Jonathan Cooper: Cabinet

CABINET

CABINET

Jonathan Cooper

sir peter lely (Soest, 1618 – 1680, London)

Of Dutch origin, Sir Peter Lely studied in Haarlem, where he became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1637.

He first arrived in London in 1641, shortly before England plunged into the turmoil of civil war. Although his earliest English works were religious or mythological scenes, he later established himself as the country’s pre-eminent portraitist and successor to Sir Anthony van Dyck, serving both Charles I and Oliver Cromwell. Later appointed Charles II’s Principal Painter in Ordinary, Lely’s fashionable style perfectly captured the spirit of the Restoration, and the new Stuart court.

This elegant portrait of Miss Ada Gossett encapsulates the appeal of Lely’s work to his aristocratic patrons, and his ability to skilfully communicate both the personality and status of his subject. A sense of intimacy is portrayed through his subject’s half-turned pose, suggesting an engagement with the viewer but also an element of distance and modesty, while the lustrous sheen 2 | c a bi n e t

of pearls against brocade testify to her wealth. Miss Gossett’s pose and dress echoes that of Mary of Modena in a portrait painted by Lely shortly before her marriage to James II in 1673 (now in Kenwood House, London), and are also found in his portrait of Katherine Windham at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk. The pastoral background to each painting imbues it with an Arcadian serenity, and suggests the prosperity of a realm now at peace.

We are grateful to Catherine MacLeod and Diana Dethloff, National Portrait Gallery, London, for their authentication of this portrait as the work of Sir Peter Lely.

Sir Peter Lely Miss Ada Gossett, circa 1673 Oil on canvas 30 × 25 ins (76.2 × 63.5 cm) Provenance Sjuberg Collection, Bukowski Sale Stockholm, 1927, lot 88

william daniell r.a.

(Chertsey, Surrey, 1769 – 1837, London)

Born in Surrey in 1769, William Daniell trained with his uncle, landscape artist Thomas Daniell, whom he accompanied to a rapidly expanding Calcutta in 1784. The financial success of the engravings produced during this first trip encouraged the Daniells to continue their enterprise and travels in India for several years, and led to the production of a lavish illustrated volume, Oriental Scenery. Published in six parts over the period 1795–1808, this work enjoyed enormous success and influence in shaping Britain’s artistic and cultural vision of India.

Daniell’s greatest achievement, however, was his depiction not of the marvels of the East, but A Voyage Round Great Britain, charting the scenery and population of his home country. Daniell travelled extensively around the British Isles from 1813 to 1823, publishing his master work in eight volumes between 1814 and 1825. The quality of the paintings produced undoubtedly helped 4 | c a bi n e t

Daniell to beat his contemporary John Constable at the ballot box to be elected a member of the Royal Academy in February 1822.

Daniell continued to work until his death in London in 1837. His paintings are held in the collections of numerous museums worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the National Maritime Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art.

William Daniell R.A. The Thames near Richmond Inscribed, signed and dated ‘On the Thames near Richmond / W. Daniell R.A. pinxit 1829’, verso Oil on panel 9 × 14 ins (22.9 × 35.6 cm)

follower of thomas jones

Follower of Thomas Jones An Italianate Landscape Indistinctly signed lower left Oil on artist’s board 8.5 × 6.89 ins (21.5 × 17.5 cm) Provenance Galerie George, London

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james webb (Chelsea, 1825 – 1895)

James Webb was born and worked in Chelsea. The son of landscape painter Archibald Webb, he trained with Clarkson Frederick Stanfield RA, and was influenced by the palette and style of Turner. A noted painter of marine scenes such as this view of the Dutch port of Brill, he worked in Britain, Holland, France, and along the Rhine.

During his lifetime Webb exhibited at the Royal Academy, Royal Society of Artists Gallery at Suffolk Street, the British Institute, the New Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. His work is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Britain, and the National Maritime Museum, among others.

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James Webb Brill, Holland Signed and dated ‘82 Oil on canvas 7 × 10 ins (18 × 25.4 cm)

william joseph shayer (British, 1811 – 1892)

The eldest son of landscape and figure painter William Shayer Senior (1787-1879), Shayer Junior trained in his father’s studio from the age of twelve, and exhibited his first painting at the age of seventeen. Despite this precocious talent, however, Shayer continued to earn a living as a coach driver for a number of years. This profession undoubtedly provided him with ample material for the equestrian scenes for which he is best known (and which ultimately did lead him to success) such as these works, which boldly capture the elegance and speed of a lost age of British travel.

