Pallant House Gallery - Magazine No.39 (Full Version)

Christopher Wood Exploring the life and art of Christopher Wood Lothar Götz's geometric stairwell mural Friedrich Nagler's cabinet of curiosities The fantastical figures of Laura Ford Celebrating the Bishop Otter art collection

£2 Number 39 July – October 2016 pallant.org.uk

Works available by

Forthcoming exhibition

LEON UNDERWOOD

DANNY MARKEY

LEON UNDERWOOD 1890-1975

DANNY MARKEY b.1965

Three Fates 1962

Elmer’s 2006

Oil on canvas 61 × 76 cm

Oil on canvas 55 × 76 cm

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CHRISTOPHER WOOD

PAUL FEILER 1918-2013

CHRISTOPHER WOOD 1901-1930

Grey Receding 1962

House in Brittany 1929

Oil on canvas 152.4 × 182.9 cm

Pencil on paper 30.4 × 37.7 cm

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Contents Features

Christopher Wood, Self-portrait, 1927, Oil on canvas, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge

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 Facebook “f ” Logo

You can also follow us at pallantgallery pallantgallery pallanthousegallery CMYK / .ai

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Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive Katy Norris Friedrich Nagler: Wunderkammer Jane England Lothar Götz: Composition for a Staircase Simon Martin and Lothar Götz The Bishop Otter Collection: A Celebration Gill Clarke Laura Ford: Beauty in the Beast Simon Martin and Laura Ford Contemporary Abstract Prints Mark Golder Adopt an Artwork Sarah Norris

Friends 47 48

Chairman's Letter What's On: Friends Events

Regulars 7 11 14 50 52 54 56

Co-Directors' Letter Exhibitions Diary Gallery News What's On: Events What's On: Art Courses Bookshop 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, Sarah Norris, Marc Steene Guest Editorial Gill Clarke, Jane England, Mark Golder, Alice Strang Friends' Editorial Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Mary Ambrose Design, Editing and Production David Wynn

CHRISTOPHER WOOD MAJOR SUPPORTERS

ADVERTISING Booking and General Enquiries Paolo Russo +44 (0)207 300 5751

GALLERY SUPPORTERS

Christopher Wood Supporters' Circle LOTHAR GÖTZ SUPPORTER The Abbey Harris Mural Fund

Headline Sponsor of the Gallery 2016

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 FRIENDS' OFFICE +44 (0)1243 770816 friends@pallant.org.uk BOOKSHOP +44 (0)1243 781293 shop@pallantbookshop.com www.pallantbookshop.com PALLANT RESTAURANT +44 (0)1243 770827 pallant.org.uk/eat Entrance via East Pallant when Gallery is closed.

Tues–Weds 9am–5pm Thurs–Sat 9am–Late 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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Fine art, antiques and collectables valuations afternoon in support of Pallant House Gallery Monday 26th September A team of specialists from Toovey’s will be on hand from 12 to 4pm at Pallant House Gallery to offer free valuations and advice on the sale of your Fine Art, Ceramics, Oriental Works of Art, Clocks, Watches, Jewellery, Militaria, Antique Weapons and Collectors’ Toys by auction.

A third of the seller’s commission for items subsequently auctioned at Toovey’s will be donated to Pallant House Gallery.

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Co-Directors' Letter

Photograph by Janie Airey

It is hard to believe that it is ten years since Pallant House Gallery’s new wing opened to the public for the first time in July 2006. With its sensitive marriage to the Queen Anne townhouse and its ground breaking geothermal heating system, the building has won numerous awards that are a testament to the thoughtful architecture of Prof Sir Colin St John Wilson and Long & Kentish that has made the Gallery one of the most distinctive public museums in the UK. As an organisation the Gallery has grown in reputation, winning numerous awards including the Gulbenkian Prize in 2007 and the Charity Awards in 2013. Almost 550,000 visitors have passed through our doors since we reopened and we now have nearly 4000 Friends. A recently completed Economic Impact Survey demonstrates that the Gallery brings a remarkable £4.45 million into the local economy each year.

An evolving programme of critically acclaimed exhibitions and publications, widely esteemed community programmes and an internationally significant permanent collection - including the most recent acquisition of a major Edgar Degas nude – mean we have much to celebrate, but we cannot rest on our laurels with public funding becoming harder to secure. We thank all of our staff, volunteers, patrons, sponsors and supporters for continuing to help us make the Gallery the wonderful organisation it is, at the heart of its community.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary, this summer the German abstract artist Lothar Götz has been commissioned to paint a vibrant site-specific mural in the stairwell of the new wing. Our major summer exhibition, Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive, presents the first substantial survey of the artist’s work for many years and is accompanied by a lavish monograph by our

Curator Katy Norris. A bohemian and dashing figure, Wood became an important influence on Modern British art, developing a recognisable faux-naïve style driven by Wood’s understanding of the primitive which he encountered through continental PostImpressionism, his friendship with the Nicholsons and the naivety of artists such as Alfred Wallis.

Alongside this we present a display of abstract prints from the Gallery’s collection by artists including Callum Innes, Rebecca Salter and Estelle Thomas which form part of the continuously developing Golder - Thompson Gift of contemporary prints.

In the townhouse there is a display of newly acquired paintings and prints donated by the Wilhelmina BarnsGraham Trust through the Art Fund, as well as an exhibition of works from the Bishop Otter Collection, part of a two-site exhibition with the University of Chichester’s Otter Gallery. This important collection was formed through the foresight of the Head of Art Sheila McCririck and Principal Betty Murray, an inspiring story of patronage by an educational institution. Another intriguing story is that of the Austrian émigré outsider artist Friedrich Nagler whose extensive talismanic carvings of heads form a ‘wunderkammer’ in the De’Longhi Print Room. In the courtyard garden and Garden Gallery we present fantastical bronze and ceramic sculptures by the contemporary artist Laura Ford, who has recently established a new studio near Chichester.

Our exhibitions and displays are accompanied by a rich programme of events that help to make the Gallery a vibrant place to visit. As we celebrate the 10th anniversary and look to the future, we hope that you will enjoy this exciting summer season.

Marc Steene, Executive Director and Simon Martin, Artistic Director 7

14 June - 6 November 2016 Watts Gallery - Artists’ Village

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Summer at Zimmer Stewart Gallery Anthony Frost, Piers Ottey & more

Mirror Man, acrylic and mixed media on canvas 76 x 76 cm by Anthony Frost

7 June to 30 July - Our annual Summer Exhibition showing a wonderful mix of paintings, prints and sculpture by gallery artists.

6 to 29 August - Beyond Cool - An exhibition of new paintings by Anthony Frost, to be joined during the Gallery Trail on 20 August by paintings by Piers Ottey.

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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Exhibitions Diary

Christopher Wood, Portmeor Beach, 1928, Oil on canvas, Private collection

Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive 2 July – 2 October 2016 This major summer exhibition is the first in 35 years to provide a comprehensive overview of the career of British artist Christopher Wood. It explores the life and art of a turbulent young painter who held an important position in the British art world during the 1920s. Along with Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Wood developed a self-consciously unsophisticated style inspired in part by the untrained Cornish artist Alfred Wallis. However his understanding of naïve art was also uniquely influenced by his early exposure to the work of modernists in France such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh, who all drew upon Western art and so-called ‘primitive’ cultures. His addiction to opium, encouraged by his friendship with the writer and artist Jean Cocteau, doubtlessly fed into the direct and visionary quality of his later paintings. The exhibition of over 80 works celebrates the magnitude of Wood’s achievement during the ten years before his untimely death in 1930, aged just 29. Including paintings, set designs and drawings created on both sides of the channel, it also explores Wood’s immense personal struggle as he juggled the conflict between the reserved sensibility of his English heritage and the hedonism of the Parisian avant-garde.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of a fully illustrated catalogue written by Katy Norris, published by Lund Humphries.

Rooms 12–16

Contemporary Abstract Prints (The Golder-Thompson Gift) 2 July – 2 October 2016 A display of abstract prints marking 15 years of The Golder-Thompson Gift, which focuses on collecting contemporary prints for the Gallery’s permanent collection. Through works by artists including Alan Davie, Albert Irvin, Callum Innes and Estelle Thompson, the exhibition showcases a wide variety of printmaking techniques whilst exploring the nature of abstraction.

Room 17 Friedrich Nagler: Wunderkammer 30 June – 16 October 2016 An exhibition celebrating the extraordinary work of self-taught Jewish artist Friedrich Nagler, an obsessive maker who fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1939. The extensive series of small scale sculptural heads which he carved, cast and assembled from materials such as bone, metal, ivory, plastic and non-traditional materials such as bread, is central to the exhibition. This is the first time that these works have been exhibited in a public gallery. The exhibition supports Pallant House Gallery’s commitment to engaging visitors with Outsider Art and elevating the profile of self-taught artists.

De’Longhi Print Room The Bishop Otter Collection: A Celebration 18 June – 11 September 2016 A two-site exhibition in partnership with the University of Chichester’s Otter Gallery showcasing works from the University of Chichester’s Bishop Otter Collection of 20th century British art. Celebrating the centenary of the birth of Sheila McCririck, Head of Art at Bishop Otter College from 1949–78, the exhibition at Pallant House Gallery includes works by Patrick Heron, John Bratby, Peter Lanyon and William Gear.

Room 4

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Exhibitions Diary CONTEMPORARY INSTALLATIONS Clare Woods: Lady Midnight Until 4 September 2016 A monumental painting by contemporary artist Clare Woods (b.1972), inspired by her sense of ‘grandeur’ and ‘debauchery’ in the historic townhouse. This follows the spring exhibition The Sleepers, a joint show with Woods’ partner Des Hughes.

