John Piper John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism Art historian Frances Spalding introduces Piper’s textiles and tapestries What makes Craft Radical? Textile artist Alice Kettle explores alternative ways of making Creative Liaisons: Des Hughes and Clare Woods Simon Martin introduces new work by a unique artist couple Helen Muspratt: Photographer Katy Norris on the career of a pioneering female photographer Outside In: Ten Years On Marc Steene on ten years of the award-winning project
£2 Number 38 March – June 2016 www.pallant.org.uk
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Contents Features 20 27 31 35 39
John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism Frances Spalding What makes Craft Radical? Alice Kettle Creative Liaisons Simon Martin Helen Muspratt: Photographer Katy Norris Outside In: Ten Years On Marc Steene
Friends 43 45
Chairman's Letter Friends Events
Regulars John Piper, Abstract, 1955, screenprinted rayon, published by David Whitehead Ltd, Lancashire, private collection © The Piper Estate
You can find full details of our latest events programme in the What's On guide. The latest news, exhibitions and events can be found online at www.pallant.org.uk
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7 Co-Directors' Letter 11 Exhibitions Diary 15 Gallery News 48 What's On: Events 50 Bookshop 52 Artwork in Focus
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Contributors
With thanks
EDITORIAL Editor Anna Zeuner, a.zeuner@pallant.org.uk Sub Editor Beth Funnell Gallery Editorial Elaine Bentley, Simon Martin, Katy Norris, Marc Steene Guest Editorial Alice Kettle, Peter Moore, Frances Spalding Friends' Editorial Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Mary Ambrose Design, Editing and Production David Wynn
JOHN PIPER: THE FABRIC OF MODERNISM
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GALLERY SUPPORTERS
GALLERY INFORMATION Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1TJ, UK +44 (0)1243 774557, info@pallant.org.uk www.pallant.org.uk OPENING TIMES Tues–Sat 10am–5pm Thurs 10am–8pm Sun/Bank Holidays 11am–5pm Monday Closed
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The Priory and Poling Charitable Trusts, The Garfield Weston Foundation, and other Trusts, Foundations and anonymous benefactors. Pallant House Gallery makes every effort to seek permission of copyright owners for images reproduced in this publication. If however, a work has not been correctly identified or credited and you are the copyright holder, or know of the copyright holder, please contact the editor.
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Co-Directors' Letter
Following the tremendous success of the fundraising art auctions with Sotheby’s and Toovey’s in the autumn, which together raised just under £200,000, we are delighted to have reached the £1million target for the Heritage Lottery Fund Catalyst Endowment Appeal. This money will be matched pound-for-pound by the Heritage Lottery Fund and will go into the Gallery’s Endowment Fund, the interest from which supports the Gallery’s ongoing programmes. We are hugely grateful to everyone who has so generously supported this campaign since 2012. Despite this success the Gallery continues to fundraise to build up the endowment fund to support core activities and to establish an exhibition fund that will support future exhibitions. This spring brings an exciting programme of exhibitions and events to the Gallery, which encompass creativity in many forms. Fifty years ago in 1966 John Piper’s first tapestry was unveiled in Chichester Cathedral. Marking this anniversary John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism is the first exhibition to focus on the artist’s role as a designer of textiles in the post-war era, presenting both rare printed fabrics designed for companies such as David Whitehead Ltd and Arthur Sanderson & Sons as well as tapestries woven locally at West Dean Tapestry Studio, alongside related paintings, studies and prints. Piper worked with highly trained craftsmen to realise his ideas, but in the accompanying exhibition, Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making, we consider the remarkable creativity of untrained artists who choose to work with traditional and non-traditional craft techniques and materials. In addition to featuring works by celebrated international Outsider Artists such as Nek Chand, Willem van Genk, Judith Scott and Shinichi Sawada, the exhibition includes work selected through an open submission process run by the Gallery’s awardwinning flagship project Outside In, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2016. The exhibition, which will tour nationally, is a partnership with Craftspace.
Clare Woods, Grey Scale, 2015, oil on aluminium, @ The Artist
In the Queen Anne townhouse we present The Sleepers, an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by contemporary artists Clare Woods and Des Hughes, created in response to works in the Gallery’s collection and influenced by Chichester Cathedral’s famous Arundel Tomb. In addition, an exciting new monumental painting by Woods will be the latest in our series of contemporary interventions in the stairwell of the historic house, and the first painting to be presented there in over a decade. In the De’Longhi Print Room an exhibition of photographs by Helen Muspratt, a pioneering and experimental female photographer of the 1930s and 40s, is followed by an exhibition featuring highlights from the Gallery’s collection of historic landscape drawings and watercolours including Thomas Gainsborough and John Sell Cotman right the way through to early 20th century examples. 2016 also sees a new era of governance for the Gallery. After nine years the Hon David Macmillan has stepped down as Chair of the Gallery’s Board of Trustees. We are tremendously grateful to David for his guidance and support during this period. We are delighted to announce that the new Chair is John Booth, who has been a trustee for two years and has extensive experience in finance and charities as well as a passion for the arts. We have an exciting programme of exhibitions during the year, including Christopher Wood in the summer, and an exhibition exploring the theme of classicism in Modern British art in the autumn. We look forward to welcoming you at the Gallery throughout the year. Simon Martin Artistic Director and Marc Steene Executive Director 7
C U LT U R A L T O U R S F O R D I S C E R N I N G T R AV E L L E R S
Kirker Holidays provides a range of carefully crafted escorted holidays, with fascinating itineraries designed for those with an interest in history, art, archaeology, architecture, gardens and music. Groups typically consist of 12-22 like-minded travellers, in the company of an expert Tour Lecturer.
PALACES & GALLERIES OF ST. PETERSBURG SIX NIGHT HOLIDAYS | 14 APRIL, 12 MAY, 1 SEPTEMBER & 6 OCTOBER 2016
Our six night tour to the city created by Peter the Great at the far end of the Baltic provides one of the most culturally stimulating holidays imaginable.Visits include the Winter Palace, now home to the Hermitage, and the summer palaces including Pavlovsk, the Catherine Palace and Peterhof. We also visit the Russian Museum with its unmatched collection of icons. This tour is based at the 4* superior Angleterre Hotel. Price from £1,897 for five nights including return flights, accommodation with breakfast, five dinners, two lunches, Russian visa service, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Lecturer.
Speak to an expert or request a brochure:
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SPECIAL OFFER FOR FRIENDS OF PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY
CLARE WOODS
STRANGE MEETINGS A major new monograph published to coincide with the Pallant House Gallery exhibition ‘The Sleepers’ by Clare Woods and Des Hughes Foreword by Andrew Marr With texts by Michael Bracewell, Rebecca Daniels, Jennifer Higgie and Simon Martin At the special price of £24.99 for Friends of Pallant House Gallery (normally £29.99) To claim the discount, buy from www.artbookspublishing.co.uk and enter code PALLANT at checkout Collectors’ Edition Limited edition of 20 copies with a unique collage, hand-painted by the artist and presented in a clothbound clamshell case £950.00 Published in association with Alan Cristea Gallery
To purchase copies and for more information, please visit our website or contact us: Art / Books 77 Oriel Road, London E9 5SG +44 (0)20 8533 5835 sales@artbookspublishing.co.uk
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Spring at Zimmer Stewart Gallery Introducing new artists.....
