Keith Grant: Invention and Variation by Chris Beetles

KEITH GRANT

Invention and Variation

KEIT H GRA N T Invention and Variation A series of paintings celebrating the trans2guration of nature in the music of Frederick Delius

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY in association with The Delius Trust

Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2020 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com ISBN 978-1-905738-94-6 Catalogue in publication data is available from the British Library Researched and written by David Wootton, with contributions from Judith LeGrove, Helen Faulkner and Keith Grant Edited by Pascale Oakley and David Wootton Design by Pascale Oakley Photography by Julian Huxley-Parlour Reproduction by www.cast2create.com Colour separation and printing by Geoff Neal Litho Limited Front cover: A Song at Sunrise [7] Front endpaper: Moonrise over the Dark River, a Mink Foraging, Gvarv, Norway [46] Frontispiece: Keith Grant in his studio, Gvarv, Norway Title page: Keith Grant in Tottenham, 1951; Young Delius, 1870s Left: The Perpendicular Forest in Rain [47, detail] Contents: The Wreath of Clouds, Grez-sur-Loing [62, detail] Back endpaper: The Four Seasons of the River Loing. Idyll of a Summer Evening: Grez-sur-Loing [65, detail] Back cover: The Four Seasons of the River Loing Idylle d’hiver, Grez-sur-Loing [67]

Acknowledgements With thanks to members of The Delius Trust, especially Lionel Carley and Helen Faulkner, for their support and their permission to reproduce the photographs of Frederick Delius throughout the catalogue; and to Jean-Merle D’Aubigné and Maryline for welcoming Keith Grant into Delius’s former home in Grez-sur-Loing.

Contents Invention and Variation

Keith Grant The Delius Trust

Helen Faulkner Frederick Delius: Chronology of Life and Work Keith Grant: Chronology of Life and Work

8 11

Re ections and Parallels: The Delius Series as a Context for Keith Grantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Artistic Career

David Wootton Framing Nature: Keith Grant and the Music of Frederick Delius

Judith LeGrove Catalogue of Works With commentaries by Keith Grant Norway

France

England

Invention and Variation From as far back as I can remember, I have stood in wonder and awe before the natural phenomena of the earth. As an art student in the 1950s, I discovered the music of Delius and its driving force of his deep a nity with nature. As a landscape painter, my love and respect for his work has strengthened and deepened, and has inspired me to attempt the same relationship to life in my own work as that demonstrated by the translation of nature into music which the genius of Delius conveys. In this quest I have systematically visited the most important places in France, Norway and England which Delius knew so well and which in turn have inspired many of my works in this exhibition. It is coincidental that my attraction to the North, and especially Norway, matches in many respects that of Delius, since I 2rst became aware of his music long before I knew of his love of the fjords and ‘high hills’ of Norway and before that country became such a compelling in@uence in my own painting.

Nevertheless, I have always recognised the role of elemental nature in Delius’s work which expresses for me in the deepest sense the very essence of creation. Delius does not attempt to explain the mystery of the sources of his inspiration through his music but rather intensi2es and rare2es it. Nor does he attempt to accurately describe in sound regions, places and things but 2nds creative, musical equivalents for them. It is this underlying almost abstract construction of his themes which enables me to the best of my abilities to identify my painting with his uniquely beautiful music. Nature speaks to us through the smallest things, minute entities of life; through insects, @owers and birds, as well as by the majesty of skies, seas and mountains. However intimately Delius’s music evokes the natural world or however thrillingly he declaims the eternal verities of time/space and the cosmos, it is the miracle of life that reaches tremendous ful2lment in his work for me. Though the range of his music is huge and the inspiration of nature profound within it, Delius never mimics nature in his work but always 2nds a beautiful passage or phrase to express it, like the sound of a harp to suggest rain or the imperceptible entry of the human voice swelling to an intense paean to express the loneliness and loftiness of high mountains. It is the structure which I have long sensed in Delius’s work; sometimes an almost abstract and dispassionate yet highly original beauty underpins his themes which I relate to the visual arts (in my case, painting) and which has enriched my approach to landscape from the 2rst time I heard his music.

Relatively recently have I become acquainted with the musical beauty of his operas, and realise that his awareness of nature permeates even his most magical and fairy-like works, such as The Magic Fountain and Irmelin, and also A Village Romeo and Juliet, in which the in@uence of mountain heights or the solemn slowness of the river are evoked in symbiosis with the human story. However, it still remains for me that the most precious in@uences on my work are from such masterpieces as In a Summer Garden, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, A Late Lark, The Walk to the Paradise Garden, Idylle de printemps, The Song of the High Hills, A Song Before Sunrise, A Song of Summer, Sea Drift and A Mass of Life, the concertos for cello, piano and violin and the double concerto for violin and cello, as well as the song cycles and sonatas. These works are amongst those which have especially inspired the paintings in this exhibition which I personally dedicate to the genius of Delius in order to celebrate and honour him. Keith Grant

The Delius Trust The Delius Trust was established in 1935 under the will of Frederick Delius’s widow, the painter Jelka Rosen. Its principal purpose has been, and continues to be, the promotion of the music of Delius. This has been achieved by the publication of a uniform edition of the music which is now complete, and by the funding of many hundreds of performances and recordings of Delius’s music. In recent years the Trust has placed particular emphasis on funding productions of Delius’s operas. Most notably these have included productions of A Village Romeo and Juliet and Koanga at the annual Wexford Opera Festival and, this summer, Margot la Rouge at Opera Holland Park. Since the Trust was established many eminent musicians have been associated with it including the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham, Meredith Davies and David Lloyd-Jones. Its learned advisers have included Felix Aprahamian, Rachel Lowe, Robert Threlfall and, currently, Lionel Carley, Stephen Lloyd, and Robert Montgomery. The Chairman is pianist, writer and broadcaster Paul Guinery. The income of the Trust derives from royalties, hire fees and performing rights from Delius’s music and whilst the promotion of his music, particularly works which are infrequently performed, is still the main purpose of the Trust, it also makes a small number of grants to organisations with a broad remit to promote British music in general. The Trust’s support for this exhibition of Keith Grant’s paintings inspired by his life-long love of the music of Delius is a 2rst for the Trust. We have never before made a grant for a 2ne art project but we see Keith’s genuine love for the music, and inspiration from places that themselves inspired Delius, as an opportunity to reach a new audience for the music and a fresh interpretation of the passion for nature which has inspired them both. Helen Faulkner

Frederick Delius at Grez-sur-Loing in 1897

Frederick Delius: Chronology of Life and Work 29 January 1862 Born Fritz Theodor Albert Delius at 6 Claremont, Bradford in Yorkshire, the fourth child, and second son, of a family of fourteen. His parents were Julius Friedrich Wilhelm Delius, a prosperous wool merchant, and Elise Pauline (née Krönig). They had emigrated to England from Bielefeld, Germany. Music was encouraged in the household. 1868/9 Started violin lessons with William Bauerkeller, a member of the Hallé Orchestra and then continued with other teachers. 1874 Educated at a local preparatory school followed by Bradford Grammar School. As well as his musical interests he developed an enduring love of cricket.

2 March 1884, eventually arriving at the site of the plantation, Solana Grove, on the St Johns River, 35 miles south of Jacksonville. He met Thomas Ward, a musician from New York, who had moved to Jacksonville for his health. They became friends and Ward was Delius’s 2rst serious composition teacher. Delius involved himself in local musical life and started to compose seriously. He found inspiration in the singing of the African-American plantation workers whom he could hear singing in harmony from his verandah. The plan to make his fortune as an orange farmer soon receded. 1885 In October Delius set himself up as a music teacher in Danville, Virginia, gaining a position at Roanoke Female College. He realised that he might be able to make a living from music. 1886 Left America to return to Europe. He persuaded his father that he should attend the Leipzig Conservatorium where he enrolled in August. 1887 Met Edvard Grieg, then aged 43. Grieg greatly encouraged him to compose. The Florida Suite was performed in rehearsal in Leipzig. His 2rst published work in England was Five Songs from the Norwegian which was dedicated to Grieg’s wife Nina.

Delius in the 1870s

1878 Started a two-year course of study at the International College, a progressive school in the London suburb of Isleworth. Attended regular concerts and opera performances in London. 1880-1884 Commenced work as a representative for his father’s 2rm, Delius and Company. Whilst in Chemnitz, in Saxony, he had violin lessons with Hans Sitt who later become one of his teachers in Leipzig. Business trips took him to various centres of the wool trade. Scandinavia, and in particular Norway, made a strong impression on Delius. Early visits to Paris with his uncle Theodor introduced him to a more sophisticated and cosmopolitan world. 1884 Decided that his future did not lie with the family 2rm and persuaded his father to back him in a project to run an orange plantation in Florida. He left Liverpool for New York on

1888 Left Leipzig. With the help of Grieg, he persuaded his father that music should be his career. His father agreed to make him an annual allowance with which he could travel to Paris. He initially stayed with his uncle Theodor at 43 rue Cambon, near the Opéra. Paris was his base for almost a decade. Composed a 1st String Quartet. He took inspiration from a most eclectic range of sources – the literature of England, Norway, Denmark, Germany and France, mediaeval romance, American peoples and landscape in general. 1889-91 Moved to Croissy-sur-Seine. Visited the Exposition Universelle. Composed small scale instrumental and vocal works. Started work on the opera, Irmelin. Toured Norway during the summer. A concert overture, På Vidderne (On the Heights), became his 2rst orchestral work to be performed publicly, in Christiania (Oslo) in October 1891. Met Edvard Munch, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature) and other artistic and literary 2gures.

1891-1896 Enjoyed a widening social and artistic circle including Strindberg, Gauguin, Munch and Mucha. Started work on The Magic Fountain. In early 1896, he met Helene (Jelka) Rosen, a young painter from Schleswig-Holstein who had been studying in Paris. She introduced him to the village of Grez-sur-Loing which had a @ourishing artistic community. Started work on the opera, Koanga. 1897 Revisited America early in the year. Whilst visiting Solana Grove he started work on the Piano Concerto. Returned to France where Jelka Rosen, her mother and the painter Ida Gerhardi were living in Grez-sur-Loing. He joined them. Composed incidental music to Gunnar Heiberg’s play, Folkeraadet, which is heard in Christiania in October, then travelled to Elberfeld for his 2rst public performance in Germany, Over the Hills and Far Away. 1898-9 Bought Gauguin’s painting, Nevermore, with part of a legacy from the estate of his uncle Theodor. The painting was sold some years later when he had 2nancial problems. The rest of the legacy was used to 2nance a concert of his music at St James’s Hall, London in May 1899. 1900-07 Now settled with Jelka in Grez-sur-Loing. They married in September 1903. He had now anglicised his name to Frederick. He had started work on A Village Romeo and Juliet which would be published in 1906, and Margot La Rouge which would be entered, without success, for the Sonzogno prize in 1904. Maurice Ravel prepared the vocal score of Margot. He met Percy Grainger in 1907 and dedicated Brigg Fair to him. His music was increasingly performed, particularly in Germany. Koanga is staged in Elberfeld in 1904. Sea Drift had its première in Essen in 1906 and A Village Romeo and Juliet in Berlin in 1907. A revised version of the Piano Concerto was heard at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert in 1907. This was followed by an

Delius, as he appeared in Monographien Moderner Musiker, Vol 2, Leipzig: C F Kahnt Nachfolger, 1907, facing page 82

enthusiastically received performance in November of Appalachia attended by Thomas Beecham, who became Delius’s most important champion. 1908-1913 Beecham conducted performances of a number of works including the 2rst complete performance of A Mass of Life in 1909. It was subsequently performed in Elberfeld and Vienna. A Village Romeo and Juliet was staged in London in 1910 and a number of orchestral works followed. Summer Night on the River and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring date from 1911 and 1912. Amongst admirers of his music were Igor Stravinsky and Leopold Stokowski. Delius’s health started to decline as the result of syphilis. 1914-1919 Shortly after the outbreak of war, the Deliuses travelled to England, settling in St John’s Wood where they stayed for over a year. They then returned to France. The Double Concerto was composed for the sisters, May and Beatrice Harrison, in 1915, though not performed until 1920. As a result of the war, income from German publishers dried up so 2nancial worries added to concerns about Delius’s health. Performances in Germany inevitably dwindled. They resumed with the opera, Fennimore and Gerda, in Frankfurt in 1919.

The back of Delius’s house at Grez-sur-Loing, circa 1929

1920-1923 Had a cottage built at Lesjaskog overlooking the valley of Gudbrandsdal in Norway. By 1922 his gradual paralysis and diminished eyesight were advancing but he was able to visit the cottage. His 2nancial worries were greatly eased by the successful 1923 London run of James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan for which Delius composed the incidental music. In 1923 he visited Norway for the last time. Throughout this period he was devotedly supported by Percy Grainger. 1924-1929 Hoping for an improvement in his health, Delius and Jelka wintered in Rapallo near Genoa. By the mid 1920s he was completely blind and paralysed. There had been virtually no new compositions for 2ve years. In August 1928 Eric Fenby,

a young music student from Yorkshire, wrote to Delius o.ering his help. He travelled to Grez in October and became Delius’s amanuensis. Interest in his music in England revived, with particular enthusiasm at the BBC, meaning that broadcasts were frequent. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1929 but of greater importance to him was a festival of six concerts devoted entirely to his music. The festival was largely planned by Thomas Beecham, who conducted all the concerts. With the help of Jelka and loyal friends, Delius travelled to England to attend.

