Horsham Museum & Art Gallery – Page 5

Cabinets of Curiosity

A Peruvian Chimu effigy vessel painted with a face and decorative collar, circa 1100AD to 1450AD, with a Mexican Nayarit figure and a Mexican Veracruz pottery head

The latest exhibition at the Horsham Museum and Art Gallery, ‘Curiosity: A Tale of Quirky Collecting’, combines the delights of the Renaissance cabinet of curiosity with the enquiry of the 18th century Enlightenment. It charts the questioning journey of a 21st century Sussex antiquary. The objects form part of his private collection and have never before been seen together in public.

Between 1680 and 1820 the imaginations of some of Britain, Europe and America’s leading philosophers, scientists and writers were inspired by a new age of reason and learning which became known as the Enlightenment.

During the Renaissance rooms and cabinets of curiosities housed encyclopaedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. They were often known as wonder cabinets and rooms. Similarly 18th century collectors, antiquaries and travellers brought together, but also sought to classify, objects from the world around them. Many of these objects were categorised according to the seven major new areas of enquiry during the Enlightenment. These included: natural history, art and civilisation, religion and ritual, the birth of archaeology, discovery and trade, the translation of ancient scripts and classification.

These areas of enquiry are abundantly displayed in this exhibition’s cabinets of curiosity filled with wonder and learning at the Horsham Museum. The objects’ stories are bound together with their custodian’s very personal journey of discovery through collecting.

An incunabula, ‘Chronicle of the World’, printed in 1493

The story begins with geology. Encouraged by his mother, when 11 years old, he began to collect geological specimens. He would eventually amass more than seven hundred examples. From geology we move to the natural world and a Christmas gift of an antique taxidermy red squirrel given to our enlightened collector as a boy of fourteen. And then to books, not just as documents of learning but as aesthetic objects, like the ‘Chronicle of the World’ seen here which was published in 1493. It is an incunabula, a term given to any book which was printed rather than handwritten before 1501. It means cradle of printing. The printed words seem to lead us into the marvellous woodblock illustration which depicts a bustling harbour filled with trading ships and a city beyond. I share this collector’s fascination with books. They have been collected for millennia. The libraries of the ancient world must have been wondrous.

This gifted antiquarian writes how one day, feeling flush, he purchased a Chinese Han Dynasty (206BC to 220AD) pottery figure from a shop near the British Museum in London and his journey of discovery through antiquities began.

Ten ancient terracotta figures from the Indus Valley, circa 3000BC to 2000BC

There are some truly ancient objects in this exhibition. Look at the remarkable group of ten terracotta figurines from the Indus Valley which date from between 3000BC and 2000BC. It is thought that might they might be emblematic of fertility. The Bronze Age, Harrappan Civilisation (3300BC to 1900BC) of the Indus Valley extended from what is now northwest India through Pakistan to northeast Afghanistan. It flourished on the banks of the Indus River. This important civilisation was lost in the mists of time until it began to be rediscovered during the Archaeological Survey of India instigated by the British Raj in 1861. There is something remarkable in these figures being displayed against the backdrop of Horsham’s Causeway.

Alongside objects from Europe, the Indus and China are pieces from the ancient Aztec, Inca and Mayan civilisations of South America. These include the Picasso like Peruvian Chimu effigy vessel painted with a face and geometric collar which dates from between 1100AD and 1450AD. Beside it is a marvellous Mexican Nayarit red pottery figure wearing a bird headdress. It dates from 100BC to 250AD. The Mexican pottery Veracruz head, circa 400AD to 800AD, has wonderfully expressive features.

The romance of history and a curiosity about the past is often bound up with the joy of owning and observing objects. I love the qualities of an enquiring and learning journey expressed in this very personal exhibition of eclectic items. The displays in these wondrous cabinets of curiosity and discovery give us an insight into how human achievement has evolved over the centuries. They allow us to glimpse the 18th century age of Enlightenment’s spirit of enquiry which, it would seem, is alive and well in 21st century Sussex!