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5 to 26 March - A joint exhibition of abstract paintings by two recent graduates: Alice Walter and David Auborn 2 to 23 April -
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See our website for more information and details of other exhibitions in 2016 Contemporary Art in Sussex since 2003 Open 10am-5pm Tues-Sat & occasional Sundays 29 Tarrant Street, Arundel, West Sussex, BN18 9DG 01903 882063 info@zimmerstewart.co.uk
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Edward King: A Life in Art From 25 March, Portsmouth Museum Museum Road, Portsmouth, P01 2LJ Open Tuesday-Sunday & Bank Holiday Mondays: 10am-5pm (5.30pm April-September) ADMISSION FREE Enquiries: mvs@portsmouthcc.gov.uk
Exhibitions Diary
John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism 12 March – 12 June 2016 John Piper was one of the leading Modern British artists of the 20th century, best known for his paintings of Britain’s romantic heritage including churches, country houses and wartime ruins. In the post-war period Piper was also noted for his work as an accomplished designer of theatre sets, stained glass windows and textiles. Marking the 50th anniversary of the installation of Piper’s Chichester Cathedral tapestry, this is the first major exhibition to focus on John Piper’s textile designs, exploring key motifs in the artist’s work such as historic architecture, abstract and religious imagery, as well as subjects explored in the final years of the artist’s life, such as foliate heads, sunflowers and the church at Long Sutton. Shown alongside related paintings and other studies the exhibition demonstrates how Piper’s designs were intricately connected with his wider work. Rooms 12–14 Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making 12 March – 12 June 2016 Outside In’s fourth triennial open art exhibition will showcase work by historically renowned and invited contemporary artists associated with Outsider Art alongside UK artists who see themselves as facing barriers to the art world for reasons including health, disability, social circumstance or isolation. With a focus on craft, and curated in collaboration with Craftspace, work drawn from across three continents will reveal an inventive use of materials in a variety of scale, from Dalton Ghetti’s miniature sculptures carved into the lead tips of pencils, to Erkki Pekkarinen’s woven birch bark sculptures. The exhibition will also include work by celebrated international Outsider Artists Nek Chand, Willem van Genk, Judith Scott and Shinichi Sawada. It launches at Pallant House Gallery, marking Outside In’s tenth anniversary, before touring nationally. Rooms 15–17
Helen Muspratt: Photographer 9 March – 8 May 2016 Helen Muspratt was one of the leading female photographers of her generation, capturing many celebrated artists and cultural figures of the 1930s and 1940s and experimenting with avant-garde techniques. This exhibition features her portraits including those of Paul Nash, Oliver Zangwill and Eileen Agar, alongside technical experiments with solarisation and insightful documentary photographs from her tour of the Soviet Union in 1936. De’Longhi Print Room The British Landscape Tradition: From Gainsborough to Nash 11 May – 26 June 2016 A chance to encounter rarely-seen historic landscape drawings and watercolours from the Gallery’s permanent collection. The landscape tradition in Britain is charted through early works by Alexander Cozens, Thomas Gainsborough and John Sell Cotman through to 20th century landscapes by Paul Nash and Edward Bawden. De’Longhi Print Room Clare Woods and Des Hughes: The Sleepers 6 March – 5 June 2016 An exhibition of new paintings by Clare Woods with sculptures by Des Hughes created in response to key Modern British artworks in the Gallery’s collection by Paul Nash, Henry Moore and Eduardo Paolozzi, as well as the celebrated Arundel Tomb in Chichester Cathedral. The exhibition includes a monumental painting by Woods, a major new contemporary art commission for the stairwell of the 18th century townhouse. Rooms 2, 3, 4 and stairwell
John Piper, Foliate Heads, 1954, screenprinted on cotton satin, Published by David Whitehead Ltd, Lancashire, private collection © The Piper Estate
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Exhibitions Diary Displays Outside In: 10 Years 12 March – 24 April 2016 A display marking the tenth anniversary of Pallant House Gallery’s flagship project, Outside In, which supports artists who see themselves as facing barriers to the art world due to health, disability, social circumstance or isolation. Garden Gallery Stephen White for Outside In 26 April – 8 May 2016 A display of work kindly donated by Outside In artist and Ambassador Stephen White. All works will be auctioned on 5 May 2016, with proceeds going to Outside In. Garden Gallery Pippa Blake: Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me 10 May – 19 June 2016 An installation of three paintings by artist Pippa Blake based on her time as Artist in Residence at Chichester Festival Theatre. The works respond to the powerful play Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness based on the experience of hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. Garden Gallery Yarnbombing: The Octopus’ Garden 12 March – 12 June 2016 See Pallant House Gallery’s courtyard garden covered in colourful knitting and crochet creations produced during workshops in late 2015, facilitated by Outside In artist and Ambassador Julia Oak. Courtyard Garden
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Studio Exhibitions Creating Untitled: Silver Awards 1 March – 3 April 2016 An exhibition of work by members of our young people’s group (13–18 years), produced as part of their Silver Arts Award. The Arts Award scheme is managed by Trinity College London in association with Arts Council England. Arts Award’s unique qualifications support young people to develop as artists and arts leaders. Passion for Painting: William Lai 5 April – 8 May 2016 After winning the 2015 Sussex Artists’ Award, William Lai has been given the opportunity to have a solo show in the Studio. William is an Outside In artist who names Paul Gauguin, Picasso and Paul Klee amongst his influences. The exhibition will showcase just some of the works that he has created over the last 50 years. Studio Artists 10 May – 5 June 2016 Pallant House Gallery’s Community Programme runs a number of schemes to support its members’ individual art interests and develop confidence in their creativity. This exhibition will showcase work created by Community Programme members in the studio sessions Art Ways and Art in Practice. People, Places and Partnership 7 June – 26 June 2016 An exhibition of work produced by two Partners in Art partnerships, showing the range of interests and approaches in their creative relationships.
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm
Kenneth Armitage Ivon Hitchens Terry Frost Patrick Heron
Roger Hilton Ceri Richards John Wells Bryan Wynter
A MONTH OF MODERN Fully illustrated catalogue available on request
Image: Bryan Wynter (1915-1975), Meander II, 1967
9 April – 14 May 2016
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TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE ROSS FIRST LIGHT FRACKED! HALF A SIXPENCE STRIFE THIS HOUSE LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 01243 781312 cft.org.uk
Gallery News NEW ART COURSE PROGRAMME FOR 2016 Following the sell-out art course last summer and its successor this spring which is already almost sold out, we have been busily developing an exciting new Art Course programme for 2016. There will be a series of Artist In Focus study sessions held on Saturdays and repeated on Tuesdays, focusing on individual artists including John Piper, Christopher Wood and Pablo Picasso. The very popular Making Sense of Modern British Art course will be repeated on Saturdays from April to July. The year’s programme will end with a new five session course, Modern Art and Old Masters. For more information visit pallant. org.uk/art-courses or enquire at Reception. EXTERNAL LOANS FROM SALISBURY TO SWEDEN By supporting requests for loans from the collection we continue to raise the profile of the Gallery, increasing public access and understanding, and helping to generate collaboration and exchange between museums and galleries both in Britain and internationally. During 2015 Pallant House Gallery was represented by 44 artworks from the collection in 13 different venues including The Walker Center, Minneapolis; Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Tate Britain, London and the Gemeente Museum, den Haag. In addition to this, 71 collection works toured to Dorset County Museum for the exhibition St Ives and British Modernism: The George and Ann Dannatt Collection. Recently, external loans include Paul Klee’s Bewölkung (1926), on display at Moderna Museet, Stockholm from 15 January – 1 May 2016. Six works by John Craxton will be included in A Poetic Eye at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum from 30 January – 7 May 2016.
Ben Nicholson, Still Life, 1934, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (On Loan from a Private Collection, 2015) © Angela Verren Taunt
RECENT ACQUISITIONS INCLUDING JOHN HOYLAND, PETER BLAKE AND MORE Pallant House Gallery was the beneficiary of a number of significant long term loans and acquisitions during the last quarter of 2015. A gift of works from Professor L. and Mrs P. Allen through the Art Fund was received in October comprising two screenprints by John Hoyland, a lithograph by Peter Blake, an etching by Victor Pasmore and a collage by Jack Smith. Together these form an interesting and complementary addition to our existing works by these artists. IMPORTANT BEN NICHOLSON WORKS ON LONG TERM LOAN As a leading figure of the artistic avant-garde that developed in Britain during the 1930s Ben Nicholson is a key artist both within the Gallery’s collection and in the wider context of 20th century Modern British art. We are pleased to now include a further two important works that have come to us on long term loan: Still Life, 1934 (1934) and 1936 (white relief) (1936). Both works are representative of an evolving abstraction and clarity of vision that drew upon developments in Europe and helped imbue British Modernism with an internationalist outlook.
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Gallery News LANDSCAPES BY PAUL NASH Two significant landscapes by Paul Nash have also been accepted on long term loan and promised as a future bequest as part of the Clare Neilson Collection gifted to Pallant House Gallery by her godson Jeremy Greenwood and Alan Swerdlow through the Art Fund in 2013. These are Skylight Landscape (1941) and Frozen Lake (1928), a pencil, chalk and watercolour on paper. The Neilson Gift of prints and archive material includes four photographs of Nash painting Skylight Landscape in the attic room at the Neilson’s Gloucestershire home ‘Madams’ as well as correspondence between Paul Nash and Clare Neilson in which the work is referenced. Frozen Lake is representative of Nash’s early drawings and watercolours of the English landscape and is the final version of Black Park Lake, Iver Heath, a subject which inspired a number of variants and designs.
Paul Nash, Skylight Landscape, 1941, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (On Loan from a Private Collection, 2015)
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PALLANT RESTAURANT AND CAFE NOW OPEN Visitors to the Gallery can now enjoy catering in two unique settings provided by Nick Sutherland and The Sussex Pub Company. Pallant Café, now housed in the Garden Gallery, offers freshly prepared sandwiches, soup, delicious cakes and fresh coffee and tea. Pallant Restaurant offers a two or three course dining menu as well as breakfast from 9am. Open till late from Wednesday to Saturday you can enjoy the finest food in Chichester in a beautiful, newly decorated setting, featuring chairs designed by Robin Day, including one of his last designs created here in Chichester, and iconic photographs of artists by Snowdon. To book call 01243 770827. AUCTION OF WORK WILL RAISE MONEY FOR OUTSIDE IN Outside In is very grateful for the donation of work for auction by artist and Outside In Ambassador Stephen White, with funds going to support the work of the project. Stephen’s work has been a part of numerous exhibitions both locally and nationally, and with influences from Willem de Kooning, George Baselitz, Frank Auerbach and the Scottish Colourists, he brings incredible originality to what he creates. Stephen was a runner up in Outside In’s 2007 triennial exhibition, and he is now a prominent Ambassador, sharing his experiences and his journey with the project with a variety of audiences. Money raised through the auction, conducted by Toovey’s on 5 May, will enable Outside In to continue to support artists facing barriers to the art world through exhibitions, training, and professional development opportunities.
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Fine Art Degree Show 2016 Featuring 30 graduating artists - painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, printmaking, installation, photo and video • Preview: Thursday 12th May, 6.00-8.30pm ADVERT Pallant House Friends welcome • Public: Friday 13th to Sunday 22nd May • Open times: weekdays 11.00am-6.00pm weekends 11.00am-4.00pm • Meet the artists: Thursday 19th May, 5.30-7.30pm. Walkabout and short talks from selected exhibiting artists FREE ENTRY: artOne, Bishop Otter Campus, College Lane, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6PE. Please visit website for directions and parking.
