Pallant House Gallery Magazine No.26 (Full Version)

Keith Vaughan Figure in the Landscape Simon Martin celebrates the Selsey painter's centenary Happy birthday Chichester Festival Theatre Pamela Howard explores 50 years of artistic innovation Portrait of the Artist David Dawson on capturing Lucian Freud Neo-Romantic Visionary Virginia Ironside's eccentric relation Robin Ironside

£2 Number 26 March – June 2012 www.pallant.org.uk

KEITH VAUGHAN 1912-1977 An centenary exhibition at Osborne Samuel gallery will be held in November 2012 to coincide with the publication of a major new monograph currently in preparation, to be co-published with Lund Humphries Publishing.

Landscape with Nude Bather, 1948. Oil on canvas. 40 x 56 cm. Signed, lower right.

We are currently seeking works for sale to be included in the exhibition that will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Please email info@osbornesamuel with details of any works

23a Bruton Street, London W1J 6QG Tel: 020 7493 7939 info@osbornesamuel.com www.osbornesamuel.com

Contents Features

Keith Vaughan, Musicians at Marrakesh, 1966–70, oil on canvas, Accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to Pallant House Gallery from the Estate of Professor John Ball (2011) Š The Estate of Keith Vaughan. All rights reserved, DACS 2012

You can find full details of our latest events programme in the What's On guide.

Previous copies of the Gallery magazine, as well as all the latest news, exhibitions and events, can be viewed online at www.pallant.org.uk You can also follow us at .com/pallantgallery .com/pallantgallery

18 Keith Vaughan Centenary Simon Martin 22 Diary of a Melancholic Keith Vaughan 26 Staging a Revolution

Pamela Howard 30 Portrait of the Artist

David Dawson talks to

Catherine Lampert 34 King of Pop-Up

Ron King talks to Emma Robertson 38 Robin Ironside

Virginia Ironside 42 Back to the Future

Ian Sherman 47 Plate Expectations

Rosie Simmons

Friends 49 50 51

Chairman's Letter Being a Guide Friends' Events

Regulars 9 13 16 53 57 59

Director's Letter Exhibitions Diary News What's On Events Bookshop Pallant Photos

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Collection in Focus 3

ANTHONY HEPWORTH FINE ART DEALERS LTD Specialist Dealers in Modern British and Contemporary Painting & Sculpture with particular emphasis on the work of Keith Vaughan (1912 – 1977)

Keith Vaughan: The Return of The Prodigal Son, 1950, Oil on Canvas 63.5 x 91.4 cm, Private Collection

Anthony Hepworth is currently finalising the catalogue of Keith Vaughan's oil paintings which will be published by Sansom & Co in 2012, Vaughan's centenary year The Hargreaves and Ball Charitable Trust supports music charities by the sale of art works by Keith Vaughan, Prunella Clough and Elizabeth Fritsch collected by Dr Gordon Hargreaves (1930 – 1989) and Professor John Ball (1931 – 2010) Catalogue available on request

ANTHONY HEPWORTH FINE ART DEALERS Ltd By appointment in Bath and London T: 07970 480 650 / 01225 447480 (Bath)

E: anthony.hepwor@btconnect.com

www.anthonyhepworth.com

Contributors Editorial Editor Emma Robertson, e.robertson@pallant.org.uk Sub Editor Beth Funnell Gallery Editorial Simon Martin, Stefan van Raay Guest Editorial David Dawson, Pamela Howard, Virginia Ironside, Ron King, Catherine Lampert, Ian Sherman, Alan Wood Friends' Editorial Beth Funnell, Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Sarah Quail, Design, Editing and Production David Wynn Advertising Booking and General Enquiries Paolo Russo +44 (0)20 7300 5751 Kim Jenner +44 (0)207 300 5658 Jane Grylls +44 (0)207 300 5661

With thanks Headline Sponsor of the Gallery 2012

Keith Vaughan Headline Sponsor

Keith Vaughan Supporters

The Keith Vaughan Supporters' Circle With thanks to

Art of Chichester Festival Theatre Supporters

The Art of Chichester Festival Theatre Supporters' Circle

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 Monday Tuesday–Saturday Thursday Sunday/Bank Holidays

Closed 10am–5pm 10am–8pm 11am–5pm

PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY Friends

Art Library library@pallant.org.uk +44 (0)1243 770824 Friends' Office Events +44 (0)1243 770816 friendsevents@pallant.org.uk Membership +44 (0)1243 770815 friends@pallant.org.uk Bookshop www.pallantbookshop.com; shop@pallantbookshop.com +44 (0)1243 781293 Field & Fork at Pallant House Gallery www.fieldandfork.co.uk; Reservations +44 (0)1243 770827

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Willard Conservation Limited, 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.