‘Curiosity: A Tale of Quirky Collecting’ runs until 5th March 2016, at the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery, The Causeway, Horsham, RH12 1HE. Entrance to the Museum and exhibition is free. It is the perfect half-term outing! 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.

Capability Brown

2016 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Britain’s most influential and famous gardener, Capability Brown. This remarkable English landscape gardener’s life and work is being celebrated in the latest exhibition at the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery. ‘Capability Brown in Horsham: Discovering a Lost Garden’ runs until the 12th March.

The landscape gardener Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown by Richard Cosway © Bridgeman images

The exhibition tells the story of how Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783) designed and constructed a landscape garden around the Jacobean mansion Hills Place for the Ingram family. Brown also worked for the Ingram’s at their Yorkshire home, Temple Newsam, where his gardens can still be seen. The Hills Place gardens were located on the outskirts of Horsham, but were lost when the Duke of Norfolk ploughed them up to turn them into farmland some 50 years after the garden’s completion.

The exhibition includes Brown’s original designs for the garden, together with the survey conducted by his assistant, Lapidge, some two years earlier in 1766. The story is told in the context of the time with costumes, porcelain and objects from the period alongside botanical paintings and letters relating to Brown’s work. The letters reveal Brown’s uncompromising, ambitious nature, and relationship with his clients as he produced his landscape art.

A rare depiction of the lost garden at Hills Place, Horsham

I ask exhibition curator Jeremy Knight what the designs tell us about Capability Brown’s work. He replies enthusiastically “I love that he knew what trees he was going to plant, and where, to create his landscape theatre. He often planted willows, spruce and cedars – cedars were his favourites.”

Brown’s clients and patrons came from the most notable families in England. Between 1751 and 1783 Brown and his team dealt with over 170 commissions and changed the face of Georgian England. Given the stature of his clients I have often wondered how Capability Brown managed their expectations, after all trees and woodland can take generations to establish. Jeremy Knight explains “He would have planted mature and young trees so that the picturesque would be there for the patron and subsequent generations. Often his designs include features like the water cascade at Hills Place. His landscape gardens were like a hyper-reality – nature perfected.”

The qualities of the picturesque are alive in Capability Brown’s landscape gardens. He composed and constructed vignette views onto sweeping lawns, curving lakes and beautifully conceived woodland clumps of trees. It is as though they are in a painting. These features are apparent in his landscape garden at Petworth House and Park, preserved and maintained by the National Trust. It continues to delight and inspire visitors through the seasons of the year.

This aesthetic was born out of the rococo in reaction to the formal straight lines and topiary of the French royal gardens designed by André Le Notre (1613-1700), which had been made popular in England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries by George London (d.1714) and Henry Wise (1653-1738). Together they had created the parterres at Hampton Court Palace, Chatsworth and Longleat.

Petworth House set in Capability Brown’s landscape garden

In early 18th century England there was a political desire, held by both the Whig government and Hanoverian King George I, to distance themselves from the excesses of the French Court at Versailles. This combined with a fascination for ‘unbounded nature’. In this climate Capability Brown’s park landscapes evolved in dialogue with his patrons. Perhaps this is why his idealised landscapes speak into the hearts and imaginations of the English and, in part, define us. Today his work can still be seen at Stowe, Blenheim Palace, and elsewhere, as well as at Petworth in West Sussex.

In celebration of Capability Brown’s 300th anniversary Visit England has declared 2016 as the Year of the English Garden. Sussex has much to celebrate in her gardens. Jeremy Knight has once again delivered an extraordinary and timely exhibition. Jeremy and the Horsham District Council are deserving of our thanks. ‘Capability Brown in Horsham: Discovering a Lost Garden’ runs at the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery, The Causeway, Horsham, RH12 1HE, until 12th March 2016. I am delighted that Toovey’s are supporting this revealing exhibition. Entrance to the Museum and exhibition is free. For more information go to www.horshammuseum.org or telephone 01403 254959.