Stairwell of the 18th century townhouse Laura Ford: Beauty in the Beast 2 July–2 October 2016 Courtyard Garden until May 2017 An installation by leading contemporary sculptor Laura Ford (b.1961), now based in West Sussex, featuring her recognisable fantasy figures. A group of bronze sculptures including Espaliered Girl (2007), Lion (2014) and Behemoth (2016) form a conversation with the formal architecture of the courtyard, and are accompanied by a series of ceramic sculptures and drawings in the Garden Gallery.

Courtyard Garden and Garden Gallery Lothar Götz: Composition for a Staircase From 2 July A site-specific mural by German abstract artist Lothar Götz (b.1963), commissioned to mark the 10th anniversary of the Gallery’s contemporary wing. Influenced by Kandinsky, the Bauhaus and Ben Nicholson, Götz’s large-scale geometric murals create an intuitive dialogue with the architecture and social function of a space.

Stairwell of the new wing

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COLLECTION DISPLAYS Pallant House Gallery’s collection of Modern British art is frequently described as one of the best in the UK. Regularly changing curated displays introduce key themes running through the collections. This season’s new displays include a focus on Wilhemina Barns-Graham showcasing new acquisitions from the Barns-Graham Trust, and a display on the development of British Surrealism, featuring works

by John Armstrong, Edward Burra and Henry Moore.

Free tours of the collection take place every Saturday and Sunday and are led by knowledgeable Gallery Guides. See p.51 for further details. Collection displays are supported by Tooveys Auctioneers.

STUDIO EXHIBITIONS Picture This 28 June – 31 July 2016 An exhibition of work by pupils from St Anthony’s School, Jessie Younghusband School and Westbourne Primary School, in response to this year’s selected collection painting, Victor Willing’s Night (1978).

Nama Ato: Japanese Outsider Art 3–29 August 2016 An exhibition of three Japanese Outsider Artists from Atelier Corners showing their work in the UK for the first time, organised by Outside In and supported

by Unlimited. The exhibition tours to Southbank Centre in London and Tramway in Glasgow.

A Celebration of 10 years of Outside In 1 September – 30 October 2016 A celebration of the past 19 Award Winners from Outside In’s triennial open art exhibitions, held at Pallant House Gallery since 2007. The exhibition follows each artist’s journey since winning a solo show at the Gallery.

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Christopher Wood Exhibition Publication The first fully illustrated account of the life and work of English painter Christopher Wood (1901–30), this authoritative work, which includes over 150 images, provides extensive visual analysis of individual paintings, set designs and drawings created

by Wood in both Britain and France so bringing fresh perspective to his unique artistic development on both sides of the Channel.

Written by Katy Norris Paperback £25 Available from the Gallery Bookshop

Gallery News EXTERNAL LOANS TO DIEPPE, EASTBOURNE AND LOS ANGELES The summer period is a busy one for works from the collection travelling on external loan. Currently works

by Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi feature in the exhibition ‘The Peculiar People’ at Focal Point Gallery, Essex (16 April to 2 July 2016), which traces the history of ideological and social-political communal living experiments throughout the 20th century and their influence on cultural history. Following the success of the exhibition ‘Sickert in Dieppe’ at Pallant House Gallery last year, four works in the collection by Walter Sickert will travel to Dieppe for the exhibition ‘Sickert à Dieppe: Portraits d’une ville’ at Musée de Dieppe (25 June – 26 September 2016), forming part of the Normandy Impressionist Festival. Five works by David Bomberg will be included in the exhibition ‘David Bomberg: A Sense of Place’ at the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (8 July – 25 September) focusing on the artist’s recording of particular landscapes throughout his career. The Bow Handel Clock Case from the Geoffrey Freeman Collection of Bow Porcelain will be on show at Boughton House, Northamptonshire as part of the Handel Commemorative Exhibition (9 July – 30 October). Finally, Michael Andrews’ Thames Painting: The Estuary (1994-5) will travel to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles for the major exhibition ’London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj’ (26 July – 13 November 2016). This will be the first major exhibition in the U.S. to consider the work of six of the artists most closely associated with the group described by R.B. Kitaj as ‘School of London’, who collectively created a revival of interest in figurative painting in a period dominated by abstraction.

David Bomberg, Portrait of Lilian Bomberg, n.d, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (Presented from the Collection of Bill Weston and Madeleine Gantley through The Art Fund, 2016) 14

NEW ACQUISITIONS FROM THE GOLDER – THOMPSON GIFT Since 2001 Pallant House Gallery has been supported in the acquisition of over 300 works on paper by Dr Mark Golder and Brian Thompson in the form of the Golder – Thompson Gift. Collectively these works provide a unique overview of printmaking in the UK and a fascinating insight into collecting and the development of a collection. Most recently we have taken receipt of 11 new works including Japanese woodcuts by Rebecca Salter; screenprints by John Carter and Peter Sedgley; a stencil drawing by David Nash; a monoprint by Martyn Brewster and a monotype

by Estelle Thompson, amongst others. They are representative of a dynamic and vibrant collection that continues to grow and and this latest addition forms the basis of the Contemporary Abstract Prints exhibition in Room 17 this summer.

DAVID BOMBERG PORTRAIT ACQUIRED THROUGH THE ART FUND We are delighted to have received through the Art Fund a portrait by David Bomberg of the artist’s wife, from the collection of Bill Weston and Madeleine Gantley. The Portrait of Lilian Bomberg (n.d) will be a significant addition to our collection of modern British portraiture and particularly complements Self-Portrait (1937) given to the Gallery as part of the Wilson Gift through The Art Fund in 2006, which is painted in a similar dark tonal range and with which it forms a poignant relationship.

John Armstrong, Feathers Conclave, 1946, Tempera on board, Pallant House Gallery (On loan from a Private Collection, 2016)

EARLY JOHN ARMSTRONG WORK ON LONG TERM LOAN A new long term loan from a private collection, Feathers Conclave (1946) provides additional insight into John Armstrong’s development as a painter, and his experimentation with oil and tempera techniques.

Representative of one of the artist’s earliest group compositions of anthropomorphic organic forms it depicts a ‘battalion’ of feathers in multiple pastel colours. Armstrong has a strong local connection having spent his childhood in West Dean where his father William Armstrong was the Reverend.

OUTSIDE IN COLLABORATE WITH THE COLLEGE OF PSYCHIC STUDIES, LONDON For one week only this August, Outside In is working with The College of Psychic Studies in London to bring you an exhibition titled Encounters with the Spirit World. From 14-20 August 2016 the College invite audiences to view over 500 spirit photographs, mediumistic artworks and artefacts relating to séances from 1856 until the present day. Across six floors audiences will see the College’s outstanding collection, including the visionary paintings of Ethel Le Rossignol, Victorian writing slates, spirit trumpets and crystal balls. Alongside this, audiences will be the first to see several new acquisitions by Outside In artists Aradne, Chris Neate, Daniel and Jan Arden and international artists Zinnia Nishikawa and Damian Michaels. Their mediumistic, automatic and visionary artworks are an important addition to the College’s collection and will undoubtedly inspire future generations of psychic students. Visitors will also have the chance to purchase artworks by these artists during the exhibition.

Venue: The College of Psychic Studies, 16 Queensberry Place, South Kensington, London, SW7 2EB Free admission. Open 12-5pm daily.

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Edgar Degas Acquisition An important drawing by the French Impressionist Edgar Degas has been allocated to Pallant House Gallery via the HM Government and Arts Council's Acceptance in Lieu scheme.

Perhaps the Gallery’s most significant and exciting acquisition in recent years, Edgar Degas’ Femme se peignant (Woman combing her hair), (c.1887-90) is a remarkable example of the Impressionist artist’s intimate drawings of the female nude. Seated with her legs crossed, the model precariously balances a scarlet slipper whilst brushing her hair. This glimpsed moment is one of a series of charcoal drawings that Degas executed on large sheets of tracing paper, which are in major museums around the world including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Fogg Museum at Harvard and the Museum of Fine Art in Houston and now, in Chichester.

The drawing has gone on public display for the first time, having remained in private hands since it was acquired directly from the artist by the celebrated French dealer Ambrose Vollard, who published it alongside several other large charcoal works in a celebratory volume of Degas’ work in 1914. It was subsequently purchased by the glamorous and unconventional American socialite Gladys Deacon, a prolific female collector during the 1910s and 1920s who moved in artistic and aristocratic circles and had friendships with artists and writers including Rodin and Proust.

Deacon was famous for her beauty and is said to have captivated figures including Marcel Proust, Wilhelm Crown Prince of Prussia, RC Trevelyan, Anatole France and Hermann von Keyserling.

In her art collection were other works by Degas, several sculptures by Rodin, and an oil painting

by Toulouse-Lautrec. She also sat for Giovanni Boldini

in 1901 following a commission by her future husband, the 9th Duke of Marlborough. In 1921, Deacon became the Duchess of Marlborough, marrying the 9th Duke after his divorce from Consuelo Vanderbilt and taking residence at Blenheim Palace, from which she was later evicted. After her death in 1977 at a mental health institution in Northampton the drawing was purchased at auction by the late owner Stephen Brod, a successful physicist who had escaped Czechoslovakia at the outbreak of the Second World War. Latterly, Pallant House Gallery was identified by the recipient of Brod’s estate, Claudia Rosencrantz, for the allocation of the work in lieu of Inheritance Tax through the AiL scheme.

Although the Gallery has several works by PostImpressionist artists in the collection, it is the first major Impressionist work to be acquired. Degas was an important influence on the development of Modern British art, in particular through the artist Walter Sickert whom he met and befriended in Paris and Dieppe in the 1880s. In terms of the figurative tradition in Modern British art, Degas’ work has relevance to later artists such as Lucian Freud, RB Kitaj and Frank Auerbach.