Delius near the end of his life The music room in Delius’s house, circa 1936

1930-1933 Work with Eric Fenby continued enabling the completion of A Song of Summer, Songs of Farewell and the 3rd Violin Sonata. He was awarded the Freedom of Bradford in 1932. In 1933 Edward Elgar visited him. 10 June 1934 Delius died at home in Grez-sur-Loing. Initially interred in France, his body was brought to England in 1935 where he rests in the churchyard of St Peter’s, Limps2eld, in Surrey. Jelka died in 1935 and was buried with him. Amongst others buried at St Peter’s are Sir Thomas Beecham and the Harrison sisters.

Keith Grant: Chronology of Life and Work 10 August 1930 Born Frederick Nall at Walton Hospital, Liverpool, with his twin brother, Roy. He was fostered and later adopted by Charles and Gladys Grant, and grew up at 21 Patrick Avenue, Orrell, Liverpool. 1935-40 Educated, with Roy, at Roberts County Primary School, Orrell. 1940 Evacuated, with Roy, to Peak Dale, Derbyshire. 1941-43 Educated, with Roy, at Bootle Grammar School for Boys, as the result of a scholarship.

1956-57 Produced murals for the Verulamium Museum, St Albans (which were later destroyed). 1956-61 Married to Valerie Owen, a fellow student at Willesden School of Art. 1957 First visited Norway, including the Western Fjords, with Gerry Whybrow, a fellow student from Willesden Art School. Exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition for the 2rst time.

1943-48 Worked at the Co-operative store, Stanley Road, Bootle. While there, he attended evening classes at Bootle School of Art, and contributed drawings to the Liverpool Co-op’s magazine.

1957-59 Won competition to produce murals for Rhodesia House, Strand (which were later destroyed). He gained a silver medal for mural painting during his last year at the RCA, as a result of his work at the Verulamium Museum and Rhodesia House.

Before 1948 Attended weekly evening classes in watercolour with the Misses Isaacs in Litherland. Through them, he made his 2rst visits to Wales, staying at their cottage in Glyn Ceiriog, Denbighshire.

1958 Won the David Murray Landscape Award, and used part of it to travel to Paris.

1948-50 Undertook National Service in the Royal Air Force as Aircraftsman 1st Class, 2rst at RAF Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and then RAF Sta.ord. While there, he received his 2rst opportunity to practise as a painter, producing murals for the canteen. 1950 Moved to London, with Roy, and worked as a window dresser at the Co-op store in Wood Green. While there, he took classes at the Working Men’s College, St Pancras, and designed productions for Mountview Theatre Club, Crouch Hill, including its famous production of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra. He also made his 2rst visit to France. 1952-55 Studied at Willesden School of Art under William Brooker, Ivor Fox, Edward Middleditch and Cli.ord Wilkinson, among others. During this period, he began to holiday in Scotland. 1954 Chaired the Young Contemporaries exhibition, held at the Royal Society of British Artists.

1958-60 Taught at Kingston School of Art. 1959 Exhibited for the 2rst time at the New Art Centre, London. Appeared on BBC television’s Monitor with Reginald Brill and Malcolm Kador, fellow teachers at Kingston School of Art. 1959-62 Contributed to three of the ‘Shell County Guides’. 1960 Held his 2rst solo show at the New Art Centre. 1960-61 Visited Norway as the result of a Norwegian Government Scholarship: spent seven months in Norway, mainly in the north of the country, one month in Oslo. Sailed back, on his boat, the Oswald, with Valerie and her brother, Nigel. By 1962 Taught at Goldsmiths’ College School of Art. By 1963 Moved to the Abbey Art Centre, New Barnet.

1955 Held his 2rst ever solo show, in Bootle.

1963-68 Lecturer in the Fine Art Department at Hornsey College of Art.

1955-58 Studied at the Royal College of Art, under Colin Hayes, John Minton, Kenneth Rowntree and Carel Weight, among others.

1964-1996 Married to Gisèle Barka Djouadi.

1964 Travelled with his wife, Gisèle, and her sister, through Italy to Sicily. 1965 First visited Iceland, with Tony Buckingham. Designed sets for productions of Ingmar Bergman’s The City and A Painting on Wood for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Exhibited, in a joint show with John Grome, at Galleria Montenapoleone, Milan. 1966 Second visit to Iceland, recording volcanic eruption. By 1967 Moved to Camden Studios. Held his 2rst solo show at Roland, Browse & Delbanco. 1968-71 Head of the Fine Art Department, Maidstone College of Art, Kent. 1969 Visit to Norway, with Milada Tashnerova. His construction, Earth Time and Space – The North was installed outside the Snape Maltings, Su.olk. Grant North, a 15-minute documentary 2lm by Jack Hazan, charted the genesis, construction and installation of Earth Time and Space – The North.

1971 His daughter, Dominique, was born. Produced the stainless steel and concrete sculpture, St Joan, to stand outside the Shaw Theatre, London. As a result he was the subject of ‘Together They Made it on Euston Road’, a Look, Stranger programme for BBC television. 1972 Produced murals for Middlesex Hospital (which was demolished in 2008). Held a solo show at the New Metropole Arts Centre, Folkestone. 1973 Recorded volcanic eruption in Iceland. 1973-74 ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North: An Exhibition of Paintings by Keith Grant’, Scottish Arts Council, Touring Exhibition. 1973-75 Gulbenkian Award Artist-in-Residence, Bosworth College, Leicester. Made sketching trips to Ireland, with his friend, Phillida Ball. 1974 His son, Paul, was born (died 1995). Held several solos shows, including one at the New Gallery, Snape, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival, and another at the National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik. 1975 Designed The Magic Mountain, a mosaic for the laboratory block corridor, Charing Cross Hospital, which was executed by young people under the Manpower Services Commission scheme.

1976 Undertook a British Council tour to Cyprus, and while there had a private audience with President Makarios. Also visited Norway on a travel scholarship from the Norwegian government. His solo shows included one at The Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, New Walk, Leicester, and another at Rochdale Art Gallery, Manchester. Circa 1976 Moved to 15 St John’s Terrace, Lewes, East Sussex. 1977 Made a second visit to Sicily. His solo shows included one at Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery. Until 1979 Taught at St Martin’s School of Art. 1979 Visited Soviet Union for Anglo-Soviet cultural exchange programme of the British Council. His solo shows included one at the Compass Gallery, Glasgow. 1979-81 Head of the Painting Department of Newcastle Polytechnic. 1981 Became a member of the London Group. 1981-90 Head of Department of Art, Roehampton Institute of Higher Education. 1982 Held a solo show at the Solomon Gallery, Dublin. Designed a production of Hamlet for the Young Vic, directed by Terry Palmer, with Edward Fox in the title role. Accepted an invitation to French Guiana to paint the launch of the Ariane rocket, exhibiting the works in the following year at the Paris International Air Show. 1983 His solo shows included one at Logica Holdings Ltd, and another at the Compass Gallery, Glasgow. 1984 First visited Sarawak, Malaysia. 1985 Made a second visit to Sarawak, and showed the resulting work in a solo show at the Francis Kyle Gallery. Also held a solo show at the Aldeburgh Cinema, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival. 1986 Visited Cameroon. Held a solo show at New Metropole Arts Centre, Folkestone. 1987 Held solo shows at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, and the University of Surrey.

1988 Commissioned to paint a portrait of Sir Geo.rey Wilkinson, the Nobel prizewinning chemist. Made a visit to Israel, sponsored by the British Israel Art Foundation and the Ben Gurion University Trust. The resulting works were included in his 2rst solo show at Cadogan Contemporary Art. 1989 Worked in Arctic Greenland. 1990 His solo shows included one at the Crane Kalman Gallery. 1990-95 Artist-in-Residence, Roehampton Institute of Higher Education. 1991-95 Art Director, Operation Raleigh. 1991 Expedition Artist to the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, with Operation Raleigh. 1992 One of seven Expedition Artists to Venezuela, with Living Earth Foundation. Held a solo show at the Gillian Jason Gallery. 1994 Commissioned to paint a portrait of H R H Prince Andrew. Designed stained glass window (dedicated to J B Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes) for the J B Priestley Hall at Belle Vue Boys’ School, Bradford. Held ‘Ice and Fire’, a retrospective at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and solo shows at the Rocket Gallery and the new Glyndebourne Opera House. 1996 Settled in Norway. 1999-2000 Designed stained glass and mosaic decorations for Charing Cross Hospital. 2000 Married Hilde Ellingsen. Together, they have a daughter, Thea. 2001 Elected to the membership of the Royal Cambrian Academy. 2001-02 Visited Antarctica on the inaugural Artists and Writers Programme of the British Antarctic Survey. 2004 Winner of competition to paint a new altarpiece for Kopervik Church, Karmøy. (It was dedicated in 2005, but was destroyed along with the church in a 2re in 2010.) 2006 Visited Greenland.

2008 Held a solo show at Partridge Fine Art. Began to be represented by the Chris Beetles Gallery. 2009 Visited the Faroe Islands. 2010 Held ‘Elements of the Earth’, his 2rst solo show at the Chris Beetles Gallery. 2012 Invited to stay at ‘Writer’s Block’, Je.rey Archer’s home at Sa Torre, Mallorca. Appointed Artist-in-Residence at Keble College, Oxford, and undertook the 2rst in a series of seminars on creativity, with Sir Geo.rey Hill, Oxford Professor of Poetry. 2014 Second stay at ‘Writer’s Block’, Sa Torre, Mallorca. Also visited Cyprus. 2015 Visited Sardinia, which provided the inspiration for Atlantis II, and Sète, in the South of France, in order to prepare to paint Atlantis III: Le Cimetière marin. 2016 Held ‘Metamorphosis’, his second solo show at the Chris Beetles Gallery. Visited the Faroe Islands to make studies for The Faroe Islands Suite. Toured Kent, Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire (Uriconium and the Wrekin), North Wales, returning to the sites he studied as a student. Completion of Aleppo and The Discarded Glove. 2017 Visited Selborne to make studies for a new series of works. These works were exhibited in ‘North by New English’, his third solo show at the Chris Beetles Gallery. Visited Antarctica, as Artist-in-Residence on a trip arranged by Ice Tracks. 2018 Held ‘Antarctica’, his fourth solo show at the Chris Beetles Gallery. 2019 Received studio assistance from Pascale Oakley in returning the large-scale work, The Dorset Mural, to its pristine state. It was then exhibited at Chris Beetles Gallery in the show, ‘The Dorset Mural and other Paintings’. 2020 Held ‘Invention and Variation’, his 2fth major solo show at the Chris Beetles Gallery, ‘celebrating the trans2guration of nature in the music of Frederick Delius’. It was the result of two years of travel and painting, with trips to Grez-sur-Loing, the Norwegian Fjords and Yorkshire.

Reflections and Parallels: The Delius Series as a Context for Keith Grant’s Artistic Career David Wootton The run up to Keith Grant’s ninetieth birthday is surely an apt time in which to re@ect on his career to date. However, he is still so active as an artist that such a re@ection should not be entirely retrospective, but must take into account his latest substantial achievement, the series of responses to the music of Frederick Delius surveyed in this catalogue. Indeed, the ‘Delius Series’ is at once so extended and interconnected that it provides an ideal framework through which to undertake a review. In the ‘Delius Series’, Keith revisits and refreshes a nexus of familiar terrains, encompassing England, France and Norway. Taken together, these may be considered to exemplify his idea of the ‘North’, which has been his 2rst and constant love, and which he has imbued with a signi2cance that is not only topographical but also mythic and spiritual. In rehearsing the resonances between himself and Delius, in both art and life, Keith has opened himself up to new aspects of the North and more generally to the essentials of creation, recognising in the composer a parallel model of how to shape nature into art. Keith has clearly shown that Norway – which he 2rst visited in 1957 and made his home in 1996 – provides inspiration that is almost inexhaustible in its variety. That variety is one of the keys to the success of the ‘Delius Series’, as it has allowed Keith to provide sympathetic visual equivalents to a range of the composer’s works, from snow-capped peaks for The Song of the High Hills (1911) to lush valleys for On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912).