The Grosvenor School & Avant-Garde British Printmaking Tuesday 17 April New Bond Street, London Entries now invited

International Auctioneers and Valuers – bonhams.com/prints

We are currently accepting consignments for our forthcoming auction. The closing date for entries is 6 March. For futher information please contact: +44 20 7468 8262 rupert.worrall@bonhams.com Claude Flight (British, 1881-1955) Lawn Mowing (CF39) (detail) ÂŁ7,000 - 9,000

KEITH VAUGHAN (1912-1977)

An Exhibition to celebrate Keith Vaughan’s Centenary 16 May – 15 June 2012

35 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4JD For further details please contact Christopher Kingzett at christopherkingzett@agnewsgallery.co.uk or on 0207 290 9256

Director's Letter

Pallant House, Photograph Š Peter Durant/ arcblue.com

In November last year the Daily Telegraph reported that despite the adverse economic climate cultural events have taken off on a stupendous scale: 'as though a vast swath of the public intends to drown its sorrows in art.' It is a trend which has been borne out here at Pallant House Gallery, with 2011 being the most successful year since the Gallery opened.

The summer show, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, drew record audience numbers to see the works of the iconic Mexican artists together for the first time ever in the UK, and in autumn the first solo show of Edward Burra for 25 years brought further crowds and received a rapturous response from critics and visitors alike. Thank you to all those who spread the word and helped make the year such a success.

The arrival of 2012, the London Olympic year, puts the whole of the UK under the international spotlight and, as a major gallery, we are uniquely placed to showcase the best of British culture. This year's programme reflects our commitment to modern British art, beginning with two important exhibitions rooted firmly in the local region: Selsey-born painter Keith Vaughan, one of the most significant artists of his generation, is the subject of a comprehensive exhibition to mark the centenary of his birth (p.18) while the 50th anniversary of the iconic Chichester Festival Theatre, the birth place of the National Theatre, is celebrated with a special display and installation created by Selsey-based theatre designer Pamela Howard OBE (p.26). We thank Kenwood, the

Finnis Scott Foundation, Offer Waterman and Co. and the members of the Supporters' Circles for their generosity in making it possible to stage these exhibitions.

Coincidently, the visionary artist Robin Ironside exhibited alongside Keith Vaughan in 1952 and this year also marks the centenary of his birth. Virginia Ironside introduces the impressive legacy of her 'eccentric relation' ahead of his De'Longhi Print Room show (p.38) while another local connection is explored later in the season through a display of the Sussex-based book artist and Circle Press founder, Ron King, who is 80 this year. He talks to us about his life and career (p.34).

Elsewhere we pay homage to the late great painter Lucian Freud in the second of two pieces from the perspective of his studio assistant and model David Dawson, whose own paintings and photographs are featured in an exhibition in Room 4 (p.30); artist and Partner in Art, Ian Sherman, introduces his technology-influenced assemblages and paintings (p.42); and we anticipate the 300th anniversary of Pallant House with a look back at the turbulent history of the Peckhams (p.60). We will celebrate the anniversary with a major installation by ceramicist Bouke de Vries to be unveiled in June 2012. Look out for more information in the next issue.

Finally I would like to thank the trustees, the Acting Director, Marc Steene, and all my colleagues for making my recent sabbatical leave possible.

Stefan van Raay, Director at Pallant House Gallery 9

De'Longhi continues its support for 2012 A Coffee with Bouke de Vries

De'Longhi, leader in stylish coffee machines, continues to invest in the arts and local community and is now in its fourth year of sponsorship of Pallant House Gallery.

To kick off the New Year, De'Longhi enjoyed a coffee with Bouke de Vries, the celebrated ceramics artist, to find out more about his work, inspirations and current projects.

Who or what most inspires you?

I suppose we all carry around a mental compendium of what inspires us – paintings, nature, memories, films and people. Consciously or subconsciously, it informs our thoughts and actions. I'm specifically inspired by the broken and discarded ceramic objects I find.

They suggest situations, connections, compositions, which I then translate into sculptures.

Where do you think modern art is heading today?

What new trends are you seeing?

I think art is moving to a re-evaluation of traditional skills, craftsmanship and beauty.

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How do you describe your style?

Reconstruction meets deconstruction.

Who or what has been your biggest influence?

My experience as a ceramics conservator has given me my voice as an artist. And the wonderfully eclectic exhibitions put on by collector/dealer Axel Vervoordt at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice gave me the need and the drive to express my ideas. His mental compendium of inspirations is encyclopedic.

Where can we see your work?

My new work will be installed at Pallant House in June 2012 in time for the 300th anniversary celebrations of Pallant House.

Keep an eye out for the next issue where we will be holding an in-depth interview with Bouke de Vries ahead of his new installation.

For more information about De'Longhi visit www.seriousaboutcoffee.co.uk

Š Gilbert Garcin

A great way to see a New York style photographic gallery, without leaving the country.

Arden and Anstruther’s amazing collection of contemporary photography has a new rural setting amongst the apple trees. We welcome you to view by apointment at The Barn, Daymans, Bedham.

Arden and Anstruther The Barn, Daymans, Bedham, Pulborough, W. Sussex RH20 1JR

.

www.ardenandanstruther.com tel 01798 865 206. Open by appointment, just give me a ring.