Edgar Degas’ ‘Femme se peignant’ (c.1887–1890) will be on display in Room 1 at Pallant House Gallery until August 2016. An Artist in Focus study session on Edgar Degas on Saturday 23 July forms part of the Gallery’s new programme of Art Courses. Hugo Vickers, biographer of Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough, will give a talk on this enigmatic collector on Thursday 14 July 2016. See events programme on page 50.

Edgar Degas, Femme se peignant, c.1887-1890, charcoal and red chalk on tracing paper, Accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax from the estate of Stephen Brod and allocated to Pallant House Gallery 2016

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Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive

As a major exhibition on Christopher Wood opens at the Gallery, Curator Katy Norris reflects on the significance of the artist’s achievement and the enduring paradox between the primitive and the sophisticated in his oeuvre.

Christopher Wood, Self-portrait, 1927, Oil on canvas, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge

Born in Knowsley, near Liverpool, Christopher Wood was one of the most gifted artists of his generation.

Following his suicide at Salisbury train station in 1930, the mystery that surrounded his untimely death aged just 29 has inevitably taken equal precedence alongside his achievement as a painter.

However the magnitude of his creative ambition, which resulted in his rapid ascent both amongst the cultural milieu of Paris and the British art world, was an extraordinary aspect of his short career. A friend of Pablo Picasso and the painter-poet Jean Cocteau, he also forged a strong alliance with the artistic couple Ben and Winifred Nicholson, with whom he nurtured a self-consciously ‘naive’ figurative style that was highly influential among his contemporaries in Britain. During the height of the 1920s it was Wood’s art that stood in opposition to academic convention, eschewing aesthetic sophistication with a childlike directness that seemed to speak of a more inherent truth about the world.

The exhibition at Pallant House Gallery will demonstrate that Wood’s unique pictorial idiom developed through his personal response to the specific conceptions of ‘primitive’ art that were prevalent in both Britain and France during the 1920s. Arriving in Paris in 1921 at the age of just 20, to a large extent he was exposed to the fashion for artefacts from the Far East, Africa and America through its reference in Cubist and Fauvist painting.

This in turn was manifested in his own work through 21

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Christopher Wood, China Dogs in a St Ives Window, 1926, Gouache on panel, Pallant House Gallery (on loan from a private collection)

his replication of gestural brushwork, decorative surface patterns and stylised, pared-down forms.

Meanwhile the candid mode of representation employed by the untrained painter Henri-Rousseau can be found in the frontal, simplified presentation of Wood’s portraits, including his immense self-image in a harlequin-patterned jumper painted in 1927.

Having seen a painting by Rousseau in the studio of Picasso alongside African and Iberian carvings, Wood no doubt recognised that for many contemporary artists Rousseau’s stylistic naivety was derived from the same ‘primitive’ mind that they attributed to the people of non-Western societies. Further to this, the concept of retreating into these so-called ‘savage’ communities was also highly influential to the generation of modern painters that Wood encountered in Paris. Exemplified

by Paul Gauguin in his trips to Brittany, Martinique and Tahiti, and to lesser extent van Gogh in the peasant communities of Arles during the 1880s, 22

the Post-Impressionists provided the template for how artists might harness aspects of the ‘primitive’ by escaping the trappings of their sophisticated milieu for a more profound ritualistic existence.

All of this was astutely understood by Wood.

As early as 1922, less than a year after arriving in the French capital, he explained in a letter to his mother that most modern artists strove to interpret their subjects as though ‘through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except that which would strike them as being the most important’. The published letters of van Gogh also had a huge impact, in particular the comparison he made between the solitary struggle of the artist and the hard-worn existence of rural peasants, who he felt were closer to nature and therefore less morally corrupt. Reflecting on the purity of van Gogh’s ideas, Wood commented to his mother ‘He must have had such a beautiful mind, so broad nothing petty could have entered

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Christopher Wood, Cumberland Landscape, 1928, Oil on board, Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge

his head, otherwise he could never have painted.’

For all the admiration that Wood bestowed on these modern masters, the ability to view the world through innocent eyes was a quality that artists and critics came to identify in his own paintings. In Paris he adopted the position of a young naif amongst a crowd of predominantly older homosexual men, to whom his unworldliness was irresistibly compelling.

Cocteau affectionately declared in a catalogue preface for Wood’s first major exhibition in Britain, shared with the Nicholsons: ‘In Christopher Wood there is no malice. There is a frankness, a naivety of a young dog who has not had the illness of time’.

Written in 1927, this comment only partially rings true since by this time Wood had inevitably become embroiled in the drug-fuelled hedonism of the Parisian avant-garde. However he did at least continue to uphold purity in his paintings. A review in the New Statesman remarked: ‘The dry winds of the continent

have blown away from his canvases some traces of the fog that besets these islands, but they have a gay humour which is essentially English.’ Cocteau too emphasised the importance of his nationality, which he believed set him apart from his peers in Paris, asserting ‘Wood is an English painter; his work is reticent, it takes exercise in the fresh air’.

These responses seemed to anticipate Wood’s next significant series of paintings, created during his visit to the Nicholsons’ farmhouse in Cumbria in the spring of 1928. Here he worked side by side with Ben, learning to eliminate detail through the method of reducing his subjects to fluid, continuous contours.

In part Wood’s pictures were a true reflection of the Nicholsons’ modest and elemental surroundings, but they also demonstrate his efforts to return to a state of innocence. His representations of farmsteads as simplified box-shapes and animals as crudely drawn profiles have a certain naïve charm that is comparable 23

Christopher Wood, Harbour in Hills, 1928, Oil on canvas, University of Essex

to children’s drawings, whilst his brush marks appear intuitive and spontaneous. It was also during his visit to Bankshead that Wood started to prepare his canvases with a thick primer called Coverine, into which he scraped in order to create a rough surface, leaving areas of the preparatory grounds exposed.

Wood’s new focus on the texture and materiality of his pictures would develop further following his ‘discovery’ of the self-taught painter Alfred Wallis during a visit to St Ives with Ben Nicholson in the summer of 1928. Staying close to the retired seaman’s home, a humble terrace in Back Road West, Wood visited Wallis almost daily, taking direct inspiration from the unique and visionary pictures he discovered there. To ‘sophisticated’ artists such as the Nicholsons and Wood, Wallis’ depictions of flattened sailing vessels painted on salvaged pieces of driftwood and cardboard spoke of creativity unspoilt by academic training or ‘civilised’ culture. In this regard his art was genuinely naïve, but it was nonetheless based on his authentic experience of sailing great schooners and brigantines during the heyday of the Atlantic fishing industry. As Wood observed there was also a certain literalness in his treatment of materials, no doubt derived from the fact that he applied the 24

same paints in his pictures as he did to real boats.

In his own depictions of the harbour in St Ives Wood unashamedly replicated Wallis’ pictures, appropriating his simple iconography and unsophisticated techniques.

In a letter to Winifred Nicholson he commented that he was painting ‘more & more influence de Wallis’, and described how he mixed colour with black and white, an approach that demonstrated surprising disregard for the modernist principles of pure colour. In one particularly Wallis-esque painting, Harbour in the Hills (1928), Wood represented the sea as a swirling variation of light greys and deep charcoals, which seems to suggest that he had taken to mixing his pigments directly on the surface of his pictures, just as Wallis did. Meanwhile the intensity with which Wood painted the dark green banks seems to bear at least some likeness to van Gogh’s Provençal landscapes. In this respect it is possible that Wallis’s spartan existence also reminded him of the Post-Impressionist’s primitive return to nature. Wood certainly put the two painters together in his mind when he wrote to Jim Ede: ‘I am not surprised that no one likes Wallis, no one liked van Gogh for a long time did they?’

Back in Paris Wood became increasingly aware that the excessive lifestyle of his artistic friends

Christopher Wood, Dancing Sailors, 1930, Oil and household paint on board, Leicester Arts and Museums Service

threatened the virtuousness he was aspiring to achieve. In order to maintain a sense of balance the artist resigned himself to dividing his existence between two extremes, oscillating between periods of solitude when he could focus on his creative output and those centring on his social life. The problem was that the drug opium featured in both aspects and, whilst in Paris he was able to keep his intake pure with supplies from friends, when alone he was more inclined to smoke the dross from old pipes.

The effect of Wood’s extreme isolation and the heightened sensory awareness that came from his drug consumption resulted in the singular appearance of his final series of around 40 pictures, which were painted in Treboul, Brittany in as little as six weeks during the summer of 1930. Focusing on the Breton people as his subject, perhaps one of his greatest accomplishments was the symbolic evocation of their religious beliefs that underpinned the Celtic seafaring customs.

In these paintings a deep spirituality is embedded within the everyday social lives of the fisher people, echoing Gauguin’s treatment of comparable subjects in Pont Aven. There are similarities too between Wood’s approach and the way that van Gogh achieved a perfect synthesis between his artistic style and

moral values. In Wood’s work the direct application of colour and form was in perfect harmony with the modest piety of the Breton people, representing a realisation of the simple, intuitive vision for which he had been striving throughout his career.

Shortly after completing his final pictures, on 19 August 1930 Wood took a train from Paris to Le Havre, and from there travelled to Southampton before finally reaching Salisbury. At 2.10 pm, just as the Atlantic Coast Express drew up into the station platform, Wood jumped in front of the train to his death. In the years following his suicide the British art world attempted to map the significance of his unique career, during a period in which his naïve style was quickly negated by the new trend for abstraction.

Nevertheless, it was Wood’s engagement with the pervading interest in Primitivism on both sides of the channel that was instrumental to changing the insular atmosphere of the British art world, thus paving the way for the progressive forms of modernism that developed in Britain during the 1930s.

Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive runs from 2 July – 2 October 2016. An accompanying illustrated monograph published by Lund Humphries is available in the Pallant Bookshop.

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Friedrich Nagler: Wunderkammer

Gallerist Jane England tells the remarkable story of the self-taught Austrian artist Friedrich Nagler, as the first public gallery exhibition of his work opens in the De’Longhi Print Room.