William J Shayer Coaching Scene I Signed Oil on panel 3.5 × 9 ins (9 × 22 cm)

William J Shayer Coaching Scene II Signed Oil on panel 3.5 × 9 ins (9 × 22 cm)

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attilio fagioli (Bagno a Ripoli, 1877 – 1966, Milan)

Sovra candido vel cinta d’uliva donna m’apparve, sotto verde manto vestita di color di fiamma viva.

A crown of olive over her white veil, A woman appeared to me; beneath her green Mantle she wore a robe of flaming red.

(Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Purgatory, Canto XXX)

The unobtainable, tragic, yet hopefilled figure of Beatrice dominates the writing of Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 –1321). She first appears in the Vita Nuova, a collection of poems written after Beatrice’s early death, which celebrates her memory and the poet’s distant and near spiritual adoration of her. In the Divine Comedy, she replaces Dante’s pagan guide Virgil, leading him through Paradise to the Emyprean, or dwelling place of God.

courtly love and feminine purity.

Beloved of the Romantic Movement and Pre-Raphaelites, in Italy she served to tie the newly unified country to the origins of its language, joining Petrarch’s Laura as an emblem of the nation itself. Born in Dante’s native Tuscany, Attilio Fagioli worked in both marble and bronze, and is best known for his Fountain to Pinocchio in Corso Indipendenza, Milan.

Beatrice enjoyed a renewed importance across Europe in the nineteenth century as a symbol of Attilio Fagioli Beatrice Signed Marble 15.35 × 13 × 6.69 ins (39 × 33 × 17 cm)

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isaac henry caliga (Auburn, Indiana 1857 – 1944, Provincetown)

Isaac Henry Steifel was born in Auburn, Indiana in 1857. His family were of modest, German origins, their surname Steifel (boot), probably indicating that their ancestral trade had been shoemaking. Originally apprenticed to a machinist, in 1878 he set sail for Munich, where he joined the Academy of Fine Arts under the celebrated history painter Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Younger. Having perfected his craft, he returned to the US in 1883, (changing his name to the Latinised Caliga), and met with almost instant critical acclaim in New York, where the newly-founded American Art Association purchased his work. Exhibitions followed in both New York and Boston, and by the end of the century he had established himself as a successful society painter whose patrons included financier James B Colgate, Charles William Eliot (President of Harvard University), and Warren F. Kellogg.

According to the contemporary art critic Frank T. Robinson’s (who included him in his Living New England Artists in 1888), Caliga was popular among his patrons due to his gift for story-telling, and his ability to keep them entertained during long sittings for portraits.

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Perhaps this might have been the secret to his success with portraits of children, which were praised in the Boston Sunday Journal on March 19th 1895: His independent and daring studies of girl faces are unique in the work of Boston artists, his poetical imagination giving him vigorous and striking effects.

The present example is among the most charming of Caliga’s surviving portraits of children. His subjects are depicted in an elegant interior, wearing simple white day dresses, the blue embroidered details of their collars matching their fashionable bows. In style and ambience it is redolent of similar works by the great American Impressionist Frank Weston Benson (1862 – 1951), who was Caliga’s neighbour in Federal Street, Salem, and a friend to John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925).

Isaac Henry Caliga Portrait of Two Girls in White Signed Oil on canvas 38 × 30 ins (96.52 × 76.2 cm)

harold speed (London, 1872 – 1957, London)

Harold Speed was the son of architect Edward Speed, and initially studied architecture at the Royal College of Art. In 1887 he turned to painting, studying at the Royal Academy Schools between 1891 and 1896. In 1893 he was awarded a gold medal and a travelling scholarship, which led him to Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain. It was in this year that he also began to exhibit at the Royal Academy, which he continued to do for the next fifty years. In addition to his practise as a landscape and portrait painter, Speed also wrote several art manuals, including The Science and Practice of Drawing (1913), The Science and Practice of Oil Painting (1924) and What is the Good of Art? (1936), which continue to be valued by artists today.

Engstlensee is a lake located near the Joch Pass in the municipality of Innertkirchen, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. The current painting would seem to be a study for Speed’s mythological painting Daphnis and Chloe, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1924 (No 170).