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Julia Krause-Harder, Stegosaurus photograph Atelier Goldstein
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John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism
Art historian Frances Spalding introduces the first exhibition to focus on John Piper’s textile designs, marking the 50th anniversary of the artist’s famous Chichester Cathedral tapestry.
Above Nicholas Sinclair, John Piper, 2000, © Nicholas Sinclair Opposite John Piper, Arundel, 1959, issued 1960, screenprinted Sanderlin, Published by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, private collection © The Piper Estate
You can cut into John Piper’s career anywhere, as one does with a pack of cards, and always, it seems, there is something fresh and interesting to find. This has been proved in recent years by a spate of exhibitions. Let’s start in 2003. That year his fascination with the seaside and what he called ‘nautical style’ gave rise to Dulwich Picture Gallery’s John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the Beach. Next came two exhibitions in the stables block at Renishaw Hall, the Derbyshire ancestral home of the Sitwells (who had introduced Piper to the grand country houses in the area, at a time when some were ruined, struggling for survival or blackened by industrial soot). Elsewhere, at Mascalls School in Kent, its curator Nathaniel Hepburn focused on Piper’s involvement with Sussex and Kent, in a touring exhibition held in 2011. The following year Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire mounted John Piper and the Church, drawing on various ways in which his work had served sacred needs. And in 2103 the National Gallery and Museum of Wales, in Cardiff, celebrated John Piper’s great love of Snowdonia with John Piper and the Mountains of Wales – an exhibition which toured to Manchester. During this period, further original and surprising exhibitions of John Piper’s work took place at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley, in Hereford Museum and Art Gallery and at Blenheim Palace. All attested to the extent to which John Piper’s art has entered the national psyche. The range and fertility of Piper’s interests is impressive. Whereas many artists, once their signature 21
style has been established, stay on track, singlemindedly in pursuit of a clearly identifiable career, Piper took risks and remained open to diversions. By the mid-1930s he had earned himself a distinctive role – his abstracts defined him as one of England’s leading modernists. Many would have been content with that. But Piper, troubled by the growing emphasis on pure form in modernist art, during a period darkened by worsening international relations, began to let in other interests. A meeting with John Betjeman brought him a commission to write a Shell guide to Oxfordshire, and between May and September of 1937, instead of keeping his eye on what was happening in Paris, then the cultural centre of Europe, he spent many days trawling through this county’s villages and small towns, jotting down notes on landscape, churches and even forgotten backwaters, for the information needed for his gazeteer. Still more surprising to the modernists with whom he had been affiliated was his sudden infatuation with the antiquated medium of aquatint, again stimulated by Betjeman, who collected late eighteenth- and early nineteenth? century travel books, often illustrated with this medium. Piper turned it on Brighton, and published in 1939 a volume of prints called Brighton Aquatints. It caught the attention Osbert Sitwell, an authority on Brighton, who praised it highly in a full-page review in The Listener (14 January 1940). But Piper’s former colleagues and admirers, among them Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Herbert Read, were nonplussed. They looked on Piper as a turncoat and a traitor to the modernist cause. Yet Piper’s commitment to the modern remained evident in almost everything he subsequently did. And his familiarity with the language of abstraction continued to inform his many designs. Nevertheless, the approach and onset of war confirmed him in his understanding that International Modernism, with its idealist philosophy, was out of touch with the angry melancholy of the wartime mood. Instead, he sought inspiration from the romantic element in English art, and sought to revive native traditions in modern terms. This was a man whose career moved with the times. His interest in architecture made him useful to the ‘Recording Britain’ project, and this in turn led on to commissions from the War Artists Advisory Committee. But when in 1940 he was invited to paint ruined churches, he at first hesitated to accept this commission, until a telephone call from Kenneth Clark sent him to Coventry the morning after a raid 22
John Piper, Cartoon for St Luke, Chichester Cathedral Tapestry, 1965, Pallant House Gallery (Accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to Pallant House from Estate of John & Myfanwy Piper, 2002) © The Piper Estate
John Piper, Preliminary design for Chichester Cathedral tapestry, 1965, gouache and collage on paper, Pallant House Gallery (Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council 1985) © The Piper Estate
which, lasting eleven hours, had destroyed two-thirds of its city centre. Instructed to make a record of its cathedral, he discovered that this great medieval building had overnight been turned into a blackened, calcined, roofless ruin – and he understood fully that it was not just stones and mortar that had been destroyed, but also history, memory and human associations. If Piper’s art is open to meanings and allusions that reach beyond the aesthetic, he is also renowned for his ability to rework his interests and ideas across a variety of media. This exhibition looks at the way his interest in modernity extended into the field of textile design and into tapestries, as well as ecclesiastical vestments. They are a part of his active involvement with what he called ‘delegated art’. He chose the word ‘delegated’ because of the trust that an artist, as designer, must place in the maker, when handing over to a craftsman or craftswoman a design, say, for stained glass or a textile or tapestry. Piper readily placed his confidence is those he knew had sufficient knowledge and experience of their own craft, not to copy the artist’s ideas, but to translate them into a new medium, making adjustments and changes as and where necessary. The chief example of this is his hugely fertile working relationship with the stained-glass maker Patrick Reyntiens. Few artists
can boast of such trust, and some actively dislike others interfering with their designs in this way. Piper, however, had great respect for craftsmanship. After producing his final design for a theatrical back cloth, on a sheet of paper measuring, perhaps, no more than 10 by 14 inches, he found it incredibly exciting to see it translated into a 100 ft-wide stage curtain, with certain colours enhanced or dimmed according to the needs of the theatre’s auditorium. This exhibition gifts us with an opportunity to come closer to this aspect of Piper’s work. Previously, attention to Piper’s textiles and tapestries has been underplayed. This exhibition, with its rich display of exhibits, offers new insights into these two fields, as well as his achievement with the design of vestments and in the use of mosaic, in tables and for wall decoration. New information informs Simon Martin’s essays on the various sections within the exhibition. With the textiles, it is especially fascinating to see how Piper managed to reuse motifs from his paintings and prints without these images deadening the necessary flow of the repeat. The Sanderson fabrics, in particular, excel at recreating the painterliness of John Piper’s designs. They must surely represent a high point not only in the manufacturing of textiles but also in the history of artist’s designs for industry. 23
Occasional Piper erred. When Walter Hussey left St Matthew’s, Northamptonshire, to become Dean of Chichester, Piper designed for him a cope. Ornamented with bold appliquéd shapes that pay homage to the ecclesiastical vestments made by Matisse, the cope must have introduced a modernist note into liturgical processions. But, as Simon Martin points out, it had been made by a theatrical costumier in materials unsuited to repeated use and which also made the vestment heavy to wear. Soon after completing Hussey’s cope Piper accepted a commission to design whole sets of vestments for each and every period within the church year for Coventry Cathedral. In this instance, he spent a great deal of care on the precise choice of coloured silks, and worked with Louis Grosse, a Belgian specialist in ecclesiastical vestments, whose tailoring gave to everything made in his workshop a perfect fall and grace. Subsequent vestments, as can be seen in this exhibition, were made for Chichester Cathedral and for St Paul’s Cathedral. Behind them all lies Piper’s experience of having designed for the stage, for plays, ballets, and for Benjamin Britten’s operas, for this had given him an understanding of how to use colours and shapes that would carry across great distances, as is necessary in the spaces associated with cathedrals. This exhibition has been timed partly to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the sevenpanel tapestry which Piper designed for Chichester Cathedral’s sacristy. Again, this was a commission to which he brought an informed awareness, this time of both ancient and modern tapestries. It is evident that he wanted a less static orchestration of motifs than that found in Graham Sutherland’s enormous tapestry for the east wall of Coventry Cathedral. He and Hussey were both aware that the sacristy at Chichester was somewhat cold, dim and dark, and in need of something that would attract and warm the eye. It took a while for some church-goers to become comfortable with Piper’s strong colour chord, of purple, green, red and blue, within the low-key hues of this ancient building. Again, the creation of this tapestry was enhanced by Piper’s decision to work with Pinton Frères in the small town of Felleton, which had a close historical association with Aubusson tapestries. To visit the tapestry workshop at West Dean, where some of his later tapestries were produced, is to gain insight into Piper’s understanding of this medium. His desire to merge one colour into another was here achieved by the gradual 24
John Piper, Church Monument, Exton, 1954, David Whitehead Ltd Opposite John Piper, Chiesa della Salute, 1959, Arther Sanderson && Sons Ltd
Above John Piper, Brittany (blue), 1968, screenprinted satinised cotton, Published by David Whitehead Ltd, private collection © The Piper Estate Opposite John Piper, Chiesa de la Salute, 1959, issued 1960, screenprinted Sanderlin, Published by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, private collection © The Piper Estate
alteration in the coloured strands, sometimes up to seven in number, that make up the yarn. Ironically Piper, who valued spontaneity in art, here engaged with a medium that is slow in production, requiring much time and labour (unless directed digitally, by computer, as is the case with Grayson Perry’s tapestries, which noticeably lack the subtlety of colouring that Piper achieved in this medium). Chichester has been fortunate in its association with Dean Walter Hussey and, through Hussey, with Piper. It is very apt that this exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of Piper’s tapestry for the Cathedral’s sacristy. Michael Northern, the lighting director who worked with Piper on several theatrical productions, was careful never to employ direct lighting on his sets, for he was aware that Piper handled colours in such a way that their effects naturally spread. The same care in lighting is required for his tapestries. In the sacristy, the need to focus light on the altar and on the celebrant of the mass is critical, but if direct lighting is also focused on the tapestry, its effect is slightly damaged. But even when overlit, this tapestry remains the most outstanding example of Piper’s ‘delegated art’, and few today would deny that, with its warmth and vitality, it does important service to the Cathedral. This essay is a contribution to the accompanying catalogue John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism, featuring new research by Simon Martin and available to buy in the Pallant Bookshop. The exhibition runs from 12 March – 12 June 2016 and is accompanied by a series of talks and events (see page 48).
