Tag: Pallant House Gallery

Old Masters and the Modern Art Show

Jean Antoine Watteau, Etude de Quatres Personnages, avec Deux Femmes Assises, c.1708, Sanguine chalk on paper © Pallant House Gallery

This week I am returning to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to see Old Masters, Modern Masters, Drawings from the Hussey Bequest.
This small, jewel like exhibition showcases some of the most beautiful and significant objects in the gallery’s collection. The selection of old master drawings, ballet prints and British landscape watercolours are taken from The Very Reverend Dean Walter Hussey’s collection.

In the exhibition’s accompanying essay Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery, explains that by their very nature drawings are vulnerable to light and can only be exhibited very occasionally. He describes them as ‘hidden secrets’. So it is a great treat to see so many on display at one time.

Walter Hussey’s collection of artworks became the founding collection of Pallant House Gallery some 40 years ago.

Hussey held the conviction that so long as the quality was right there was no barrier to placing art of different periods side-by-side, a principle he applied to his commissions of Modern British Art at Chichester Cathedral during his time there as Dean.

Hussey often selected works on the advice of the modern British artist who he worked with. The beautiful sanguine chalk drawing of a group of figures by the French rococo artist Jean Antoine Watteau from 1708 is a good example of this. He purchased the drawing on the advice of the sculptor Henry Moore. The accomplished depiction of the drapery of the ladies’ dresses gives them form. Henry Moore often incorporated figure groups into his own work.

Henry Moore, Two Sleepers, 1941 Crayon, chalk and wash on paper © Pallant House Gallery

This is apparent in the study Two Apprehensive Shelterers from 1942. Henry Moore’s depiction of these two vulnerable figures has a poignancy which speaks into our own times with the experience of the people of Ukraine. It is one of a body of work known as his Shelter Drawings which Moore produced as a war artist during the Blitz. Returning to his studio, the Shelter Drawings were often made from his memory of the experience of people sheltering underground as the bombs fell on London and elsewhere. The figures are depicted with dignity recording feelings of confinement and claustrophobia. Whilst the figures are anonymous the relationships between them is clear.

Other drawings on show include Hussey’s passion for Old Masters and the British landscape with watercolours by Giulio Romano, Thomas Gainsborough, John Robert Cozens, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland and others.

Old Masters, Modern Masters, Drawings from the Hussey Bequest, provides an insight into the tastes, influences and thinking of one of the 20th century’s most important patrons of art. It runs until 10th April 2022.

Ben Nicholson: From the Studio

John Webb, Ben Nicholson’s Studio, London, 1982 © The Late John Webb FRPS

This week I am in the company of Pallant House Gallery Director Simon Martin exploring the gallery’s latest exhibition Ben Nicholson: From the Studio.

I ask Simon about the central themes of the exhibition, he replies “During a career spanning six decades Ben Nicholson used the humble still life as a vehicle for experimentation. It’s interesting how antique objects inspired one of our most famous modernists. There is a real sense of his pleasure in objects in his work.”

The exhibition looks at the inspiration of objects whilst telling the story of the relationships in Ben Nicholson’s life. In particular his artistic and romantic relationships with his wife Winifred Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth.

In a letter to a friend, Nicholson acknowledged ‘I owe a lot to my father…not only from what he made as a painter, but from the very beautiful striped and spotted jugs and mugs and goblets, and octagonal and hexagonal glass objects he collected. Having those things in the house was an unforgettable early experience for me.’

This creative exhibition explores the importance of still life and the studio within Nicholson’s art from his early, highly finished realist paintings to the abstract reliefs that secured his international reputation. Distinctive striped jugs, mochaware mugs and glassware are displayed alongside the paintings, carved reliefs and works on paper which they inspired. The photograph of Nicholson’s studio shows it filled with objects.

Nicholson would move from painting in a realist way to a faux-naïve manner, and then to abstraction with the development of an interplay between space and depth in his famous carved relief panels which explore the same interests but with a new vocabulary.

Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth were influenced by their time in Paris where they spent time with Constantin Brȃncusi, Hans Arp, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, all of whom had explored cubism and abstraction through objects.

Ben Nicholson, June 16- 47 (still life), Oil and pencil on board, Private Collection, © Angela Verren Taunt. All rights reserved, DACS 2021

The abstract June 16 – 47 (Still Life) expresses the joy and stability in being accompanied in life by beautiful objects be they humble ceramics, glass, or paintings and sculptures by one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

The wholeness of the art and objects exhibited together reminds me of the aesthetic of Jim Ede’s home Kettles Yard in Cambridge. Jim Ede would acknowledged the influence of Ben and Winifred Nicholson on him.