Friedrich Nagler, Photograph by England & Co

For over five decades, a self-taught, émigré artist named Friedrich Nagler compulsively carved and painted hundreds of tiny, idiosyncratic faces. Working in a modest Hampshire bungalow in a private world of self-imposed obscurity, Nagler created an ever-growing population that he carefully housed and secreted away in old biscuit tins, layered flat in chocolate boxes, or laid out kaleidoscopically in the shallow drawers of a cabinet.

This multitude of faces and heads seen in profile were created in several series and at different periods.

Each group can seem repetitive, and yet on close examination, there are slight variations within each type. Nagler later emphasized that “every one of them is different”. Using plastic, resin, metal, bone and even baked bread, Nagler laboured intensively, relentlessly accumulating his expressive characters and keeping them within his own crammed private universe.

In one of his poems, Nagler wrote: “Faces to me are a talking book” (i). He did not elaborate, but perhaps in some way he was trying to replace the lost Jewish community of his youth in pre-war Vienna, where he was born in 1920. Several series of faces in profile carved in horn or plastic are clearly based on bearded Orthodox Jews from the Jewish quarter of Vienna.

By the beginning of the 20th century Vienna had become one of the most prominent centres of Jewish culture in Europe, with many Jews assimilated into Viennese society. When the National-Socialists came to power the city’s Jewish population were almost 27

all killed or dispersed during the Holocaust. Many of Nagler’s friends, and almost all of his relatives, died in concentration camps during the war.

The majority of the carved and painted objects that Nagler created so obsessively reflect his early life in Austria: as the art historian, Professor Roger Cardinal pointed out in an essay on marginal art, “each of us is born into an environment marked by a cultural past and it is not possible to avoid being influenced by this inheritance” (ii).

There was a close relationship between the ethnographic and the applied arts in Vienna: Austrian folk art reflected the diverse peasant cultures of the Austrian empire and was evidenced in the carved wooden implements, painted furniture, and the embroidered costumes and woven textiles of the popular decorative arts. Decorated ritual objects also form part of traditional Jewish art, and so both decorative traditions would have been absorbed from childhood by the young Nagler in Vienna.

Nagler spent much of an unhappy childhood in foster care and in an orphanage, and later told his family: “I was always on my own”. The anti-Semitism and rise of Nazism in pre-War Vienna ended his early hopes of attending an art school. Helped by Zionist friends to get out of Austria, after a failed first attempt to escape into Czechoslovakia, he managed to reach England.

He joined a farm commune in Kent, but was soon interned and sent to Douglas on the Isle of Man, from where he was deported to Quebec in Canada, on the ship SS Sobieski. The camp at Douglas was known as ‘the artist’s camp’ as so many German and Austrian artists, writers, and intellectuals were interned there as ‘enemy aliens’. It was at Douglas, and then on the Sobieski that Nagler met the few people that remained his friends in later life, in particular, the graphic artist Hans Arnold Rothholz. In Quebec, Nagler worked as a lumberjack, and managed to produce some early watercolours, drawings and paintings.

After four years, Nagler was able to return to England in 1943, but was interned again near Oxford. During this second period of internment, he was assigned a day-job at a munitions factory where he met his future wife, and they settled in Hampshire in 1945. Nagler worked as a gardener and at various odd jobs, and the family lived in a converted railway carriage with a shed built in the garden where he worked on wooden sculptures.

Around 1959, a bungalow replaced the railway carriage, and Nagler worked in the new kitchen,

working in the evenings accompanied by loud classical music on the radio. His shed became a repository for the brass fittings and metal scraps that he collected and stored for future use in making a metal menagerie of animals. He prepared animal bones for carving, made clay sculptures, and constructed a small forge to make animal sculptures and crucifixes in wrought-iron.

Constantly making something and always ingenious, Nagler hunted for his materials in junk shops and later at car boot fairs. When his sons left home, their small bedroom became another workroom that gradually filled with works; and after his wife’s death, he bought down objects and materials that he had hidden in the attic years before. Jobs in local sawmills had provided him with off-cuts for his carvings, and later factory and boat-building jobs provided access to plastics and resin. Assemblages of found and modified material gradually accumulated and filled his tiny bungalow.

From the late 1970s into the 1990s, he returned to painting, producing stylized compositions on board and a series of colourful images on second-hand plates with iconography very reminiscent of Austrian folk art.

Towards the end of his life, he made larger, simpler and more abstract constructions of masks and animals using polystyrene and plastic tubes and containers.

His long-standing friend, Hans Arnold Rothholz regularly visited and encouraged Nagler over the years after the war. Rothholz sometimes gave him art materials, and once persuaded him to allow a few works to be exhibited at Heals in the 1950s. However, Nagler would vehemently say that he did not want his work to be seen until after his death. It was not until 2013 that a first solo exhibition of Nagler’s work was held at England & Co, arranged at the suggestion of Stephen Rothholz, Hans Arnold’s son, who as a boy had often accompanied his father on visits to Nagler.

This exhibition was followed by other exhibitions in London and Japan and now this Wunderkammer display is the first showing of his work in a public gallery.

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Friedrich Nagler, Photographby England & Co

i. Friedrich Nagler, from an unpublished poem ii. Roger Cardinal, ‘Marginalia’, essay published in Marginalia: Perspectives in Outsider Art, Zwolle, The Netherlands, De Stadshof Museum for Naïve and Outsider Art, 2000, pp. 51-75.

Note: Unpublished material by Martin Nagler (the artist’s older son) is the source of much of the biographical information provided in this essay.

Friedrich Nagler: Wunderkammer is in the De’Longhi Print Room from 30 June – 16 October 2016.

The artist’s sons Martin and Mervyn Nagler, will be in conversation with Executive Director Marc Steene on 8 September 2016.

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Lothar Götz: Composition for a Staircase German abstract artist Lothar Götz (b.1963) is creating a site-specific mural in the stairwell of Pallant House Gallery’s new wing to mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Gallery in 2016. Artistic Director Simon Martin met him in his studio to discuss his work.

How do you set about working on a site-specific commission?

With site-specific commissions there is always a brief, which I try to ignore if possible, and to just work with it and see if there is a problem. The site-specific work developed out of my interest in spaces and architecture – architecture as form and the social activity in the space.

For a while I found it difficult to work on canvas or support – it’s probably a character thing as my brain starts working when I can respond to something – people, a story, a book, a space. Working on canvas I found too difficult. The surface is too soft. That’s why I like working on a wall. The hard surface is beautiful to draw on.

For me, an important aspect is that the work does not start when I begin painting, but before, when I am travelling to the space – and I try to take in as much information as I can but my own story also starts. There can be things from art history – but also things from daily life that influence what I am doing.

The work doesn’t end where the paint ends, but is about the whole space. It is something performative – for example where there is a room and I paint a wall pink, the viewer becomes part of the work – an interaction between the viewer and the work.

Site-specific works often work with the memory.

You have an eye in the back of the head as well.

When you see an orange on one wall and then green on the other, even if you’ve only seen it for a second

it’s in your brain. When something is site specific it is so different from looking at a painting, which you can see in one go. You have to walk around. It’s not an image. The viewer becomes an integral part of the whole work because it’s not possible without that.

How does this work in a practical sense?

I start to make sketches, spending a lot of time wandering around. Then I make rough sketches without using colour. The process is not an active design process, but an emptying out of the head where I try to make a connection with the space, where I become like a medium. Very often I get first ideas and then dismiss them again. Usually I leave and then don’t know what I’ll do and get a moment of despair. Often an idea comes later when I look at my sketches. I need time, distance.

A train journey, a day or two... I then start to draw.

Working with pencils, following up ideas – most of which get chucked away. After I made the decision on what to do, I went to my Berlin studio for a week, which is very clean - the opposite of here - and I worked there and at the end I felt ready to start.

Art has the freedom to be completely useless. You probably need a certain selfishness. David Bowie said that all his best work was when he was completely in the work being selfish. When you’re in the studio being a bit crazy, after that period, the two things come together.

You do not have that strange discrepancy when you work on a painting or drawing. These commissions get their own life, meeting people, travelling there.

Lothar Götz, Crash, 2012, mineral paint on wall, Kunstverein Hanover, Germany © Raimond Zakowski

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How do you feel about working in a public space like a staircase?

You design something and solve problems with public art commissions. When you respond to something you have a responsibility - you are not entirely neutral. You have to design something that has to function. There is a social use that is fixed to something that is very different to a gallery.

As an abstract artist, how important is the connection of your work to reality?

Abstract works for me are so much more real than so many realist paintings. For me, abstraction and reality belong together – I always have problems when people divide these two things. People are inspired, looking at work, making work – it’s kind of a circle. On the one hand you respond to something that is real and then in the studio something completely abstract and then bring them together.

If you have a staircase that is completely white and you add colour, it doesn’t change the function but it does completely change our experience of going up and down the stairs.

I am not interested in abstraction as a theory model. I’m not dogmatic about it. I get irritated when it is being fitted into a set of rules.

I don’t see my work as opposed to figurative art.

It’s the same thing with music – you respond to a more abstract quality. For me it is completely real.

Does music have a particular resonance for you as an abstract artist, like it did for artists such as Kandinsky and Klee?

It was quite important. I loved Bach. I went to a specific school for artists and musicians. I loved to play the piano and had lessons in piano and flute for at least ten years from around the age of seven. I did lots of painting compositions after music when I was a student. Classical music was quite important, particularly as a teenager, and especially Handel. Music can transport you into an abstract space. It is a similar way of thinking: dismantling reality and putting it together in your own way.

Your comments suggest that the imagination is just as important to your work as the physical reality of the architecture to which you have to respond?

As a child I created big villas. I was always interested in architecture, in the private and domestic space.

I always enjoyed maps and ground plans – they 32

give you the freedom to imagine what it could be.

