composed by Herbert Ryle, Dean of Westminster, which includes the words ‘MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF, FOR GOD, FOR KING AND COUNTRY, FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE, FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD’.

As Big Ben rang out 11 o’clock, and the familiar canon rumbled in the distance, in the silence there was an overwhelming sense of the long shadow of history and our place in the procession of human history bound up with faith and nationhood – a tangible sense of loss and gratitude.

These commemorations combined familiarity with reverence. I hope that each of us will be able to find time in this Remembrance Day and week to reflect and offer thanks for the courage of successive generations who have been called, and continue to be called, to fight for the greater cause of justice and concord.

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 11th November 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.

Lalique Masterpiece

I am in the Channel Islands visiting family as I write this week’s column. My cousins, the De La Hayes, today, decided to take me to St Matthew’s. The church exterior has been described as the ‘the ugliest church in the Island’. But it has hidden delights for those who venture inside!

The Lalique glass reredos of angels at St Matthew’s, Jersey

St Matthew’s is to be found at Millbrook halfway round St Aubin’s bay, on the south coast of the island of Jersey. It has been a grey day and the fine drizzly rain enfolded us as we walked from the car park towards this plain, concrete clad building. Nothing of the exterior prepares you for what awaits inside. The interior is entirely decorated with Lalique glass.

As you come into the church you are gathered into a space of great peace and light. The unity of design afforded by the work of the famous Parisian glass art designer René Lalique, and the Jersey architect A. B. Grayson, is unexpected and beautiful. Behind the altar the illuminated four metre high glass cross is decorated in relief with lilies. The Madonna lily motif is repeated throughout much of the glass decoration. The cross is flanked by two glass pillars creating a scene which brings to mind the Crucifixion. The Lady Chapel and Vestry are enclosed by glass screens. The Lalique font lends an intimacy to this sacred space.

The Lalique interior of St Matthew’s church

The interior was transformed in memory of the first Lord Trent, Jesse Boot, who founded Boots the chemists and lived in Jersey with his wife Florence. René Lalique and the Boots met in the South of France where they were neighbours. The Lalique glass works were famous for their bold Art Deco designs on vases, bowls and decorative objects. René Lalique was delighted when Florence offered him the commission to decorate St Matthew’s, near Villa Millbrook her Jersey home, to the glory of God and in memory of her late husband.

Lalique had accepted a commission in 1930 to redecorate La Chapelle de la Vierge Fidèle a la Deliverande at Calvados which was severely damaged during the Second World War. This design incorporated six pillars crowned with Madonna lilies, six angels formed the reredos and there was a fifteen panel glass communion rail. All these elements from the French chapel were assembled in the Pavillon de Marsan at the 1933 Paris Exhibition. Many of the components of this earlier design appear to have been incorporated at St Matthew’s, which provides the best surviving example of Réne Lalique’s important glass interior designs. The refurbished St Matthew’s church was completed and dedicated in September 1934.

I am drawn to the Lady Chapel. The heavy glass panel opens smoothly revealing the breath-taking reredos formed of four sculptural Lalique glass angels. Their arms are crossed framing their faces which express a timeless serenity. These monumental figures lead your eyes heavenwards as you pause in prayer, gathered in a space radiant with light.

On Remembrance Sunday we will reflect on the courage of those who fought, and continue to fight and give their lives, so that we might live in freedom. The courage of the Allied forces who fought in the Second World War liberated Europe and the Channel Islands from Nazi occupation. Our corporate acts of remembrance will take place in spaces like St Matthew’s, Jersey and at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, with familiar services marked by church and state. As we approach Remembrance Sunday each of us will reflect on points of love in our lives, and those we have loved and lost in acts of personal remembrance.

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 4th November 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.

David Jones Exhibition

Pallant House Gallery’s Artistic Director, Simon Martin, opened their latest exhibition ‘David Jones: Vision and Memory’ last Friday. This timely retrospective provides an extraordinary insight into the life and work of this talented British artist who, between 1921 and 1924, was a member of Eric Gill’s Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic in Ditchling, Sussex.

David Jones, Flora in Calix Light, 1950, watercolour, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge © Trustees of the David Jones Estate

David Jones (1895-1974) worked as a painter, engraver, poet and maker of inscriptions. He responded with a lyrical delight to the visual world around him. But there is also a mystical, timeless quality to his work, rooted in the memory of the long and ancient procession of human history. In 1936 the famous art historian, Kenneth Clark, described him as ‘in many ways, the most gifted of artists of all the young British painters’, adding in the late 1960s that Jones was ‘absolutely unique – a remarkable genius’.

