Pallant House Gallery – Toovey’s Blog

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.

Dora Carrington at Pallant House

Dora Carrington – Lytton Strachey Reading, oil, c.1916 © National Portrait Gallery London

The winter season of exhibitions has just opened at Pallant House Gallery with a reassessment of the life and art of Dora Carrington.

Dora Carrington liked to call herself Carrington. She thought ‘Dora’ was vulgar and sentimental. A bohemian, Carrington found herself at the heart of a passionate group of artists, writers and friends from the Bloomsbury Group. Her lovers, who included men and women, and friends profoundly influenced her work. Much of the work of this gifted female artist is on a domestic scale which is refreshing. Travel, love, relationships, sexuality and the importance of place are recurring themes. Carrington’s work was never critically acclaimed during her lifetime and the paintings form a very intimate, personal expression and observation of her life.

Dora Carrington – Farm at Watendlath, oil, c.1921 © Tate

Carrington fell in love with the homosexual writer Lytton Strachey in 1915 and a year later she painted an intimate portrait of him reclining and reading. Her love for him is apparent in the intimacy with which she observes his long slender fingers, face and soft reddish beard. Strachey and Carrington first set up home together at Tidmarsh Mill near Pangbourne in 1917. There Ralph Partridge fell in love with Carrington and attracted the attentions of Strachey. Ralph and Carrington were married in 1921, not so much for love but to preserve the ménage à trois with Strachey. On the day she agreed to marry Partridge she wrote movingly to Strachey ‘I cried last night Lytton, whilst he slept by my side sleeping happily – I cried to think of a savage cynical fate which had made it impossible for my love ever to be used by you…’. It was on holiday with Ralph Partridge in Cumbria in 1921 that Carrington began her affair with Ralph’s friend Gerald Brenan. The landscape, Farm at Watendlath, seems to capture the emotional turmoil of their relationships. The farm where they all stayed is painted beneath the brooding Cumbrian hills. The description in Virginia Woolf’s diary of the tensions in Carrington’s life are apparent throughout this show. Woolf would write how likeable, impulsive and self-conscious Carrington was ‘…eager to please, conciliatory, restless, and active…’. The exhibition leaves you with a sense that although Carrington embraced the freedoms and spirit of a bohemian life it was costly to her. Her love for Lytton Strachey could not be fulfilled. She nursed him and heartbroken after his death she committed suicide.

Dora Carrington at Pallant House is an exhibition filled with beauty, joy and sorrow. An intimate portrayal of Carrington’s life expressed through her art and letters.

Still Life in Britain at Pallant House

Eric Ravilious’ Ironbridge Interior, 1941, © Towner, Eastbourne

A rather wonderful exhibition has just opened at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester which explores the place of the Still Life in the procession of British art with a particular emphasis on the 20th century and the contemporary. The Still Life was introduced to England in the 17th century by the Dutch. Ever since artists have used the genre to explore and experiment.

The show is arranged chronologically with works from the 17th century to the present day and cleverly traces the progression of British art from realism and post-impressionism through the major art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. In the first room Ethel Walker’s ravishing Flower Piece No.4 keeps company with paintings by Ivon Hitchens, Harold Gilman, the Scottish Colourists and a delicate interior scene by the Sussex artist Eric Ravilious titled Ironbridge Interior. I’ve often reflected that an English Country House interior is made up of a series of Still Lifes formed of eclectic, arranged objects, art and furniture. Here Ravilious paints the restrained interior with his customary use of light. The hatching, shadows, tone and colour on the chair, wall and flower filled jug lending life to the stillness of this scene. The composition cleverly creates a layered perspective leading the viewer’s eye through the room to the window and landscape beyond.

Ben Nicholson’s oil St Ives, Cornwall (detail) © Tate

Ben Nicholson’s beautiful Still Life, St Ives, Cornwall, painted in 1943-45, depicts a large white mug on a curtained windowsill which, like Ravilious’ interior, draws the eye to the landscape through the window where toy-like, traditional fishing boats nestle against the backdrop of sea and sky. The Union Jack wouldn’t look out of place on a seaside sandcastle. There is an innocence to the scene which contrasts with the experience of war. 17th century Still Lifes are often filled with allegory. The Nazis considered modernist art to be degenerate so the painting’s modernism is an allegory in itself which provides a very British, understated voice speaking eloquently and powerfully of peace and innocence in reaction to the violence of Nazism.

Director of Pallant House Gallery, Simon Martin, has described this season’s series of exhibitions as “…an artistic journey that transcends time and borders and invites you to explore the intersections of tradition and innovation.”

This exhibition shows us how the genre of Still Life has constantly evolved reflecting our changing society and the themes of love, loss, beauty, decay and consumerism. The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain is a stunning exhibition, eloquent and beautiful. You really must see it.