I looked at thousands of architectural plans as a child, but for me it was the starting point for a fantasy.

For a long time architecture inspired me more than art. When I get really excited by space it’s with the buildings that have the dimensions of a private house.

I see a house as an extension for our body, nearly a portrait of someone. It’s an extended body. The kind of architecture you grow up with.

I grew up in a little market town and probably knew every building site on the town. I was very much a loner.

I played with dolls and imagined all these spaces for them. At the time they were building all these 1970s bungalows. These were all architect-designed – different to a Barrett home in England: architect-designed modernist spaces. This moment of imagining things is one of the main reasons I became an artist in that I was never really interested in reality. When you get your head into a book you create a different reality. There was one house I looked at all the time. I was fascinated by the ground plan, and after it was finished I went with my parents to see it, but nearly cried as the reality was so disappointing. I later did a project called ‘If I had grown up elsewhere’. The finishing of something as an architect did not interest me. It’s the point where it is not ready.

Growing up, did the murals in Rococo Bavarian churches like Die Wieskirche have any impact on you?

The local church in Günzburg (the Frauenkirche), where I had Holy Communion, was built by the same architect, Dominikus Zimmermann. It was the testing out for his masterwork at Die Wieskirche. The spaces of Baroque churches had quite a big influence on me: I grew up in a narrow-minded environment and architecture was a way out of that. I grew up in a provincial, quite homophobic environment. As a child I was obsessed with green eye shadow, escaping through makeup.

Transforming as a child was an escape – I didn’t realise as a child what that meant.

In Günzburg there were wall paintings that were quite tropical with really amazing trompe l’œil. Baroque paintings are all illusionary, a bit fake and theatrical, but it’s reality in that moment. It’s like being transformed into some sort of cloud of space that’s real.

As a student I was always saying I hated Baroque because I loved the Bauhaus, until one of my painting tutors said I was a Baroque soul. Only later I understood what he meant – dealing with painting as a different kind of space – doing wall paintings in spaces adds a different kind of space – these layers.

Lothar Gotz, What Makes Boys Dance, acrylic and emulsion on wall, DOMOBAAL London © Andy Keate

You mentioned your love of the Bauhaus, what was it about it that particularly appealed?

Coming from Bavaria I responded to the light and very specific conditions in landscape when growing up.

Kandinsky and the whole Bauhaus thing was probably the biggest influence for me. The Bauhaus was the first art movement that influenced me as a student, after my childhood interest in architecture and plans.

There are links to the ground plans of imagined houses I did as a child. When a student in Aachen I was not a painterly painter – I was always on the edge with design, theatre, and architecture. In my first degree I did a bit of everything. And the Bauhaus I felt the most in common with - I always like the traditional world of Gestaltung (design). The Bauhaus was always good breaking down categories - designers as theatre people and I like the whole political social aspect – beautiful simple mass production. I always responded very much to colour. As a student I did my dissertation in art history on Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet.

I couldn’t decide the way I wanted to go – I would go more to the theatre than to the museum. At the RCA I started to bring all these elements together and with site-specific projects could combine different interests.

Are there British artists who have had a big influence on you?

Ben Nicholson was a big influence. I felt much closer to Nicholson than lots of people from Germany. This probably goes even so far as the question of why I enjoy being an artist in Britain more than in Germany.

With Nicholson, it was the form. I came across him in the second year of my first degree. I was drawing all these corners and always trying to make an abstract composition and my tutors said I should look at Ben Nicholson. It wasn’t colour, but the geometry and shapes, the drawings that are not abstract that were quite influential. It’s so much more playful – so English – in Germany it was often seen as more strategic.

In Dusseldorf my tutor Gerhard Merz tried to rip the personal out of us, because there was the idea that everything had to be the perfect white cube. I was always interested in the imperfection – not the intention to change it, but to start from there and include it into the work.

This is an edited version of an interview original published in The Russell Chantry: Lothar Götz/ Duncan Grant. Lothar Gotz: Composition for a Staircase will be in situ in the new wing stairwell at Pallant House Gallery from 2 July 2016.

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The Bishop Otter Art Collection: A Celebration

Gill Clarke, Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester’s Otter Gallery introduces the Bishop Otter Art Collection, the subject of a two-site exhibition this summer between Pallant House Gallery and the Otter Gallery.

William Gear, White Feature, 1958, oil on canvas, courtesy Bishop Otter Trust, University of Chichester, © The Estate of William Gear

The history of the Bishop Otter Art Collection at the University of Chichester is the history of a vision held by two remarkable women: Sheila McCririck (1916-2001) and K.M. Elisabeth ‘Betty’ Murray (1909-98). In this, the centenary year of the birth of Sheila McCririck, Head of Art at Bishop Otter College from 1949-77, it is fitting to celebrate her role and foresight in the creation of a unique collection of 20th century British art.

Sheila’s selection of both figurative and abstract work purchased with limited funds from then little known artists faced fierce opposition from staff and Governors but was supported by Betty Murray, Principal of Bishop Otter College (1948-70). By 1955 students, staff and visitors to the College could see work by Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Alan Reynolds, Christopher Wood (on show at Pallant House Gallery), Graham Sutherland, William Scott, Willi Soukop (his sculpture Mother and Child [in the College Chapel] being the first to enter the Collection in 1952 - all on display at the Otter Gallery) and others which were hung around the College simply where they looked right. Both women believed in the civilising influence of art and in the educative value of its challenge and to achieve this the works had to be on open display in accessible places.

The Collection commenced in the post Second World War era when emphasis was on the rebuilding of Britain and the integration of the arts with education. It was founded on two beliefs. Firstly, that living with works of art added a dimension 35

to life and a quality not available in any other form.

And secondly, that original works were the only ones capable of bestowing this extension and enrichment.

The limitations of funds (based initially on 10/- per student per annum – there were approximately 200 female students in 1949) restricted acquisitions and the Collection began with paintings, some purchased but many lent by artists for lengthy periods. Amongst early supporters were William Gear, Ivon Hitchens and John Craxton, often under the auspices of the Contemporary Art Society. A large number belonged to Howard Bliss who proved a generous lender allowing the College first refusal in 1958 of Hitchens’s Bleak Spring, at the low price of £250. Even so, as he predicted, this was beyond the College’s means. Gear allowed his paintings (White Feature [on display at PHG] and Black Figures [at the Otter Gallery]) to be acquired by the College at low cost.

Betty Murray often initiated contact with artists including writing to Hitchens in August 1949, who replied suggesting ways to acquire works: “…you don’t want artists’ second best pictures – nor is it fair to ask painters to lend their best & saleable work for long periods…as the modern painter is mostly hard pressed financially…Why don’t you buy two pictures a year on the instalment plan at £25 a year each...If you know the artists you want – then you can write to them…saving the dealers commission of 33%…I could personally let you have a 75 guinea picture for 50 guineas – or call it £50…”

Hitchens’s Autumn Stream was acquired in January 1950, and as the first work in the Collection it provoked much debate amongst staff and students. Later that year three ‘car loads’ (a mixture of staff and students) visited Sutherland in his studio near West Malling in Kent.

McCririck and several students then went to the Redfern Gallery in London to see Green Tree Form. Following these visits Entrance to a Lane (1943) was selected.

This was the only instance of a group buying a work.

In 1955 Murray wrote to Stanley Spencer. She and McCririck later visited the Cookham Festival to hear Spencer speak and as he left the Parish Church they stopped him and asked if they could buy a picture.

He took them straight back to his house and they purchased three cartoons for The Resurrection of the Soldiers on the altar wall at the Sandham Memorial Chapel and he gave them a first sketch.

Purchases were made from galleries, notably Scott’s Harbour from the Redfern in 1953, which was immediately loaned to the second Biennale in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Some Collection items were gifts, and/or commissioned or donated works.

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The choices made were subject to criticism.

Murray’s Foreword (1972) to the exhibition of Selected Works from the Collection held at the Gardner Art Centre Gallery, Sussex University explained that this criticism was: “when any particular purchase affronted someone’s taste”. “Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth, and that picture is neither truthful nor beautiful” was said of our Patrick Heron, [by Governor Lancelot Mason, Archdeacon of Chichester] with the implication that young students should not be exposed to an abstract of this kind.

The College Council (Governing Body), shaken

by Heron’s Black and White, queried the Collection as an educative and viable enterprise and prior to their meeting on 7 November 1957 members inspected the pictures, which had been gathered together in an exhibition in the College. Some saw no value in ‘modern art’ and/ or originals. Others favoured originals but were doubtful of the choice. Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester, though a private collector with many examples of modern works in his collection, was critical of some choices. A proposal was made at the last meeting chaired by Bishop Bell that: ‘The College’s present policy of “artistic challenge” be continued’. It was passed with two dissensions.

The amalgamation of Bishop Otter College with Bognor Regis College to form the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education in 1977 caused uncertainty about the Collection’s status and how best to protect its future.

The solution was for the Collection to stay on the Bishop Otter College site and in the possession of Bishop Otter College and its Residual Trustees. In 1979 an Agreement was constituted between the Trustees of the Bishop Otter Trust and the Institute Trustees. In this the Charity Trustees (Bishop Otter) undertook to loan the Collection to the Institute Trustees, together with what might be added ‘and to continue to display it in a manner designed to enhance quality of life at the College…’.

The building of a new Learning Resources Centre on the Chichester campus in 1997 provided the opportunity to incorporate a new gallery at its centre which was named the Otter Gallery in honour of Bishop William Otter (1768-1840) in whose memory the original college was founded. Its inauguration in 1998 marked a new phase in the life of a distinguished collection reflecting its original intention to place art at the heart of people’s lives.

This is an abridged version of an essay by Gill Clarke & Sally Mather from the new illustrated book published to coincide with The Bishop Otter Collection: A Celebration, a two-site exhibition at Pallant House Gallery (18 June – 11 September 2016) and the Otter Gallery (20 June – 9 October 2016). Gill Clarke will be giving a talk on 21 July 2016.

