OBJECT OF THE MONTH THE WICKHAM PAINTING

Elisabeth Bletsoe, Curator, Sherborne Museum

To me, painting is learning to see’ so wrote Mabel Frances Wickham (1901-1992), born in Fleet, Hampshire and whose artistic talent was strongly encouraged by her parents. She studied art at Clapham High School between 1919 and 1923, which also included a year’s teacher training, and this led to her becoming an art teacher at Lord Digby’s School in Sherborne.

Mabel attended the summer landscape painting courses run by Reginald St. Clair Marston and by the 1930s opted to teach part-time in order to develop her own creativity. In 1936 she was made an Associate of the Society of Women Artists, and in 1938 she was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. She also became a member of the Sherborne Art Club and was for several years its Hon. Secretary.

During this time it is not surprising that she produced many representations of the town, ten of which are part of the Museum’s collections; these include watercolours, pencil drawings and pen and ink wash. Looking at these, it seems that Mabel worked very often on location, from a vantage point such as the Slopes, Lord Digby’s School or halfway down Long Street which enabled her to represent the town in its context, among the characteristic oak and ash trees of the locality and the distinctive profiles of Honeycombe Tout and Thornford Ridge. She was an excellent draughtswoman, adept at reproducing the facade of the Abbey or the frontage of shops on Cheap Street. In 1951 she drew the Church House in Half Moon Street as an illustration for Joseph Fowler’s Medieval Sherborne, bending its perspective slightly in order to include the whole building to suit her purpose. Often she drew attention to changes in the townscape, recording features that are no longer there, perhaps from her mind’s eye; written on the back of her works are brief phrases like ‘now houses come to the horizon’ or ‘open ground on right now filled’. They provide a valuable historic record of small details that made the town what it was and is in memory: Hunt’s Cycle Shop, the old market, the acacia tree outside the Estate Office, the avenue of limes in front of the Abbey. sherbornemuseum.co.uk

One of the most fascinating images is the watercolour illustrated above: Newland, bomb damage after the air raid, September 1940. This is in fact a preliminary sketch, executed in a very free and loose style; what makes it so powerful is that it is clearly a spontaneous and immediate reaction to disaster and a desire to capture the historic moment. There are no initial pencil marks and the drag of the brush is visible across the slightly roughened paper. The mood is ominous and chaotic. The sketch was later worked up into a considered and more detailed watercolour. On the back of this second canvas is recorded the necessity for her to have a permit and the signature of the attending officer.

In 1953, Mabel retired to Weymouth, where she held her own summer art courses, and lectured for the WEA, Bristol University Extra-Mural Department and the Portland Bill Observatory. She exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and featured in a retrospective at The Chesil Gallery in Chiswell in 1988. Sherborne Museum is proud to hold a comprehensive selection of her work in trust for the town and will be displaying a small exhibition later in the year.

Sherborne Museum is opening on winter hours during March: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 10.30am–4.30pm. Admission is free.