David Jones, Quia Per Incarnati, 1945, watercolour, Private Collection © Trustees of the David Jones Estate

David Jones, The Dove, wood-engraving from Chester Play of the Deluge, 1927 © Trustees of the David Jones Estate/ Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

My passion for Modern British Art began at Jim Ede’s home, Kettles Yard, in Cambridge. Jim Ede championed many of the leading artists of the 1920s and 1930s whilst an assistant curator at the Tate gallery in London. It was at Kettles Yard, amongst the work of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Naum Gabo and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, that I first encountered David Jones’ watercolours and prints. Amongst these was the expressive work ‘Flora in Calix Light’. Jones converted to Roman Catholicism whilst at Ditchling and his faith remained one of the recurrent influences on his art and writing. In the 1950s Jones’ horizons began to come in on him and his attention moved from a delight in the world outside to the interior. The resulting still lifes are considered to be amongst his best works. ‘Flora in Calix Light’ has many of the common themes of these watercolours. The large, central glass goblet resembles the chalice of the Mass. There is an abundance in the garden flowers which fill it. The three glass chalices represent the scene of the crucifixion. They are charged with a translucent light, the white gouache heightening our sense of the luminous. Through the open window we glimpse a tree which reminds the viewer of the cross. This reflective painting captures the mystery of the Passion narratives through its rich symbolism, whilst the Christian iconography is implicit rather than explicit. There is a connection with David Jones’ meditation on the unity of all creation in the presence of God, ‘The Anathemata’, which was published in 1952.

From the 1940s onwards David Jones embarked on a series of painted inscriptions. They are amongst the most beautiful images in this exhibition. Initially he produced them as greetings cards to friends. There is a playful quality to them as the artist wilfully misspells words and mixes languages. But these are meditative pieces which demand the full attention of the viewer. They embody an understanding of the true presence of Jesus Christ in the Mass and as ‘the Word made flesh’ as expressed in ‘Quia Per Incarnati’.

The exhibition illustrates the development of, and influences on, the work of this complex artist in an accessible way. It allows us to see the consistent quality of line apparent throughout David Jones’ career and not least in his earlier wood engraved illustrations like ‘The Dove’.

‘David Jones: Vision and Memory’ will reward you whether you are familiar with the artist’s work or discovering him for the first time. You cannot fail to be delighted by this remarkable modern British artist with such strong links to Sussex. I am pleased that Toovey’s is amongst the headline sponsors of this insightful exhibition which runs until 21st February 2016 at the Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, PO19 1TJ. For more information about the gallery’s current exhibition program go to www.pallant.org.uk or telephone 01243 774557.

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 28th October 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.

China, the Maturing Market

The thing which never ceases to surprise me about doing business with the Chinese, in mainland China and here in the UK, is the phenomenal speed with which this creative and dynamic nation are adapting and changing in order to do business in the global economy.

In 2013 Toovey’s, together with a group of the UK’s leading regional auctioneers, formed the Association of Accredited Auctioneers (AAA) and were invited to China to form an exclusive working relationship with Epai Live, China’s largest mainland online auction platform for the marketing of art and antiques. The introduction of British auction practice and ethics was seen as an important part of this relationship in Beijing.

Rupert Toovey pictured here at the British Embassy in Beijing with Dr Qi Qi Jiang of Epai Live and Mr Gan Xuejun from the Chinese auction house, Huachen

The British Embassy hosted the launch of this agreement which was signed by the Epai Live Chief Executive, Dr Qi Qi Jiang and attracted much attention in the Chinese media.

A series of promotional lectures have established relationships with mainland collectors and the emerging aspirational professional class. Working with Epai Live continues to allow Toovey’s to overcome the obstacle of the Chinese internet firewall in order to market directly to Chinese mainland collectors.

There have been extraordinary developments in this market with an increasing connoisseurship evident amongst Chinese mainland collectors and specialist dealers. This rapid maturing of this is enormously important to the long term health of this market. The strength of demand has to date shown no signs of abating.