Alan Reynolds, Fen Landscape, 1952, watercolour on ink, courtesy Bishop Otter Trust, University of Chichester, Š The Estate of Alan Reynolds

Alfred Wallis, Boat, c.1930, oil on paper, courtesy Bishop Otter Trust, University of Chichester 37

Laura Ford: Beauty in the Beast To coincide with a new sculpture installation in the courtyard garden Artistic Director Simon Martin speaks to the contemporary sculptor Laura Ford.

Over the past couple of years, Pallant House Gallery’s courtyard garden, designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole, has provided a unique setting for outdoor sculpture exhibitions. In 2014 it housed carved stone heads by Emily Young and in 2015 terracotta and ceramic figures by the Indian Outsider artist Nek Chand.

This year it is home to an installation of intriguing bronze sculptures by the artist Laura Ford (b.1961) who has recently established a studio in West Sussex.

The studio has enabled her to make larger sculptures than is possible in her London studio, and allowed for a different way of working.

Born in Cardiff in 1961, Ford studied at the Bath School of Art and Design and the Chelsea College of Arts.

Her sculptures have a playful quality that is tempered by a darker edge: girls that turn into espaliered trees, animals and birds displaying human frailties and characteristics.

She speaks of how the inspiration of her work is drawn in part from folk and fairytales that are ‘remembered and mis-remembered and re-interpreted.’ Ford uses creatures in her work to ‘make the works approachable and to make the sometimes uncomfortable feelings I am working with more palatable and engaging.’ She doesn’t make a huge differentiation between animals and humans and finds that when she watches animals she sees them ‘expressing similar kinds of feelings as I experience.’

For the courtyard of Pallant House Gallery Ford has chosen works that inhabit the space in a way akin to the objects in Jean Cocteau’s film Beauty and the Beast.

She speaks of how in the film, ‘as soon as you step into the beast’s grounds everything comes alive and appears to be conscious. I thought it would be good to have sculptures that were of things you would expect to find in courtyards, the classical sculpture, Laura Ford, Espaliered Woman I, 2007 © The Artist

the espaliered tree, the sculpture of a bird or lion, but to try to fill them with a consciousness and life.’ The creatures in the garden include Behemoth (2016), which is based upon the eponymous character in Mikhail Bulgakov’s book Master and Margarita, whom Ford describes as an ‘utterly anarchic, fast-talking, pisstaking human size black cat’. Leaning against a tree stump, the sculpture references the classical statues of Hercules. Indeed, the artist wanted to give the impression that the vain Behemoth was conscious of the precedent in a quietly mocking manner.

Alongside, Ford has proposed a series of ceramic sculptures and drawings which will be displayed on the Garden Gallery wall inside, linking exterior and interior spaces. She explains that, ‘the ceramics are often made to try out ideas on a smaller scale but also as works in their own right. I like that they sit in people’s homes on their shelves and mantelpieces and become part of people’s lives and imaginations.

I enjoyed dreaming about the ceramics on the shelves of my family as I grew up.’ The setting of her work in a ‘living’ space that also functions as a place for people to meet, eat and drink appeals to Ford. She is not precious about her work and comments that she enjoys ‘the difference in the way audiences interact with work when they are just sitting around having lunch or a coffee with it. There is less pressure and more of an opportunity to catch something out of the corner of your eye and to let the subconscious do its work.’

Laura Ford will be exhibiting in the courtyard garden and Garden Gallery at Pallant House Gallery from 2 July to October 2016. She will be in-conversation with Stephen Feeke, Director of New Art Centre, on 29 September 2016.

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Contemporary Abstract Prints Collector and donor Mark Golder reflects on 15 years of Pallant House Gallery’s Golder-Thompson Gift, as a display of contemporary abstract prints from the collection opens in Room 17.

All two-dimensional art is to some extent abstract because it reduces the observed or imagined objects to the essentials of shape, colour and line. But the 20th century saw artists make progress away from a foundation in the observable world to one rooted in ‘pure’ abstraction, where concerns of form replace the urge to create a recognisable picture akin to what the eye can see.

As Pallant House Gallery’s Artistic Director Simon Martin explains "abstract art is a valid form of expression which can be nuanced and subtle.

It is about perception and allows space for the viewer’s personal response. It provides something different from the constant barrage of detail and associative links provided by figurative imagery."

Of the two of us contributing as donors to the Golder-Thompson Gift, Brian Thompson has always been the one most attuned to abstract art. Before retirement he was a mathematics teacher and is naturally drawn to geometric forms, but also to shapes that play with the eye.

He likes to be teased, "to have my senses jangled" by something which is not immediately obvious and which makes the brain work harder.

The Gift has always centred on collecting prints by contemporary artists. The new display is drawn from a shortlist of 25 works that give an insight into the nature of abstraction, whilst showcasing a spread of artists and printmaking techniques. The earliest work is a monoprint by Martyn Brewster

(1987) and the latest a diptych by Jane Harris (2016) which involves the use of laser technology. There is also a Katy Dove from Edinburgh Printmakers.

This appealed to me rather than Brian in the first instance, but once it had been purchased and hung, Thompson fell for its charm. Now he likes its playfulness, how there are elements of both symmetry and asymmetry within the composition, and how there are no sharp corners where you can hide.

The Estelle Thompson comes from Purdy Hicks Gallery and is a good example of optical art, in which the eye is bamboozled as it moves across the lines of colour. It does not, perhaps, give up its charms immediately, but the viewer ought to persevere.

In an interview in The Independent (11.1.1994), the artist sums up the trajectory of 20th century art in her own life. Starting with figurative work, she moved into producing landscapes and then into works that ‘allow you the space and time to reflect’.

There is in that statement a perfect convergence with the earlier remark made by Simon Martin: less detail, more space for response by you, the viewer.

Contemporary Abstract Prints: The Golder-Thompson Gift is in Room 17 from 2 July - 2 October 2016.

Katy Dove, Mirador, 2004, Screenprint on paper, Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2009) © The Artist Estelle Thompson, Untitled, 1999, Monotype on paper Pallant House Gallery (The Golder - Thompson Gift, 2016) © The Artist

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Adopt an Artwork: Conservation at Pallant House Gallery Sarah Norris, Collections Manager at the Gallery, gives an insight into the ongoing challenges of conservation and how you can help.

One of Pallant House Gallery’s core functions is to ensure the long-term preservation of all items in our permanent collection, making them accessible now and in the future. With over 4000 items to care for, conservation is one of the Gallery’s biggest – and most essential – challenges. There is a way you can help us achieve this mission, via our Adopt an Artwork scheme, which supports the conservation of a chosen work needing care in our collection.

Conservation at the Gallery includes both preventative conservation - the procedures put in place to slow deterioration, prevent damage and create optimum conditions for the preservation of items - and interventive conservation – treatment by a trained conservator to repair or restore damage or unacceptable change on an object.

Different mediums have various requirements.

Works on Paper The Gallery’s collection of works on paper now numbers over 2,500 and includes old master drawings by Giulio Romano, Tiepolo and Watteau; watercolours by artists including David Jones, Edward Bawden, Henry Moore and Eric Ravilious; John Piper’s collage designs for the Chichester Tapestry; iconic portfolios such as Eduardo 42

Paolozzi’s BUNK and Moonstrips Empire News and the contemporary print collection acquired through the support of the Golder – Thompson Gift.

Works on paper are physically fragile and vulnerable to light levels, humidity, fluctuating temperature and acidity which may be apparent in historic mounts or backing materials. The Gallery follows an on-going programme of work by paper conservator Sarah Deere to ensure newly acquired and existing collection works can be maintained in optimum condition. Works may undergo a number of treatments such as lifting from acidic backboards; surface washing; repair of tears and re-mounting in conservation grade board.

Sculpture In 2014 Pallant House Gallery, together with The Scottish National Gallery of Contemporary Art, took part in a pilot project funded by the Gabo Trust for Sculpture Conservation. Working with Derek Pullen and Jackie Heuman from Sculpcons Ltd a comprehensive survey of our sculpture collection was undertaken in which works were systematically photographed, assessed and condition checked. This resulted in recommendations for maintenance, care and treatment and the identification of specific works to be prioritised in future

Graham Sutherland, Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen (Noli Me Tangere), 1961, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council, 1985)

David Bomberg, The Man (Verso, Self-Portrait), 1937, Oil on board, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, 2006)

conservation funding applications. Through this project we have been able to identify potential problems and prioritise treatment needs.

to preserve and extend their physical integrity and improve standards of care for the future.

Five major works in the collection benefitted from this project including David Bomberg's The Man (Verso, Self Portrait), 1937, and Graham Sutherland's Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene (Noli Me Tangere), 1961.

Oil Paintings Following the recommendations of conservator Sarah Cove we successfully secured funding from The Leche Trust to carry out a programme of preventative conservation for key collection works that were unglazed and identified as vulnerable. It was recommended that works were re-framed with UV, non-reflective museum glass and a sealed backboard, protecting them from physical damage, providing a buffer from changes in relative humidity, and protecting them from dust, therefore slowing the natural ageing of the materials.

This has been proven to extend the life of the canvas and/or support by 2 to 3 times longer in a historic house environment and may be longer still in a more easily controlled museum environment.

Achieving funding from The Leche Trust has provided an excellent opportunity to actively build upon our conservation programme, identifying care and conservation requirements and addressing potential risk to key artworks. This helps ensure that the collections are cared for and maintained in conditions intended

We are enormously grateful to The Leche Trust and the Gabo Trust for Sculpture Conservation without whose support these projects would have not been possible. We will continue to build upon the lessons learnt from them to ensure our collection is cared for to the best possible standard and continues to be able to be displayed, travel on external loan and stored in such a way that its safety, protection and long term preservation is assured for future generations to enjoy.