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26
What makes Craft Radical?
Leading British textile artist Alice Kettle introduces Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making, a Craftspace and Outside In touring exhibition which opens at Pallant House Gallery this spring.
Pascal Tassini, Untitled (Chair), Š CrÊahm Region Wallonne
What makes craft radical? In Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making craft is presented as a dynamic process of making. This quiet provocation is made possible through makers who reveal craft as a crucial part of being individual and human. Through alternative ways of making, these makers break habitual patterns of ingrained practice by letting go of preconceptions around what constitutes craft. Their materials are often surprising and their skills breathtaking, especially since most are self-taught and using low technologies. These makers employ craft to shape their worlds, fashioning work outside of the mainstream, to integrate their material connections into a wider world that is material itself. Radical Craft communicates this dynamic synergy of living and making. What is radical is not simply the level of improvisation with process and material, untamed by convention. The more important radical aspect of these works is how craft is used as an instrument to mediate and communicate alternative versions of being. What might be seen as monologues of making become intuitive openended dialogues with material, where ideas and thoughts are made physical and visible through making. The makers focus intimately on these conversations with material, as they touch, hold, feel and articulate their sensations of being in the world. This exhibition draws together the strands of various projects reflecting current developments in craft. Craftspace, a craft development agency 27
Horace Lindezey, Suit 2, Detail from Seven Suits
Erkki Pekkarinen wearing his woven birch bark suit
in Birmingham, has linked its national touring exhibition programme with Outside In’s fourth triennial open art exhibition, which also marks the project’s 10th anniversary. The partnership marks a timely rise in prominence for artists working outside established art worlds, as well as a refocus on craft which has previously been regarded as a marginalised practice compared with fine art. In this alliance craft is emphasised in its capacity for relational engagement. It is a material and a process, an action or skill often repeated, a ritual of expertise and an enabling knowledge of living. The makers are particular in their method and imaginative in their approach. In allowing us access to these ways of thinking we are privileged to see the potential of individuals, of objects and materials around us, as though something and someone is waiting to be discovered. Works have been selected through Outside In’s open call-out to UK artists who define themselves as facing barriers to the art world, for reasons including health, disability, social circumstance or isolation. They are displayed alongside pieces by historically renowned and international contemporary outsider and self-taught artists. Part of the touring exhibition, which is co-curated by Laura Hamilton, is a project
devised by Craftspace with ActionSpace and social anthropologist Professor Trevor Marchand. The film observes the residency of artist Andrew Omoding, who works with found textiles on a sculptural scale. Marchand describes his own ‘deep persistent need to work with my hands…With bodies people learn to craft their ways of living in the world.’ Working with their hands and using what’s available in daily life, these makers reveal a place of departure for their creative imaginations. Autobiographical themes and figurative forms recur, as do images of animals and birds, models of cars and familiar objects. Craft is used for inventive problem-solving, for intricate and labour-intensive construction. Objects are found and recycled as metaphors for reconstituting the discarded. Repetition and rituals of making are the visual reminders of embodied encounters and passions for assembling. Wood, ceramic, metal and constructed forms are represented such as in Willem Van Genk’s intricate models of trams and buses made from recycled ephemera. Some works make use of local environmental materials, employing traditional rural techniques with a twist of radical interpretation. Angus McPhee from the Outer Hebrides used grasses and sheep’s wool picked from barbed wire fences to weave
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Aradne, The Gathering
vests, jackets, hats, shoes and socks. Erkki Pekkarinen collects birch bark to weave and plait his own clothing. There are remarkable images of him wearing his ‘national costume’ and Stetson as he walks through his native Finland. Scottish artist Pinkie Maclure is one of the few to acknowledge current politics. Her stained glass work titled Landfill Tantrum references the loss of home as land as well as human destructive forces. Textiles are a popular medium, readily to hand within the environs of home; portable, familiar and malleable. James Gladwell says ‘I relax better when I am doing needlework, it keeps my mind going and you think of something else.’ Nek Chand, whose cement and stone figures are internationally celebrated, has three life-size cloth figures dedicated to the creation of his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani on display. Wrapping is a repeated motif with textiles used to bind and reconfigure objects. Powerfully metaphorical in its gestures and multiple layering Judith Scott is this method’s most famous exponent. She wrapped objects with textile strips and yarns, appearing to bind her physical presence to the world she occupied. Nnena Kalu’s work contains no hidden content. Her works grow as bodies from a core of wrapped textile strips to become
human-like mummified beautified bodies. Pascal Tassini’s work is more decorative, wrapping thrones and bridal headdresses that no bride could resist. In contrast are the delicate thread lace houses, stiffened with sugar by Marie-Rose Lortet, and Aradne’s groups of thread people. This exhibition is not of makers who seek to be radical. The unconscious tendencies of craft imply interaction with the world, which through the intuitive workmanship of these makers is shaped with distinction. Their rich physical experience of making reveals an ‘aliveness’ to the material. Craft in this exhibition is an instrument offering a radical way to encounter life outside of normal experience, one that is different in pace, in production and in intention. Here we view the radical potential of craft made physical and the imagination made matter. Professor Alice Kettle is a leading UK textile artist/ maker who was a selector for Outside In’s national open call-out. Her installation ‘Odyssey’ was on display at the Gallery from October 2014 – May 2015. Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making is at Pallant House Gallery from 12 March – 12 June See page 48 for related talks and events. 29
30
Creative Liaisons: Des Hughes and Clare Woods
Artistic Director Simon Martin introduces the work of contemporary artists Des Hughes and Clare Woods as a new exhibition in dialogue with the Gallery’s collection and Chichester Cathedral’s Arundel Tomb opens at the Gallery.
Clare Woods, Lady Midnight, 2016, oil on aluminium © The Artist
There is an evocative picture in Ben Nicholson’s photograph album showing the home and studio that he shared with Barbara Hepworth in the Mall Studios in Hampstead in the 1930s. In the background one can see groupings of sculptures by Hepworth with paintings by Nicholson. Whilst the forms are different, these pairings speak of lives and interests shared, and ideas discussed. This photograph immediately comes to mind whilst visiting the home of contemporary artists Clare Woods and Des Hughes in the Cathedral Close of Hereford, where there is a pairing of a small painting and a sculpture on a mantelpiece. The grouping implies an emotional relationship between the works, reflecting that of the makers. The bookcases in the artists’ home further attest to a deep, shared interest in Modern British art: high shelves filled with books on artists they admire, including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, Eduardo Paolozzi, Francis Bacon, and Walter Sickert, as well as international artists such Alberto Giacometti, Jean Fautrier and Louise Bourgeois. Clare Woods (b.1972) and Des Hughes (b.1970) have been partners for over twenty-five years, having originally met as art students at Bath School of Art in 1990. But they have never shared a studio until a year ago. Now they create work in the same industrial studio spaces, each describing the other as their ‘harshest critic’. Peppered amongst the more usual family chatter about school reports and children’s parties, the 31
couple’s conversations include discussions about Sigmar Polke’s paintings of sausages, containment in Francis Bacon’s paintings, humour in The Two Ronnies, or other seemingly unrelated topics. Both trained at Goldsmiths College in the early 2000s under Michael Craig-Martin. Despite her long-standing interest in sculpture Woods is now a painter, although her paintings are essentially sculptural. She works flat on aluminum panels in oil and enamel, masking areas of paint to create layers and crisp linear forms. She thinks of her paintings very much as physical objects rather than conventional ‘views’ into another plane. In the past her work was concerned with landscape forms, but following her major solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2012 when she made paintings based on Yorkshire’s Brimham Rocks, her paintings have increasingly become occupied with conveying sculptural form and the human head through line and flat colour. Hughes’ work reflects his exploration of the materials, methods and traditions of sculpture. He playfully reconsiders conventional sculptural materials such as marble, plaster, bronze and clay. For example a series of bronze sculptures cast in the form of flint stones were inspired by Moore and Hepworth's pierced form sculptures made with stone in the early 1930s. Hughes cast collected pieces of flint in such a way to mimic the qualities of the stone whilst subverting this mimesis by revealing the material. This is achieved through polishing or scratching the surface of the bronze, recalling the way that religious bronzes become polished through repeated touch by worshippers. These ‘deceptive bronzes’ represent a humorous postmodern response to the Modernist credo of 'truth to materials' as they look exactly like a flint, but simultaneously reveal their true materials. Whilst Woods’ work often obliquely explores the dark side of human existence, a black sense of humour is central to Hughes’ work, which he sees as being an antidote to being too earnest about things. Both artists share a fascination with medieval tomb sculptures. Hughes has created a series of sculptures inspired by figures on catafalques such as those in Hereford Cathedral and Woods produced a group of enormous lithographs for Harewood House in 2013 focused on the heads of female tomb effigies in the village church. Whilst completely different in form and technique, both come back to a shared love of the original inspiration. 32