Pallant House Gallery magazine Full page (215 x 148mm)

John Piper Octagonal Church, Hartwell, Buckinghamshire 1939 © Usher Gallery, Lincolnshire

21 April to 10 June 2012 DORCHESTER ABBEY

www.johnpiperandthechurch.co.uk Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire OX10 7HH Enquiries: 01865 340 007

12010_pallant_215x148mm.indd 1

A celebration of HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

by The Friends of Dorchester Abbey

John Piper and the Church is sponsored by

23/1/12 07:18

Exhibitions Diary

The Art of Chichester Festival Theatre: A celebration 3 March – 3 June 2012

Keith Vaughan, Landscape with Steeple, Iowa, 1960, Goauche on paper Pallant House Gallery (George and Ann Dannatt Gift, 2011)

Keith Vaughan: romanticism to abstraction 10 March – 10 June 2012 An exhibition to mark the centenary of the birth of the British painter Keith Vaughan (1912–1977), who was born in Selsey, West Sussex. Largely self-taught, Vaughan formed friendships with the painters Graham Sutherland and John Minton during the war, becoming a leading 'Neo-Romantic' artist in the 1940s and 1950s.

Concentrating on the male nude in the landscape, Vaughan developed an increasingly abstract painterly style in later years. This exhibition features drawings and studies and major paintings from across his career, providing a comprehensive overview of the artist's life and work. Main Galleries (Rooms 12–14)

The theatre has long been both a source of inspiration for artists and a place to experiment with innovative costume and set designs. To mark the Chichester Festival Theatre's 50th anniversary this exhibition, curated and designed by renowned scenographer Professor Pamela Howard obe, celebrates how visual theatre artists responded to the challenge of designing for the first purpose-built thrust stage theatre in the UK. A selection of models, drawings, paintings, costumes and designs from the early productions will be exhibited for the very first time, assembled in a specially-constructed installation of the theatre park in the galleries of Pallant House Gallery.

Main Galleries (Rooms 15–16)

David Dawson: Working with Lucian Freud 28 January – 20 May 2012 An extraordinary insight into the notoriously private world of the late great painter Lucian Freud through the eyes of his model and studio assistant David Dawson. For 20 years Dawson witnessed the creation of some of the most celebrated paintings of our age as well as being the model for numerous paintings himself. But each afternoon, after his work with Freud was done, Dawson would return home to do his own painting. This exhibition brings together some of Dawson's rarely-seen paintings with his intimate studio photographs and pieces by Freud.

Main Galleries (Room 4) 13

Exhibitions Diary De'Longhi print room Robin Ironside: Neo-Romantic Visionary 27 February – 22 April 2012 An exhibition celebrating the centenary of Robin Ironside (1912–1965), a self-taught painter of Surrealist fantasies, designer for the theatre and writer on art who became Assistant Keeper at the Tate Gallery and Assistant Secretary for the Contemporary Art Society. This will be the first museum exhibition of the artist's work for over 40 years. De'Longhi Print Room (Free Entry)

Ian Sherman, object powered by laughter, 2004

STUDIO International Sketchbook Project 28 February – 25 March An extraordinary collaboration between young people from different parts of the world in the form of a collection of tiny personal home-made sketchbooks.

Studio (Free Entry) Ian Sherman: Artefacts from the ContrariUM 27 March – 29 April 2012 The first solo studio exhibition of artist and Partner in Art Ian Sherman featuring his technology-influenced paintings and assemblages.

Studio (Free Entry)

Robin Ironside, Wounded Man in a bed-sitting room, 1952, Gouache over pencil on paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Gift of the Class of the Museum of Fine Arts, Mrs. Arthur L. Devens, Chairman, 1953)

Ron King: On and Off the Page 24 April – 18 June 2012 Prolific printmaker and book artist Ron King is best known for founding the Circle Press in 1967, a specialist publishing house formed to design, print and distribute artists' books. Since then he has collaborated with more than 100 artists, writers and poets to produce an extensive body of work unique in its variety and quality. This exhibition, which marks King's 80th birthday, looks back over the artist's career both 'on and off the page' including some of his best known artists' books as well as examples of his painting and sculpture. De'Longhi Print Room (Free Entry)

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A Tale of Twinned Cities: Chapter three 1 May – 27 May 2012 Friends of Chartres and Pallant House Gallery collaborate for the fourth time with the return of the School Arts Competition.

Studio (Free Entry) Jon Adams 29 May – 3 June 2012 An exhibition of recent work by Portsmouthbased Outsider artist, Jon Adams.

Studio (Free Entry)

news Bobby Baker to judge Outside In 2012 The renowned performance artist Bobby Baker has been announced as a judge for the 2012 Outside In: National exhibition at Pallant House Gallery (27 Oct 2012 to 3 Feb 2013). During Bobby Baker's remarkable 20-year career she has danced with meringue ladies, made a life-size edible and tasty cake version of her family to be eaten by visitors, and cured thousands of her pea patients with their many 'unreasonable' psychological and behavioural problems with her therapy empire 'How to Live'. She joins art critic Roger Cardinal on the judge's panel, the originator of the English term Outsider Art in 1972. Outside In: National will be accompanied by complementary displays of Jean Dubuffet and Scottish self-taught artist Pat Douthwaite. www.outsidein.org.uk

Paul Bellingham (Outside In Entrant), Flowers of Romance

gallery acquires important new work An anonymous donor has presented a painting by the contemporary artist Annie Kevans (b.1972) entitled 'Bobbie Driscoll in Black' (2009). The portrait is from the artist's 'Lost Boys' series and depicts the American child actor, who later descended into drug dependency. The painting was part of the Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support and forms a significant addition to the gallery's holdings of contemporary art.