Adopt an Artwork If you are interested in learning about which works in the Gallery’s permanent collection are in need of conservation and how you could support the Gallery through its ‘Adopt an Artwork’ scheme, please contact Beth Troakes (b.troakes@pallant.org.uk/01243 770811).

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Chairman of the Friends' Letter

Christopher Wood, Treboul, The Blue Sea, 1930, Oil on canvas, private collection

As I am sure many of you will be aware, this summer we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the opening of the new building. It is extraordinary to think what a long way we have come since then and what a hugely successful decade this has been for the Gallery. Pallant House Gallery is now firmly established as a leading museum for Modern British art outside London and this is due to all our dedicated and talented staff who have worked in the Gallery during these years. We are delighted that her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra will join in our celebrations at a private event, having performed the official opening ceremony ten years ago. With the newly-refurbished restaurant and the café in the hall, the Gallery is buzzing. It is now well established as an agreeable meeting place for Friends in the centre of Chichester.

On 17 August there will be a trip to see the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition at Tate Modern with an opportunity to see the much-vaunted new extension. O’Keeffe is recognised as the ‘Mother of American Modernism’ and is best known for her iconic flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. Val and Frank Woodgate, who are lecturers for Pallant House Gallery’s new art course programme, will deliver a one-hour lecture during the trip on this intriguing artist and afterwards there will be an exhibition viewing and lunch. For more information, please get in touch with Mary Ambrose at m.ambrose@pallant.org.uk.

On 30 July the Woodgates will be conducting the next art course in the present series at Pallant House Gallery, on Piper, Sutherland and the Neo-

Romantics, and there are spaces available for Friends at the discounted rate of £25. For the full programme of art courses, please get in touch with Helen Martin, h.martin@pallant.org.uk.

Our Friends trip to Northern France with Kirker Holidays was a great success with visits to galleries in the Pas-De-Calais, Lille, Lens and Arras. It was thoroughly enjoyed and we are so grateful to Kirker Holidays and to Christopher Monckton, who was a most interesting and knowledgeable guide. We hope to offer you further trips with Kirker and will keep you informed.

The trip to the Cotswolds in September should be lovely. We will go to Hidcote Manor Gardens and Chipping Campden on a journey through the Arts and Crafts Movement, with a visit to Buscot Park, the home of Lord Farringdon with a wonderful collection of Old Masters and modern pictures. Some spaces are available for this trip.

As always thank you for your continued support and indeed for the support you have given the Gallery during the past ten years.

Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Chairman of the Friends

Pallant House Gallery Friends

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What's On Friends Events Find the rest of the public programme including workshops in the What’s On guide or online at pallant.org.uk.

Booking for Friends Events is required through Reception unless otherwise stated (01243 774557)

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.

Tate Modern: Georgia O’Keeffe Exhibition and Tour of new Gallery Spaces Weds 17 August 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

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Pallant House Gallery Friends

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).

Cotswolds Trip Tues 20 – Weds 21 September 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

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.

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.

Friends 10th Birthday Celebrations for Pallant House Gallery and Private View for Christopher Wood Sat 2 Jul, 10–11 am The Friends are invited to celebrate the 10th Birthday of the new wing at Pallant House Gallery alongside the Friends private view for the Christopher Wood exhibition. Enjoy a short talk by the exhibition’s curator, Katy Norris and help us celebrate 10 years in the new galleries.

All Friends are welcome at this special preview event. Includes refreshments.

Due to the popularity of this event, please contact Mary Ambrose if you would like to attend (m.ambrose@ pallant.org.uk / 01243 770816).

Exhibition Tour Wed 6 July, 10 am–11am An exclusive tour for Friends conducted by curator of the Christopher Wood exhibition, Katy Norris. £5.50 (£3 Student Friends).

Women Artists Wed 20 Jul, 11–12 pm Join Katy Norris, Curator, and Sarah Norris, Collections Manager, to examine works on paper by wellknown and forgotten women artists in the collection such as Catherine Yarrow, Suzanne Valadon, Prunella Clough, Winifred Nicholson, Claire Leighton and Paul Rego. £5.50 Booking required through Reception (01243 774557).

Art Book Club Join our lively discussions on Sunday afternoons, 2.30–4pm in the Gallery. To maximise your enjoyment, we suggest you should read the book before attending. £6.50 Friends, £7.50 Friends of Friends, including tea/coffee and cake. Please contact Jacintha for more information about the Club: jhjacintha8@gmail. com. Booking required through Reception (01243 774557).

I Paint my Reality by Frida Kahlo Sun 18 Sept, 2.30pm–4pm Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 and was married to Diego Rivera. As the result of an accident she had lifelong health problems including amputation of her right leg and she died aged 47. She enjoyed a legendary, if turbulent partnership with Diego as they both had a strong attachment to Mexican art and a deep commitment to Communism. The book traces her extraordinary life whose unforgettable imagery combines cruelty and pain with honesty, wit and empowerment.

The Shock of the New

by Robert Hughes Sun 23 Oct, 2.30pm–4pm This has been described as “much the best synoptic introduction to modern art ever written”. As Hughes was incapable of writing in the jargon of the art world he was

treated by the mandarins with fear and loathing as he championed artists such as Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach when there was considerable antipathy towards such work.

Pallant Proms Sat 24 Sept, 12–1pm Sat 29 Oct, 12–1pm Please note new price details below.

Come and enjoy outstanding recitals by international students from the Recital Class at the Royal College of Music.

Tickets priced £7, including Friends.

Ticket price does not include entrance to the Gallery, which must be purchased separately. Friends have free entry to the Gallery. Tickets to be purchased from Reception.

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 Keith and Helen Clark 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 Andre Zlattinger

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 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.

Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive Thurs 7 July, 6pm A friend of Picasso and Cocteau in Paris, Wood was also at the forefront of the development of a ‘naïve’ figurative style amongst British painters. Based on research into his personal letters Katy Norris, Curator at Pallant House Gallery, will discuss the opposing factors that shaped this conflicted character, drawing out the paradox between the primitive and the sophisticated that dominated his painting.

Duchess and Collector: Hugo Vickers on Gladys Deacon Thurs 14 July, 6pm The unconventional socialite Gladys Deacon was a prolific female collector who had friendships with artists and writers including Auguste Rodin and Marcel Proust, and later became the Duchess of Marlborough. This talk by Hugo Vickers coincides with

50

the acquisition of a new work to Pallant House Gallery’s collection

by Edgar Degas, formerly owned

by Deacon. Hugo Vickers is a writer and broadcaster who has written biographies of many 20th century figures, including the Queen Mother, Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough and Cecil Beaton.

The Bishop Otter Art Collection: A History Thurs 21 July, 6pm Gill Clarke, Visiting Professor at the Otter Gallery, University of Chichester, will explore the building of the University’s art collection which includes some of the most important figures in Modern British art including abstract artists Terry Frost, William Gear, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, William Scott alongside the likes of Henry Moore, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer. The collection resulted from the unerring eye of Sheila McCririck, Head of Art, together with the tenacious spirit and support of the Principal Betty Murray, often in the face of fierce opposition from staff and Governors. A book signing of the newly published history will follow.

Art and Life: Christopher Wood and the Nicholsons Thurs 28 July, 6pm Jovan Nicholson, grandson of Ben and Winifred Nicholson, will discuss Wood’s deep friendship with the artistic couple, exploring how creative ideas flowed between them during two important painting trips: firstly to the Nicholson’s home in Cumbria and then to Cornwall in 1928. Jovan Nicholson is the author of ‘Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray, 1920-1931’, and the forthcoming ‘Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour’.

In Conversation: Mervyn and Martin Nagler with Marc Steene Thurs 8 September, 6pm The self-taught artist Friedrich Nagler was born in Vienna and experienced persecution from the Nazis before escaping to England, where he settled in Horndean, near Petersfield and created work reminiscent of folk art and Jewish iconography. Mervyn and Martin Nagler, Friedrich’s sons, will discuss this fascinating life and career in conversation with Marc Steene, Executive Director at Pallant House Gallery. A film screening will precede the discussion.

Special Events Southern Cathedrals Festival Concerts Thurs 21 July, 3.15pm and Fri 22 July, 2pm As part of the Southern Cathedrals Festival 2016, the Gallery hosts ‘Songs and Sonnets: Shakespeare and Friends’, a recital featuring tenor Mark Wilde and pianist David Owen Norris. £15 (includes admission to Gallery) southerncathedralsfestival.org.uk

Lothar Götz, portrait © Jordan Hutchins

In Conversation: Lothar Götz with Simon Martin Thurs 15 September, 6pm The mural paintings of internationally renowned artist Lothar Götz are characterized by abstract geometric forms and fields of intense colour which alter our perceptions of the surrounding architecture. To coincide with the presentation of a site specific mural on the walls of the Gallery’s new wing stairwell, he will be in conversation with Simon Martin, Artistic Director.

In Conversation: Laura Ford with Stephen Feeke Thurs 29 September 2016, 6pm The sculptures of Laura Ford have a playful quality that is tempered by a darker edge: girls that turn into espaliered trees, animals and birds displaying human frailties and characteristics. The artist will be discussing her work with Stephen Feeke, Director of the New Art Centre, to coincide with the exhibition in the courtyard garden and Garden Gallery.

Exhibition Tours Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive Thurs 1 September, 6pm Curator Katy Norris leads an illuminating tour of the Christopher Wood exhibition, exploring the development of his faux-naïve style during the ten years preceding his death, aged just 29. £5.50 (£3 students) plus admission

Toovey’s Valuation Afternoon Mon 26 September, 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. Free Macmillan Coffee Morning Fri 30 September, 10am – 12pm Come along to the Gallery’s annual coffee morning in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support, supported by our headline sponsors De’Longhi.