The title of their exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, The Sleepers, takes as its starting point such a monument - the recumbent figures of the Earl and Countess of Arundel in Chichester Cathedral. The tomb was made famous by Philip Larkin’s poem An Arundel Tomb: ‘Side by side their faces blurred, the earl and countess lie in stone’. In his poem Larkin refers to ‘that faint hint of the absurd: the little dogs under their feet’ - a detail in line with Hughes’ wry humour. The show’s title also makes reference to a drawing in the Pallant House Gallery collection bequeathed by Walter Hussey, the former Dean of the Cathedral: Henry Moore’s wartime drawing Two Sleepers (1941) depicts a couple lying asleep in the London Underground during the Blitz. Hughes has a longstanding interest in Moore’s reclining figures and was recently commissioned to create a response to a Moore figure originally made for Castleford School in Yorkshire. He is creating a new sculpture for the exhibition at the Gallery which explores the idea of the entwined hands of figures in the Arundel Tomb. A Henry Moore sculpture in the Gallery’s collection entitled Suckling Child (1930) provides the subject of a new painting by Woods. Moore’s alabaster carving explores the relationship between mother and child, with the baby clutching the maternal breast. Woods’ painting will be an extension of other recent works exploring early alabaster sculptures by Barbara Hepworth that feature voids within forms. Such a subject presents an artistic challenge as alabaster has such subtle edges and there is no harsh line where brush-marks disappear behind other brush-marks; her usual approach to masking and layering paint. It will not be the first time that Woods has worked in dialogue with artworks in the Gallery’s collection. In 2011 she painted an unsettling image based on a twisted tree root called Dead Spring, the title borrowed from one of her favourite paintings in the collection by Paul Nash. Woods had come to Nash through his photographs of Swanage after realizing that she had unknowingly taken photographs of the same subjects during a visit to the seaside town. Subsequently she was drawn to study his surreal, natural motifs such as the famous Monster Field (1938). A postcard of Nash’s Dead Spring (1929) is pinned on Woods’ studio wall amidst a mass of images that provide inspiration for her work. These found images range from pictures of Stanley Spencer’s Sandham Memorial Chapel, to eighteenthcentury still life paintings of dead hares, sausage meat, an Eduardo Paolozzi sculpture, a Sutherland
From left Des Hughes, Stonut, 2007, bronze and crisp bag © The Artist Clare Woods, The Parting, 2016, oil on aluminium © The Artist
head form, and bandaged war victims photographed by Don McCullen and Philip Jones Griffiths. It is a visceral selection of images, which reveal the almost surrealist associational approach that underlies her work; it is the suggestive qualities of an image or form which speak to our unconscious. The finished paintings may have very little in common with the disparate, seemingly unconnected imagery but carry traces that make the painting unsettling. The quality of strangeness in Eduardo Paolozzi’s egg-like plaster sculpture Contemplative Object (1951) in the Gallery’s collection also draws her to want to paint and explore its form. This and other works in the Gallery’s collection selected by Woods and Hughes will be on display in the townhouse, including works by Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash and Barbara Hepworth. Alongside the exhibition Woods is producing a large multi-panel oil painting for the stairwell of the Gallery’s 18th century townhouse. The starting point for the staircase painting will be a sculpture of a head. This will be a development from recent projects undertaken by Woods which includes a monumental wall painting for the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Woods finds that in contemporary visual and digital culture two dimensional imagery is ‘read’
very quickly, but she is drawn to the idea that ‘when you look at a bronze by Arp or Brancusi you have to move around it, spend time with it, you have to think about the weight’ in a way that is completely different to ‘flat’ imagery. This poses all kinds of questions for a painter. Bringing the work of Woods and Hughes together in the domestic rooms of the Queen Anne townhouse will not only provide an opportunity to explore the creative relationship and dialogue between an artistic couple. It will also be the first time that artists have been commissioned to create a dialogue with the Gallery's permanent collection, which will hopefully serve to show the continuing relevance of sculptors and painters such as Moore, Hepworth and Sutherland to contemporary artistic practice. Clare Woods and Des Hughes: The Sleepers runs from 6 March – 5 June 2016. The artists will be In Conversation at the Gallery on Thursday 2 June (see page 49). A new monograph on Clare Woods published by ART/ BOOKS and distributed by Thames and Hudson, including a contribution by Simon Martin, coincides with the opening of the exhibition and will be available in the Pallant Bookshop. 33
34
Helen Muspratt: Photographer
As a new exhibition opens in the De’Longhi Print Room, Curator Katy Norris outlines the remarkable career of eminent female portrait photographer Helen Muspratt.
Helen Muspratt, Tess Mayor, solarized portrait, 1933 © The Estate of the Artist
Helen Muspratt was just 21 when in 1926 she set up her first photography business on Swanage High Street. Despite her youth she was quickly recognised for her unmistakeably modern style. An article in The Professional Photographer identified her remarkable talent for achieving natural, unaffected portraits through an understated use of lighting and pose. Portraits of families, couples and children became Muspratt’s primary source of income, but a number of more progressive images followed, including a haunting picture of an unemployed miner that captured the melancholic atmosphere of the Depression era. Taken in the studio, this image preceded her ventures into documentary photography, but it is an early indication of Muspratt’s immense social conviction and compassion for fellow human beings that was to inform her future portraits. In 1932 a family friend of the Muspratts, the painter Francis Newberry, introduced Helen to a young widow named Lettice Ramsey, a meeting that was a turning point in her career. Lettice had valuable social connections through her association with a lively intellectual circle in Cambridge, of which her late husband, the precocious philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey, had been part. Helen encouraged Lettice to acquire the necessary formal training in photography and together they established the partnership ‘Ramsey & Muspratt’. Whilst Lettice concentrated her attentions on members of the Bloomsbury Group such as Roger Fry and Julian 35
Bell, Helen captured emerging academics, including the brilliantly talented writer C. P. Snow and the influential neuropsychologist Oliver Zangwill. Just two years after acquiring their first premises in Cambridge Ramsey & Muspratt took over a larger complex of studios from a rival photographer. Both women worked as equals, alternating their time between the studio and the darkroom. That their photographs were signed in both their names demonstrates their shared aesthetic vision, which was based upon the principle that their subjects should be shown as naturally as possible. As Helen herself declared, it was always their intention to ‘make the picture look more like the person than less.’ The collaboration was embodied by their artist friend Elisabeth Vellacott in a design that she made for the Ramsey & Muspratt business, which featured a reel of film set behind a single, all-seeing eye. It was during this time that Muspratt truly began to experiment. The influence of the artist Man Ray on both Helen and Lettice can be seen in their daring investigations into his surrealist techniques. A Ramsay and Muspratt portrait of Eleanor Singer betrays the silvery outline and bleached effect of solarisation, a technique that Helen in particular endeavoured to master over the following years. Undoubtedly, a dramatic set of portraits of the theatrical family, the Spencer Watsons, was to be her highest achievement with this technique. Several photographs show the mother and daughter duo, Hilda and Mary Spencer posing in exotic tableaux, their shimmering costumes emphasised by dark profiles. A similar effect can be seen in Muspratt’s images of the surrealist artist Eileen Agar whom she captured along with Agar’s lover, the painter Paul Nash, in Swanage during the summer of 1935. That Muspratt happened by chance to cross paths with this artistic couple during the height of their romance has become one of the most talked about aspects of her career. When Helen was not in Swanage she embroiled herself further in the academic circles in Cambridge and became increasingly engaged in their left wing politics. In 1936 she embarked on a tour of the Soviet Union where she took confrontational photographs of its citizens. Overwhelmingly Muspratt formed a positive impression of the Soviet system. She found evidence of the state’s collective achievements, whether in urban, agricultural or technological development, and was impressed by the variety 36
Helen Muspratt, Paul Nash, 1935, © The Estate of the Artist
of roles open to women. Her commanding photograph of young women standing on a collective farm near Kiev communicates something of the sense of empowerment that Muspratt identified, a strength that is also echoed in her images of Soviet monuments and architecture. It was perhaps Muspratt’s communist persuasion that shaped her views on gender equality. Although many women photographers stopped working after they had families, the opposite was true of Helen. Following her marriage she became the main breadwinner, eventually taking up a photographic studio with Lettice in her new home in Oxford, close to the university where she found many of her subjects. Arguably Muspratt’s experimental period was over, but she continued to seek out honest and direct representations of her sitters. The exhibition Helen Muspratt: Photographer runs in the De’Longhi Print Room from 9 March – 8 May 2016. A talk by Muspratt’s daughter Jessica Sutcliffe will take place on 24 March 2016 (see page 48), followed by a book signing of the new monograph Face: Shape and Angle, published by University of Manchester Press.
Opposite (Clockwise from top left) Helen Muspratt, Women in the fields; Helen Muspratt, Hilda and Mary Spencer Watson performing Jacob and Esau, solarized, c.1932; Helen Muspratt, Busking Miner, Dec 1930, Š The Estate of the Artist
37
Outside In: Ten Years On
Founder of Outside In Marc Steene reflects on 10 years of an awardwinning project that strives to create a fairer art world.