Simon Martin concludes “These objects were a vital presence in the numerous studios Nicholson inhabited during his life and were of central importance in his still life paintings.”

The beautiful works on show, the very personal narrative provided by the objects and the focus on Nicholson’s relationships gives this refreshing exhibition a rich textural quality – modern but not minimalist.

Ben Nicholson: From the Studio runs at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester until the 24th October 2021.

Art is harmony in parallel with nature

Édouard Vuillard’s ‘Modèle assise dans un fauteuil, se coiffant’, oil © Pallant House Gallery 2020

This week I thought I would take you to Pallant House Gallery for a flavour of their latest show Degas to Picasso. The exhibition provides a platform to showcase a number of the international, continental European modern prints and paintings in the gallery’s collection from the 19th and 20th centuries. It includes works by Degas, Manet, Picasso, Bonnard, Klee and Léger.

Amongst my favourite images on display is the 1898 lithograph by the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne titled ‘Les Grands Baigneurs’. Cézanne is regarded by many as the father of modern art. His work foreshadows Cubism and Fauvism. In this image the abstracted figures are united with the artist’s emotional engagement with the rhythms in nature and the landscape. Writing to a friend in the 1890s Cézanne would declare “Art is a harmony parallel with nature.”

Paul Cezanné, ‘Les Grands Baigneurs’, lithograph © Pallant House Gallery 2020

The print seems to evoke Cézanne’s fond memories of swimming as a schoolboy with his closest friends, Émille Zola and Jean-Baptiste Baille in the Arc River near his home in Aix-en-Provence. It is an expression of idealised comradeship, of true friendship rather than passing acquaintance. It is my experience that the best and most creative things in life always come out of long-term relationships built on trust. These ideals were highly valued by the novelist Émille Zola.

The other is another intimate scene ‘Modèle assise dans un fauteuil, se coiffant’ from 1903 by the Post-Impressionist Édouard Vuillard. It was painted in Vuillard’s studio in Rue Truffant in Paris where his mother ran the family sewing business. It is redolent of many of the artist’s interiors. Vuillard believed that a painting is a grouping of harmonious lines and colours. The beautiful pattern of the brushwork in this oil on paper gives life, texture and space to the scene. There is an economy in the palette Vuillard employs which draws our eye through the composition. At the centre the model is lost in her thoughts as she combs and pins her hair.

This exhibition reminds us that many Modern British artists, including Walter Sickert and Harold Gilman, were influenced by the modern artistic movements of continental Europe.

As a nation we have always embraced the ‘modern’ across the centuries whilst, of course, keeping one eye on the past. After all the British are a processional people – we celebrate the past as we confidently embrace the future. Our eclectic taste, like our art, is distinctive to our island nation. The influence of the international has always informed British culture reflecting our nation’s global, outward facing character.

The importance of our museums, theatres and art galleries in articulating our hopes, common stories and identity is often overlooked and misunderstood: as is their significant and positive economic impact on our local economy. I hope that our politicians will continue to look at creative ways to support this sector through the current challenges.

These are difficult times for our county’s museums, theatres and art galleries. I hope that you will join me in supporting them once the current restrictions are eased.

Gilbert White’s Tercentenary Celebrated at Pallant House

John Nash, A pair of Hoopoe Birds from‘The Natural History of Selborne’, c.1972 © Estate of John Nash

Pallant House Gallery’s exhibition Drawn to Nature: Gilbert White and the Artists celebrates 300 years since the birth of the Revd. Gilbert White and the centenary of the Society of Wood Engravers. It runs from the 11 March to the 28 June 2020.

The Revd. Gilbert White (1720-1793) was a remarkable man, a pioneering naturalist who hugely influenced the development of the science of natural history, an author and a gardener. He is perhaps most famous for his book ‘The Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne’. A man of God with a love and interest in science and the natural world sits well with me. It is often argued that White’s study of earthworms and their vital role in creating topsoil influenced Charles Darwin’s thinking around evolution.

White’s Natural History recounts his daily observations of the animals, birds and plant life found on his doorstep in Hampshire and nearby in the South Downs in Sussex. Published in 1789 it was an immediate success.

Gilbert White’s Natural History has also inspired artists over the centuries and never more than in the 20th century as highlighted by the works on display.

In the 20th century many artists rediscovered their role as artisan artists and designers whilst working as painters and sculptors of fine art. One of the ways that this was expressed was by making printed woodblock illustrations for fine books printed by private presses.