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 27th January 2016 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.

200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo Remembered

After W. Heath - 'The Battle of Waterloo June 18th 1815', colour aquatint

This week sees the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, a moment in British history bound up with our national psyche.

The defeat of Napolean Bonaparte and the French at Waterloo, on the evening of Sunday 18th June 1815, brought to a close decades of conflict which began with the French Revolution in 1789 and continued with the Napoleonic Wars.

Napolean had been exiled to the island of Elba after his defeat by the Allies in 1814. He escaped from Elba in February 1815 and returned to Paris.

The Duke of Wellington was in command of the Allied forces in the Netherlands. In response to Napolean’s return he assembled the British forces from garrisons there and urgent reinforcements were sent from England. Although many British soldiers were away in America his forces totalled some 40,000 men. The remaining 100,000 were hired from the smaller powers as was customary. Each of the Allies mustered a quota similar in number. As the Russians and Austrians moved slowly towards the French borders the Prussians, under the command of Gebhard von Blucher, came up in May.

Napolean left Paris on the 12th June 1815 intending to drive a wedge between the British and the Prussians in order to divide and defeat them and regain Belgium.

On the 15th June Napolean attacked the Prussians on the Sambre driving them back to the North-East. The Belgians were also forced back towards Brussels as far as a farm house known as the Quatre Bras. Wellington ordered his forces to meet at Quatre Bras. He too was attacked but determinedly held his positon before drawing back and establishing himself at Waterloo.

On the 18th June column after column of Napolean’s forces fell upon the British only to be repelled by Wellington’s defensive technique and the discipline and courage of his troops. Evening brought the sound of the Prussian guns. Blucher had evaded the French forces deployed to keep him from the field of battle.

Now certain of his ally’s aid Wellington advanced his whole line of infantry under the support of artillery and cavalry. The French were driven from the battle field in confusion. Napolean’s power was broken. He fled to Paris and surrendered to British forces before being imprisoned on St Helena.

A Waterloo Medal with impressed naming to 'Quar. Mast. Ben. Sweeten, 1st Batt. 52nd Reg. Foot.'

Objects which make history tangible and alive are highly prized by collectors. This is particularly true of collectors of militaria and medals. Take for example the rare Waterloo Medal with impressed naming to ‘Quar. Mast. Ben. Sweeten, 1st Batt. 52nd Reg. Foot.’ It came with its original adapted steel clip but lacked the suspension ring. Together with a newspaper cutting relating to the Sweeten Family it sold for £4600 in a Toovey’s specialist medals auction to a Horsham based collector.

Circle of William Grimaldi - Oval Miniature Head and Shoulders Portrait of a British Military Officer in Uniform, decorated with a Waterloo Medal, early 19th Century watercolour on ivory

However, a lot of militaria remains much more affordable. For example the colour aquatint titled ‘The Battle of Waterloo June 18th 1815’, after W. Heath would sell for around £120. The oval miniature head and shoulders portrait of a British Military Officer in Uniform, decorated with a Waterloo Medal, dates from the early 19th Century and is a watercolour on ivory. It was sold at Toovey’s for £300.

If you would like to know more about the background to this most famous battle Horsham Museum and Art Gallery’s exhibition, ‘Waterloo: 100 Days’, explores the events that led to the final defeat and exile of Napolean Bonaparte. Horsham Museum is fortunate to have many original documents from the period including the plan of the barracks drawn in 1815 when the barracks were sold and dismantled. The exhibition features documents which illustrate how the town was dramatically affected by the soldiers giving a flavour of the period through costume, books, prints, china and glassware. The exhibition runs until 11th July 2015.

Toovey’s next specialist auction of Edged Weapons, Firearms, Medals, Awards and Militaria will be held on Wednesday 9th September 2015. To find out more telephone 01903 891955 or go to www.tooveys.com.

Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 17th June 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.