However, Keith has not con2ned himself to a precise mimetic geography in articulating his interpretations. Rather he has drawn on the highly sophisticated painterly language that he has long been developing. Thus the snow-capped peaks echo his images of Antarctica and Greenland, and the lush valleys hark back to those of French Guiana and Sarawak, as well as relating to earlier Norwegian subjects. Each composition remains true to the individuality of a place while transcending it and intimating the universal power of nature, a result that Delius would surely have approved. While Keith has also had a long acquaintance with France – having 2rst visited it as a student in 1950 – his approach to the country in the ‘Delius Series’ is di.erent from that of Norway, being intensive rather than extensive. This is due in large part to the fact that he has focussed his attention on a single location, the village of Grez-sur-Loing, located 30 miles south of Paris, which was Delius’s home for the last 35 years of his life. In order to reveal its variety – as a counterpart to that found across Norway – he made multiple visits through the year, and painted it in the four seasons. Of course, Keith individualises Grez by emphasising, among other qualities, the beauty of the tree-lined Loing that runs through the village (in only the latest of the paintings of French rivers that have punctuated his career). However, it might be suggested as a generalisation that, in the ‘Delius Series’, he distinguishes France from Norway by considering the former temporally and the latter spatially. Time and Space have always been at the heart of his work, and understandably he has explored them symbiotically, explicitly so in the construction, Earth Time and Space The North, and related works of the late 1960s, but often implicitly and deeply. Here, in this series, they are held in balance by the personality and pursuits of Delius. His 20 journeys to Norway may epitomise his restless and adventurous spirit, while his years in France represent the concentrated process of his creative mind. And what of England? Both Frederick Delius and Keith Grant were born there, the 2rst in Yorkshire (to German parents) and the second in Lancashire. While both travelled widely, and away from England, the country remained a point of reference in their lives and works. Delius was inspired, if indirectly, by a town in north Lincolnshire to write Brigg Fair (1907), and much more directly by his native Yorkshire to write North Country Sketches (1914), a composition that Keith describes in his commentaries on the ‘Delius Series’ as a ‘splendid quartet of the elements’. At the outset of his career, Keith was prompted, most notably by Jacquetta Hawkes’ A Land (1951), to produce paintings that explored Northernness through England's geology, natural history and archaeology. And, having revisited the theme in native landscapes throughout his career, including some of Yorkshire, he has rehearsed it thoroughly in the recent scintillating ‘New English Series’. Keith’s paintings of Bempton Cli.s [74] and Harome Pond [75] in the ‘Delius Series’ may seem like footnotes to the body of Norwegian and French subjects, but strongly allude to signi2cant strands in both artists’ careers.

The works that comprise the ‘Delius Series’ may be considered to o.er a lexicon of Keith’s painterly language, in both its structural and gestural aspects. In the Norwegian subjects alone, many permutations lie between the contrast of snow-capped peaks and lush valleys, and indeed beyond them. For Keith is also estimably attentive to the changing aspects of the sky above and the sea below.

The Midnight Sun, 2012

Particularly powerful is Keith's focus on the sun, which is partly a response to the belief of ‘Delius and his Norwegian painter friend, Edvard Munch’ that it ‘is the supreme symbol of life’ (as Keith describes in his commentaries). Crucial to this focus is his ‘Sun Quartet’ in which the sun rises over both mountain [12] and sea [14], and sets over mountain [13] and forest [15]. At the centre of each almost square canvas sits a white disc, surrounded by concentric circles that suggest its radiating light. These mutually enhancing variations on a theme are the latest results of Keith's challenge to himself to paint the ultimate source of light, which reached an apogee of scale and directness in the images of the midnight sun that he produced in 2008-9 [including the image above right]. As a set, they may also be compared to his ambitious paintings of the phases of the sun (produced in the late 1960s) and the 20 small Stanzas of the Arctic Moon, Ilulissat (of 2007). In other works of the ‘Delius Series’, sky and earth are linked through the presence of clouds, disruptively as in those that depict lightning striking a forest [25, 26], or more holistically in those that incorporate re@ections in water [including 27, 28].

Amid the Peninsula Mountains, 2018

Keith responds @exibly to the presence of mountains, employing a wide or even panoramic format to indicate a range or chain, and a vertical one to emphasise elevation. His recent return to Antarctica, in 2017, has also enabled him to hone his masterly ability to suggest the coldest climes through a broad repertoire of handling [as in the image above right], which he had already displayed in, especially, his ‘Lofoten Series’ (1987-89) and paintings of Greenland (1989/2007), as well the results of his 2rst trip to Antarctica in 2001. And while he tends to depict snowy summits in an evocatively limited palette of blues, greys and whites, he relishes the opportunities to portray the vivid colours of vegetation in compositions that integrate land both high and low. If the horizontal compositions represent, in Keith’s words, ‘the high hills beloved by Delius’, some of the vertical ones recreate the journeys that the composer made to reach them. For instance, Ascent to the High Hills [9] ‘depicts the high, lone and di cult road’ while Narrow Road to the High Hills, Jotunheimen; Summer Snow [18] links ‘the route that Delius took on many of his “hiking” visits ... to the travelogue of the seventeenth-century Haiku poet, Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North’. Bashô's ‘travelogue’, charting a journey taken on foot through Japan, made a profound impression on Keith when he 2rst read it and, in the early 1970s, inspired a major series of extraordinarily varied paintings, from exquisite works on paper embellished with quotations to an impressive set of 24 canvases representing a continuous horizon of a north Norwegian coastline, with each picture standing for one hour of the day. That he should associate Basho and Delius with himself in this way, as artist-travellers, implies that his imagination draws rich correspondence between people, between places and between natural forms.

Salto Aicha, 1992

Other small vertical paintings feature water as torrent [20, 23] or cascade [22], which as forces of nature dominate a terrain. Water courses were central to Keith’s ‘Forest Series’ of 2009, in which he explored the Telemark landscape close to home, and have elsewhere taken on an iconic status, as in his images of the waterfall, Salto Aicha, produced during and following an expedition to Venezuela in 1992 [see image above right].

Puma Fence Night – Equatorial Rain Forest, 1983

The Hovering Cloud (Derbyshire), 2016

Yet other paintings, large and small, celebrate the fecundity of the forest through what Keith calls a ‘tapestry of interwoven images’. In these, he responds to highly imaginative, even mythic elements in the work of Delius by drawing on his personal experience – including the equatorial rainforests of, particularly, French Guiana and Sarawak (both visited in the early 1980s) [see image above centre], and English woods (explored again in 2017-18 in the making of the ‘New English Series’) [see image above right]. So, for instance, he takes his cue from the name of the ‘low class inn’ in the opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet (1901), to present a real ‘Paradise Garden’ [31]. He also relishes the opportunity to invoke the presence of the God Pan by painting a great Northern forest of the kind ‘evoked in Jens Peter Jacobsen’s disturbingly strange poem Arabesque from which Delius created a masterpiece’ and the novel Pan (1894), written by Delius's friend, Knut Hamsun [43]. It is perhaps precisely because Keith has spent so much time in forests, both Northern and Equatorial, that he has earned the right to veer away from naturalism, and meet the strangeness of Jacobsen head on by depicting ‘the frenzied eye of an enfolding @ower’ at the centre of Arabesque [42]. It also chimes with his own ingrained love of correspondence, which leads him to represent a ‘distant glacier ... as an exotic blossom’ [2]. As he can conjure a forest from a ‘tapestry of interwoven images’, so he can pull out a thread in order to feature a single natural form, be it a @ower, a @ower-shaped glacier, or his favourite, recurring Silver Birch. ‘If one Birch alone is for him ‘symbolic of the isolate individual’ [45], a foregrounded group of them seems to establish a rhythmic conversation across a canvas [46, 47] (in possible contrast to The Listening Forest [33]). For Keith, the subject of what he paints – especially the natural world as he experiences it – has invariably guided the way that he paints it. Nevertheless, his long practice has made him, like Delius before, highly attuned to the patterns that underlie nature, patterns that can provide the structure to aid the transformation of nature into art.

Framing Nature: Keith Grant and the Music of Frederick Delius Judith LeGrove

Keith Grant has known and loved the music of Frederick Delius since he was an art student in the 1950s. This in itself is surprising. By textbook accounts, the decade thrived on a cocktail of jazz, the radical experimentalism of Berio, Xenakis and Boulez, new appetites for Mahler, for mediaeval and renaissance music, the operas of Britten. Yet Delius, the landscape-inspired, Bradford-born, French-exiled, Norwegian-impassioned composer, scarcely registers – or, if so, to receive short shrift. From the late nineteenth century onwards his music provoked continued, often virulent, assaults on what critics perceived as its unconventional approach to form. A tipping-point occurred in 1962, precipitated by Deryck Cooke’s cogent analysis of the Violin Concerto. Positing new parameters for form, Cooke applied them to Delius ‘because of all composers he stands most in need of rescuing from the confusion of fashionable dogma and loose journalistic opinion’.1 Fifty years on, Delius studies are @ourishing, underpinned by ever-closer and more nuanced readings of his music and its context.2 Why, though, the longstanding attraction for Grant? First, it should be noted that Grant is no @ighty follower of fashion: he remains steadfast to his subject, listening intently to where it might lead. Secondly, and most vitally, he divines in Delius a kindred spirit whose primary impulse, like his, derives from nature. This impulse transcends the super2cial allure of place, or landscape, to apprehend nature in its totality: the stirring of leaf or sea, the slanting e.ect of light, the mystery of the seasons. It is a feeling so profound as to inspire a life’s work. Approaching Delius with characteristic seriousness, Grant has travelled to the places of greatest signi2cance to the composer: to northern England, Norway, and France, where Delius settled. (Grant shares Delius’s a.ection for Norway, which Delius explored by foot, and where Grant has lived for over 20 years.) He has read widely; from Delius’s own letters to the literature, poetry and philosophy that inspired him. Throughout, he has listened voraciously to Delius’s music, which has played most days in his studio, sustaining and inspiring a series of 75 paintings. Many questions are raised, nonetheless. What is Grant seeking to convey through painting? How does he hear Delius’s music? Is there a correlation between painting and music that can be explained through a further medium – words? How to convey the complexity of a project that has evolved, through intense focus, over 16 months? (At the time of writing, Grant is still painting.) There are no simple answers. Perhaps quixotically, therefore, this essay takes as its starting point Delius’s music: exploring Grant’s paintings through music’s lens. Prologue: On the Heights In 1888 Delius composed On the Heights (På Vidderne), a setting for orchestra and speaker of a poem by the Norwegian writer, Henrik Ibsen. The work is not wholly successful, but it de2nes with unexpected clarity the compass of music to come. Delius had 2rst visited Norway in 1882, as part of a commercial visit related to his father’s textile industry, and in 1887 he walked the Hardangervidda, the rock-strewn expanse of heather on the southern plateau. Norway’s landscape, experienced at much the same age as Grant’s 2rst encounter, sings from the pages of Delius’s journal: The sun for a moment @ashes a few rays over the long valley, I from amongst the clouds look now on almost a fairy like scene. The light & shade e.ects I never saw before, but only for a few minutes, & then all is again bleak & misty ….3

The narrative of an archetypal wanderer, who loses himself to discover a spiritual, solitary freedom, resonated with the young composer as he put pen to manuscript paper. Underpinning Ibsen’s text with a kaleidoscope of orchestral e.ects, Delius articulated space through the use of bells and mimicking of horn calls. He coloured, darkly, the 2gure of a traveller who peers ‘through his hollowed hand, the better to examine the perspective’.4 Light, distance, and the disruptive incident would become fundamental elements of Delius’s – and Grant’s – approach to framing nature. The Song of the High Hills It soon becomes apparent, from Grant’s ‘Delius Series’, that there is no clear-cut mapping between painting and music. A work by Delius may correspond with the subject of a painting, but equally it might serve as the springboard for a di.erent line of thought, or a combination of themes. The approach is light-footed, creative, idiosyncratic. Grant has a retentive memory, and while his paintings at times draw from speci2c views experienced by Delius, he has a rich visual store from which to supplement reality. As Grant says, One thing about nature, it always wins. You can’t mimic nature to such a degree that you can be in competition with it. You have to 2nd a di.erent way of expressing what you experience.5 This strikes to the heart of Delius. Walking the high hills of Norway, Delius was exhilarated by the air’s purity, such that after even a brief absence he would write of his longing ‘to wipe all the dust & dirt from [his] feet, & to set foot on the fresh, fragrant moorland!’6 Yet how to convey this experience through music?

A musicological context can be constructed through Delius’s circle of Norwegian friends, encountered during studies at Leipzig Conservatoire (1886-88), through his admiration for Edvard Grieg, whom he met in 1887, and through his friendship with Percy Grainger, who shared a passion for Norway and its folk music. Such in@uences can be detected in details of orchestration, harmony, knowledge of Scandinavian literature and the use of Norwegian folk tunes or motifs. Yet Delius’s idiom is his own, just as his response to nature would clarify as his technical assurance developed. Over the Hills and Far Away (1893-97), is not, as might be expected, an allusion to the traditional British song of the same name, but a @edgling attempt to convey Norway’s elemental landscape through music. Unfurling from an expectant C major chord (parallel, in microcosm, to Das Rheingold’s overture), Delius’s fantasia passes through a series of @eet impressions – tempestuous, pastoral, elegiac. If we arrange Grant’s Norwegian Delius paintings sequentially, the experience is not dissimilar: we see an ice-gripped landscape, at times veiled, riven, or depicted with mirror-glass clarity.

