Pallant House Gallery – Page 6

Classicism in Modern British Art

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1945 © Henry Moore Foundation

‘Idealism & Uncertainty Classicism in Modern British Art’ at the Pallant House Gallery is this season’s must see exhibition. Simon Martin, the gallery’s Artistic Director and Curator of this show, has once again demonstrated his remarkable insight into this period of British artistic endeavour.

The exhibition is the first to explore how Modern British artists referenced the past as they developed a distinctive form of modern art. It is a particular characteristic of the British that as we embrace the future and celebrate the modern we always have one eye on the past. Our art, like our nation’s history, reflects procession as well as revolution. The work on display reflects the experience of war and the social concerns which defined Britain in the 20th century.

Meredith Frampton, Portrait of Marguerite Kelsey © Tate

Against the backdrop of the political uncertainties of the 1930s, classicism in Britain became a style associated with progressive traditionalists. This influence is reflected in the work of artists like Meredith Frampton who sought clarity and precision in her portraits.

After the experience of the Great War artists like Wyndham Lewis and Frederick Etchells developed a more rounded form of figurative art in contrast to their earlier Vorticist and Cubist work.

Ben Nicholson, Heads, 1933, image courtesy of Tate © Angela Verren Taunt

Whilst figurative artists like Paul Nash experimented with Surrealism their art was still broadly figurative, executed with a purity of line.

This search for purity of line and simplicity, Simon Martin argues, is also expressed in the work of abstract artists associated with groups like Unit One. Ben Nicholson’s exquisite study of his lover, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, depicted in silhouette communicates an extraordinary tenderness through its paired down qualities of line and tone. Here Hepworth’s head gazes into the eyes of a man, presumably Nicholson, who is depicted as a Roman Emperor or god. The couple had holidayed in St Rémy de Provence at Easter in 1933 and it is likely that the nearby Roman ruins of Glanum influenced the work.

Henry Moore’s figures also express a concern with, what Simon Martin describes as, ‘classicising form’ which can be seen in the recumbent figure from 1945.

The strength of the narrative of this show is exceptional. The works are confidently placed in the context of their time and the procession of classicism in art history, re-interpreted by Modern British artists. Simon Martin is to be congratulated.

I am excited that Toovey’s Fine Art Auctioneers are sponsoring this ‘must see show’. ‘Idealism & Uncertainty: Classicism in Modern British Art’ at Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, PO19 1TJ, runs until 19th February 2017.

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.

Christopher Wood – a Sophisticated Primitive

Christopher Wood, ‘China Dogs in a St Ives Window, Pallant House Gallery

A major exhibition on the artist Christopher Wood (1901-1930) has just opened at Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery. Curated by Katy Norris, it explores the complex life and importance of this ‘sophisticated primitive’.

Katy Norris has delivered an exemplary exhibition which highlights the influence of continental artists on Wood and his pivotal position in the Modern British Art Movement as he navigated a path between the representational art of the Victorian and Edwardian periods and the new abstraction of the 1930s.

The exhibition charts the chapters of this talented artist’s all too short life.

Christopher Wood, ‘Self-Portrait, 1927’, Kettles Yard, University of Cambridge

The twenty year old Christopher Wood arrived in Paris in 1921 where he met Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and others. He was also influenced by the Post-Impressionists including Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Rousseau. He wrote to his mother in 1922 explaining how these artists endeavoured to interpret their subjects as though ‘through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except that which would strike them as being the most important.’ Seeking this essential view of the word lends an intensity to his work.

Christopher Wood’s first trip to Cornwall in 1926 affirmed the artist in him. It was during this visit that he painted one of his most iconic and finest pictures titled ‘China Dogs in a St Ives Window’. This playful painting brings together the naïve style which Wood had developed in Paris and a playful lyricism which imparts his sense of new-found freedom.

The quintessentially English scene is inspired by Victorian Staffordshire ceramic dogs. The Spaniels are framed by the chair and window. The composition leads our eye to the steamer and lighthouse in this primitive, artistic interpretation of St Ives harbour.