The Qianlong (1736-1795) Chinese famille rose vase sold at Toovey’s for £520,000

Demand from China has had a profound effect on collectors’ markets. Together with India, China looks set to recover its historic economic position. Between 1500 and 1850 AD China and India accounted for between 50% and 60% of the World’s GDP. Britain has the most varied and largest art and antiques market in the European Union, and the third largest internationally next to the US and China. Tom Rowsell, head of the specialist Chinese and Oriental sales at Toovey’s commented “In a few short years China has established itself as the world’s largest antiques market. The new super-rich Chinese elite have the money and the desire to dominate the market. Many of the strongest results in the UK are in the regions. Take for example the Chinese famille rose and pea green ground vase dating from the reign of the Emperor Qianlong which realised £520,000 at Toovey’s. It was sold to a Chinese mainland collector.”

Many areas of China’s economic activity appear to be slowing but their desire to acquire Chinese and increasingly European art and antiques remains undiminished – a trend which looks set to continue in this maturing sector of the collectors’ market.

Tom Rowsell concludes “Toovey’s have specialised in Chinese porcelain and works of art for almost twenty years, with a long standing Chinese client base. But we are continuing to successfully build relationships with new, emerging Chinese mainland collectors through our business activities out there, working with China’s leading collectors’ internet platform EpaiLive.”

Exciting times in this maturing international market!

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 21st October 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.

Portraying the Poor

‘A Girl feeding Pigs’, a watercolour by Thomas Rowlandson

The Horsham Museum and Art Gallery’s latest exhibition ‘Portraying the Poor and Industrious in the age of Waterloo’ seeks to tell the story of the rural and urban poor, and societies changing attitude towards them in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

A pencil and watercolour sketch titled ‘A Fishing Trip’ by George Morland

The Industrial Revolution in Britain had seen a mass movement of people from the countryside to towns and cities across the country. There had been a long tradition amongst artists of depicting hawkers and the poor in urban settings. However, with increasing fears of revolution at home as well as on the Continent, artists began to draw and paint the rural poor. The timeless social order of the countryside seemed safe against the perceived threats of the urban poor. English print makers reproduced and distributed these images very successfully placing them in the nation’s consciousness.

The 1790s saw two years of appalling harvests leading to starvation. Horsham had bread riots. Events like these led to the enclosure awards which were designed to enable efficiencies in farming. For example the Duke of Norfolk enclosed Horsham in 1813. But enclosure awards did not benefit everyone. Many of the people whose lives were bound up with agricultural land were profoundly affected.

The Agricultural Depression continued after the Napoleonic Wars and the Battle of Waterloo of 1815 until 1836. Crushing taxation connected with the post-war national debt, a glut of workers returning from military service, and the subsequent collapse in food prices came with heavy social and economic costs. The depression’s severity brought financial ruin upon landlords and tenant farmers alike.

Jeremy Knight with mezzotint engravings of rural scenes after George Morland and William Redmore Bigg

Exhibition curator, Jeremy Knight, stands next to a colour mezzotint print titled ‘The Rapacious Steward or Unfortunate Tenant’ after William Redmore Bigg (1755-1828). In this scene a tenant farmer is being taken from his family as the steward looks upon their distress dispassionately.

Jeremy Knight draws my attention to the charming sketch ‘A Fishing Trip’ by the artist George Morland (1763-1804). He comments “This sketch was almost certainly drawn on a visit to the Isle of Wight whilst the artist was avoiding his creditors in London”. Morland is well known for his rural landscapes, but he also painted coastal scenes like this one depicting fishermen and the poor. He employed a spirited technique producing a large body of work despite his own dissolute life which was often defined by drunkenness.

The artist Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) knew George Morland well. Jeremy enthuses “Thomas Rowlandson is probably one of the best known illustrators and caricaturists of the Regency period. When depicting the poor he often draws our attention to the activity and not the actual portrait.” I comment on the charming watercolour ‘Girl feeding Pigs’ by Rowlandson and Jeremy replies “Pigs were very important to the poor. Morland kept pigs in his house and often painted them being fed. Who knows, perhaps Rowlandson might have painted this picture in jest thinking of his friend.” Certainly Rowlandson is famous for caricaturing people’s vanities, eccentricities and hypocrisy.

These depictions provide a softened, romanticised view of the poor. A revival of the Church in England together with fears of revolution brought the plight of the poor to the public’s attention.

Jeremy Knight has once again placed our local history in the context of British art and national events in this imaginative exhibition. He is deserving of our thanks. The majority of the works on display are from private collections and are rarely seen. I am so glad that Toovey’s is supporting this fine exhibition. Admission is free and there is much to delight the visitor!

‘Portraying the Poor and Industrious in the Age of Waterloo’ runs until 28th November 2015 at the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery, 9 Causeway, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 1HE. For more information visit www.horshammuseum.org or telephone 01403 254959.

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 14th October 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.