Easter – A Pilgrimage from Tragedy to Hope

The St Mary Magdalene Chapel, Chichester Cathedral, with Graham Sutherland’s ‘Noli me tangere’

Easter in the Christian tradition marks a pilgrimage from tragedy towards hope. These themes are given powerful voice in Graham Sutherland’s paintings of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.

Sutherland’s 1947 version of the ‘Crucifixion’ from the Hussey Bequest is displayed at Pallant House Gallery. It illustrates the artist’s obsession with thorns as metaphors for human cruelty; their jagged lines are reflected throughout the composition. Sutherland acknowledged the influence of photographs taken by the American military in the Nazi concentration camps at Belsen, Auschwitz and Buchenwald on his Crucifixions remarking “many of the tortured bodies looked like figures deposed from crosses”. His 1947 Crucifixion depicts Jesus’ body hanging lifeless on the cross. The shocking red of Christ’s blood is accentuated by the fertile green. There is agony in the body’s posture, the weight clearly visible in the angular shoulders, chest and distorted stomach. This is a God who understands and shares in human suffering. Graham Sutherland, a Roman Catholic, was sustained by his Christian faith all his life.

Graham Sutherland’s ‘Crucifixion’ 1947 at Pallant House Gallery

Sutherland gave voice to a common story. His Crucifixions reflected people’s experience of evil in the world and yet spoke loudly of the triumph of hope in response to the tragedy of violence and war. They sadly resonate with our own times.

Graham Sutherland’s vibrant oil on canvas ‘Noli me tangere’ of 1961 was commissioned by Walter Hussey for the St Mary Magdalene Chapel in Chichester Cathedral.

The painting depicts the moment on that first Easter morning when Mary Magdalene becomes aware that she is in the presence of her risen Lord who has just spoken her name. As she reaches out to touch him his gesture stops her. The angular composition of the figures, plants and staircase allude to the Passion narratives which lead up to and include Jesus’ crucifixion. At the centre of the painting is Jesus Christ dressed in white symbolising his holiness and purity. Christ’s finger points towards God the Father symbolising His presence. Graham Sutherland invites us into the narrative at this liminal moment so that we, like Mary, might acknowledge Jesus, our teacher and friend, as advocate and redeemer of the whole world.

Here in the story of Jesus we witness the triumph of hope and love over evil and hatred.

There are a series of services at Chichester Cathedral in the coming days to mark Holy Week and Easter. For more information and times go to www.chichestercathedral.org.uk. To find out more about Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, visit to www.pallant.org.uk.

John Craxton’s Sunlight, Joy and Colour On Show At Pallant House

John Craxton, Still Life with Sailors, 1980-1985

The artist John Craxton (1922-2009) was a contemporary and friend of Lucian Freud. The current exhibition, John Craxton: A Modern Odyssey, at Pallant House Gallery concentrates on his life and work.

The show is arranged chronologically portraying the artist’s life as an odyssey from his early life in pre-war Britain and culminating in his awakening in Greece.

John Craxton was born into a Bohemian, musical family in London. He lived in his imagination drawing on his fascination for the ancient and mythology, themes expressed in his art. As he struck out he produced a series of melancholic landscapes and was, to his annoyance, associated by many with the Neo-Romantic movement.

His early self portrait displays the introspective qualities and palette of much of his work from this earlier period.

The influences of his mentor Graham Sutherland and the inspiration of Picasso, who he met, began to permeate his paintings with an increasingly radiant palette.

Shortly after the end of the war, in 1946, Craxton’s odyssey finally arrived in Greece. He was accompanied by his rebellious friend and contemporary, the artist Lucian Freud. Once in Greece Craxton’s work began to be emblematic of his homosexuality the works filled with a new found freedom; a sense of joyous rebelliousness and liberation. The work is far less introspective. He painted portraits, life and the scenes around him. The paintings are inculcated with the influences of cubism and surrealism with bold outlines and vibrant colour. The resilience of the people and the animals in the landscape are often tinged with a breaking smile, perhaps reflecting Craxton’s state of mind.

Still Life with Three Sailors painted in the 1980s captures these qualities. It depicts three conscripted sailors seated at a table in a Cretan taverna on the harbourside. These later works draw on Greece’s layered creative history, myths, sculpture, Byzantine mosaics and Icons. The sailors are like mariners in a Greek myth far from home.

But it is the composition, palette and domesticity of the scene which delights. The wall notice behind them implores taverna dancers not to break the plates whilst being applauded with the words ‘No Breakage by Order’. There is a lightness and humour to Craxton’s signing of the cigarette packet and dating of the beer bottle.

It is in these later works that you find sunlight, joy and colour – the perfect antidote to our winter rain and grey weather.

John Craxton: A Modern Odyssey runs at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester until 21st April 2024.