Delius’s mature ‘hill music’ is heard in two compositions which begin to illuminate the cross-currency between music and painting. A Mass of Life (1905) sets passages from Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra for double choir, soloists and orchestra, de2ning a spiritual journey into the mountains; The Song of the High Hills (1911) is scored for orchestra and wordless chorus, ‘to represent Man in Nature’, a presence that becomes increasingly faint, then vanishes.7 From these two works, Grant’s Ascent to the High Hills [9] imagines a composite image: Zarathustra’s crooked pathway, hewn into rock, as a treacherous conduit. Minute droplets of paint render water vapour visible, overlaying a gentle blue and roseate haze. Mist obscures vision. Yet the image’s power lies in its contrasts: solidity against ambiguity, strong compositional lines – a vertical waterfall, slanting light – against masked contours. Tellingly, Hubert Foss wrote of Delius’s music, ‘there is much of the German “mist-sculptor” therein’.8 Two antithetical words; a wealth of possibility. Delius’s armoury to convey such landscapes and tricks of light, through music, can be detailed relatively succinctly. Unfolding melody suggests journeying, threading onwards. Space may be delineated through musical volume, distance through decrescendo or reduced forces. A solo instrument evokes solitude, hastening tempo the threat of a squall, a timpani roll the rumble of thunder. Harp or celesta (favourite instruments) conjure stars or shimmering light, while high strings invoke chill, glacial textures. More di cult to describe, in

layman’s terms, is Delius’s use of harmony. His language is extensively chromatic yet utterly distinctive. The Song of the High Hills opens with a rending, falling semitone from the violins, echoed by an upward, sobbing motif from violas. It closes with a G sharp minor ninth chord, piling dissonance upon dissonance. If Delius were seeking to express joy, exhilaration, but also ‘the loneliness & melancholy of the high Solitudes & the grandeur of the wide far distances’,9 he could scarcely have done so more hauntingly. Grant follows Delius’s path into the Jotunheim mountains, and to Nærøyfjorden, whose snow-gullied peaks cast intense shadows on the water. With knowledge of Delius’s music, perception of these images alters. In Grant’s The Frozen Lake [6], for instance, we might read the psychologically charged landscape of Fennimore and Gerda, as Fennimore learns of her husband’s death and collapses in the snow. The fractured geometry of The Frozen Lake intensi2es in A Song at Sunrise [7] and A Song Before Sunrise [11], large-scale compositions which are among the 2nest of these Norwegian paintings.

In A Song at Sunrise, the sun’s aura acts as an inner frame: drawing the eye back, as it strays to take in the richly textured landscape and sky. At the centre is a magnetic stillness; the splintered beauty of pearlescent glass. While Grant’s title adapts from an orchestral work by Delius (A Song Before Sunrise), his painting stems from a prolonged consideration of The Song of the High Hills, as recorded in his journal: The completed work has passed many stages 2nally rejected for a simpler geometrical composition. I feel the suggested geological structures of the mountains in the painting can stand for the structure of Delius’s ‘[The] Song of the High Hills’. The best of Delius is of a nuanced complexity resulting in a unity with nature and music, and it is this richness which I hope to re@ect in all the works of my Delius project.10 A Song Before Sunrise entailed a similar, if more protracted, process of reassessment and revision: a fascinating evolution, not just as a painterly exercise, but for the work’s re@exive, or putative, relationship to music. Originally the composition included a moon and stars, which Grant gradually removed. Instead he emphasised the triangular cloud, drawn as a veil before a low sun that appears at its edges as a halo. In its 2nal state, Grant again considered this more formalised, geometric rendering of nature to be more closely attuned to Delius’s method of composing.11 Sea Drift Delius’s Sea Drift (1904) moves to a di.erent consideration of nature. Taking Walt Whitman’s poem, Delius fashions a work for baritone, chorus and orchestra embodying a potent sense of loss. The narrative tells of a seabird whose mate fails to return, and of a boy, watching, who learns of human love and grief. Nature mirrors narrative: the winds bring no news, no consolation. From the outset Delius establishes a sense of stilled time. The pulse is marked, pianissimo, by harps, timpani and bass drums. As the texture ebbs and surges, Delius pinpoints the stars (muted strings, arpeggiated harps), slapping waves (counterpointed by limpid, solo @ute), and solitary bird’s call (solo violin). The structure is continuous; restless in its tonality. To depict a desolate seascape would be straightforward: this is not Grant’s concern. Instead, each of his works relating to Sea Drift accrues imagery from di.erent sources, as a layered, intertextual response. In The Night Wind from the Sea [34], for instance, curtains and a casement open amid the sea’s waves. The conjunction is surreal, yet Grant harmonises the composition through a single colour, blue, which he describes as possessing ‘great longing and nostalgia … because it’s so expressive of space.’12 Longing is signalled, in these paintings, by a distant star, a beacon, or in the related Night Wind from the Mountain [37] by a lone silver birch (a personal symbol, the birch considered a weed amid Norway’s pines). And just as Whitman’s sea breeze is mercurial – bringing hope of the bird’s return, ru ing a child’s hair, whistling as a decoy – so too Grant varies the e.ect, elaborating or sti.ening curtains which dance or swirl, moved by an unseen force.

Behind such imagery is a recollection of the peripheral curtain in Edvard Munch’s painting, The Sick Child.13 Grant visited Åsgårdstrand, the seaside town where Munch lived and his friend Delius stayed, in June 2019, and made characteristically abbreviated pencil sketches of the sun, circular harbour and a dense line of trees opposite the water. The resulting painting, The Waters of Separation, Åsgårdstrand, 2019 [40] resonates further with Munch, echoing both his Sun mural for the University Hall in Oslo and his Melancholy series, in which a man broods, jealously, as two lovers prepare to sail from the jetty. (Grant’s inclusion of a 2gure in his own painting is unusual.) Admixed, through Grant’s title, is a reference to Delius’s ‘The sad waters of separation’ from Songs of Sunset (1907). In Ernest Dowson’s text, a lover’s face has faded through absence – is she dead? – ‘no proclamation sprang to me over the waste gray sea’. Delius echoes the music of Sea Drift in shared motifs and a similarly piquant use of solo instruments (cor anglais, oboe, violin). Grant’s visual parallel reconciles an almost overwhelming contrast between sunset and water through the formal conceit of a sphere; the harbour echoing and completing the sun’s aura. Where the Last Stars Touch the Sea [38] mirrors this, although the harbour in question is Seaford in Sussex (Grant discovered, to his astonishment, a similar drawing in a sketchbook from the 1990s). The title derives from a song by Delius, I-Brasil, whose text by Fiona Macleod evokes a mythical island o. the coast of Ireland.14 Together, they form an exquisite triptych. Macleod’s poem whispers of sorrow borne by the wind, whose falling cadences Delius catches and crystallises in the brittle Scotch snap. Grant, in his painting, carries the soul outwards, from shore’s haven, across tousled waves, to stars we can never reach. Delius’s letters allude to a planned visit to the Lofoten Islands in 1913. Whether this happened is unclear, but the possibility fascinates Grant. Delius’s journey would have taken him past Tysfjord, with its small wooded island and fretwork horizon: a view Grant has painted on several occasions. In The Island Under the Stars [41], the dark island of Hulløya is Grant’s nominal focus, but by various strategies he encourages a sense of the landscape’s expansiveness. The panorama stretches laterally by virtue of its horizontal canvas. An incomplete arc of ripples presses forward, while light illumines the twisted, chiselled peaks, pierces the starred 2rmament and irradiates the sky. Following the example of the Renaissance painters, as well as Tiepolo, Grant overpaints a rich brown with grey to create a numinous glow. Questioned whether this painting relates to I-Brasil, Grant replies simply, ‘It could do’. Stars, cloud and a mysterious island suggest a subliminal connection, but more pertinent seems the poem’s reference to peace. Island settings are important to Grant; Tysfjord, for its proximity to Lofoten, particularly so. The depth of expression in The Island under the Stars, completed in February 2020, forms a touching conclusion to the ‘Delius Series’. An Arabesque Jens Peter Jacobsen’s poem, En Arabesk, inhabits a strange hinterland. Symbolising the brief summer experienced in Scandinavia, it equates a rare @ower, unfolding under the sun, with passion that @ares intoxicatingly before dying. The text twines and splices imagery – meshing blood-red poppies, thorn bushes, berries, lilies, chalices, fountains, dew-laden grass – to exotically charged e.ect. Jacobsen, a botanist as well as a writer, uses language with scalpel precision to disturb and obfuscate, qualities that undoubtedly attracted the ‘mist-sculptor’ in Delius. Scoring Jacobsen for baritone and chorus, Delius harnesses the full potential of the orchestra (including bass oboe, sarrusophone, celesta, harp and xylophone) to create a work Philip Heseltine described as ‘his sole experiment with the psychologically macabre’.15 From a mysteriously low-pitched chromatic opening, strings and horns are joined by @ashes of woodwind and harp, alternating between tonal light and darkness. Grant’s 2rst response to the @ickering textures of Delius’s music was Know’st thou Pan? [43] (a question that appears early in Jacobsen’s text), evoking the ‘gloomy forest’ through masterly visual analogy. A path winds through dappled light and tangled foliage into darkness. Light catches the bark of silver birches. In the foreground white @owers gleam, and in the middle distance a dove arcs across the branches. The texture is in2nitely varied, seeming to oscillate as insects or motes of dust move the air.

Concurrently, Grant was contemplating a work related to An Arabesque’s conclusion, in which a ‘lonely thorn bush’, rendered lea@ess by the black winds, sheds berries in the snow. The solution proved elusive, however, until Grant relinquished a literal depiction to enshrine Jacobsen’s imagery ‘in the winter forest landscapes I know so well’.16 The Winter Forest [44] shows a mountain, glimpsed through the curtaining of pine trees and birches. How might it compare with Harald Sohlberg, whose Winter Night in the Mountains (1914), likewise framed by trees, is regarded as ‘the national painting of Norway’?17 Sohlberg’s scale and intensity are impressive, and Grant admits enthusiasm on 2rst seeing his paintings in Oslo. Further acquaintance, however, yielded a more critical view of what Grant regards as an ‘illustrative bent’ in his art.18 A crucial di.erence between Sohlberg’s and Grant’s paintings lies in the manner of execution. Where Sohlberg’s mountains are meticulously sculpted (you might almost imagine them moulded from snow), Grant’s single mountain appears provisional, unmediated. It is partly a matter of scale (on Grant’s small canvas every brushstroke tells), but also of de2nition and what is left to the imagination. Sohlberg’s trees are silhouetted starkly against the mountains. Grant’s landscape is slightly blurred, as if seen through snow or eyes misted with cold. Comparing Grant now with Delius, we can detect parallel strategies of layering to suggest space. Grant overlays arching brambles against the snow, berries against the blackened pines, the delicate brushwood of forests receding towards the mountain. (The berries, too, are echoed by in2nitesimally small pinpricks of red.) In similar manner, Delius collages strati2ed textures, one after another: celesta and harp moving in chill, conjunct chords against susurrating woodwind; pizzicato lower strings puncturing a cushion of sustained, divisi violins. The e.ect in both cases is a potent vision of nature, glimpsed and understood. Nearly a year later Grant returned to An Arabesque, creating a miniature that distils its uncanny imagery to a single symbol. The backdrop is darkened, striated light penetrating unnaturally in vertical, orange-green streaks. A @ower cradles an eye. In Jacobsen’s poem, this is the ‘frenzied eye of one enchanted’, coloured in Delius’s setting by metallic glints from triangle and tambourine. The eye in Grant’s Arabesque [42] is coolly regarding – observed and observing. It unsettles through this dual capacity, deftly conveying the sensual contradiction of Jacobsen’s text. On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912), heralds nature’s fresh season in all its sweetness and complexity. Much has been written about the work’s ‘Englishness’ – yet cuckoos are European, and so is Delius’s music: it responds to Norway, but with ears attuned to the impressionism of France. After a sublime opening (widely spaced strings, a solo oboe), Delius introduces a Norwegian folk tune. ‘In Ola Valley, in Ola Lake’ tells of a missing boy, perhaps bewitched and taken to the mountains, perhaps drowned, and of his mother who summons church bells to ring for his return.19 Arranged by Grieg for piano, the bells can be heard in the piano’s repeated chords. Delius changes these bells to the repeated notes of a cuckoo. A series of paintings transforms Grant’s winter forest to spring. But 2rst, The Hill-Cloud Falls Away in Rain [4] stands, Janus-like, on the threshold: recalling I-Brasil (from which its title derives) and the red-berried bush of An Arabesque, it also looks forward, as rain nourishes landscape into the foliage of spring. Next is Grant’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo [1], a spontaneous, temporal response to nature. In Echo of the Cuckoo’s Call in Spring [2], Grant’s imagery alters, such that ‘a glacier seen between hills becomes a delicate, unfolded @ower’.20 This rendering is smaller than the preceding work, and in acrylic its impulsiveness intensi2es: colours amass and mingle, jewel-like, while the birch tree’s patterning recalls Aboriginal bark painting. Finally, in Approach to the High Hills, Norway [3], the view comes into clearest focus, such that we see a seedling, magni2ed, sprouting from a tree stump. Delius wrote of the longing for Norway that spring always brought him.21 In these paintings by Grant, the feeling is at once sharper and more fragile, embracing the loss foreshadowed in the @ower and glacier. As Grant wrote, after completing Echo of the Cuckoo’s Call in Spring, these ‘works will express a poetry of nostalgia, a melancholy mood which catches the breath.’22

Nostalgia, strictly de2ned, is a longing for home. Neither artist nor composer can claim Norway as his native country, yet for each it is a spiritual home, and in both paintings and music there is a stillness of belonging. Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is a set of variations on a tune and on a bird’s call. Harmonically open-ended, it fades in then out, its landscape remaining – in the listener’s mind – after sound ceases.