Gallery Tours Collection Tours Every Sat and Sun, 2pm A half-hour guided tour providing fascinating insights into our collections and displays. Whether exploring themes such as portraits or landscape, or telling stories behind particular artworks, each week is different. Free with admission, meet at Reception.

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What's On Art Courses Find the complete public programme of talks, events and workshops in the What's On guide or online at pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557 or visit the Gallery.

Tutors for Short Courses and Artist in Focus Led by Tate Guides and NADFAS Lecturers Val and Frank Woodgate, Alexandra Epps and Linda Casey.

Françoise Durrance is a freelance lecturer, for many London Galleries, including the Courtauld and the Royal Academy.

Tutors for Practical Art Courses Bridget Woods studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art. Bridget teaches extensively and has written books on life drawing and on watercolour.

Piers Ottey studied at Chelsea School of Art and works in studios in Hackney and Arundel, exhibiting regularly in London and at Zimmer Stewart in Arundel.

Christopher Baker, an artist, teacher and author who exhibits widely in the UK and Canada, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions.

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Short Courses Short courses on particular themes, bookable in full or as individual sessions.

Full course £130 (Friends £100) Individual sessions £30 (Friends £25) includes coffee and pastries.

Making Sense of Modern British Art 28 May, 25 June, 30 July, 11am – 1.30pm Booking as individual sessions only Led by Val Woodgate and Linda Casey An introduction to modern art in Britain places the Gallery’s rich permanent collection into the context of artistic developments in Britain and Europe.

Sat 28 May Sat 25 June Sat 30 July

Artistic responses to the Great War Surrealism in Britain Piper, Sutherland and the Neo-Romantics

Modern Art and the Old Masters: Tradition and Innovation 3, 15, 29 November 2016 and 10, 24 January 2017, 11am – 1.30pm Led by Val and Frank Woodgate, Alexandra Epps and Linda Casey Compare Old Master paintings with modern treatment of the same subjects in British and international art, examining the extent to which modern art has been inspired by the example of earlier eras.

Thurs 3 Nov Tues 15 Nov Tues 29 Nov Tues 10 Jan Tues 24 Jan

Reinventing Tradition Portraiture Genre Still-life Landscape

Artists In Focus

Practical Art Courses

One-off study sessions exploring in depth the life and work of particular artists. £30 (Friends £25) includes coffee and pastries.

Develop practical art skills such as drawing and watercolour.

Each course is individually priced.

All participants will be sent information and a materials list prior to the course.

Christopher Wood Sat 16 July and repeated Tues 19 July, 11am – 1.30pm Led by Linda Casey Christopher ‘Kit’ Wood (1901–1930) was a talented British artist whose ambition and naïve representational style earned the admiration of many fellow British and European avant-garde artists including Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Wood was a pivotal figure in the development of Modernism in Britain in the 1920s, helping to lay the foundations for radical advancements in the 1930s. This study session will look at Wood’s life, friendships, artistic collaborations and his paintings, particularly focusing on the decade before his tragic death aged just 29.

Edgar Degas Sat 23 July, 11am – 1.30pm Led by Françoise Durrance Edgar Degas (1834–1917) specialised in scenes of contemporary life, including dancers, entertainers and women at their toilette. His mastery of technique was superb, and he experimented with various media including pastel. This special session will examine Degas’ work including the Gallery’s recent acquisition, the charcoal and red chalk drawing ‘Femme se peignant’ (Woman Combing her Hair) (c.1887–90).

Pablo Picasso Sat 17 September and repeated Fri 28 October, 11am – 1.30pm Led by Val Woodgate Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) told his biographer John Richardson that his work was like a diary – ‘to understand it, you have to see how it mirrors my life.’

A deeply personal response to each new love in his life, as well as world events, can be seen in the different styles in which he worked. This study session will show how Picasso’s life, and especially his emotional life, influenced what he painted and how he painted it.

A Fresh Approach to Watercolour Sat 16 July (from 10am), Sun 17, 24, 31 July, and Sun 7 August, 11am – 5pm, £295 Led by Bridget Woods This comprehensive five session course will give you confidence to handle watercolour and at the same time develop your own way of working. You will discover the exciting possibilities of direct painting and explore the transparency and texture of the medium. Bridget will share her knowledge and experience of watercolour with you through both group and one to one teaching.

There will be opportunities to work ‘en plein air’ and to see exhibitions and displays at the Gallery.

Measured Drawing Thurs 4, 11, 18, 25 August, 5–8pm, £200 Led by Piers Ottey This four session course will employ the methods of the Euston Road School using optical measuring and plum lines. There will also be the opportunity to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques and the rigorous observation they require, and more subjective drawing marks will be encouraged.

Each session will include a talk about elements of the process and the artists who applied them.

Sketchbook and Painting Sat 3 September, 10am – 5pm, £85 Led by Christopher Baker Drawing is about discovery, a direct communication from eye to hand, so often sketchbook drawings can appear more animated than paintings. This day course will strengthen your sketching ideas and you will study methods and approaches that will directly impact on the dynamic relationship between the sketchbook and painting. There will be the opportunity to explore and discuss this disconnect between drawing and painting.

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Shop pallantbookshop.com

The Bishop Otter Art Collection: A Celebration

By Gill Clarke, £15 Featuring selected images of work from the collection, including sculpture and ceramics, with accompanying comments, the book also includes a Foreword

by Professor Clive Behagg, Vice Chancellor, University of Chichester and an essay by Simon Martin, Artistic Director at Pallant House Gallery.

Exclusive Print: Lemons in a Basket

by Christopher Wood A giclee print from the original oil painting by Christopher Wood, part of Pallant House Gallery’s permanent collection available exclusively in the Pallant Bookshop.

Special Exhibition Price of £100 54

Friedrich Nagler Mini Sculptures We will be selling a selection of small works in metal, bone and shell by Friedrich Nagler to coincide with the exhibition in the De’Longhi Print Room. Prices start from £75.

To keep up to date with our newest titles, offers, books and products, sign up to our mailing list instore or on our website.

Tel: 01243 781293

Featuring Studio Pottery and Designer Jewellery A variety of exciting work from contemporary potters and craft designers from around Britain is on sale in the Gallery Bookshop.

Christopher Wood Exhibition Publication

By Katy Norris The first fully illustrated account of the life and work of English painter Christopher Wood (1901–30), this authoritative work, which includes over 150 images, provides

extensive visual analysis of individual paintings, set designs and drawings created by Wood in both Britain and France so bringing fresh perspective to his unique artistic development on both sides of the Channel.

Paperback ÂŁ25 55

Artwork in Focus Expanding Forms (Entrance), Touch Point Series No.1, 1980

by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Expanding Forms (Entrance), Touch Point Series No.1, 1980, Acrylic on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (Presented by the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust through the Art Fund (2015) © The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust

A pioneer of British Abstraction, Wilhelmina BarnsGraham was born in St Andrews in 1912 and trained at Edinburgh College of Art. In 1940, three years after graduating, she moved to Cornwall where she became an established member of the St Ives School. Twenty years later Barns-Graham inherited a house outside St Andrews, thereafter straddling the Cornish and Scottish art worlds. Her long, varied and prolific career was underpinned by continual experimentation and ended with a flourish of vibrant paintings and inventive printmaking before her death in 2004.

Expanding Forms (Entrance), Touch Point Series No.1 is a major work from a series in which BarnsGraham marshalled line, form, colour and space with discipline and joy and continued her exploration of objects in motion. The sequence of brittle yet organic elements, their inter-relationships and placement within a mute grey space, creates a sensuous image that appears to breathe and move before our eyes.

Lynne Green, Barns-Graham’s biographer, commented on this work: ‘The artist…pursued her concept of a repeated, expanding formal element, but here the progression is…stately, the visual sensation…subtle. Colour and its proportion are as central in the work of previous years; harmony and dissonance of hue an equal partner with the balance and tension of geometrically determined form...A crucial role is played by the point at which one form touches – or influences – another: a slight touch can propel, a more prolonged embrace can squash or inhibit.’ Painted with acrylic on canvas on a large scale (122 x 122cm), it shows a mature 56

artist in full command of her métier.

In 1987 Barns-Graham founded a charitable trust to further her reputation and to support living visual artists, which became active when she died. Along with the painting Snow at Wharfedale II of 1957 and six prints by Barns-Graham, Expanding Forms (Entrance), Touch Point Series No.1 was presented to Pallant House Gallery in 2015 by The BarnsGraham Charitable Trust through The Art Fund.

This Barns-Graham display comes at a particularly opportune moment for the understanding of this leading British modern artist. A display of her prints, selected from a major gift to the National Galleries of Scotland by her Trust, runs at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern art until 26 June 2016, where four of her paintings can be seen in the concurrent exhibition Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965. Furthermore, sixty years after she had her first solo exhibition in Scotland with them, Barns-Graham is to receive a solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh in May 2016. The Trust itself is in the midst of moving its activities and collection to the Scottish capital. Perhaps it can be argued that all of these endeavours, their energy, optimism and significance, are embodied in Expanding Forms (Entrance), Touch Point Series No.1.

This essay has been written by Alice Strang, Trustee of The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust and Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The collection display will be in Room 9 during the summer season.

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Frank Dobson

1886-1963

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Frank Dobson. .. was a sculptor of immense integrity and vision, with a feeling for the female form that seemed to wrest it out of the earth and make its very earthiness not only monumental but sublime.

I would call him a great sculptor; certainly one of England’s greatest.

Duncan Grant

Above: plaster for Reclining Nude (ht 33 cms) circa 1926, now available for the first time in a bronze edition of 12. Exhibition of sculpture and drawings from 25th June. A fully illustrated catalogue is available with essay by Andrew Lambirth (ÂŁ10 plus p&p.) The exhibition may be viewed and purchases made online at goldmarkart.com, 14 Orange Street, Uppingham, Rutland, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424

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