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Peter de Francia, Ship of Fools, 1972, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through The Art Fund), © Estate of Peter de Francia

Peter de Francia dies aged 90 We are sad to announce that the painter Peter de Francia has died aged 90. Born in France to a FrancoItalian father and an English mother, de Francia attended l'Academie Royal des Beaux Arts in Brussels and later studied at the Slade School. From 1973–1986 he was Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art. A committed socialist, de Francia established his reputation in the 1950s with his powerful politically and socially-engaged paintings and drawings such as the powerful triptych 'A Diary of Our Times' (1974) in the Gallery's Permanent Collection, which represents a political torture scene from the Algerian war. His highly individual style is rooted in the European figurative tradition of Picasso, Léger and the German Expressionists Beckmann and Grosz.

Happy birthday Pallant House Pallant House Gallery has commissioned ceramic artist Bouke de Vries to create an installation in the eighteenth-century stairwell using the Gallery's Collection of Bow porcelain to mark the 300th anniversary of Pallant House. The Collection is the most comprehensive record of the output of this London factory, consisting of over 300 key examples produced between the years 1747 and 1776. De Vries joins the line-up of contemporary artists commissioned to produce a work for the stairwell which includes Susie MacMurray, Spencer Finch, Nina Saunders and Paul Huxley. The new work will be unveiled in June and will be a key part of the 300th anniversary celebrations.

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figure in a landscape Selsey-born painter Keith Vaughan may not be a household name but an exhibition to mark his centenary offers a timely opportunity to reassess his legacy, argues Curator Simon Martin

While Wakefield celebrates its association with Barbara Hepworth, Margate has JMW Turner and Eastbourne has Eric Ravilious, Selsey is perhaps not a place that anyone would think to associate with a major British artist. Yet, exactly a century ago, this coastal village near Chichester was the birthplace of Keith Vaughan (1912–1977). His family moved to London very soon afterwards, but Sussex remained a formative presence in his life: educated at Christ's Hospital at Horsham, he spent seaside holidays at Pagham in the 1930s with his brother Dick and friends, recording the visits in paintings and photographs, and in later years he frequently spent weekends in the South Downs visiting friends such as the poet Alan Ross and his wife.

Although Keith Vaughan may not be a household name as are Turner or Hepworth, he was undoubtedly one of the finest figurative painters in post-war Britain. In the words of the former Whitechapel Director Bryan Robertson, Vaughan's 'brilliantly realised gifts would find their place among some of the best work done in the country in the twentieth century.'

The centenary exhibition at Pallant House Gallery presents some of those 'brilliantly realised gifts', revealing his mastery of the gouache medium, an experimental approach to handling oil paint and drawings that have a distinctive and powerfully expressive broken-edged line. Vaughan is perhaps best-known for his paintings of the male figure.

Indeed, he reinforced this notion of his work in his eloquent journals, recording his belief that: 'a painter

has only one basic idea which probably lasts him a life time. Mine is the human figure.' Central to the exhibition are Vaughan's paintings of the male nude, but while this was undoubtedly an abiding concern for the artist, it is only part of the story. These paintings transcend what might be seen as homoeroticism to express a wider, humanist vision of mankind. Whereas Francis Bacon's copulating or wrestling figures morph within the fixed boundaries of an urban room setting, Vaughan's images of man (with the exception of his private sketchbooks) seem to be rooted in a chaste classicism and, more often than not, are positioned within a landscape setting.

As a theme, the 'romantic' subject of the figure in the landscape has its roots in the classical poetry of Virgil, and the pastoral tradition of Giorgione, Claude, William Blake and Samuel Palmer. During his career Vaughan was to expand the stylistic boundaries of this motif through painterly experimentation, drawing on the Modernist visual languages of artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Philip Guston and Nicholas de Staël. The exhibition charts this trajectory from the romanticism of Vaughan's early work, to the almost completely abstract paintings that he produced in later years. Although always a figurative painter on one level, Vaughan's later work oscillates on the edges of abstraction whilst always remaining anchored to its starting point in representation. With his nuanced approach to composition, questioning in paint how figures can relate to each other, how far a form can be

Keith Vaughan, Neopolitan Bathers, 1951, Oil on board, Private collection courtesy Osborne Samuel Gallery, London, © The Estate of Keith Vaughan

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Keith Vaughan, Standing Figure – Kouros, 1960, Oil on canvas, Private collection courtesy Anthony Hepworth Fine Art, © The Estate of Keith Vaughan

abstracted whilst remaining a figure, Vaughan is held in high esteem by painters, but he moves beyond being merely a 'painter's painter' to addressing issues to do with the human condition that affect us.