‘The Walk to the Paradise Garden’ This sense of transition is inherent in music but not in painting. Delius’s ‘The Walk to the Paradise Garden’ was conceived speci2cally to cover a scenery change in the opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet (1901). There is no description of the episode in Gottfried Keller’s novella, from which the work derives, nor are there any indications in the score. All we understand, from Keller, is that the two young lovers, Sali and Vrenchen, walk from a village fair to the ‘Paradise Garden’ – an inn, set on a lonely hillside, ‘frequented by the lower classes, children of poor farmers and labourers, and all kinds of vagabonds’.23 Delius’s music is luminous, suggesting the couple’s absorption in one another, to the exclusion of the outside world. Their passage from one milieu to another, fair to tavern, is suggested by a tonal progression, from E @at to B major.24

Overall, A Village Romeo and Juliet draws a tragic trajectory, containing within it sinister undercurrents that account for the compelling force of the narrative. Interruptions break through the opera’s fabric, in the tract of land that becomes increasingly wild (the source of the argument between the two families), and the character of the Dark Fiddler, who tempts and threatens. It is this darker side to which Grant alludes in paintings related to the work. In The Cuckoo in the Paradise Garden [31], Grant colours landscape luridly. Sunset blushes the sky, contrasting with a forest suggested by oranges, yellows, purples and greens. The disruptive element, the cuckoo, is scarcely visible. By contrast, in Rain in the Paradise Garden [32], a strange @ower dominates the composition. Gentian blue, and hooded, this @ower rears up amid the birch trees, lilies and forest foliage. Grant began the painting with a sensation of the woodland, then rain, then the potential of mist, as he worked obsessively on the canvas: I wanted the notion of blossoms or some mysterious @owers, because I think in An Arabesque there’s a reference to a mystical @ower which is just like an eye, and it dominates the landscape. It’s a calyx, or cup, a beaker-type shape, a bit like convolvulus in a way … but the picture started to inform me as to what it wanted – what I could get away with next, what I could add to it, or subtract …25

Subtraction became crucial, as well as the idea of mist – sometimes high in the branches, sometimes to the sides, re-enclosing a closed world. Grant used the imprint of fabric to create parallel lines in the composition, relating these abstractly to tree trunks. The e.ect in The Listening Forest [33] is more powerful still, tautly balancing detail (the half-open sheath of a plant crammed with berries; a 2ligree of twigs) against the rhythm of repeated verticals. Veiled and transitory, these images can, in fact, be mapped to the aural e.ect of Delius’s ‘The Walk to the Paradise Garden’ in the way that solo lines emerge from sustained textures only to melt away, or to be passed to other instruments. At one point, a cuckoo can surely be heard. North Country Sketches Grant’s response to Delius speaks eloquently of his attitude to landscape, amplifying our knowledge of typologies that inspire him and those that don’t. Admiring Delius’s North Country Sketches (1914), which trace the Yorkshire moors of his youth from autumn to spring, Grant originally planned a series based on northern English landscapes. He painted a tiny study of the coast at Bempton, with gannets and guillemots wheeling above summer cli.s. Returning to Yorkshire, however, he was deterred by the brown moors (albeit preferable to ‘sickly purple’) and the idea that many had painted these landscapes before.26 Instead, he sketched the pond in the village where he stayed, which he related, in his mind, to the pond in Delius’s garden. The resulting painting, Harome Pond, North Yorkshire [75], proves far gentler than the often astringent tone of Delius’s North Country Sketches. From drawings, and recollections, Grant structured a composition around his leitmotif of a vertical aperture, a central opening onto landscape. Light su.uses the foliage and melts the surface of the pond. A sca.olding of trees – real and re@ected – holds in place this image of transcendent beauty. Idylle de printemps In spring 2019, Grant visited Grez-sur-Loing, where Delius lived from 1897 until his death in 1934. The forest of Fontainebleau, south-east of Paris, had attracted painters from the mid-nineteenth century, seeding around it a cluster of artists’ colonies. First and foremost was Barbizon, followed by Montigny, Marlotte and Grez. The river Loing, slow-moving and re@ective, was the principal appeal at Grez, bordered on one side by gardens and on the other by open meadows, where there was level ground for siting easels. Artists were enticed by the greyness of the light, particularly in October.27 Robert Louis Stevenson visited Grez in the 1870s, describing it as ‘full of gentle attractions for the navigator: islanded reed-mazes, where, in autumn, the red berries cluster’.28 This was the location that drew Jelka Rosen, a German painter and later Delius’s wife, to buy the house in Grez where the couple would live. The environment became invaluable to Delius. There was solitude, allowing him to compose undisturbed, but also the proximity of nature, in the garden running to the river’s edge, and in the surrounding countryside. Delius frequently walked along the road to Marlotte, amid the woods, and through the rural landscape surrounding Grez.

Grant’s visits to Grez-sur-Loing, in spring and summer, elicited a response he described as ‘beautiful and deeply poignant’ but also ‘profoundly disturbing’. Such is perhaps foreseeable, given the intense visualisation, then experience, of a landscape where a composer had walked and where his music was conceived. What can we see in these paintings? First, there is the continuing glint of the surreal in Grant’s vision. Fruit trees, clothed in spring blossom, are sequestered behind glass-topped walls, the shards of glass becoming sharks’ teeth of ice. Elsewhere, as in La route de Villiers au printemps [50], a single @owering tree interrupts a verdant landscape. We might recall Jacobsen’s enchanted description, in Niels Lyhne (on which Fennimore and Gerda was based), of ‘bouquets of snow, wreaths of snow, domes, arches, garlands, a fairyland architecture of white @owers with a background of the bluest sky’.29 The accumulative emphasis on the unexpected can be seen, too, in Grant’s Idylle de paysage près de Grez-sur-Loing [49], where a timber pile echoes a forest, and clouds the @ooded meadows – in neat (though not too neat) equations of wood with wood, water with water. In Walden [54], the element of surprise is a sports pavilion discovered amid trees, which Grant transforms into a writing hut complete with curling pillar of smoke.

The titles of Grant’s forest paintings draw from nineteenth-century American literature. While a link might be imagined with Delius, who as a young man supervised an orange plantation in Florida, writing works such as Koanga and Florida inspired by the experience, it would be more accurate to consider Grant working at tangents suggested by the subject matter. ‘Le bois gothique’, near Grez-sur-Loing [51] references Ralph Waldo Emerson’s likening of interlaced branches to the vaulting in Gothic cathedrals, while Walden, of course, alludes to Thoreau’s woodland cabin. In ‘Le bois gothique’ Grant’s evocation of light is magical: the ‘festal or solemn arcade’ of Emerson’s description is replicated by the arching of branches, at the centre of which is a golden stillness.30 The speci2c location was the road to Marlotte, and linked in Grant’s mind was Delius’s a rmation that form is simply a matter of ‘imparting spiritual unity to one’s thoughts’.31 The word ‘spiritual’ is striking in this context. Religion, for Delius, proved a vexed issue, and one over which he found himself at odds with Eric Fenby, the young composer from Yorkshire who stayed at Grez as Delius’s amanuensis from 1928. Fenby regarded Delius as ‘at heart a pagan’. Their argument simmered over Nietzsche, whom Delius revered, and upon whose writings he founded a creed based on nature.32 Grant, discussing the forest paintings inspired by Grez, broached his own belief in the miracle of life as a further perceived sympathy with Delius: … it is a religious position. For me, it is the mystery of it which is the most important thing: the idea that an unfathomable mystery exists, and no matter how you try to understand it, it will always elude you … And of course, for me, all natural things are manifestations of this miraculous order of life, out of which we sprang. So forests have a meaning.33 Grant’s beautiful returning of the argument to nature – the forest – is characteristically self-e.acing. His paintings are not grand expositions of a philosophy, but speak all the more potently because of this. At Grez, it was the river, marrying ‘the cosmic to the pastoral’, that distilled Grant’s response to landscape.34 Borrowing his title from Delius’s Idylle de printemps (1889), a tender orchestral study, Grant captures something rarely achieved: a sense of space so beautifully executed as to make the viewer aware of height, width, depth – almost the sensation of the air. The sharply outlined dialogue between oboe and @ute, which opens Delius’s tone poem, broadens to an expansive, joyous melody, lushly underscored. Grant’s painting holds similar contrasts – black, skeletal trunks to the left, to the right the blurring of spring foliage – but without any sense of disjointedness. Rather, it is a panorama that unfolds, always with fresh detail to be discovered. Where earlier artists (Corot, for example) focused on the physicality of the twelfth-century arcaded bridge, Grant looks outward, studying re@ections that shift, seeming not to match what is above them, then change again.

Summer Night on the River We might consider two rivers that form bookends to Delius’s life, threading its creative span. By St Johns River, in Florida, Delius witnessed sunsets of ‘lurid and ferocious hues’, shot snakes and alligators and breathed air scented by orange blossom.35 At Grez, he rowed on the Loing, struggling under the bridge, and landing at the deserted garden where Jelka had painted for many summers. Rivers colour Delius’s compositions: Florida, Summer Night on the River, and the closing scene of A Village Romeo and Juliet – to name a few. Understanding the importance of the river, as a motif, Grant has produced a set of four paintings charting the Loing through the seasons, each with a gloriously distinct character. In Chanson de printemps [64], it is the softness of dusk and miraculously funnel-shaped clouds. Song of the Summer Evening [65] draws the onlooker, irresistibly, to match clouds to their re@ections, and to imagine the sound of crows above the trees. Idylle d’automne [66] possesses trancelike stillness, warmed by the burnished glow of trees’ foliage. Lastly we come to Idylle d’hiver [67], in which snow dusts the riverbanks, and a tree, crowned with twigs, leans athwart a gunmetal river. Grant is a skilled colourist. Is this a further reason for his love of Delius? Roger Quilter wrote in detail about Delius’s ear for orchestral colour, linking it, too, to the pictures in his house at Grez-sur-Loing. Principal, of course, was Gauguin’s Nevermore (1897), which hung amid paintings by Jelka and others ‘of an impressionist kind – studies in colour rather than form; their strange, vivid colouring immediately caught the eye’.36 Summer Night on the River (1911) embodies this thesis, daringly juxtaposing timbres and textures to suggest light and shade. Fenby, knowing intimately the setting that inspired Delius’s music, envisaged ‘the gnats and dragon@ies dart over the waterlilies, and the faint white mist [that] hovers over the willow-tressed banks and overhanging trees’.37

The garden of Delius’s house at Grez-sur-Loing, taken by Philip Oyler in the early 1930s

In a Summer Garden Approaching the conclusion of his ‘Delius Series’, Grant turns to the garden at Grez-sur-Loing. Its creation is often ascribed to Jelka, who undoubtedly undertook most of the planning, nurturing and maintenance. Yet plants were a passion of Delius’s too, as seen from descriptions in his letters, and his touching inclusion of examples he had found (‘I send you a little @ower which grows only in Norway & Sweden & has a very sweet perfume when fresh’).38 Together, Jelka and Delius collected @owers and bulbs to plant in the garden, and Jelka prided herself on growing vegetables and fruit to prepare for their meals. Although photographs of the garden are black and white, and not of superb quality, there exist relatively detailed descriptions of the garden’s planting during Delius’s lifetime. Spring was marked by primroses, da.odils, snowdrops, crocuses, violets and periwinkle, and summer by lilies, ‘Gloire de Dijon’ roses and a riotous profusion of annuals: marigolds, nicotiana, phlox, cosmos and petunias. Structure was provided by a pond, bamboo, and trees.39 By 2019, these aspects remained, although much else had changed.

A direct musical parallel is suggested by Delius’s In a Summer Garden (1908), dedicated to Jelka with lines from Dante Gabriel Rossetti.40 On its reissue in 1921, the score included a descriptive setting for the music, with Bright butter@ies @itting from petal to petal and gold-brown bees murmuring in the warm, quivering summer air. Beneath the shade of the old tree @ows a quiet river with water-lilies.41 Beguiling as this may be, it is more interesting, perhaps, to consider a work such as Delius’s Cello Concerto (1921), which Grant numbers among his favourites without a literary or identi2ably landscape-derived source. Discussing this, we soon reach a linguistic impasse. Struggling to articulate what he responds to, Grant describes it as an ‘abstract quality … I can sense the form, but it doesn’t have a 2gurative quality’. JL: But how do you see this as di.erent in Delius’s music from that of other composers? KG: I’m absolutely sure it’s because I can’t understand a lot of Delius’s music. It doesn’t touch me directly, as, say, Mahler does. There’s very little in Mahler that I would feel was not appropriate for the piece. I’m thinking of Das Lied von der Erde, for example. But with Delius there’s lots of passages which I think of in terms of smudged colour! Grant laughs, and the conversation veers to approach the problem from a di.erent angle. I think, possibly, that it’s music to be used rather than enjoyed … in the sense that it can be attributed to everyone’s experience of existence. Its dramatic moments and its lyrical passive moments, its quietnesses and its unbelievable cacophonous noise. What Delius was trying to express when he suddenly introduces these powerful crescendos of sound might be to do with the extremes of life. Circling back to painting, the illusion of two-dimensional representation, and the parallel illusion of nature, seen – but never quite seen, Grant continues,

So much of nature is to be taken on trust because you can’t go beyond it … And in a way, I suppose, Delius comes closer to me in its celebration of life – of existence. Because I’ve never said ‘I’m an artist’, I’ve just said that I have a subject, and that subject has demanded all my energy and attention in order to make some comprehensible expression of it. And I think that Delius would say that too, because the subject motivation behind Delius’s music is so powerful that it almost excuses any excess … the abrupt changes, the variations, the things that musicologists can’t quite understand, I 2nd those all part of the same reaction that I have to things. I suggest, then, that what Grant is experiencing, through Delius’s music, is a short-circuiting to something he considers essential: that listening takes him to the heart of the matter. He agrees.42 Positioning Grant’s ‘garden’ paintings in relation to Delius, following this line of argument, proves revelatory. Rêverie du jardin de Jelka et Delius [71] and The Garden Pond, Grez-sur-Loing [73] are boldly composed, assembling details from reality into newly con2gured entities. In the former, lilies (once again recalling An Arabesque) crane upwards to a patchwork of foliage, above which clouds rest, caught in the spare interlacing of trees. In the latter, the pond recedes, rimmed by serrated wooden staves, while a perforated stone, a reminder of the sluice running as a conduit under the house, assumes vast proportions. Both aspire to the abstract while never for a moment losing sight of nature. But in a third painting, A Blackbird in the Garden of Jelka and Delius, Grez-sur-Loing [69], nature reads clearly; behind her the abstract vaulting of trees. This gradated weighting of form to ‘message’ correlates to a similar spectrum within Delius’s music: from the overt narrative of The Bird’s Story (1889, orchestrated 1908, to a poem by Ibsen) to the deliberately impressionistic texturing of In a Summer Garden. What, then, of the Cello Concerto?