Christopher Wood depicts himself in a harlequin-patterned jumper in his 1927 Self – Portrait. There is an introspective intensity of emotion apparent in his face as we observe him. It is as though we are looking out of the canvas upon which he stands to paint. The influence of the untrained, candid representations of Post-Impressionist, Henri Rousseau can be seen here.

In the summer of 1928 Christopher Wood returned to St Ives with the artist Ben Nicholson. Whilst there he discovered the work of the self-taught painter and former fisherman, Alfred Wallis. Wood took on Wallis’ iconography depicting the Atlantic fishing industry and coast. Wood’s brushwork appears intuitive and spontaneous.

Christopher Wood, ‘Harbour in the Hills, University of Essex

Wallis’ influence is particularly apparent in ‘Harbour in the Hills’. Painted in 1928, the sea is depicted as swirling bands of light greys and charcoals which contrast with the intensity of the green hills.

In his youth in Paris Christopher Wood had become addicted to opium. By now his life oscillated between his intense social life and solitary periods of painting.

Christopher Wood, ‘Dancing Sailors’, Leicester Arts and Museums Service

In the summer of 1930 Christopher Wood painted his final series of some forty pictures at Treboul in Brittany over a period of six weeks. They depict an idealised view of these Breton seafarers, their customs and spirituality. This is captured in ‘Dancing Sailors’. Wood’s addiction lends a pulsating intensity to the painting.

Shortly after completing these works Christopher Wood tragically took his own life when he jumped in front of a train at Salisbury station.

Katy Norris’ superb monograph ‘Christopher Wood’ provides an insightful companion to this outstanding exhibition and is on sale at the Pallant House Gallery Bookshop.

At its heart the exhibition explores Christopher Wood’s pervading interest in Primitivism in the context of his life. It examines the international and domestic influences on his work, and how his faux-naïve style would contribute to the journey towards more progressive forms of modernism in art in 1930s Britain.

‘Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive’ runs until 2nd October 2016 and brings together often rarely seen works – what a summer holiday treat!

For more information on current exhibitions, events and opening times go to www.pallant.org.uk or telephone 01243 774557.

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.

Art and Design at the Heart of Change in Postwar Britain

John Piper’s large ‘Arundel’ fabric panel © The Piper Estate

This week I am returning to Pallant House Gallery’s latest exhibition ‘John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism’ which runs until 12th June 2016.

This insightful and visually stunning exhibition has been curated by Pallant House Gallery Director, Simon Martin. It explores John Piper’s important relationship with both the church and industry. It is the first major exhibition to explore John Piper’s textile designs.

John Piper had a long standing interest in textile design. He had taken part in the 1941 exhibition ‘Designs for Textiles by Twelve Fine Artists’ which formed part of the wartime export drive. It was the first of a series of influential shows organised by the Cotton Board. Other participating artists included Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious and Graham Sutherland, all of whom worked in Sussex.

John Piper’s ‘Abstract’ fabric © The Piper Estate

This generation of British artists restored the Renaissance tradition of the artisan artist.

The Pallant House Gallery exhibition highlights the idea of ‘painterly textiles’ during the period of post-war austerity. Art and design formed part of the re-articulation of hope and national identity after the experience of two world wars and in the face of enormous political, social and religious change. It fell to artists and their patrons to give voice to this new national consciousness. This was reflected in John Piper’s commercial designs as much as in his art and ecclesiastical schemes for tapestries, vestments and windows.

David Whitehead Ltd produced fabric designs by John Piper. They unite the recurring themes in Piper’s work which include the abstract, religious imagery and historic architecture.

The design ‘Abstract’ from 1955 was based upon an oil painting by John Piper which he produced in 1935. The rhythm and tones of Piper’s original oil painting lend themselves to the repeated nature of fabric design and still seem modern today. During numerous trips to Paris in the 1930s Piper had been exposed to the cubist work of Pablo Picasso and others. Together with his friends and fellow artists, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore, Piper was a leading member of the Seven & Five Society which was formed to promote the cause of abstraction and modernism in Britain.