Harold Speed Trees by Engstlensee Signed Oil on canvas 20 × 25 ins (50.75 × 63.5 cm) Exhibited Wolverhampton Municipal Art Gallery, Catalogue of Paintings by Harold Speed, 17 February – 7 April 1939, no.9 (50 guineas)

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robert duckworth greenham r.b.a., r.o.i.

(Streatham, 1906 – 1976)

The elder brother of fellow artist Peter Greenham R.A., Robert Duckworth Greenham trained at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. Best known for his landscapes of the Suffolk coast, Greenham delighted in capturing scenes of English social life outdoors, from sporting occasions to this view of Embankment Gardens, London. Sunlight dapples through the trees which offer shade to those enjoying tea below, engrossed in conversation, or enjoying a quiet solitude in the midst of a crowd. This painting celebrates a moment of summer that is forever frozen in time.

Robert Duckworth Greenham R.B.A., R.O.I. Embankment Gardens Signed and dated ‘55 Oil on canvas 19.5 × 29.33 ins (49.5 × 74.5 cm)

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marcel delmotte (Charleroi, Belgium, 1901 – 1984, Mont-sur-Marchienne)

A student of Léon Van den Houten, Marcel Delmotte studied at the Université du Travail in Charleroi.

Originally a realist painter, Delmotte gravitated towards Expressionism, and finally Symbolism. A versatile artist working in oil on canvas, watercolour, and sculpture, his works were inspired by mythology, the Bible, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, and he throughout his life he exhibited in solo shows in his native Belgium, France, Italy, the USA, and Japan.

detail, attains a monumental quality, yet retains a tactile softness that is enhanced by the asymmetrical folds of her Japanese robe, its red lining adding a warmth and richness to the picture.

Best known for his large frescoes, Delmotte also painted more intimate works such as this portrait. Here his elegantly dressed subject, silhouetted against a background that is devoid of

Marcel Delmotte Le Peignoir Japonais Signed and dated 1958 Oil on canvas 47.25 × 35.38 ins (120 × 90 cm)

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sven berlin (Sydenham, 1911 – 1999, Wimborne, Dorset)

Sven Berlin was a multi-faceted artist and colourful character in the history of Modern British Art. Having left school at the age of twelve, he first trained as a dancer, moving to Cornwall and taking up painting in the 1930s. As a pacifist and conscientious objector, Berlin worked on the market garden established by art critic Adrian Stokes outside St Ives, where he encountered Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and Naum Gabo.

After a change in his political views, Berlin enlisted in the armed forces and took part in the D-Day landings, an experience that would leave a lasting and traumatic effect on the artist. Seeking psychological solace, Berlin returned to Cornwall, where he joined the flourishing community of St Ives artists, and began to sculpt in the local, resilient granite. Unlike his peers, however, he rejected total abstraction in his work, admiring the more representational paintings of the local fishermen and untrained artist Alfred Wallis, whose biography 22 | c a b i n e t

Berlin published in 1949. This artistic stance served to isolate Berlin from the St Ives School, and led him to leave Cornwall for the New Forest in 1953.

The publication of his fictionalised autobiography, The Dark Monarch, in 1962, caused further tensions, and led to a libel case being brought against him by his fellow artists, and Berlin’s financial ruin. Nevertheless, he continued to exhibit in London, and the 1980s saw a revival of interest in the work of this controversial yet supremely talented painter, sculptor, and writer.

Sven Berlin Rhino Honister carving in granite 3 × 6.69 × 2 ins (7.5 × 17 × 5 cm)

rory m c ewen (Berwickshire, 1932 – 1982, London)

One of the most revered botanical artists of the twentieth century; Rory McEwen was born in Marchmont House, Berwickshire. The son of Sir John Helias Finnie McEwen and Lady Bridget Mary McEwen, he began painting flowers at the age of eight, but first pursued a degree in English at Trinity College Cambridge. While there McEwen became involved in the Cambridge Footlights, writing and performing in their 1955 production at the Scala Theatre, London. In 1956 he travelled with his brother to the US, pursuing a fascination with blues music, and by the following year he had achieved some fame as a folk singer, appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show in America and the BBC’s Tonight in the UK. Between 1959 and 1963 he presented and performed in his own television show, Hullabaloo, before devoting himself exclusively to visual art from 1964.