73 69

The outstanding cellist, Beatrice Harrison, watched as Delius began to compose his Cello Concerto on Good Friday in 1920, in a sunlit Surrey garden surrounded by the @owers he knew so well from Grez-sur-Loing. Harrison later described the sounds of nature she perceived in the music: spring heralded in the opening chords, birdsong (there is, in fact, a musical allusion to On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring), the weaving of melody like a river through landscape, ‘sometimes clear and sometimes in shadow’.43 Her analysis is subjective, yet it identi2es a fascination shared by contemporary musicians and critics. In 1925, the She eld-born musicologist, Herbert Antcli.e, published an essay titled ‘Space and Spacing in Music’, which attempted to draw connections between nature, music and painting. Identifying a return to light and space in music, he cited as examples the Judgment section of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius (a blaze of light, ranked angelic hosts), Bax’s Garden of Fand and Delius’s In a Summer Garden, Sea Drift and The Song of the High Hills.44 ‘Light’ and ‘space’, apt to painting (and Grant’s, as we have seen), are woefully imprecise descriptors for music. And yet — might they signal a continuum of expression, in Delius’s music, that hinders it from being perceived abstractly? If so, and if this is indeed a consequence of the music’s life-spring in nature (Delius famously having de2ned form as ‘contained in the thought itself’),45 this is surely the most compelling parallel between Delius and Grant: the astute balancing of subject against structure.

27 36

Epilogue: Framing Nature The ‘Delius Series’ has tapped a fresh vitality in Grant’s painting. Through Grant’s eyes we listen to Delius anew, and through Delius we learn immeasurably about Grant’s approach to painting, and about his attitude to nature. These interrelated concerns could be explored endlessly, particularly since Grant’s enthusiasm to continue painting – and inventing – seems bounded only by the practical limits of an exhibition. The most intriguing titles in this series pertain to forests. The Listening Forest transforms nature into a sentient presence, while The Intruding Forest [36], more a radiant interruption than an incursion, coaxes its ‘Arabesque’ thorn-bush between open curtains. Grant talks engagingly of forests, ‘seeking the light, rising’, and reminds us of a passage in Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. In it, Bachelard states that we do not have to go far into a forest to feel lost and occluded from the outside world.46 But Grant @ips this anxiety to something wondrous: the limitless reach of the imagination. Even though, physically, we might stand within a small area, enclosed between trees and branches, imaginatively it’s everything – … and I like that idea, because paintings are like that, too. I don’t like the idea of ornate frames, but I like the idea of some limitation between the canvas and the world.47 Perhaps we should conclude with this thought. Delius’s music, more often than not, begins and ends quietly, within which is framed an exquisite portrait of nature. So, too, Grant’s paintings frame landscape, isolating moments of strangeness or rare beauty. Ravishing yet truthful, they present a unique mediation of nature: a conduit to the universal that we ignore at our peril. Judith LeGrove is an art historian, author and musicologist. She studied music at Cambridge and for many years was curator at the Britten-Pears Archive. Her publications include A Musical Eye: the Visual World of Britten and Pears (2012); Geo.rey Clarke: a Sculptor’s Prints (2012); The Sculpture of Michael Lyons (2013) and Geo.rey Clarke Sculptor: Catalogue Raisonné, (2017). Judith continues to write the programme notes for the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts.

Notes to Framing Nature 1

Deryck Cooke, ‘Delius & Form: A Vindication – 1’, Musical Times, Vol 103, No 1432 (June 1962), page 392.

Recent publications include Martin Lee-Browne and Paul Guinery, Delius and his Music (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014), Andrew J Boyle, Delius and Norway

(Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017) and Daniel M Grimley, Delius and the Sound of Place (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). An online Catalogue of the Works of Frederick Delius was launched in 2018. See https://delius.music.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/ 3

Frederick Delius, diary (20 July 1887), in Lionel Carley (ed), A Life in Letters, I: 1862–1908 (London: Scolar Press, 1983), pages 385-386.

Delius, På Vidderne, text by Ibsen, translated by Lionel Carley. These lines appear twice in Ibsen’s text.

Keith Grant, soundtrack to the 2lm Painter ProPles – Keith Grant (MB Films, 2018).

Delius, letter to Edvard Grieg (June 1889), A Life in Letters, I, page 41.

Delius, letter to Norman O’Neill (10 February 1920), in Lionel Carley (ed), A Life in Letters, II: 1909-1934 (London: Scolar Press, 1988 [1994]), page 79.

Hubert Foss, ‘Additions, Annotations and Comments’, in Philip Heseltine, Frederick Delius (London: Bodley Head, 1952), page 137.

Delius, letter to Norman O’Neill (10 February 1920).

Grant, journal (24 December 2018).

Grant, journal (8 January 2019).

Grant, soundtrack to Painter ProPles.

Munch made several versions of this painting over a period of 40 years.

Fiona Macleod was the pen name of the Scottish writer William Sharp (1855-1905).

Philip Heseltine, programme note for An Arabesque (Radio Times, 11 October 1929). Heseltine provided an English translation of Jacobsen’s poem for the score of

An Arabesque. 16

Grant, journal (18 March 2019).

Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935), Winter Night in the Mountains (1914), oil on canvas, 160 x 180.5 cm, Oslo National Museum. This painting was shown in

‘Harald Sohlberg: Painting Norway’ in 2019 at Dulwich Picture Gallery, from whose publicity the quotation is taken.

Grant, letter to the author (7 March 2019).

This folk tune was sung, without words, by Peter Pears in the soundtrack to the 2lm Grant North (1969), directed by Jack Hazan.

Grant, journal (10 January 2019).

Delius, postcard to Percy Grainger, undated (probably January 1914), quoted in Boyle, Delius and Norway, page 261.

Grant, journal (10 January 2019).

Gottfried Keller (1819-90), A Village Romeo and Juliet, trans Ronald Taylor (London: John Calder, 1985), page 173.

The distance of these keys appears greater visually than aurally: B major is equivalent to C @at major, thus forming a tonal relationship of a third,

common in Romantic music. 25

Grant, interview with the author (September 2019).

Ibid.

Alexandra Herlitz, Grez-sur-Loing revisited: The international artists’ colony in a diKerent light (Göteborg: Makadam Förlag, 2013).

Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the Plains, with other Memories and Essays (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1892), page 128.

Jens Peter Jacobsen, translated by Tiina Nunnally, Niels Lyhne (Seattle: Fjord Press, 1986), page 40.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol 2 (Essays. First Series), Fireside Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton-Mi in, 1909), page 24.

Eric Fenby, Delius as I knew him. Revised Edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), page 200.

Fenby, Delius as I knew him, pages 171-172, 181-183. Delius stated, ‘[Nietzsche] feels nature. I believe, myself, in no doctrine whatsoever & in nothing but Nature

& the great forces of Nature. Letter to Philip Heseltine (23 June 1912), quoted in Grimley, Delius and the Sound of Place, page 227. 33

Grant, interview with the author (September 2019).

Grant, journal (9 April 2009).

Delius, letter to Jelka Rosen (April 1897, A Life in Letters, I, page 114.

Roger Quilter, in Peter Warlock, Frederick Delius (London: The Bodley Head, 1923 [rev 1952]), page 160. Delius was forced to sell Nevermore due to

2nancial di culties, but retained a copy painted by Jelka. 37

Eric Fenby, note for a recording of Summer Night on the River by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Beecham, HMV (1957).

Delius, letter to Jelka Rosen (8 July 1896), A Life in Letters, I, page 107.

Philip Oyler, ‘Frederick Delius in his Garden’, in Christopher Redwood, A Delius Companion (London: John Calder, 1976), pages 49-54.

‘All are my blooms and all sweet blooms of love / To thee I gave while spring and summer sang’, from Sonnet LIX, Love’s Last Gift.

The original programme note, in German, dates from 1913; quoted in Lee-Browne and Guinery, Delius and his Music, page 267.

Grant, interview with the author (September 2019).

Beatrice Harrison, The Cello and the Nightingale (London: John Murray, 1985), pages 114, 118-119.

Herbert Antcli.e, ‘Space and Spacing in Music’, The Musical Quarterly, Vol 11 No 1 (Jan 1925), page 122.

Fenby, Delius as I knew him, page 200.

Gaston Bachelard, translated by Maria Jolas, The Poetics of Space (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994), page 185.

Grant, interview with the author (September 2019).

Norway

ON HEARING THE FIRST C CKOO IN SpRING

(This and all subsequent commentries were written by Keith Grant in February 2020) 1 On Hearing the First Cuckoo Signed Signed with initials and dated ‘Nov 2018’ on reverse Oil on linen 14 x 10 ¾ inches

‘On Hearing the First Cuckoo in S(ring is an undoubted and unparalleled masterpiece by Delius. But the hidden bird that he heard making its seasonal cry was not in an English wood but a Norwegian Birch forest.’

2 Echo of the Cuckoo’s Call in Spring Signed Signed, inscribed with title twice, ‘Homage to Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘Jan:2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 12 ¼ x 7 ½ inches

‘The distant glacier appears as an exotic blossom between the blue sides of a “V” shaped valley. The formalised forest landscape below shields the fugitive bird whilst the glacial 6ower re6ects its plaintive call.’

3 Approach to the High Hills, Norway Signed and dated 2/19 Signed, inscribed ‘Approach to the High Hills’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated ‘Feb:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil 19 ¾ x 12 inches

‘A((roach to the High Hills, Norway invites the viewer to reach the “6owering” glacier at the end of the valley. On this journey physical encounters are with natural forms not quite understood as they are glimpsed and form a tapestry of interwoven images dissolved into the objective of reaching the heights of snow and ice.’

4 The Hill-Cloud Falls Away in Rain Signed and dated 6/19 Signed and signed with initials, inscribed with title, ‘FM’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘June 2019’ on reverse Oil on linen with pencil over board 15 x 12 inches

‘The Hill Cloud falls away in Rain is a line from the poem, “I-Brasil” by Fiona Macleod (a pseudonym of William Sharp), which uses nature imagery imaginatively conceived to stress the fundamental sadness and transience of humane life. Delius set this poem of a Celtic paradise for baritone voice and created an astonishingly evocative masterpiece.’

THE SONG OF THE HIGH HILLS 5 Morning Song Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated 'Jan:2019' on stretcher Oil on linen 11 ¾ x 12 ½ inches

‘I don’t think Delius ever experienced the rigours of the Norwegian winter. However, many of his most imaginative works like An Arabesque and North Country Sketches invoke the symbolism of winter and he would have been aware of the great extent of ice and snow through his trekking on the Hardangervidda.’

6 The Frozen Lake, Norway Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Homage to Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘Jan:2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 7 ¼ x 12 ¼ inches

7 A Song at Sunrise Signed and dated 12/18 Signed, inscribed with title twice, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres thrice, and dated ‘December 2018’ and ‘Dec:2018’ on stretcher Oil on linen 45 ¼ x 52 inches

‘A Song at Sunrise is inspired by Delius’s A Song Before Sunrise and The Song of the High Hills, paean of inimitable, all embracing tonal truth and originality.’

8 The High Hills from Afar Signed Signed with initials and dated ‘Nov 2018’ on reverse Oil on linen 11 ¾ x 12 ¾ inches

‘The glacier seen from the “Y” shaped valleys assumes the form of the petals of a gigantic 6ower. The poetic sentiment expressed by many of Delius’s compositions concurs with my realising the almost surreal visual reality of the form in nature.’

9 Ascent to the High Hills Signed Signed with initials and dated ‘Nov 2018’ on reverse Oil on fabric laminated on board 17 ¾ x 13 inches

‘Ascent to the High Hills is directly inspired by the music of Delius, and especially the Nietzschean poetry of A Mass of Life. The painting depicts the high, lone and di cult road to the high hills beloved by Delius.’

10 Song of the Morning Mountain’s Sun (opposite) Signed Signed, inscribed with title twice and ‘Delius Series’, and dated ‘Jan:2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ¾ x 27 ¾ inches

11 A Song Before Sunrise see larger image overleaf

‘Song of the Morning Mountain’s Sun is a scene inspired by the sun motif in Delius’s works and actually derived from the many observations of sunsets, sunrises and midnight sun that I have made over the years in Norway.’

‘A Song Before Sunrise is related eponymously to a Delius composition but also to his love of the Norwegian fjords. The underlying formalism of this large painting is inspired by the structured base upon which Delius builds even his most lyrical creations.’