Along with artists such as John Minton (with whom he shared a house in 1946), John Piper, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, Vaughan has been classified as a British 'Neo-Romantic' artist whose work presented a nostalgic and elegiac response to nature. This was perhaps true of his early work when he was working out his own artistic voice. Vaughan often cited the influence of the Brangwyn murals at Christ's Hospital, but did not attend art school in any formal sense. Instead he joined Lintas, the in-house advertising agency at Unilever in the art department.

A conscientious objector during the Second World War, he joined the Pioneer Corps after initially serving with the St John's Ambulance, and although he had twelve works purchased by Kenneth Clark for the War Artists Advisory Committee he was never appointed as an Official War Artist. At this time Vaughan's work presents a fusion of his contemporaries: a group of wartime ink wash drawings of a nude male sheltering in a rocky cave reflect both the Underground shelter drawings of Henry Moore and the organic rock forms 20

of Graham Sutherland. The vulnerability of the figure, curled up in an almost foetal position, seems to be a wider metaphor for humanity during the war. The landscape seems to offer protection, or least solace, and the title of some of these drawings 'Seligkeit' translates from German as 'salvation' (Vaughan worked as a German translator in a prisoner of war camp).

Other paintings reveal a yearning for tenderness amidst the devastation of war as in 'Night in the Streets of the City' (1943) in which a sorrowful couple embrace within a bomb-damaged street. Vaughan's paintings often seem to express a longing for a connection of some kind: the lighting of a cigarette, the holding of hands, but what is often conveyed is a sense of difficulty in connecting. He wrote in his journals of being drawn to: 'a state of tension which results when two different things of different natures are brought together. A figure in a landscape, the natural world and the human world, a man lighting his cigarette from the butt of another's – the essential separateness of individuals momentarily united in a single gesture – these to me are situations of conflict. In painting I seek for reconciliation. I seek a common unit of construction with which, while each individual object retains its essential identity both can be built anew together in order and harmony.' In this respect the paintings reflect both Vaughan's troubled sexuality that he discussed with remarkable frankness in his journals and the wider questions posed by existentialism of the 1950s.

As an illustrator Vaughan created distinctive decorations and book jackets for 1940s literary compilations such as John Lehmann's 'Penguin New Writing' and 'Orpheus', and he taught illustration at Camberwell School from 1946–48 and subsequently at the Central School of Arts, but ultimately his work was to depart from the English narrative tradition.

He became more interested in structure than illustration, working with oil paint to flatten forms and stress rhythm and colour. For example, his study for the central mural in the Dome of Discovery at the 1951 Festival of Britain reveals how Vaughan was reconciling the lessons of European modernists such as Matisse and Braque with the English landscape tradition. Vaughan's use of verdant greens in the 1950s is utterly unmistakable, but his colour palette was to expand to encompass piercing blues and warm ochres. The 'Assembly of Figures' series produced throughout the 1950s and 1960s continue the grand tradition of figurative painting. Brought together they

Keith Vaughan, Village in Ireland, 1954, Oil on hardboard, Courtesy of the Government Art Collection (UK), Š The Estate of Keith Vaughan

have an almost religious intensity, but remain secular in intent. Whilst paintings such as 'The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian' have a basis in biblical subject matter, it is more that Vaughan is reconsidering the paintings of the past. There is sensuality, but it is generally reserved for his handling of paint. His awareness of classical statuary and his travels in Greece were to inform the almost timeless quality of paintings such as 'Standing Figure - Kouros' (1960), while a trip to Morocco inspired 'Musicians at Marrakesh' (1966–70), which was recently acquired by Pallant House Gallery from the estate of the major Vaughan collector, Professor John Ball. The formal tonal relationships in such paintings reflect his efforts to 'make something at once very real and very abstract...the human figure as an abstract element, like a musical chord', as Vaughan was to write in his 1968 journal.

Vaughan's significance as a landscape artist has perhaps been overshadowed by his figure paintings.

In paintings such as 'Black Rocks and Beach Huts, Whitby Bay' (c.1955) and 'Cenarth Farm' (1962–63) Vaughan employed blocks of paint to create a sense of spatial recession through colour and form, rather than through conventional perspective. The impact of his trip to America in 1959 and term as Resident Painter

at Iowa State University is evident on paintings such as 'Landscape with Steeple, Iowa' in which he appears to reconcile the pastoral imagery of Samuel Palmer with the bold forms of American abstraction. As with his figure paintings, Vaughan used the landscape as a vehicle to experiment with structure and formal concerns, and in this respect it reflects his prevailing attempts to 'pare away the inessentials until the subject matter becomes irrelevant.'

Despite considerable success during his lifetime, including the award of a CBE in 1965, Vaughan became increasingly melancholic and reclusive in later life and eventually committed suicide in 1977. His centenary in 2012 provides an opportunity to reconsider Vaughan's position not only as a pre-eminent painter of the human form, but also as a leading British landscape artist. While there is no blue plaque for Vaughan in Selsey, the exhibition nearby at Pallant House Gallery should form a fitting tribute in the county of his birth.