Eric Ravilious, The Tortoise in the Kitchen Garden from ‘The Writings of Gilbert White of Selborne’, ed., H.J.Massingham, London, The Nonsuch Press, 1938

The artist Robert Gibbings influenced the revival of wood engraving by artists. In 1920 he founded the Society of Wood Engravers. Members working in Sussex included Eric Ravilious and John Nash. The society ignited a revival of wood engraving where the designs and the blocks were created by the artist, making that vital connection between the artist and the final print.

Eric Ravilious displays the line, flecking and crisp edging which define his woodblocks in The Tortoise in the Kitchen Garden. It depicts Gilbert White in his garden. A keen gardener from his youth, White increasingly took a close interest in the natural world around him, and grew a wide range of traditional and experimental fruit and vegetables, recording weather, temperature and other details.

Clare Leighton, Hop-pickers from‘GilbertWhite, TheNatural History of Selborne’ c.1941, wood engraving on paper © Estate of Clare Leighton

Clare Leighton also belonged to this revival of wood engraving. Her work combines a deep understanding of life and love informed by her Christian faith, with a captivating simplicity and honesty. Many of her compositions are characterized by the use of a series of underlying curves which at once unite the subjects in her pictures while articulating movement, qualities which are apparent in the composition of Hop Pickers.

Against some opposition from her family Clare Leighton persuaded her parents to allow her to attend the Brighton School of Art. She was friends with Hilaire Belloc, who lived at Shipley windmill near Horsham, and Eric Gill, who was at this point living in Ditchling.

John Nash’s Pair of Hoopoe Birds is one of a series of joyful illustrations to White’s natural history.

The exhibition Drawn to Nature: Gilbert White and the Artists brings together a wonderful collection of images, each inspired by Gilbert White’s Natural History. It runs at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester from 11 March – 28 June 2020.

German Émigré Artist Walter Nessler at Pallant House

Walter Nessler – Pigeons on Windowsill, Paris, oil, c.1952 © The Artist’s Estate

This week I am visiting the retrospective exhibition of the German émigré artist Walter Nessler (1912-2001) at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, with the artist’s son Conrad.

Walter Nessler’s work reflects the plight of the émigré artist and the challenges of the war years. Nessler fled the Nazis and although he was not Jewish he felt an affinity with the Jews. He moved to London in 1937 where he lived until his death in 2001. However, there was always a sorrow in being separated from ‘his’ Germany and ‘his’ Dresden.

Walter Nessler – Haverstock Hill, London, oil, c.1938-9 © The Artist’s Estate

The bleak palette of the war years can be seen in Haverstock Hill painted in 1938/9. Its subdued blues and greys and the camouflage effect patterns in the painting lend the scene a surreal quality. After the war this muted palette would be replaced with the vibrant colours which were such a part of Nessler’s German Expressionist training.

Nessler worked intermittently for the Marlborough and Leger Galleries in London during the 1940s and 1950s during which time he visited Paris. His painting was inspired by the city’s artists and streets. He met Picasso, Giacometti and Cocteau. In the post-war period there was a return to a sense of optimism in his work expressed in bold outlines and colour.

Conrad explains how his mother and father were divorced in 1947 when he was six years old and the joy of rebuilding his relationship with his father and rediscovering his art later in life. He says “I believed in him and loved his work. His work stands up very well against his peers. This exhibition at Pallant House Gallery affirms my father’s reputation and that my confidence in him and his work was right.”

My eye is taken by a vibrant oil on canvas titled Pigeons on Windowsill, Paris painted in 1952.

Speaking about the painting Conrad remarks “I am confident that the bridge is the Pont Neuf and for me this is an optimistic landscape. My father had a wonderful sense of humour as you can see in his depiction of the pigeons. I often question whether the fish are in the Seine or a bowl?”

I agree, the view is hopeful and playful in its depictions of the birds and fishes in a strident palette – the outline of a cup of coffee on the windowsill. But this optimism is held in tension. The composition of the picture is divided. The dramatic depiction in monochrome of Parisian street architecture and jagged branches describe a sorrow and the shadow of war.

This retrospective of Walter Nessler’s work portrays him as an emotionally intelligent artist who remained optimistic but owned with integrity that he and his art were informed both by the joys and the sorrows of his life. It reflects a very personal journey of reconciliation and hope expressed through art.

‘Walter Nessler – Post-war Optimist’ runs at Pallant House Gallery until 6th October 2019. For more information visit www.pallant.org.uk.

And you must make time to see the exceptional and beautiful ‘Ivon Hitchens: Space through Colour’ exhibition whilst you are there.

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.