John Piper’s ‘Foliate Heads’ fabric © The Piper Estate

The design ‘Foliate Heads’, produced by David Whitehead Ltd in 1954, with its crowned faces, was inspired by the carved foliate masks which can be found decorating medieval bosses and miserichords in churches across England. The foliate mask is a repeated theme in Piper’s work which he would return to later in his life.

John Piper also produced textile designs for Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd. Amongst these was the fabric ‘Arundel’ which was issued in 1960. The design is composed of fifteen brightly coloured vignette panels each with an abstracted figure. Part of the inspiration for this design undoubtedly comes from the tomb of the 5th Earl of Arundel in the Fitzalan Chapel of Arundel Castle and the Arundel Tomb in Chichester Cathedral. But the luminosity of the colours and the composition is reminiscent of the stained glass windows which Piper designed, in the early 1950s, for the chapel of Oundle School in Northamptonshire.

Through John Piper’s fabrics this intelligent exhibition illustrates how the artist reworked his ideas, themes and interests in various media, making modernism accessible to a far broader audience. This exciting exhibition continues that work revealing John Piper’s brilliance when working with textiles.

The superb exhibition catalogue, published by Pallant House Gallery and written by Simon Martin, is available at the Pallant House Bookshop and costs just £14.95.

I am delighted that Toovey’s Fine Art Auctioneers are sponsoring ‘John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism’ at Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, PO19 1TJ. This perceptive and striking exhibition runs until 12th June 2016. For more information on current exhibitions, events and opening times go to www.pallant.org.uk or telephone 01243 774557.

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.

John Piper Exhibition an Easter Feast

The artist John Piper in 2000 © Nicholas Sinclair

A remarkable exhibition ‘John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism’ has just opened at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. It marks the fiftieth anniversary of the installation of John Piper’s Chichester Cathedral reredos tapestry.

This is the first major exhibition to explore John Piper’s textile designs. It highlights the influence of Piper’s paintings and drawings on his designs. There is much to feast your eyes on. Paintings are displayed alongside designs and textiles illustrating how he reworked his themes and interests in various media. He worked in the abstract, romantic and classical traditions as a painter, designer, writer, printmaker and ceramicist. Whilst there is something of the modern in all his work he is, nevertheless, rooted in the tradition of individual voices in British Art. The exhibition highlights the central and recurring themes in Piper’s work which include religious imagery, historic architecture and the abstract.

In the 20th century two industrialized world wars had forged a shared experience of suffering and conflict in Britain. It fell to artists and their patrons to give voice to this new national consciousness in a period of political, social and religious change. John Piper’s work is deeply bound up with this story.

Walter Hussey was Dean of Chichester Cathedral and famous for his patronage of the arts through the church. In his book ‘Patron of Art’ Hussey notes how he chose to follow Henry Moore’s advice to commission John Piper to create a worthy setting for the High Altar. With his great sympathy for old churches he suggested a tapestry. Tapestry, he argued, would work in concert with the old stonework and 16th Century carved oak screen. He felt that the seven strips of tapestry would be able to be read as a whole across the narrow wooden buttresses of the screen with its crest of medieval canopies.

John Piper’s preliminary design for the Chichester Cathedral tapestry © The Piper Estate

In the January of 1965 Piper presented a final sketch. The artist’s familiarity with the language of abstraction remains evident. It met with favourable opinion. But at lunch with Hussey and others, Piper was deeply troubled when the Archdeacon of Chichester commented that there was no specific symbol for God the Father in the central section of the design. The lack of this symbol in the earlier design by John Piper, illustrated here, is notable. After much consideration Piper introduced the white light to the left of centre on the tapestry itself. The tapestry panels are schematic in their use of symbolism. The Trinity is represented in the three central panels. God the Father is depicted by a white light, God the Son by the blue Tau Cross and the Holy Spirit as a flame-like wing, all united by a red equilateral triangle within a border of green scattered flames. The flanking panels depict the Gospel Evangelists St Matthew (a winged man), St Mark (a winged lion), St Luke (a winged ox), and St John (a winged eagle); beneath the Elements earth, air, fire and water.

As we journey through Holy Week and mark Jesus’ death upon the cross on Good Friday the Tau Cross seems particularly poignant with its symbolic wounds on each spar. Jesus’ role in creation from before the beginning of all things to the triumph of his death and resurrection are powerfully proclaimed in this extraordinary tapestry.