Jasna Nikolic, Talk-Talk
Before joining Pallant House Gallery in 2001 I spent 12 years working with people with learning disabilities in a number of roles. During this time I discovered that there were many gifted and talented creators in our communities who, due to prejudice, stigma and the general inaccessibility of the art world, found it impossible to have their work seen and their voices heard. It was from this revelation that Outside In grew, and from which its mission developed. Since the project was formed at Pallant House Gallery in 2006, Outside In has supported thousands of artists who define themselves as facing barriers to the art world, for reasons including health, disability, social circumstance and isolation. Though the landscape has changed in the period since Outside In was formed, the art world is still very much the same, change comes slowly, especially when it comes to something so ingrained and imbedded as to how we as a society define and describe art and culture. Outside In seeks to create a fairer art world, to provide the opportunity for artists who, without the support of the project, would largely remain invisible and their work overlooked and forgotten. Though I am optimistic about the future I am also aware of the cyclical nature of the interest in outsider and non-traditional artists that we are currently living through. It is important to implement change while you can, to put in place actions that will improve the situation in the longer term. I feel that one of the major achievements of the project has been the 39
rewriting of the Gallery’s mission statement, and more importantly its acquisitions policy, to include the work of non-traditional and outsider artists. This has meant that work has been acquired by the Gallery for its collection, creating a lasting legacy for future generations, redefining our collection of Modern British art and thereby enabling it to tell an inclusive and wider story of artists and art. Artists are at the heart of Outside In. The project provides artists with the opportunity to present themselves and their art work on their own terms, enabling them to share their art, enter exhibitions and competitions and sell their work. It also provides a platform, a safe space in which they can receive validation and recognition, form creative relationships and establish networks. Outside In connects artists with the art world and with each other, providing opportunities for discussion and support, and nurturing a growing sense of respect and entitlement. The remarkable critical success of some of the artists Outside In has worked with is testimony not just to the quality of the artists’ work itself, but also to how fundamentally important it is to reach out to and present the work of artists hidden in our communities. As well as the artists, partnerships are core to the project’s success and without the support of numerous partners, small and large, including galleries, museums, arts projects and organisations, the project would not have the impact it has. This shared belief in the premise of creating a fairer art world is the driving force behind the project and its partnership working. Outside In provides an overarching, now national, programme that gives credibility and confidence to organisations seeking to extend their programmes to include a broader range of artists. To date, through its dedicated website, exhibitions and accompanying events programme, Outside In has engaged with more than 5,000 artists, and 260,000 audience members. Artists who have worked with the project have experienced increased confidence and self-esteem and improved mental health and wellbeing. In 2008 Outside In developed Step Up as its professional development programme, supporting artists to gain new sector-based skills. Step Up has since trained 70 artists in how to lead workshops and research and interpret collections, moving their engagement with the art world to a more active and professional one, in many instances resulting in employment and increased self respect. 40
David Jones, In Awe, Pallant House Gallery Opposite Nigel Kingsbury, Woman, Pallant House Gallery
One of the project’s major achievements was winning the Charity Award for Arts, Culture and Heritage in 2013. This recognition publicly validated the Gallery and its unique approach to community engagement. Outside In is fortunate to have a small but highly skilled and committed team. The Outside In Manager Jennifer Gilbert is tireless in her work, organising exhibitions and enabling the project to broaden its reach. Hannah Whitlock, the Outside In Artist Coordinator, provides excellent support for the artists, and Kate Davey, the Outside In Communications Officer, makes sure the project and its artists are heard far and wide. Huge thanks should also go to Jackie and Steve Street who generously provided the seed funding to help Outside In get off the ground, to Regis Cochéfert and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for the subsequent six years funding, and to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The Roddick Foundation and The George Dannatt Trust for their current support of the project. But most importantly the largest thanks of all should go to the artists, for their trust in the project, their support and for their remarkable work which continually excites and surprises me, opening up my eyes to the true depth and quality of the wider creative community we live in. Outside In’s national exhibition Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making runs from 12 March – 12 June 2016. A range of related talks and events have been scheduled (see page 48) to tie in with the exhibition. A display marking the project’s 10th anniversary will be in the Garden Gallery from 12 March – 8 May 2016, and a yarnbombing installation will be in the Courtyard Garden from 12 March – 5 June 2016.
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Chairman of the Friends' Letter
Buscot Park, Courtesy of Allan Harris. Changes were made to this photograph. https://www.flickr.com/photos/allan_harris
I am delighted to start this letter with the excellent news that our appeal to raise £1 million for Gallery’s Catalyst Endowment Fund has been achieved six months ahead of the deadline. This amount will now be match-funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund increasing the value of the endowment fund by £2million, which will generate around £100,000 per annum towards the Gallery’s running costs. This astounding result is due to the generosity and support received by the Gallery from sponsors, artists, auctioneers, and Friends and I want to thank everybody involved for their contribution to this exciting outcome. A varied programme of trips for Friends has been arranged for 2016 including the tour of Northern France in April with Kirker Holidays. There has been a lot of interest in this trip but there are still a few places available so please get in touch if you are interested. In May we will be visiting Waddesdon Manor, the French Renaissance style chateau near Aylesbury built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. In June we also plan a visit to Farley Farm House, home of the surrealist Roland Penrose and photographer Lee Miller. The tour will be led by their son Antony Penrose. Please consider booking early for this as space is limited. An overnight trip to the Cotswolds
is the highlight for September, during which we will visit the Faringdon family art collection at Buscot Park and stay one night in the lovely town of Chipping Camden, a great base from which to visit the spectacular Arts and Crafts garden at Hidcote Manor the following day. For details of all our trips and events, of which there are too many to mention here, please do remember to look at the Friends section of our website. If you are a book lover do consider joining the Art Book Club run by Jacintha Hutton which takes place on Sunday afternoons. A well-chosen selection of books with connections to the Gallery’s exhibitions is discussed during these informal but lively sessions, and there is a wide variety of books in the spring season programme. To find out more please contact Jacintha on jhjacintha8@gmail.com. If you have a few hours to spare and would like to support the Gallery by volunteering please get in touch with Deborah Blows at d.blows@pallant. org.uk who would be delighted to hear from you and explain the volunteering opportunities. May I end by saying what a great debt of gratitude we owe to all our supportive friends. Mary Nicholas Gordon Lennox Chairman of the Friends Pallant House Gallery Friends
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A Legacy to Art Head of Development, Elaine Bentley, offers some advice on legacy giving.
John Piper, Redland Park Congregational Church, Bristol, 1940, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (Kearley Bequest through The Art Fund, 1989) © The Piper Estate
‘It is now more important than ever that individuals make provisions to support the arts – a legacy is an easy way to help secure the future of a place that is an asset to the arts. For me Pallant House Gallery is an amazing example of that.’ A Patron of the Gallery The trustees and staff of Pallant House Gallery are incredibly grateful to the generous individuals who choose to remember the Gallery in their Wills and we have just been advised of another residual legacy to be received in the next few months. Legacies are an increasingly important source of funding for the Gallery, as well as an ever more attractive way of giving for benefactors. All legacies received are paid into our endowment fund to secure the future of the Gallery in perpetuity. Until 30 June 2016 all legacies will be matched pound for pound with a grant from the HLF Catalyst Endowment Fund. Legacy giving has tax advantages; by leaving at least 10% of your estate to charity, the rate of Inheritance Tax applicable to the rest of your estate is reduced to 36%. Due to recent increases in property prices alone, more estates are becoming eligible for Inheritance Tax. This can, however, be addressed by establishing appropriate Wills which include charities as beneficiaries, as no Inheritance Tax is payable on any amount bequeathed to registered charities such as Pallant House Gallery. We would also encourage seeking a regular review of your Will with a solicitor to ensure your 44
estate is administered in the way you see fit. Assuring a Will is in place prevents the state from deciding who inherits, an outcome that may not be desirable. Regular reviews of existing Wills are equally important to ensure family, friends and chosen charities are remembered in accordance with your wishes and to ensure your Will complies with new laws and any changes in your circumstances. Pallant House Gallery owes its existence to the bequest of Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral. Recent legacies have contributed to the Gallery’s ongoing success and by leaving a gift in your Will, you would be helping the Gallery to continue its excellent programme and to achieve the long term vision of preserving its collections for future generations to enjoy. Your legacy could help us do all of this and more. If you would like to discuss leaving a legacy to Pallant House Gallery, contact Elaine Bentley in complete confidence (01243 770844/e.bentley@pallant.org.uk).
What's On Friends Events Find the rest of the public programme including workshops in the What’s On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk. Booking for Friends Events is required through Reception unless otherwise stated (01243 774557)
Our monthly Friends Events bulletin is sent out the second Wednesday of each month. If you have not already signed up for this, you can email the Friends Office Manager, Mary Ambrose at m.ambrose@pallant.org.uk who will be happy to subscribe you to the e-bulletin.
Trips and Visits To reserve a place on the trips please contact Mary Ambrose (m.ambrose@pallant.org. uk/01243 770816). See our website for full terms and conditions for all Friends’ trips. ‘Circles of Influence: British Art 1915–50 - A Diarist’s Perspective’ Otter Gallery, University of Chichester Weds 9 March 2016 A chance to explore the lives of those within the circle of influence of Randolph Schwabe, Principal of The Slade 1930-1948. This included Evelyn Dunbar whose work was recently displayed at Pallant House Gallery. Curator Dr Gill Clarke will introduce the exhibition and sign copies of her newly published work ‘The Diaries of Randolph Schwabe: Artistic Circles 1930-48’, which will be available to buy. Free, but pre-booking is essential. Please meet at Otter Gallery at 10.50am for 11am visit. The Chichester Festival Theatre car park is nearest to the University. Arrangements can be made for those who require extra assistance.
Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, Courtesy of Jim Bowen, https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiedfw/
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire Weds 4 May 2016 An opportunity to visit the spectacular Waddesdon Manor, a French Renaissance-style chateau built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in 1874 to entertain the beau monde and to house his collection of fine art. The visit will include an historical introduction to the house, its gardens and the Rothschild collection as well as free time to explore. Entry to the house will be by timed ticket. There are a variety of options for lunch (not included in the price) ranging from take-away sandwiches to a licensed restaurant. £42 per person for National Trust members, including return coach travel from Chichester; non-NT members £56. Departure from Oaklands Way, Chichester, at 8.30am; return at approx. 7pm.
Farley Farm House, East Sussex Weds 15 June 2016 Antony Penrose and his daughter Ami Bouhassane will lead a small group tour through his home, largely unaltered since his parents, the surrealists Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, hosted leading figures from the world of post-war modern art. Gain an unrivalled insight into the family’s lives and that of their visitors and admire works by their house guests, before taking in the view of the South Downs from the Roland Penrose-designed Sculpture Garden. A tea with the hosts will enable further insight into the history of this truly unique house. £ 57.50 including return minibus travel from Chichester. Disabled access to this private home is restricted. Departs from Oaklands Way, Chichester at 12.30pm; return at approx. 6.30pm. 14 spaces available.
Pallant House Gallery Friends
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TATE, View from St Paul's Cathedral at dusk © Hayes Davidson and Herzog & de Meuron
Tate Modern: Georgia O’Keeffe Exhibition and Tour of new Gallery Spaces Weds 17 August 2016 Georgia O’Keeffe is recognised as the Mother of American Modernism. This retrospective show will reassess her place in the canon of 20th century art and chart the progression of her practice, the influence and legacy of her work. Val and Frank Woodgate, lecturers of Pallant House Gallery’s new Art Courses, will deliver a one-hour lecture on this intriguing artist whose work is rarely seen in Europe. An exhibition viewing will follow after lunch. An optional guided tour of the new Gallery Spaces led by the Woodgates will follow. £39 (over-60s £37, Tate Members £23.80, other concessions available) includes lecture, entrance fee, coffee/biscuits on arrival and lunch; optional £10 extra for the guided tour of the new Gallery Spaces. Meet at Tate Modern at 11am for coffee/biscuits; lecture at 11.30 followed by lunch and exhibition; New Gallery tour at 3pm. Timings are designed to fit within off-peak tickets and allow for return before rush hour trains (travel costs not included).
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Pallant House Gallery Friends
Cotswolds Trip Tues 20 – Weds 21 September 2016 Retrace the rich arts traditions of two National Trust properties, and discover the Arts and Crafts museums and galleries of Chipping Campden on an overnight visit to the Cotswolds. The visit starts with a guided tour of the National Trust’s Buscot Park to see the Faringdon Collection of pictures, furniture, ceramics and objets d’art. On arrival in Chipping Campden we will check into the Noel Arms Hotel, a three-star award-winning 16th century coaching inn. There will be time to explore before a welcome drink and dinner. The second day offers the opportunity to delve into the legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement with a visit to The Court Barn Museum of Craft and Design, including a two-hour guided walking tour of museums and galleries in Chipping Campden. The final stop is Hidcote Manor Gardens, one of the best known and most influential Arts and Crafts gardens in Britain. £235 per person sharing a double room, or £215 for National Trust members. Single room supplement: £45 Included in the price: return coach travel from Chichester, welcome drink, dinner, bed and breakfast at the Noel Arms, entrance fees. Not included: lunches, further drinks.
Private View John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism Sat 12 March, 10am The Friends Private View of John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism, including a short talk by Pallant House Gallery Artistic Director Simon Martin, curator of the exhibition. Due to the popularity of this event, please RSVP to Mary Ambrose (m.ambrose@ pallant.org.uk/01243 770816). Free. Includes refreshments.
Exhibition Tours John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism Weds 16 March, 11am A special tour of the exhibition for Friends. £ 5.50 (£3 Student Friends) (includes refreshments). Hidden Treasures Weds 28 April, 11 am Join curator Katy Norris and collections manager Sarah Norris for a discussion of the works included in the De’Longhi Print Room exhibition The British Landscape Tradition: From Gainsborough to Nash. £5.50 includes refreshments.
Art Book Club A lively and informative monthly discussion around books that are carefully chosen to link with the Gallery’s exhibitions. Sunday afternoons, 2.30 - 4pm. For more information contact Jacintha Hutton (jhjacintha8@ gmail.com) and to book contact Reception. £6.50 Friends, £7.50 Friends of Friends, including tea/coffee and cake. Edmund de Waal: ‘The White Road’ (2015) Sun 20 March De Waal describes his book as a pilgrimage of sorts, a chance to walk up the mountain where the white earth comes from; Germany, the place where porcelain was invented; and England, where it was made.
Patricia Highsmith: ‘Ripley Under Ground’ (1970) Sun 17 April The amoral Tom Ripley is living in France with his wife, but becomes involved in the fraudulent sale of forged art through a London gallery. Dominic Sandbrook: ‘The Great British Dream Factory: The Strange History of our National Imagination’ (2015) Sun 22 May This has been described as a good bad history book. It is a book full of love for and fascination with everything from the origins of heavy metal in the metal bashing industries of the West Midlands to the ruthlessness of John Lennon’s and Damien Hirst’s lust for money.
Michael Peppiatt: ‘Francis Bacon in Your Blood’ (2015) Sun 19 June Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon as a student hoping to get an interview. They formed an extraordinarily close friendship which lasted throughout Bacon’s life involving countless drinking sessions in the grand hotels and low dives of London and Paris.
Pallant Proms Vitaly Pisarenko Sat 19 March, 12–1pm The last of the season’s series of recitals by students from the Recital Class at the Royal College of Music. Tickets priced £7 on sale at Reception. Friends of Pallant House Gallery are admitted free and are invited to contribute towards a retiring collection.
Patrons of the Gallery We are immensely grateful to the following Patrons of Pallant House Gallery, and to all those who wish to remain anonymous, for their generous support: Judy Addison Smith Keith Allison Lady Susan Anstruther John and Annoushka Ayton David and Elizabeth Benson Edward and Victoria Bonham Carter Vanessa Branson Ronnie and Margaret Brown Louise Cameron Patrick K F Donlea Frank and Lorna Dunphy Linda and Mike Forlan Lewis Golden
Paul and Kay Goswell Mr and Mrs Scott Greenhalgh Mr and Mrs Alan Hill Andrew Jones and Laura Hodgson James and Clare Kirkman Merle Lomas José and Michael Manser RA Charles Martin Keith and Deborah Mitchelson Robin Muir and Paul Lyon-Maris Angie O’Rourke Denise Patterson Simon and Harriet Patterson
Catherine and Franck Petitgas Charles Rolls and Jans Ondaatje Rolls Jackie and David Russell Sophie and David Shalit Tania Slowe and Paddy Walker John and Fiona Smythe Candida Stevens John and Susie Wells Mr and Mrs Michael Weston Tim and Judith Wise John Young
If you are interested in becoming a Patron of Pallant House Gallery please contact Elaine Bentley on 01243 770844 or e.bentley@pallant.org.uk
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What's On Gallery Events Find the complete public programme of talks, events and workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557 or visit the Gallery.
Talks All talks £10, Friends £8.50, Students £9 (unless otherwise stated) A wine reception courtesy of the Friends of Pallant House Gallery will follow each talk. Helen Muspratt: Photographer Thurs 24 March, 6pm Helen Muspratt was one of the leading women photographers of her generation and widely acclaimed for her natural, unaffected style of portraiture. In this talk, marking the launch of the newly published monograph Face: Shape and Angle, Muspratt’s daughter Jessica Sutcliffe will discuss her mother’s extraordinary career, focusing on her work in the 1930s and experimentation with the technique of solarisation. A book signing will follow.
Helen Muspratt, Young Woman © The Estate of the Artist 48
John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism Thurs 31 March, 6pm Simon Martin, Artistic Director and curator of the exhibition, explores how Piper designed eye-catching modern fabrics for the post-war home based on his images of architecture, foliate heads and sculpture and his fascinating process of working on major commissions such as the Chichester Tapestry. A book signing of the newly published catalogue will follow. Piper as Picasso: Creativity as Variant Forms Thurs 7 April, 6pm Piper expert Orde Levinson, author of the catalogue raisonée of Piper’s prints, considers Piper’s versatility as an artist working in various fields including printmaking, painting, textiles, stained glass and ceramics and his relationship to European modern art.
Sacred or superstitious? John Piper and the Church Thurs 28 April, 6pm The relationship between modern artists and the Church has greatly improved in recent years. Piper’s biographer and art historian Frances Spalding looks at how his interests fed into his work for sacred buildings. Working in a predominantly secular age, but also at a time when the Liturgical Movement was introducing changes within worship and church architecture, he helped lessen the divide between modern art and the Church. Artist Designed Tapestries Thurs 12 May, 6pm Tapestry artist and author Caron Penney discusses the creative history of tapestry and fine art, referencing the Dovecot and West Dean Tapestry Studios. She will explore how designs by artists including Henry Moore, John Piper and Tracey Emin have been realised in tapestry.