Keith Vaughan: Romanticism to Abstraction is in the main Galleries from 10 March to 10 June.

Simon Martin will lead two Curator's tours on Thurs 5 April and Wed 18 April at 10.30am.

Robin Child will give a talk about Vaughan's work on Thurs 3 May, 6pm (p.54).

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diary of a melancholic Vaughan's candid and eloquent journals offer a revealing glimpse into the life of the troubled painter

25 August 1939 I have endeavoured all my life to find my own solution to the problems which confronted me and to maintain a standard of values which seemed to me right in spite of the prevailing standards and values of the society in which I find myself. By misfortune those standards have never coincided with my own, and so I have had to go my own way without very much help from other people. As a result I find myself in my twenty-seventh year quite alone, with no great liking for life, without very much ambition for the things most people pursue, but simply a dumb and mule-like persistence in continuing the struggle. If I have achieved nothing positive, at least I hold to the belief that a truth does exist, and that it is within my power to find it. I always imagined that complete loneliness could only afflict a person who deliberately sought or desired it. But I find myself alone in spite of the fact that my dearest wish is to be on intimate terms with my fellow man. I want more than anything someone I can love and trust and who is willing to return the same. But I cannot find that person, nor do I know any longer where to look for him. Am I asking too much of life? Few people ever achieve such a relationship completely yet most people achieve sufficient happiness without it. If so it is a pity – because without it I do not think I can go much further.

3 September 1939 At eleven o'clock this morning England declared war on Germany. The insane calamity whose fear has overshadowed most of my conscious life has happened; has become actual, real and present.

Keith Vaughan, Sketchbook, c.1941 Š The Estate of Keith Vaughan

And it takes all my will to convince myself that it is so.

The moon is high and full and the sky is starred with stillness. There is peace over the land more profound than anything I can remember. I cannot understand this feeling. Every sense is quickened and full and I feel alive‌ If I force myself to think I am aware that the future must hold much misery. But peacetime living was not worth the living to me. What is wartime living to be like? I only know that this morning and evening of the Second World War have given me such an abundance of peace that my spirit is drunk with it.

18 April 1944 I want to set down all I can remember of what Graham Sutherland said last Sunday about painting. We were discussing the question of perfection in art. It started by S [Sutherland] telling us of someone who had bought a painting of his asking him some time afterwards if he could do anything about a small area in the right hand bottom corner which somehow the client found unsatisfactory. S. was much impressed by this and agreed to take the painting back and do what he could because he knew himself that this was the one point in the picture which was not quite resolved. That led on to the suggestion as a general principle that in all great painting there was always one such point, a flaw if you like, which had not been completely resolved, and which was in fact essential to the strength and beauty of the whole work. The flaw could not be repaired without the whole painting being damaged. It was as if a painting were trying to approach equilibrium but never could 23

quite reach it; if it did it would disintegrate, the tension would snap… He mentioned Seurat's 'Bathers' as an example of a painting which was very nearly perfect but was made into a great painting by the one or two places where it didn't quite come off. It is the recognition of these places that gives a scale for measuring the greatness of the achievement in the rest of the picture.

14 August 1948 I become aware of this growing sense of doom which has been going on for a year or more.

Almost as though I was under a sentence of death.

Partly the sense of inevitably approaching war again, partly the sense of my failure as an artist. Or rather the flimsy premises [sic] on which my career is based.

But again, I am not sure. I compare favourably with my contemporaries. But since I am unwilling to accept the small aims which assure them a continued career, I think it possible that I may one day fade out as quickly as I faded in.

December 1951 Looking back through the earlier entries I see that each one repeats almost exactly the same refrain: frustration, creative lethargy, emptiness, inaction. Yet, [since January 1950] I have had an exhibition of gouaches in August 1950, of paintings in October 1951, I have done the large Theseus painting for the Festival and designed and executed the fifty foot by eleven wall in the Dome. Not to mention designing jobs, book jackets etc. Whatever their faults they are better than anything I could have done two years ago. So why not buck up – you poor old boy. Get up half an hour earlier than you need. Do things out of routine. Ring people up whom you do not particularly want to see.

Make an effort to be nice.

4 January 1954 The constant struggle against the idea of doomed failure. I tell myself that this is nonsense in light of facts. Outwardly I seem to succeed. The last show was better received, better sold. But all this is simply bitterness on the tongue. I delight in praise and instantly disbelieve it; despise it rather.

'Studio exercises rather than considered statements' – fair comment. But I confess myself absolutely at a loss. I can see only the possibility of fragmentary affirmations. Up till now my preoccupation has been with the technical means. Now I have my instrument, but what to play on it. Abstraction seems the way out for most other painters. But I cannot regard it as a solution. The language of 'pure' form is too subjective.

I refuse to embark on anything as soon as the outcome can be foreseen; as soon as I know it lies within my 24

grasp. Yet almost everything I do looks as though it has been done precisely because I know.