John Piper’s Chichester Cathedral reredos tapestry, circa 1966

John Piper set himself to the task of designing the tapestry panels. He employed subtle changes in the colour of threads to avoid jagged edges. Piper was convinced that Pinton Frères, in the small French town of Felletin, near Aubusson, was the right atelier of weavers to produce the tapestry. The weavers worked with a true and faithful sense of the artist’s intentions and hopes for this design. Their painstaking, lengthy discipline in producing these panels gift the work with contrasting qualities of life, movement and spontainaity. The subtleties and life in the tapestry are best observed in natural light. The tapestry was installed fifty years ago in the autumn of 1966.

I am excited that Toovey’s Fine Art Auctioneers are sponsoring ‘John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism’ at Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, PO19 1TJ. The exhibition runs until 12th June 2016.

What a wonderful Easter treat – Pallant House Gallery and Chichester Cathedral!

For more information on current exhibitions, events and opening times go to www.pallant.org.uk or telephone 01243 774557. For details of Holy Week and Easter services at Chichester Cathedral visit www.chichestercathedral.org.uk.

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.

Lost Works by Evelyn Dunbar

Evelyn Dunbar, Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook, 1940, oil on canvas, private collection © The Artist's Estate / Christopher Campbell-Howes

The current exhibition, ‘Evelyn Dunbar: The Lost Works’, at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, includes many previously unseen pictures by this lesser known artist. Many of these paintings and drawings had lain forgotten in an attic in Kent until their rediscovery in 2013.

Evelyn Dunbar’s recurrent themes of the repeating rhythms of nature, the seasons and the year seem particularly poignant as we once again reflect on the coming of a New Year.

Evelyn Dunbar, An English Calendar, 1938, oil on canvas, Archives Imperial College London © The Artist's Estate / Christopher Campbell-Howes

These themes are reflected in ‘An English Calendar’ painted in 1938. Here we also observe the artist’s passion for horticulture. Dunbar’s figurative study ‘February’ is filled with allegory. It is as though this figure has been disturbed. Her startled face is illuminated as she lifts a cloche and the first shoots of spring issue from her hat against the cold grey of a February sky. It displays something of the graphic qualities present in the artist’s illustrations.

Evelyn Dunbar, February, 1937-38, Oil on canvas, © The Artist's Estate, courtesy of Liss Llewellyn Fine Art

The exhibition is being held in the early 18th century house which forms part of the gallery. The influences of the 1930s British art scene on Evelyn Dunbar’s work is immediately apparent. There is something of the attitude of Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland and others in her pictures which connects her work to the Neo-Romantic movement of the time. Nevertheless there is much to delight in the familiar.

Amongst the strongest images in this exhibition are her depictions of the home front painted whilst she was working as a war artist. Dunbar was appointed as an Official War Artist in April 1940.

Sir Kenneth Clark provided the inspiration to set up the ambitious Recording Britain scheme which he saw as an extension of the Official War Artist Scheme. Artists, like Dunbar, were employed on the home front to create topographical views of the British landscape, architecture and people. These things were being threatened by bombing and possible Nazi invasion and were rightly considered to be important to the British nation and her identity.

Evelyn Dunbar, Milking Practice with Artificial Udders, 1940, oil on canvas, © The Artist's Estate, courtesy of Liss Llewellyn Fine Art

There is a poetry and rhythm in Evelyn Dunbar’s paintings from 1940 of ‘Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook’ and ‘Milking Practice with Artificial Udders’. These stylized depictions display Dunbar’s empathy with her subjects and love of the English landscape. Her palette and the texture inherent in her handling of paint adds a vitality to her work.

This charming exhibition runs until 14th February 2016 at the Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, PO19 1TJ. For more information about ‘Evelyn Dunbar: The Lost Works’ and the gallery’s current exhibition program go to www.pallant.org.uk or telephone 01243 774557.

I wish you all a peaceful and happy new year filled with blessing.

By Revd. Rupert Toovey. Originally published on 30th December 2015 in the West Sussex Gazette.