Rupert Toovey’s Articles – Page 8

Sussex Heritage Trust 2024 Awards Launched at Berwick

Sussex Heritage Trust Chairman David Cowan and Rupert Toovey at Berwick Church

Leading architects, artisans and supporters gathered at St Michael and All Angels, Berwick, East Sussex for the launch of the 2024 Sussex Heritage Trust Awards.

Sussex Heritage Trust Chairman, David Cowan thanked The Revd. Peter Blee, headline sponsors Irwin Mitchell and all gathered for their hard work and support.

The church’s fine decorative scheme has recently been sensitively restored. It was commissioned by Bishop George Bell of Chichester. Bell was a great patron of the arts. He wished to see churches once more filled with colour and beauty. Eternal truths would be proclaimed anew in modern art, poetry and music. More people would be drawn into the Christian community by the revival of this old alliance and renewed vitality. Bell founded the Sussex Churches Art Council. Relying on generous patrons, like the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, he began to commission work. Keynes, a frequent visitor to Charleston, was close to Duncan Grant.

During the summer and autumn of 1940 the Battle of Britain was fought over the skies of Sussex. The Luftwaffe failed to defeat the R.A.F. but the Germans continued the Blitz into the May of 1941. Against this backdrop, Bishop Bell commissioned Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell to paint St Michael and All Angels. The parish church at Berwick is just a few miles from the artists’ home at Charleston.

Writing to her daughter Angelica Bell in 1941, Vanessa Bell proclaimed that Charleston was “all a-dither with Christianity”. Large panels were prepared to be painted on in the barn at Charleston. Family, friends and neighbours were used as models. These well known Christian stories were retold in paint and set in the Sussex landscape.

Sponsors Matthew Baker of NFU, Nicholas Toovey of Toovey’s and Daniel Grainge of Kreston Reeves

Initially the project met with local opposition but Kenneth Clark and Frederick Etchells acted as expert witnesses and the scheme was accepted. At the time Kenneth Clark was director of the National Gallery in London and Surveyor of the King’s Pictures.

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, alongside a number of Sussex companies, remain long-term sponsors and supporters of their important work.

The closing date for entries for this year’s Sussex Heritage Trust Awards is 22nd March. To find out more visit sussexheritagetrust.org.uk.

The House of Boucheron and The Art Deco

An Art Deco 18ct white gold Boucheron, diamond and aquamarine dress clip

Over millennia jewellery has held a fascination for humankind bringing together timeless gems, the skill of the craftsman and the beauty of the jewel. Jewellery often marks important moments in our lives, points of love, and the procession of history. Jewellery evolves to the delight of successive generations.

Amongst the leading designers and makers of the 20th century was the house of Boucheron. This French firm represents a family dynasty founded by Frederic Boucheron in 1858 who opened his first store in the Galerie de Valois at Palais Royal in Paris. The cornerstone of Boucheron’s reputation for making pieces of the finest quality was seeded in 1866 when he won a Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1867.

Jewellery designs from earlier periods have always been reinterpreted and adapted over the centuries with collectors prepared to pay a premium for original pieces. Alongside date and the quality of the stones the essential ingredient is the eye of a designers and makers like Boucheron and the skill of the maker.

In the first decades of the 20th century mainstream taste gravitated towards restrained clean lines.

These same qualities can be found in the Art Deco. Art Deco was a fashionable style in the inter-war years of the 20th century. It co-existed with machine age styles and modernism with clean lines and geometric designs. Art Deco combined the styles of early 20th century modernism with the avant-garde employing the fine craftsmanship and rich materials of French classical design. The principles of Art Deco chimed with the classical but with a new and fresh expression in contrast to the Art Nouveau which preceded it.

An Art Deco Boucheron Paris black onyx and black enamelled brooch, designed as a stylized feather mounted with cushion shaped diamonds

Boucheron embraced this new style as can be seen in the delicate design of the gold, black onyx and black enamelled brooch designed as a stylized feather mounted with cushion shaped diamonds.

The small Art Deco Boucheron 18ct white gold clip’s beautifully conceived fan design is set with circular cut diamonds set off by the delicate blue of the calibre cut aquamarines.

Both jewels were detailed ‘Boucheron’ and sold for £5000 and £12000 respectively at Toovey’s.

Throughout the 20th century the house of Boucheron remained one of the world’s great jewellery designers and makers. Queen Elizabeth II had a collection of Boucheron jewellery. Today the House of Boucheron continues as one of the world’s great luxury brands and delights collectors around the world.

Sargent and Fashion at Tate Britain

Madam X (detail), c.1884 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A breathtaking array of portraits by the avantgarde artist John Singer Sargent has just gone on show at Tate Britain.

John Singer Sargent was the most successful society portrait painter of the Belle Époque. His portraits evoke wealth, power, status and drama, providing windows into his sitters beyond the fashionable facades of the costumes which he exploited in his pursuit of intimacy, notoriety and an expression of beauty which is particular to this gifted and sensuous artist. Alongside many of the portraits on show are the costumes worn by his sitters and often chosen by Sargent.

Sargent was born in Florence. His American parents have been described as cultural nomads. As children they were exposed to art and culture across Europe by the artist’s mother. Sargent’s experience of art by Velasquez, Goya, Rembrandt and many other artists would prove formative.

In his youth Sargent displayed a precocious gift as an artist. His mother, ambitious for his talent, moved the whole family to Paris. There he would meet and later paint Claude Monet. Carolus-Duran taught him to paint quickly directly from his subject using a heavily loaded brush wet on wet allowing him to mix colours directly on the canvas. There is a brilliance in his fluid, spontaneous brushstrokes.