7 April 1964 The New Generation exhibition at Whitechapel. After all one's thought and search and effort to make some sort of image which would embody the life of our times, it turns out that all that was really significant were toffee wrappers, liquorice allsorts and ton-up motor bikes. So one could have saved oneself the trouble… One hoped, I suppose, in the end to hand on to someone who saw further, had more talent, more youth, energy, more time before him, to complete what one had started, or relayed from the past. But not this...

What is disappointing in the work of so many of the more talented young painters is not so much the nature of the experiences they seem to find interesting but the bland, positive, hard-edged assurance which leaves out of account the one thing which seems to me most characteristic of this age, namely its basic contradictions and dialectical quality. The difficulty for the young is so great that they borrow the form of someone else's experience and embroider on to it minor variations of their own.

August 1964 My problem is to find an image which renders the tactile physical presence of a human being without resorting to the classical techniques of anatomical paraphrase. To create a figure without any special identity (either of gender or number), which is unmistakably human: imaginative without being imaginary. Since it is impossible to conceive a human form apart from its environment, an image must be found which contains the simultaneous presence and interpretations of each. Hence the closer and closer interlocking bombardment of all the parts, like electrons in an accelerator, until the chance collision, felt rather than seen, when a new image is born.

19 September 1964 Driving back from Worthing...

I realized that I should pass the turning which said Christ's Hospital. With mixed feelings I decided to go back. I had not been for about twenty years. Everything looked the same, yet in a strange way different. I looked again at the Brangwyns. In each one were the same details which particularly pleased or displeased me and the same secret thoughts and fantasies which I had left there when I had stared at them day after day for eight years. Partly it was like a dream – so much instantly familiar as though one's identity still belonged there, but also unreal, as though neither the place nor I really existed. But there was no sense of the past.

Keith Vaughan, Night in the Streets of the City, 1943, Indian ink, gouache and crayon on paper, Private Collection, West Sussex

There are things one comes upon unexpectedly and one remembers. They revive momentarily a forgotten experience which one has outgrown. But there were things at Housey like...the sound of the organ...which evoked not the past but a sort of timeless present. They did not seem remote or sealed off. They seemed to be part of me. It was not the widening recognition of Time Regained, but an awareness that I was still carrying around with me these unassimilated trappings from childhood which I could neither outgrow nor discard.

15 June 1965 Numerous letters congratulating me on my CBE. Extraordinary how many people notice such things. It would never occur to me to read through all the columns of small print in the Honours List. Obviously I don't know how to behave. Life is really a great cheat.

One is brought up to pursue success. To reach the top.

But the higher you go the more you leave behind. The more difficult it becomes to maintain contact with the simple things and people who are knowable and lovable.

Top people are effigies. No one thinks they have any problems. Or if they do they are certainly not interested in hearing about them. ‌So now when I do not telephone people I would like to see they naturally think it is because I am too grand. They are not good enough.

I have more important things to do. They cannot realize

one is still a lost child wandering through a wilderness of confusion. And why should they? The immature should remain inconspicuous otherwise they store up more trouble for themselves.

17 August 1965 One's hold on life these days is tenuous. People die in the streets of Los Angeles, Vietnam, Chicago, London. One morning other people will read about mine, while sipping their coffees on their balconies. One must arrange things so that death will not create too much disorder. So that what is unfinished can remain unfinished without confounding what has already been achieved. This is difficult when one is accustomed to living on the natural assumption that there will be a future.

Keith Vaughan continued to write in his diary throughout his life, describing his growing depression and despair.

Poignantly he recorded his last moments on 4 November 1977, having taken an overdose, with the words: 'I cannot drag on another few years in this state...65 was long enough for me.'

Gerard Hastings, author of a new book on Vaughan's journals, will give a talk at the Gallery on Thurs 12 April, 6pm (p.53).

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staging a revolution 50 years ago the newly-built Chichester Festival Theatre was at the forefront of design innovation. Scenographer Pamela Howard recalls the thrill of her first job at the place that everyone wanted to be

In 1960 I was a postgraduate theatre design student at the Slade School of Fine Art, having come up to London from Birmingham College of Art and Birmingham Repertory Theatre where I had happily taken the unpaid role of assistant bucket cleaner and dead leaf maker. London lay at our feet, so we thought, but to our astonishment instant invitations to design ballets and operas at Covent Garden did not fall through our letter boxes (this being long before e-mail was invented). In 1962 three of us recent graduates from the Slade: a painter, a jewellery maker and me decided to form a small company to make exquisite props and head-dresses for other designers, as 'we would want them made'. We called ourselves Theatre Arts and sent out 300 gold leaflets with this slogan, announcing our services.

We received one response from the elderly designer Roger Furse who was going to design a production for the soon-to-be-opened Chichester Festival Theatre, which was to be sited in a park somewhere in Sussex. We went to meet him in his small studio in Soho. He drew a quick pencil design on the back of a packet of Senior Service cigarettes, gave us a phone number and we never saw him again.

We rang the phone number, spoke to the production manager who told us what we would be paid and asked us to include some other head-dresses for 'The Broken Heart', which Roger Furse was designing. We had no idea who was going to wear them – they were to be adjustable sizes - and had no proper designs to

work from. Nevertheless we thought we had struck gold, as we knew we were on the fringes of something new and exciting.

