Pippet’s lost cycle

Richard Pickett reports on the restoration of the polychromatic murals at the Oxford Oratory

Exciting things are happening at the Oxford Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga. The Oratorian Fathers have ambitious plans to reinstate the historic high altar and build a new baptistry and ‘Little Oratory’ in honour of St John Henry Newman in the city of his conversion. In the last edition of Mass of Ages Paul Waddington reported on this 1870s Gothic Revival church built by the architect Joseph Hansom, who designed the Hansom Cab. Since then, a first phase of the sanctuary restoration project has been completed.

In the 1900s and 1910s the arts and crafts artist Gabriel Pippet executed a series of vibrant polychromatic murals in the sanctuary and two of the side chapels. The son of a family of Catholic artists – his father had worked with John Hardman Powell – Pippet was born in Solihull in 1880. He became friends with Robert Hugh Benson and together with a small group of Catholic artists worked on the restoration of Benson’s Hare Street House, which subsequently served as a country home to successive Archbishops of Westminster. He is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Benson in illustrating A Child's Rule of Life and Old Testament Rhyme but also designed murals and mosaics at St Mary's, Wolverhampton and St Catherine’s, Droitwich.

As Paul Waddington reported, Pippet’s Oxford murals were whitewashed over in the 1950s, a portent of future iconoclasm, the tale of which is better saved for another article. His scenes from the life of the church’s patron, St Aloysius, which formerly ornamented the spandrels of the sanctuary arches, were thought lost forever. But in

November 2022 exploratory work by Cliveden Conservation revealed the murals remained in surprisingly good condition under successive layers of paint.

The relatively small sum of £20,000 was all that needed to be raised to uncover and restore the paintings. This painstaking work began in mid-February 2024 and over the ensuing weeks Pippet’s lost cycle slowly came back to life. The exact subject matter of each scene from the life of St Aloysius had been lost to memory and as things transpired the roundels were uncovered in reverse order. Starting on the north side of the sanctuary, the first roundel to be revealed was a depiction of the death of the saintly youth, who caught the plague ministering to the poor of Rome and died at the age of 23. Then came a depiction of Aloysius as a Jesuit novice kneeling to receive Holy Communion, possibly during his ordination to the Minor Orders.

Next, the scaffolding moved to the south side of the sanctuary and two further scenes emerged – Aloysius receiving his father’s blessing to renounce the Gonzaga title and fortune and the First Holy Communion of the saint at the hands of St Charles Borromeo.

When the Oratorians arrived at St Aloysius’ in 1990 it was a declining parish with a dwindling inner-city congregation. Bereft of its historic ornament, the church felt unused and unloved. There had been talk of merger with other parishes and even closure of the church. Today, the church has standing room only for those who arrive late on Sundays and is very much at the heart of a vibrant Catholic culture flourishing in the city and university. The daily queue for the confessional is probably the best visible testimony to the transformation which has taken place.

The Fathers reintroduced eastward facing celebration of Mass some years back and fundraising has now begun to restore the historic high altar to its original position. This will reinstate Hansom’s original vision of the high altar as an integral part of his monumental reredos with arcaded niches containing 52 statues of saints. Steps behind the gradine will enable use of the Benediction Throne, which towers high above the altar, for the first time in almost 60 years. The rediscovery of the Pippet murals is just the start. If you would like to find out more, you can visit oxfordoratory.org.uk.

A Child’s Rule of Life by Robert Hugh Benson with illustrations by Gabrial Pippet is available at the LMS Shop, price £13.50. lms.org.uk/shop