11 A Song Before Sunrise Signed and dated 12/18/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘12/18/Jan:2019/Feb:2019’ and ‘July 2019: completed’ on stretcher Oil on linen 39 ½ x 59 inches

12 Morning Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated ‘Jan:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil 11 ¾ x 12 ½ inches

‘Morning is part of a “Sun Quartet” inspired by Delius’s many works of the sun’s dawning, its phases through the day to its setting into the night.’

40 13 Radiance of the Evening Sun Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated ‘Jan/19’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil 11 ¾ x 12 ½ inches

14 Marine Sunrise Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated ‘Jan:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil 11 ¾ x 12 ½ inches

‘Marine Sunrise refers to the elemental grandeur at sea and is also one of my Sea Drift sketches.’ [Please see pages 52-53]

41 15 The Sun Goes Down Behind the Forest Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated ‘Jan:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil 11 ¾ x 12 ½ inches

‘The last work of the “Sun Quartet” implies the advance of the night when the forest itself becomes intensely mysterious and open to imaginative interpretation. The God Pan moves from shadow to shadow.’

16 The Bridge and Setting Sun Signed with initials and dated 3/19 Signed, inscribed with title twice, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated 1/19 on stretcher Oil on linen 8 x 10 inches

‘The Bridge and Setting Sun represents the Delian fascination with the sun’s dying, resurrection and eternal recurrence. The bridge depicted joins the Island of Karmøy to the mainland near Haugesund across a sound called “Nordvegen”, the road to the North from which it is said the name of Norway derives.’

42 ‘The sun is the supreme symbol of life for Delius and his Norwegian painter friend, Edvard Munch. Sunsetting and Congregating Crows, “Sandvika” is a work which obliquely refers to A Song of the Setting Sun but also to the Christiania fjord which extends to Sandvika, and which Delius knew very well, staying as he did in Drøbak and Åsgårdstrand for protracted periods.’

17 Sunsetting and Congregating Crows, ‘Sandvika’ Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Homage to Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘Jan:2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 12 ¼ x 7 ¼ inches Dedicated to the Memory of Eystein and Rosita Paasche

18 Narrow Road to the High Hills, Jotunheimen; Summer Snow Signed and dated 7/19 Signed, inscribed ‘Narrow Road to the High Hills’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘July 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 x 12 inches

‘Here is linked the route that Delius took on many of his “hiking” visits to Jotunheimen to the travelogue of the seventeenth-century Haiku poet, Bash ’s The Narrow Road to the Dee( North. I 4nd Bash ’s descriptions of his travels and his encounters with nature and people in symbiotic harmony with the open-air life of Delius.’

43 ‘The High Hills of Jotunheimen celebrates the kind of mountain scenery which Delius has immortalised in his masterpiece, The Song of the High Hills. For my part, I do not attempt to romanticise mountain imagery but rather to 4nd painterly equivalents to visually authenticate my experiences in the 4eld. The same was true of Delius before me who used the known mountain motifs to create a musical equivalent that, whilst rooted in actual experience rose to a paean of sound, the beauty and originality of which has never been surpassed.’

19 The High Hills of Jotunheimen Signed and dated 11/19 Signed, inscribed ‘The High Peaks of Jotunheimen’ twice, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘2019/Nov’, ‘November 2019’ and ‘Repainted Nov: 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 ¾ x 10 ¾ inches

20 In Jotunheimen, A Distant Mountain Signed with initials Signed, inscribed ‘In Jotunheimen’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘July 2019’ on reverse Oil on linen over board 13 ½ x 12 inches

‘Certainly the greatest inspiration behind the high mountain music of Delius was the Jotunheimen massif of Norway. It is a region of the highest peaks in Norway crossed by innumerable torrents and clothed in the lower valleys by dense forests and woodlands; above are compelling distances crowded with snow peaks about which sudden storms often rage.’

21 The Glacier in the North (below left) Signed Signed and inscribed ‘KG Nov 2018’ on reverse Oil on linen 13 x 9 ½ inches

‘Delius explored the Jostedalsbreen Glacier with a guide. I have visited this massive area of prehistoric ice on numerous occasions, and it was the subject of many of my earliest works from Norway.’

23 Sudden Storm, Jotunheimen, the River in Spate Signed twice and dated 7/19 Signed, inscribed ‘Sudden Storm, Jotunheimen, the River in Spate’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘July 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 ½ x 12 inches

‘Such storms, often descending from the mountains, turn the lower forests into clashing encounters with the forces of nature – during which trees appear to be 6ailing in the wind and the streams and rivers burst their natural courses and in boiling 6oods drown the forest 6oor.’

22 Late Snow, Jotunheimen, a Waterfall Divides the Cli s (opposite below right) Signed and dated 11/19 Signed, inscribed ‘Late Snow on the Jotunheimen Mountains, a waterfall divides the cli.s’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘July 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 x 12 inches

‘Last June with friends we stood in six inches of fresh snow. The patterning of light snow over the patches of the remaining winter precipitation creates a lace-like cloth covering the mountain ranges. This breathtaking beauty is often punctuated by rock falls or avalanches and in this case by the distant thunder of a waterfall descending in a thin column from the upper snow 4elds. Delius knew this country well.’

24 The Derelict Hut, Jotunheimen (right) Signed and dated 11/19 Signed, inscribed with title twice, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Nov:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with collage 16 x 13 inches

‘This decaying ruin just o the path that Delius used on his ascent into the high hills of Jotunheimen may have been seen by the composer and could even have given him shelter.’

25 Lightning Strikes the Winter Forest Signed Signed with initials and dated ‘Nov 2018’ on reverse Oil on linen 16 x 12 ¼ inches

‘Delius deeply understood the signi4cance of Nature as an inspirational force in human life. Lightning Strikes the Winter Forest relates to his description of a storm that he endured with lightning before and above him in the mountains.’

26 Summer Lightning Divides the Forest: Norway Signed Signed with initials and dated ‘Nov 2018’ on reverse Oil on linen 21 ½ x 18 inches

‘My experiences in the elemental landscape of the North are the source of many of the paintings in my Invention and Variation exhibition. The single shaft of lightning from an isolated cloud is a memory of my experiencing a moment of awe and incredulity in Norway several years ago.’

27 Delius and the Nærøyfjord Signed Signed, inscribed with title and ‘Delius Series’, and dated 3/4 2019 on stretcher Oil on linen 12 x 12 inches

28 Nærøyfjorden Signed and dated 1/20 Signed, inscribed with title and ‘Delius Series’, and dated ‘Jan:2020’ on reverse of frame Oil on linen 23 ½ x 27 ½ inches

‘Nærøyfjorden is an image of the narrow fjord as seen from a boat. I have attempted a geometrical formalism and simpli4cation of the subject enhancing the stillness and the silence naturally prevailing mood of Delius’s favourite fjord.’

29 Delius at the Western Fjord Signed and dated 3/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘March 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 15 ¾ x 15 ¾ inches

30 Above Nærøyfjord Signed and dated 12/2019 Signed twice, inscribed with title twice, ‘Delius Series’ and medium, and dated ‘Dec/2019’ and ‘Dec:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ¾ x 27 ½ inches

‘The narrow fjord beloved of Delius occupies a cleft in the upland plateau of the southern mountain region of Norway. I have travelled the long length of the Nærøyfjord and also like Delius have marvelled at its grandeur. My painting attempts to unify the uplands with the sea-level reality of the fjord.’

THE WALK TO THE pARADISE GARDEN 31 The Cuckoo in the Paradise Garden Signed and dated 1/19 Signed, inscribed with title twice, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Jan:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil 11 ¾ 12 ½ inches

‘In Delius’s opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet, the Paradise Garden is a rather low class inn. But the very title transcends the prosaic and I see the ill-fated lovers walking through an exotic forest where forms are open to the imagination and the cuckoo’s enigmatic call is everywhere heard!’

Dedicated to the artist’s friend Tony Buckingham

‘The painting amalgamates the Delian themes of woods, the seasons, natural growth and the mystery of the Paradise Garden with that sense that the forest has anticipated our entrance and listens and looks at us as we attempt to evaluate our passage into or through it.’

‘This image of the mysterious woods of the Paradise Garden where strange exotic blooms 6are is dedicated to the memory of my friend Tony Buckingham. With him I shared a love of the music of Delius, and through him I 4rst understood the overwhelming beauty and pathos of the baritone voice in Sea Drift.’

33 The Listening Forest (below) Signed and dated ‘Oct/2019’ Inscribed with title thrice, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dated ‘Oct: 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ½ x 27 ½ inches

32 Rain in the Paradise Garden (opposite below) Signed and dated 3/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, 'For Tony Buckingham’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘March 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 15 ½ x 23 ½ inches

SEA DRIFT 34 The Night Wind from the Sea Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated 1/19 on stretcher Oil on linen 8 x 10 inches

‘The origin of this small oil is a sketch of the sea at Karmøy in which a light curtain dances in the breeze as the wavelets are driven towards us. The mysterious light heightens the surrealistic tension. The series on this theme is inspired by the sublime mood music of Sea Drift.’

35 The Beacon and the Night Wind Signed and dated 2/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Feb/2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 15 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches

36 The Intruding Forest Signed and dated 1/20 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Jan:2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 16 ¼ x 13 inches

‘Here it is not we who threaten the forest but the forest which threatens us. Some of the imagery is inspired by the Arabesque of Delius and Jens Peter Jacobsen. The curtains move as natural laws ensure the wind is that of change. Fear syphons towards our domesticity. The intruding forest declaims the vanishing forest. The God Pan of Jacobsen, Delius and Hamsun is nature’s essence.’ 37 The Night Wind from the Mountain Signed and dated 3/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’ twice, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated 3/19 on stretcher Oil on linen 15 x 18 inches

‘The single birch tree is a symbol of individualism. The curtains swing their skirts and the depth of the night is populated by stars.’ 53

38 Where the Last Stars Touch the Sea Signed and dated 7/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘(“I-Brasil ‘Fiona MacLeod”’)’ ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘July 2019’ on reverse Oil on linen over board 12 x 15 inches

‘The title is a hauntingly beautiful line from the poem, “I-Brasil”. From it, I have constructed a design based on a small circular inlet which I sketched years ago at Seaford in Sussex near the house of Felicity Lott, one of the most beautiful voices to interpret the songs of Delius. In the work, I have attempted to show human geometry compared to the perfection of the arc of water penetrating into the stone basin.’

39 Sea Drift Signed and dated 1/20 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated 1/2020 on stretcher Oil on linen 15 ¾ x 15 ¾ inches

‘Sometimes the beauty of a text and its attendant music is of harrowing sadness as in Walt Whitman’s poem and Delius’s score. Yet when such a work of art is performed the bleakness and the loss is obviated and out of the drama a new vision of life and creative optimism is born. But how to realise them visually? Only I feel, by inferring an imagery which might carry the signi4cance of Sea Drift without resorting to illustrate an exact theme. Time and the in4nity of stars enters with the sea itself drifting under the wafting silk of curtains. As the poet Kaplinski wrote, it is “the same sea in all of us’’.’

41 The Island Under the Stars, Tysfjord, North Norway see larger image overleaf

40 The Waters of Separation, Åsgårdstrand, 2019 Signed and dated 7/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘July/2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil; 23 ½ x 27 ½ inches

‘The Waters of Se(aration, Åsgårdstrand is a visual essay of essential aspects of Delius’s journeying about the shores of Christianiafjord, now the Oslofjord. The work shows the sun, the great symbol of Edvard Munch’s painting and Delius’s music. Reference is also made to Songs of Sunset and the melancholy and jealousy paintings of Munch. The lone 4gure watches the yacht which departs with a loved one on board.’

‘It is uncertain if Delius ever visited the Lofoten Islands but it is certain that he had plans to go there. Had he done so he would have most likely passed the island and the mountains of the Tysfjord depicted in the painting. In the arctic, stillness is balanced against violent storms, especially in winter, but, when the periods of calm prevail, the silence and the total absence of movement – save for the 6ight of sea birds – brings the observer as if to a motionlessness of timeless duration. Coupled with clarity and sunless light one can look both ways into life and death at the same time.’

41 The Island Under the Stars, Tysfjord, North Norway Signed and dated 1/20 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, and dated ‘February 2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ½ x 43 ½ inches

AN ARABES E 42 Arabesque Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title, 'Delius Series', medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated 'Jan/2020' on stretcher Oil on linen 9 ½ x 7 ½ inches

‘The frenzied eye of an enfolding 6ower is the centre of Jacobsen’s poem. It is a 6ower that lasts but a day symbolising the transience of all sensate being. Delius’s music reaches a pitch of mysterious intensity, and the human voice acts as a foil to the bleakness of the poem’s message drawn from the depths of a disturbed world. My small painting is an important departure for me, focussed, yes, in Delius’s music, but subject to irrational, surrealistic enigma.’

‘The great forests of the North are evoked in Jens Peter Jacobsen’s disturbingly strange poem Arabesque from which Delius created a masterpiece for solo voice and orchestra. The God Pan is invoked and later Knut Hamsun, a comrade of Delius continued the God’s presence in art through his eponymous novel.’