Ever versatile, McEwen experimented with Modernism, producing abstracts in oil and Perspex sculptures, but primarily 24 | c a b i n e t

painted exquisitely detailed individual flowers or vegetables. Alongside these works, in the 1970s he also produced looser, more impressionistic depictions of vetches and grasses, such as the present example. This painting forms part of a series of over 30 watercolours created in September 1977 which obsessively explore the same vegetation from differing angles, echoing the fascination with series and repetitions of his artistic contemporaries, such as David Hockney.

In addition to many solo exhibitions in Edinburgh, London, and New York during his lifetime, Rory McEwen was the subject of two major retrospectives at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 1988, and at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens, London, in 2013.

Rory McEwen Wildflowers Signed and dated ‘’Spt. ‘77’ lower right and inscribed ‘For Alice’ lower left Watercolour 17.91 × 21.26 ins (45.5 × 54 cm)

carol mahtab (Montréal, 1935 – 2012, Nova Scotia)

Born in Montréal, Canada, in 1935, Carol Donalda Armour first studied under Arthur Lismer at the Montréal Museum School of Fine Arts, and completed her education in London at the Central School of Art and Craft in 1957. After returning to Montréal, were she developed her artistic practise whilst also teaching art, she met her husband, Ashraf Mahtab, in 1964, and accompanied him to Berkeley, California, in 1966. Ashraf’s work for the US Bureau of Mines led the couple to live for extended periods in Colorado, Ontario, and New York City, where she exhibited in solo shows with Outer Space Gallery between 1988 and 1999. This was followed by a move to Upstate New York, and briefly Italy, before they finally returned permanently to Canada in 1993. It was here in Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, that Mahtab would live and work for the last nineteen years of her life, in the studio which she had built behind her nineteenth century family home,

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overlooking the narrow peninsula of Digby Neck.

Mahtab’s passion and compulsion for painting remained strong throughout her life. Her dedication to the act of making led her to the studio almost every day throughout her seventy seven years, leaving a deep artistic legacy, fed by the landscape of the many places in which she lived, from the great national parks of California to the fierce beauty of Niagara Falls.

Her incredible sensibility to colour and form is dominant throughout her rich and varied oeuvre, in which natural and man-made forms are alluded to yet not defined, remaining mysterious, evocative, and alive.

Carol Mahtab Abstract in Grey Oil on canvas 43.75 × 41.75 ins (111 × 106 cm)

leonard m c comb r.a.

(B. Glasgow, 1930)

Leonard McComb studied at the Regional College of Art, Manchester, and the Slade School of Art, where he obtained a Post-Graduate degree in sculpture. A versatile artist, he is represented in the Tate Gallery Collection by works in oil, watercolour, prints, and sculpture. McComb was elected to the Royal Academy in 1991, and served as its Keeper between 1995 and 1998. In 1999 he completed a portrait of Doris Lessing commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, and in 2000 was selected by the Vatican to design a Jubilee Medal featuring Pope John Paul II and the late Archbishop Basil Hume. McComb describes his work as abstractions after nature, and declares that everything he paints, whether a landscape or still life, is for him a portrait.

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Leonard McComb R.A. Peaches in a Vase Signed with initials and dated 1989 lower right Watercolour 14.75 Ă— 22.5 ins (37.5 Ă— 57 cm)

sarah raphael (East Bergholt, Suffolk, 1960 – 2001, London)

Sarah Raphael studied at Bedales School and Camberwell School of Art. Described by Charles Saumarez Smith as “one of the finest figurative artists of the generation”, she began her career as a portraitist, before turning to landscape with dramatic and potent views of the Australian interior. In the final years of her short life she began to experiment with abstraction, and her Strip Paintings of 1996 – 98 were created using a grid of strip forms. This new direction in her art is presaged in this portrait, evident in the structured planes of the vivid yellow jumper of

her sitter, and the muted grey tones of the background. Her work is held in the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Sarah Raphael Penny II, 1991 Oil on canvas 11 × 6 ins (28 × 14.5 cm) Provenance Agnew’s, London

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james lynch (B. Devizes, Wiltshire, 1956)

Over the last thirty years James Lynch has gained a reputation as one of the country’s leading landscape and animals painters. His egg tempera paintings of rural England, and his depictions of dramatic weather and seasonal light are reminiscent of the English Romantics, echoing the themes of painters such as Samuel Palmer, Ravilous and Minton.