Free Toy Valuation Morning at Horsham Museum

Jeremy Knight and Christopher Gale — Jeremy Knight, curator of the Horsham Museum exhibition Dolly Mixture, with Christopher Gale, Toovey’s toys specialist

An early 20th-century Bing tinplate clockwork bus, auctioned by Toovey’s for £2800

Toys are so evocative; they provide prompts to childhood memories and a window into our imaginations. The current exhibition Dolly Mixture A Pageant of Dolls Through the Ages at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery looks at the diversity of dolls made over the centuries. In support of the exhibition, Toovey’s specialist toys valuer, Christopher Gale, will be at the museum this coming Saturday morning, 21st February, to provide free auction valuations and advice on your dolls and collectors’ toys.

Chris Gale says: “A third of the seller’s commission for items subsequently auctioned by Toovey’s will be donated by us to Horsham Museum to help with its important work.”

Bassett-Lowke at Toovey's — A Bassett-Lowke O-gauge electric locomotive and tender, circa 1936-40, auctioned by Toovey’s for £4500

History, heritage and objects have the power to transform our lives. They provide us with a common story. Horsham Museum is the cradle in which that common story is held, preserved and told – a narrative which is at the heart of our community.

George III doll at Toovey's — A George III carved wood and painted gesso doll with glass eyes, auctioned by Toovey’s for £5600

I tag along with Chris and exhibition curator Jeremy Knight as we view the show and their enthusiasm is infectious. Jeremy explains, “I decided on the title Dolly Mixture because dolls come in all shapes and sizes and have been made from wood, cloth, wax, porcelain and plastic. They have been a constant feature in childhoods over centuries.” The play on words recalling the colourful variety of those ever-popular Dolly Mixture sweets isn’t wasted on Chris or myself.

Wooden dolls date from the earliest times. Dolls have been found in Egyptian tombs and Greek and Roman children are known to have played with them.

Doll circa 1760 at Horsham Museum — A carved wood and painted gesso doll, circa 1760, from Horsham Museum’s collection

I comment on an 18th-century doll whose head appears to be of carved wood and painted gesso. Jeremy Knight responds enthusiastically: “That’s right. This 1760s doll was found under the floorboards of the medieval hardware shop Glaysher’s, which used to be in Middle Street, Horsham.” The shop was deemed to be in poor condition and was dismantled in 1967. Fortunately, it is preserved at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton. Jeremy continues, “The dress is not contemporary to the doll. We don’t know if this is the dress she was discovered in, or whether it is a later addition by the Museum in the early 1970s.” I ask if the doll is made solely of wood. “The arms and legs are kid leather,” replies Jeremy.

Chris Gale adds: “We auctioned a very similar 18th-century wooden doll at Toovey’s for £5600, despite having replacement arms and legs, other alterations and problems of condition. The black glass eyes and carved and painted facial details are typical of the rare examples of this date. People are often surprised and delighted by how valuable their old toys are!” I am reminded of the wealth of Dinky and Corgi vehicles, model trains, tinplate and clockwork toys which accompany the dolls and teddy bears on the shelves of the toys department at Toovey’s.

Dolly Mixture is currently on show at Horsham District Council’s Horsham Museum in the Causeway, Horsham. So come to play with toys specialist Chris Gale between 10am and 12noon this Saturday, 21st February 2015, for a morning of fun and free pre-sale valuations. Who knows, your old toys could just be your hidden treasure! A third of the seller’s commission for items seen at the event and subsequently auctioned by Toovey’s will be donated to the Friends of Horsham Museum. So sellers would receive the full amount they would normally get but they would know that they have helped the Museum as well. “Funds received this way will go towards the conservation of the historic toy collection,” says Jeremy Knight, “enabling future generations to show their children what they played with when they were young.” For more information on Dolly Mixture A Pageant of Dolls Through the Ages, go to www.horshammuseum.org or telephone 01403 254959.

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 18th February 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.