43 Know’st thou Pan? Signed and dated 3/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘Mar:2019’ and 3/19 on stretcher Oil on linen 10 ¾ x 14 inches

46 Moonrise over the Dark River, a Mink Foraging, Gvarv, Norway see larger image overleaf

44 The Winter Forest Signed and dated 3/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’ and medium, and dated ‘Mar 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 ¾ x 10 ¾ inches

‘The Winter Forest is inspired by Delius’s North Country Sketches which reference the Four Seasons and particularly Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Arabesque. But neither of these sources has resulted in an attempt to illustrate their themes but rather to create a deep mood of winter at its darkest.’

45 Birch at the Forest Edge Signed and dated 12/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’ and medium, and dated ‘Dec/19’ and ‘Dec/2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 ¾ x 10 ¾ inches

‘No traveller in Norway has not seen the slender silver/white trunks of the Silver Birch. For me it is symbolic of the isolate individual when it stands singly at the forest’s limit against a background of dark pines and 4rs or resisting swirling veils of snow.’

‘My home in the village of Gvarv is about 43 kilometres from Skien, a town which Delius is known to have visited. The subject of the river is one beloved of Delius and which has inspired some of his greatest miniature compositions.’ 46 Moonrise over the Dark River, a Mink Foraging, Gvarv, Norway Signed and dated 3/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘31st March 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 26 x 40 inches

47 The Perpendicular Forest in Rain Signed and dated 11/19 Signed twice, inscribed with title thrice and ‘Delius Series’, and dated 10/2019, ‘Oct:2019’ and 10/19 on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ½ x 27 ½ inches

‘I always derive great satisfaction in knowing that the cuckoo in Delius’s miniature masterpiece, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in S(ring, is heard calling from a Norwegian birch forest and not an English copse. Perhaps I desire comfort from the ubiquitous bird’s presence in many parts of Europe. It gives great imaginative force to nature’s ignoring national boundaries and the protective power of the natural forest.’

France

IDYLLE DE pRINTEMpS 48 The Moon, the Mountain and the Apple Tree Signed and dated 7/2019 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘July 2019’ on reverse Oil on linen with pencil over board 15 ¼ x 10 ¼ inches

‘This work is inspired by the Hardanger fjord and the “Hardangervidda Man, Delius”, as Greig called him, and is a tribute to the many references to moonlight made by Delius.’

49 Printemps; Idylle de paysage pres de Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘May 2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 8 ¾ x 13 ¾ inches

‘This is an interaction of clouds, forest, forestry and 6ood on the road to Marlotte which Delius knew so well.’

50 La route de Villiers au printemps Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘May 2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 8 x 11 ¾ inches

51 ‘Le bois gothique’, near Grez-sur-Loing see larger image overleaf

‘Delius knew much about American literature. He would have known Thoreau’s Walden, and also Ralph Waldo Emerson’s slim volume of essays entitled Nature in which a relationship is made between the tracery of branches of trees and the columns moulding and vaulting of the great Gothic cathedrals of France.’

51 ‘Le bois gothique’, near Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘May 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ¾ x 39 ¼ inches

‘The trees form the columns of an imaginary cathedral expressive of the in6uence nature creatively played on the minds of the Mediaeval architects and masons.’ 52 La Route de Marlotte, printemps Signed, inscribed with title and dated 4/19 Signed, inscribed ‘“La Route de Marlotte” from the Grez-sur-Loing sketchbook’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘April 2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 14 x 8 ¾ inches

‘The Gothic theme is formalised in the overarching trees that appear to form the nave of a green chapel.’

53 Spring in the Woods, Marlotte Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘May 2019’ on supportive board Acrylic on board 12 x 8 inches

54 Walden Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Scene from the Marlotte Road’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated ‘May 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ½ x 23 ½ inches

‘A small pavilion in the woods almost overwhelmed by the trees brought to mind Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods. I envisage Thoreau’s hut with the column of smoke dividing the forest as evidence of human presence.’

55 Spring Blossom at Grez-sur-Loing above a Glass-Topped Wall Signed, inscribed ‘Grez-sur-Loing’ and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘May 2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 8 x 9 inches

‘A wall in Grez-sur-Loing, with a broken glass defence against those who would climb, inspired me to contrast the brittle scarring sharpness of broken glass with the soft delicacy of the petals of spring blossom.’

‘I relocated the wall in this painting and exaggerated its shark teeth e ect. I have modi4ed the contrast at the last stage of painting to lessen the dichotomy between the 6owering cherry tree and slivers of glass.’

56 Flowering Tree Above a Broken-Glass Topped Wall, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 6/2019 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘June 2019’ on reverse Oil on linen over board 18 ½ x 14 ¼ inches

57 ‘Trois arbres en eur’, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 7/19 Signed, inscribed ‘Trois arbres en @eur, Printemps: Grez-sur-Loing’, ‘Delius Series’ and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘July 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen with pencil 23 ½ x 27 ½ inches

‘This is a celebration of the spring of April 2019 that I experienced in Grez-sur-Loing. When hardly any other trees were in leaf the 6owering cherry – 6amboyantly celebrating the advent of the season – was captured for me as a visual anthem of recurrence and hope.’

58 The River Loing at Grez-sur-Loing, Delius’s Garden on Right (opposite above) Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches and centimetres, and dated ‘May 2019’ on reverse Acrylic and wax pencil on board 9 ½ x 13 ¾ inches

Delius mentions the great trees on the river bank of his garden. The trees still remaining dwarf those close by and, standing under them, I could almost feel the presence of the past.

59 The River Loing Flows Past Jelka’s Garden (opposite below) Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘from the Grez-sur-Loing sketchbook’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘May 2019’ on reverse Acrylic and wax pencil on board 10 x 14 ½ inches

60 Grez-sur-Loing, au printemps (below) Signed and dated 5/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘May 2019’ on reverse Acrylic on board 10 ¼ x 14 inches

‘The River Loing Flows past Jelka’s Garden is the 4rst of a river quartet painted in acrylics from drawings I made from the famous twelfth-century bridge of Grez-sur-Loing, a bridge which featured much in the life of Delius and other famous artists who gathered at Grez.’

‘View of the river Loing from the left side of the bridge leaving Grez. I was struck by the small cumulus clouds in the morning light of April 2019 and the space de4ning re6ections in the water.’

61 Idylle de printemps – Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 4/2019 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘The River Loing’, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘April 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 39 ½ x 47 ½ inches

‘Two types of landscape predominantly inspired Delius: the elemental uplands of Norway and the pastoral poetry of the riverscapes of Grez-sur-Loing in France where Delius and Jelka his wife had their home. Idylle de (rintem(s – Grez-sur-Loing was painted from drawings I made in early spring 2019. All nature is uni4ed by light, perspective and re6ection.’

63 The Great Trees at the River’s Edge. The Garden of Delius and Jelka, Grez-sur-Loing see larger image overleaf

‘Summer is approaching in this study made from drawings during my second visit to Grez in July 2019. I noticed a strange con4guration of clouds 4rstly by their re6ections in the river and then by their almost circular positioning in the sky.’

62 The Wreath of Clouds, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 6/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated 6/2019 on stretcher Oil on linen 15 ¾ x 23 ½ inches

‘This painting was made consequent to my visiting Delius’s garden with photographer, Jools Huxley-Parlour, where we were welcomed by Jean Merle d’Aubigné and Maryline, and received their kind and thoughtful hospitality. I stood under the great trees at the river’s edge of the garden, the remaining giants of those mentioned by Delius and Eric Fenby, and was awed by the thought that I was standing in the very place where Delius, Jelka and their friends had stood. The painting attempts a certain solemnity.’

63 The Great Trees at the River’s Edge. The Garden of Delius and Jelka, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 31/12/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’ and medium, and dated ‘Dec:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ¾ x 31 ½ inches

THE FOUR SEASONS

SPRING

‘In one of Delius’s short compositions, Idylle de printemps, he expresses in the most beautiful musical orchestration the aspirations and the eternal promise of spring. In my painting, Chanson de printemps, the seeds of Delius’s music have informed both the intensity and the innovation of the subject and moves towards a symbolism expressive of light, space and the aerial movement of clouds. Nature becomes a re ection of itself and con rms Jacques Maritain’s assertion that “water and meditation are wedded forever”. Nature becomes as its own Narcissus except that in reality its re ection is no less real.’ 64 The Four Seasons of the River Loing. ‘Chanson de printemps’ Signed and dated 12/19 Signed twice, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium twice, dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Dec:2019’ and ‘Dec/2019’ on stretcher Inscribed with title on reverse of frame Oil on linen 32 x 39 ¼ inches

SUMMER

‘This work is for me the most important of the quartet of paintings, “The Four Seasons of the River Loing” and the one painting in which I feel I have come closest in spiritual a nity to Delius’s river works. In this composition I have resolved so many painterly questions relating to my need to de ne my subject and x on the best process which could refer as much to the beauty and harmony of Delius’s river music as to my need to visually express the loveliness of the River Loing itself.’

65 The Four Seasons of the River Loing. Idyll of a Summer Evening, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 10/19 Signed and inscribed with title thrice, ‘Delius Series’ twice, medium, dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘September 2019’, 9/10/2019 and ‘Nov/19’ on stretcher Oil on linen 45 ¼ x 61 inches

AUTUMN

‘The still river mirrors the stillness of autumn as if nature is waiting silently for the onset of winter. The autumn moon is peripheral to the composition but is insistently present.’

66 The Four Seasons of the River Loing. Idylle d’automne Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions, and dated ‘Nov 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 34 ½ x 45 ¾ inches

WINTER

‘The great trees of Delius and Jelka’s garden are on the right. The mood of the work is of the slow drift of nature’s descent into the roots of her being and the last leaves left to cling momentarily to a lace of thin branches.’

67 The Four Seasons of the River Loing. Idylle d’hiver, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 11/19 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Nov:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 31 ¾ x 40 inches

THE FOUR SEASONS

Summer Night oN the river 68 Le chemin d’été, Grez-sur-Loing Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘May 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 8 ½ x 10 ½ inches

‘The lane here runs parallel to the river bank opposite the home of Jelka and Delius. I have not avoided an English neo-romantic mood, the forms of which I feel as mute music of simultaneous visual e ects of nature.’

69 The Bird’s Story. A Blackbird in the Garden of Jelka and Delius, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 1/2020 on stretcher Signed, inscribed with title and ‘Delius Series’, and dated ‘Jan:2020’ on reverse on frame Oil on linen; 11 ¾ x 15 ¾ inches

‘This small oil painting was made in admiration of Delius’s setting of Ibsen’s poem, “The Bird’s Story” to music for voice and accompaniment. But I also want the painting to represent my long held love of the singing of Felicity Lott under the baton of Eric Fenby on a recording from 1984.’

70 The Path to the Summer Garden Signed with intials Signed, inscribed with title, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Delius Seriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;May 2019â&#x20AC;&#x2122; on stretcher Oil on linen 8 Âž x 10 Â˝ inches

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Beautiful as the garden is still, there were no abundances of owers such as Jelka so creatively achieved, but the music of in a S ga d n was still calling to me softly. I decided that some of the elements of the garden should be included in the design, notably the two Cyprus trees and the background trees as seen from the terrace where Delius spent very many hours of his later life. The great masses of blossom and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gloire de Dijonâ&#x20AC;? roses I symbolised by a near abstract image of lily/convolvulus type owers. I feel that in the circumstances this compositional device would have met with the approval of Delius.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

71 RĂŞverie du Jardin de Jelka et Delius, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 1/20 Signed, inscribed â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Grez-sur-Loingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Delius Seriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with medium, and dated â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jan:20â&#x20AC;&#x2122; on stretcher Inscribed â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Reverie du Jardin et Deliusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; on reverse of frame Oil on linen 15 x 18 inches

72 In the Deliusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Garden, Grez-sur-Loing Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Delius Seriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and medium and dated â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Feb 2020â&#x20AC;&#x2122; on stretcher Oil on linen 13 Âž x 10 Âž inches

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Perhaps some passages of Deliusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wonderful in a S ga d n can allude to that which exists there still. However, this corner, including the surreal presence of a large perforated stone atop the entrance to a dark conduit of a shallow stream, would have held the attention of Jelka and Delius. The surrounding trees and some few blossoms camou age a gradual decay of stone and turn the evidence of passing time into a pleasant play of seasonal detail and light.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

73 The Garden Pond, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 1/20 Signed, inscribed with title, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Delius Seriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, medium and dimensions in centimetres, and dated â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jan/20â&#x20AC;&#x2122; on reverse of frame Oil on linen 13 x 16 inches

en land

‘Delius loved sea-birds and imaginatively interpreted their souls in music as pseudonyms for human experience. In admiration of Delius’s N C n y Sk c s, I wanted to include a painting or two of Yorkshire in this exhibition, but my Bempton painting is also a part of my interpretations of Delius’s S a D f .’ [Please see pages 52-53]

74 Sketch of the North Yorkshire Coast at Bempton Signed Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’ and medium, and dated ‘August 2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 10 ¾ x 9 inches

75 Harome Pond, North Yorkshire (opposite) Signed Signed, inscribed ‘Harome Pond, N Yorkshire’, ‘Delius Series’ and ‘(North Country Sketches)’, and dated ‘Dec:2019’ on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ¾ x 27 ¾ inches

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The fact that Harome is in North Yorkshire is the only justi cation I have for associating it with Deliusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s early life in the country and his splendid quartet of the elements, N C n y Sk c s. But in itself as an aspect of nature I claim its association with Deliusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music in its entirety. I nd it rewarding to use the terms counterchange, mood, re ection, growth and structure, since in my appreciation of the sound of Delius all these and many others are qualities that I can nd in his compositions.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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