James Lynch grew up in Wiltshire and now lives and works in Somerset. His work is included in the National Trust collections at Kingston Lacy, Wimpole Hall, and Chartwell.

In the Renaissance tradition, James Lynch makes his own egg tempera paint, combining raw pigment with egg yolks. The translucency of the egg tempera allows the bright gesso ground to reflect ambient light through the pigments, and gives the paintings an otherworldly luminosity.

James Lynch The Chair Signed and dated ‘93 lower right Egg tempera on panel 33.13 × 25 ins (84.1 × 63.5 cm)

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James Lynch Reynard the Fox Signed and dated ‘97 Egg Tempera on panel 23 × 27 ins (58.4 × 68.6 cm)

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James Lynch The Pig Signed and dated ‘88 Oil on canvas 21.88 × 30.13 ins (55.6 × 76.5 cm)

James Lynch Dark Brahma at Sutton Montis Signed and dated ‘99 Egg tempera on panel 28.62 × 26.62 ins (72.7 × 67.6 cm)

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James Lynch Barn Owl, High Ham Signed and dated ‘99 Egg tempera on panel 26.5 × 30.62 ins (67.3 × 77.8 cm)

pierre boncompain (B. Valence, France, 1938)

Born in Provence in 1938, Pierre Boncompain studied at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, and in the studio of Raymond Legueult in the École nationale des Beaux Arts. His paintings and ceramics, informed by the heritage of Matisse and Gauguin, celebrate the pleasures of Mediterranean life and the south of France, combining clarity of light with a subtle simplicity of form. Boncompain’s work has been exhibited in solo shows worldwide, in Europe, North America, Japan, and China, and is held in many public and private collections, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Centre Pompidou, the Mellon Collection, the Navio Museum, Japan, and the Dumesnil Collection, Dallas, among others.

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Pierre Boncompain ‘Tulip’ Vase Signed and dated ‘4/7/94’ Ceramic 20 × 24 ins (50.8 × 60.96 cm)

marc stanes (B. London, 1963)

Marc Stanes was born in England in 1963, and began photographing at the age of fourteen with a camera borrowed from his father. For over twenty-five years, he has received wide acclaim for his black and white and colour photography of flowers, landscapes and the human form, which demonstrate his fascination with the beauty, sculptural quality and the abstract constructions of nature.

Stanes’ work is inspired both by sixteenth and seventeenth-century still life painters and the colours, and the sights, imagery and light in South Africa, where he now lives.

Since 2003, he has photographed extensively in South Africa for the Mandela Rhodes Foundation as their official photographer, and his acclaimed portraits of Nelson Mandela form part of the Mandela visual legacy.

Stanes’ photography has always been pared down and minimal, which allows the viewer to develop their own ideas from the images they see. He works in large format and creates silver gelatin prints and chromogenic light jet prints that capture the texture and tone of the subject, creating sharp, languid and bold portraits of both flowers and the human form.

Marc Stanes Lilies, 1997 Silver gelatin print 20.87 × 27.17 ins (53 × 69 cm) Edition of 5

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Marc Stanes Formation Landscape No. 1 Signed verso Chromogenic light jet print 37.75 Ă— 47.25 ins (95.8 Ă— 120 cm) Edition of 2

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marco sanges (B. Rome, 1970)

Originally from Ostia, Rome, photographer and filmmaker Marco Sanges lives and works in London.

Alongside his work for publications such as Vogue Italia, Elle, and the Sunday Times, his clients include Dolce & Gabbana and Agent Provocateur.

His 2004 publication Circumstances became a film which was awarded Best Art Film at the Portobello Film Festival, London, and he has co-directed two films with Alberto Bona. His work is held in the Virgina Museum of Fine Arts, USA

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Marco Sanges The Awakening Signed verso Silver print 24 Ă— 20 ins (61 Ă— 50.8 cm) Edition of 10

It is all in the eye when it comes to acquiring works of art.

This is a personal collection built over a number of years, and I thought now was a good time to open the doors of the cabinet!

I would like to sincerely thank Rebecca Wall for her assistance in researching and writing the catalogue entries for this exhibition, and Graham Rees (my secret weapon!) for designing this catalogue.

Jonathan Cooper, April 2016

Jonathan Cooper 20 Park Walk  London  SW10 0AQ t: +44 (0)20 7351 0410 mail@jonathancooper.co.uk jonathancooper.co.uk

Jonathan Cooper