In Conversation: Alice Kettle with Aradne and Ian Sherman Thurs 26 May, 6pm Artists Aradne and Ian Sherman both draw upon autobiography and the imaginary to create works which use material process as part of their construction: Aradne makes jewel-like figurative Co-Curator Talk on Radical Craft: stitched works, and Ian Sherman’s Alternative Ways of Making assemblages are of miniature Thurs 14 April, 6pm extraordinary worlds made using Laura Hamilton, Co-curator of the Radical Craft exhibition, takes a closer found objects. Coinciding with look at the creative processes of the the Radical Craft exhibition, Alice makers represented in the exhibition, Kettle, herself a textile artist who exhibited at the Gallery in asking how the development of 2015, will be in conversation with their unique practices provides a these two Outside In artists. sense of timelessness, uncommon in the field of mainstream, contemporary craft. Laura was Director of the Collins Gallery, Glasgow for 25 years, specialising in exhibitions of applied arts.
In Conversation: Clare Woods and Des Hughes Thurs 2 June, 6pm To coincide with their joint exhibition The Sleepers, Simon Martin will lead a conversation with contemporary artists Clare Woods and Des Hughes, discussing their approach to painting and sculpture, their response to the work of Modern British artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Paul Nash, as well as their public commissions including for the Olympics. A signing of Woods’ new monograph will follow.
Special Events The Artist’s Palette: Designing a Flower Festival Sat 30 April, 3pm Join the Chichester Cathedral Festival of Flowers Design Team, past and present, as they take you behind the scenes of the renowned Festival of Flowers to see how it is designed and staged. This year’s theme is The Artist’s Palette featuring fine art from the Cathedral collection together with local Sussex artwork and classic masterpieces. £7.50. The Festival of Flowers takes place at Chichester Cathedral from 2-4 June 2016. Stephen White Auction 5 May 2016 An auction of work kindly donated by Outside In artist and Ambassador Stephen White to raise money for Pallant House Gallery’s flagship project Outside In. The auction will be conducted by Toovey’s.
Free Open Weekend Sat 7– Sun 8 May Our Free Open Weekend is a fantastic opportunity to visit Pallant House Gallery with the whole family at no cost. Be inspired by our spring season exhibitions and take part in creative activities for all ages. Get to know the Gallery’s extensive collection of Modern British art with Spotlight Art Talks and enjoy free coffee courtesy of the Gallery’s headline sponsor De’Longhi. Free Toovey’s Valuation Afternoon Mon 9 May, 12-4pm Bring your arts, antiques or collectables to the Gallery for free valuations and advice from Toovey’s specialists. A third of the seller’s commission for items subsequently auctioned at Toovey’s will be donated to Pallant House Gallery. Panel Discussion: Art as Communication Sat 21 May, 2–4pm For many of the artists involved with Outside In, communicating using language is not possible. Because of this, many of them use their art to communicate with the people around them, and to share their worlds with others. To accompany Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making, Outside In is hosting a panel discussion focusing on art as communication, looking at how creativity can be vital for people without language to maintain their independence. The panel will include Charlotte Hollinshead, Facilitator at Action Space; Joyce Scott, sister of exhibiting artist Judith Scott; Dr David O’Flynn, Consultant Psychiatrist at SLaM and Chair of the Adamson Collection; Dr Cheryl McGeachan, who is conducting research into the Art Extraordinary collection; and David Johnson, an Outside In artist. £7 (£5 Friends)
1696 Stradivarius Concert Sun 12 June, 6pm A Concert to celebrate the John Piper exhibition and the 10th anniversary of the opening of the new wing. The Bernardi Music Group will perform music by Sir Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten, Mozart and John Ireland as part of the Shipley Arts Festival. Andrew Bernardi will lead on the Stradivarius, joined by Andy Laing on Cerutti violin, Nic Pendlebury on viola, Jonathan Few on cello and Maria Marchant on piano. Event sponsored by Toovey’s. Tickets £60 to include drinks and canapé reception.
Exhibition Tours £5.50 (£3 students) plus admission John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism Thurs 21 April, 6pm Gallery Guide Liz Walker leads a tour of the exhibition which is the first to focus on John Piper’s textile designs, exploring key motifs in the artist’s work such as historic architecture, abstract and religious imagery. Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making Thurs 19 May, 6pm Outside In Manager Jennifer Gilbert leads a tour of the exhibition which showcases historical and contemporary Outsider Artists, as well as Outside In artists’ extraordinary craft works ranging from bark woven clothing, to buses made from tin cans and delicate textile weavings.
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Shop pallantbookshop.com
1. Archivist Tapestry Kits
4. Clare Woods: Strange Meetings Published April 2016. This beautifully designed and illustrated volume is the first monograph on Clare Woods’ art. It presents all the major works from her career to date, from small-scale intimate paintings and prints to ambitious large-scale architectural projects. £29.99
Following the popularity of Archivist Letterpress cards and matchboxes, we are now stocking their tapestry kits featuring some of their most popular designs. £75
2. DESIGN: John Piper Compiled by Brian Webb & Peyton Skipwith, DESIGN surveys the design and career of John Piper, with over 100 illustrations it includes designs for film posters, book jackets & illustration, stained glass, textiles, magazines, ceramics and fireworks. £12.50
3. Robert Stewart Wall Hanging Produced in a limited edition of 75 by Robert Stewart, an influential textile designer whose work was produced by Liberty, Pringle and Donald Brothers during the 1950’s. £275 50
5. John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism
By Simon Martin with contributions by Frances Spalding, this well illustrated catalogue has been produced to accompany the exhibition ‘John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism’.
To keep up to date with our newest Titles, offers, and exhibition books and products, sign up to our mailing list instore or on our website. Tel 01243 781293
6. Face: Shape & Angle, Helen Muspratt Photographer
This book reproduces some of Helen Muspratt’s most important photographic images, with an accompanying text by Jessica Sutcliffe offering a fascinating insight into her life, work and politics. £30
7. John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art
Frances Spalding presents the first comprehensive account of the life and work of John Piper, and of his wife Myfanfwy Piper and the significant part they played in the art world. Paperback £19.99
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Artwork in Focus A Suffolk Lane, 1750-60, by Thomas Gainsborough
Born and raised in Sudbury, Suffolk, Thomas Gainsborough spent his formative years surrounded by the kind of bucolic wooded landscape typified by this delicate pencil drawing. So influential was his early immersion in this environment that Gainsborough later told his close friend Philip Thicknesse that ‘during his Boy-hood…there was not a Picturesque clump of Trees, nor even a single Tree of beauty… nor hedge row, stone or post…for some miles round the place of his nativity, that he had not so perfectly in his mind’s eye, that had he known he could use a pencil, he could have perfectly delineated’. By the time of his death in 1788, the association between Gainsborough’s art and the landscape of his childhood was such that an obituary noted ‘Nature was his teacher, and the woods of Suffolk his academy’. In 1740, at the age of thirteen, Gainsborough had clearly shown a great aptitude with pencil and paper. Having seen his son’s sketches his father reputedly declared that ‘Tom will be a genius’ and sent him to London to train as an artist. Once settled in the capital, Gainsborough became closely acquainted with the group of artists and designers associated with the St. Martins Lane Academy, including HubertFrançois Gravelot and Francis Hayman. Under the influence of these more experienced men he was able to supplement his innate technical ability as a draughtsman with the study of established modes of landscape. Both Gravelot and Hayman were involved in the production of illustrations for well-known collections of Fables published at the time, which introduced into British graphic art a new and highly conventional kind of imagery. The rural landscapes 52
conjured by these men, which typically employed large trees as framing devices and routinely featured rustic inhabitants, clearly made an impression upon Gainsborough, as can be evidenced in A Suffolk Lane. Access to a variety of prints and drawings from the continent, made possible through London’s thriving art trade, enabled Gainsborough to further refine his style, leading him to produce works that he later termed ‘imitations of little Dutch Landskips’. When Gainsborough returned to his native Suffolk in 1749 these profoundly influential experiences allowed him to develop a new approach to depicting the local landscape, one which was fundamentally borne out of first-hand encounters and his personal vision of the world around him, but at the same time honed by his newfound knowledge of, and admiration for, past masters of the genre. The coexistent sense of fiction and reality, clarity and distortion, earthliness and ethereality – all present in A Suffolk Lane – epitomises Gainsborough’s inimitable style. Produced following the artist’s return to his home county in 1749, and prior to his departure for pastures new in Bath in 1759, the drawing can be seen as a quintessential expression of the deep-rooted and emotionally charged connection that Gainsborough retained with his birthplace throughout his lifetime. This essay is written by Peter Moore, Research Curator at Gainsborough’s House, a museum and gallery dedicated to the artist’s life and work. A Suffolk Lane (1750-60) appears in the exhibition The British Landscape Tradition: From Gainsborough to Nash, in the De’Longhi Print Room from 11 May – 26 June 2016.
Graham Sutherland, Landscape in the South of France, 1950 (circa), Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery, (Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council, 1985)
Thomas Gainsborough, A Suffolk Lane, 1750-60, Pencil on paper, Pallant House Gallery (Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council, 1985)
John Piper
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