Today’s actors and celebrities wear costumes on the red carpet from the most famous designers to catch the eye and attention of society. Sargent understood this and was unafraid to court notoriety to gain attention and to promote his art. His upbringing made him a natural outsider at the heart of Parisian and London society. These bohemian qualities proved attractive to his wealthy patrons.

Dr Pozzi at Home (detail), c.1881 © The Armand Hammer Collection

Two of Sargent’s most notorious portraits are united in the exhibition. Dr Pozzi at Home depicts this brilliant gynaecologist, surgeon and prodigious lover not in formal attire but in a sensuous pose wearing a cardinal red dressing gown. Madam X captures Virgine Gautreau’s famous profile in a provocative pose and dress which shocked Parisian society at the 1884 Paris Salon. Gautreau skirted the fringes of Bohemian Paris and like Pozzi was known for her extramarital affairs. Gautreau and Pozzi were lovers.

Both portraits depict vanity and seduction. She is self-assured and commanding, his sexuality simmers in crimson red. He is looking, she is being looked at. Sargent’s virtuosity is apparent in their expressions, posture and costumes.

John Singer Sargent captured the essence of his times with a breathtaking ability to bring his subjects to life on canvas.

Sargent and Fashion at Tate Britain runs until 7th July 2024.

The Importance of Tea in the Life of the Nation

A set of four George III silver gilt bachelor’s teapots, London 1806 by Digby Scott & Benjamin Smith II

Tea is very important in our home especially for my wife. No tea no Teresa in the mornings – well a girl must have standards.

It is said that the first tea shop in England was opened in 1706 by Thomas Twining at 216 Strand in London where it remains to this day.

Parliament banned the importation of finished Chinese and other Asian silk and textiles in 1720 and this led to the British East India Company turning its attention to tea. Between 1720 and 1750 the company’s imports of tea quadrupled. Its imports of tea from Canton were some three times higher than any of its European rivals. With tea now its main import and with production rising in India the price stabilised making it less expensive than coffee with an inevitable growth in its popularity. In the 18th century tea replaced beer as our national drink. Much was made of its health benefits and the rise in tea drinking in Britain from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries was matched by a significant fall in mortality rates, though this may have just been a benefit from tea being made with boiling water thereby reducing water carried pathogens.

In the early 18th century tea was hugely expensive and an array of objects were made marking the drink’s new found popularity in Britain’s wealthiest homes. Many were made in silver like the set of three graduated rococo tea caddies decorated with C scrolls and pineapple finials. They were made in London in 1739 by the highly respected silversmith John Pero. Their contemporary sarcophagus shaped casket has a lock to keep the precious tea safe. They sold for £3600 at Toovey’s.

A set of three George II silver graduated rococo tea caddies, London 1739 by John Pero

Teapots, too, were used to serve tea in front of guests and were often made of silver. The exceptional set of four small silver-gilt classical revival bachelor’s teapots, each measuring just 3 1/2 inches in height, were made by Digby and Scott and Benjamin Smith II whose partnership produced some of the finest silver objects of the early 19th century. These elements of the classical revival taste were popular in the late Georgian and Regency periods. The teapots also sold at Toovey’s for £6800.

Although coffee’s popularity is on the rise today these tea related objects and their values still speak of the important place of tea in the life of our nation.

The Artist and Conservationist David Shepherd

David Shepherd’s Siberian Tiger painted in 2000

The Sussex based international artist David Shepherd, CBE, FRSA, FGRA (1931-2017) is still celebrated for his painting and work as an outspoken conservationist. One of the most popular and gifted realist artists of his generation he was famous for his paintings of wildlife and steam locomotives.

David travelled to Kenya in 1949 where he encountering Africa and its wildlife. After failing to become a game warden he returned to London intent on becoming an artist only to be rejected by the Slade. The artist Robert Goodwin took the young David Shepherd under his wing and taught him to paint.

I met David at numerous charitable events across the county over the years and we discovered that we were both Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts and shared a passion for nature and steam locomotives. Despite owning several steam locomotives David was always very encouraging of my daughter and I’s humble model railway which has lift-off landscape so it can be neatly stored. And this was the measure of a man who took great interest in others and the world he lived in. Outward facing and passionate he stood in defence of the natural world and particularly the African and Asian wildlife he captured so beautifully in his paintings.

Tigers feature prominently in his art. The Siberian Tiger painted by David on a small canvas in 2000 captures the nobility of this critically endangered species which is only found in Northeast China and the Russian Far East. The play of light on the undergrowth and fur accentuates the life and movement in the scene. There is an intensity to the tiger’s piercing gaze, alert to the world it inhabits. It sold at Toovey’s for £10,000.

A detail of David Shepherd’s Rhinos in Namibia painted in 1999

Namibia, like so many African countries, is constantly engaged in the defence of its black rhinos against illegal poaching. The country is home to more than a third of Africa’s black rhinos. David Shepherd captures the rare sight of two black rhinos together on the African savannah in his small oil Rhinos in Namibia. The rhinos appear to be moving towards us through the sun-baked sparsely wooded grassland. The heat, light and movement is once again stunningly captured. The painting also sold at Toovey’s for £9000.

David’s love of these wild animals is apparent not only in his painting but also in the work of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation which he founded in 1984 to champion endangered wildlife and their habitats across Africa and Asia.