Of course we did get our inches and centimetres confused and photographs reveal that the drop pearls we so carefully selected from the continental costume jewellery importers in Soho were more than twice the size they should have been. But the highlight of the experience was that we took the train to Chichester to deliver our art and walked from the station to the park and saw a breath-taking nearlycompleted building in idyllic surroundings. When we saw the auditorium full of technicians putting the final touches to the stage we were so amazed to realise that all the old theatre sayings like 'you won't notice that from the front' or ' it will be all right when it's lit' just would no longer apply. We had entered the new age of reality and perfection in construction and materials and the age of theatrical fakery had passed.

The standards and practices of the new Chichester Festival Theatre influenced contemporary designers and interpreters. New costumiers set up in London to make costumes with meticulous attention to detail so they were interesting from all the angles a spectator might see them. A new breed of large-scale prop makers evolved as the art of illusionistic stage painting declined and the more sculptural three dimensional constructions came into prominence. The innovative lighting rig mirroring the hexagon roof shape gave birth to lighting designers as artists and professionals

James Neave, drawing of the first production 'The Chances' The London Illustrated News, 7 July 1962 Š the artist

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in their own right as they had been for many years in the USA and Canada (notably at the theatre at Stratford, Ontario, the fore-runner of Chichester Festival Theatre, where Tyrone Guthrie was director).

All these professional artists were bringing their talents to Chichester every summer. It was simply the place where most theatre makers wanted to be.

The Theatre, however, was not without controversy, and even today the argument 'to thrust or not to thrust' still continues. Plays with movement and fluidity in non-specific locations, so called epic plays like the 'Royal Hunt of the Sun', 'Vivat Vivat Regina', and the Shakespearean canon gave designers the opportunity to create powerful and strong emblematic images that became visual metaphors for the whole world of the production. Ralph Koltai's striking sculptural evocation of Prospero's Island in 'The Tempest' – a collection of perfect white spheres and triangles balancing on a white pentagon with a concave floor - created the strange and alien world that clearly only belonged to the native Caliban.

Stefan Lazarides' 'Mitford Girls' explored the whole height of the stage space; that has continued to be one of the principal design challenges. The angle of the auditorium with the audience looking down from three sides forced the stage floor to take on the importance of the conventional backcloth of the proscenium theatre as the background against which actors were seen. 'The Royal Hunt of the Sun' through the unity of costume, mask and staging evoked the ancient Aztec Empire, just as 'Vivat Vivat Regina' through contemporary means took the audience into the Elizabethan world. The more designers responded to the geometry inherent in the architecture of the theatre the more a simple and dynamic theatre language evolved.

From my inauspicious start as a head-dress maker I came to design productions at Chichester Festival Theatre and to understand the challenges of the space. There was an odd connection between Birmingham and Chichester. The designer of the old Birmingham Repertory Theatre and my teacher, Finlay James, did many productions at Chichester bringing his inimitable elegant style to period dramas. Then Peter Dews, Director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, became the overall Director at Chichester and invited me to create the entire Antarctic on the stage for 'Terra Nova' on a minimal budget. This was a challenge I rose to by finding, quite by accident in an old warehouse off Brick Lane in the East End of London, bales and bales of old unused white muslin

that the owner was only too glad to get rid of very cheaply (I was actually looking for coloured silk at the time for another production). We covered the whole stage from its height to its depth in crumpled muslin, lit by floor lamps from the side. Even though it was summer, many people really felt the cold.

I then worked with Patrick Garland on creating 'The Merchant of Venice' and the successful one man show 'Kipling ' with Alec McCowen that toured to London and New York. One of the most interesting and challenging productions was the little-known George Bernard Shaw play 'On the Rocks' with Keith Michell and Alfred Marks. In this production action took place throughout the auditorium as well as on the stage, memorably the socialist mayor's march from the Isle of Dogs to Downing Street. Hardly anyone saw it but the drawing will be in the exhibition.

Evidence of all these innovations can be seen and enjoyed in the exhibition The Art of Chichester Festival Theatre: A Celebration. I have aimed to recreate the atmosphere of the unique Theatre in the Park as I first saw it in 1962: the green grass, the daisies, the golden oak trees, the champagne, the sense of celebration.

A small sample of the iconic works, reproductions of posters and programmes from those early days and later, stage models, set designs, costume designs, a mask from 'Royal Hunt of the Sun' and the costume worn by Sir Alec Guinness as Shylock, will all contribute to the atmosphere as visitors wander through the Park in a Gallery.

Take a moment to sit on the park bench and have a look through the past souvenir programmes and marvel at the performers and directors who came to Chichester and the choice of plays, many unknown, that had their first airing in the balmy Sussex summer.

Pass by the wall of posters, stand under the golden oak tree and read the comments made by the great and the good about the opening of Chichester Festival Theatre and feel free to write your own comments on a ribbon on the Tree Table in Room 17 and hang them on the tree, watched by the wise old owl. Finally, in the video room, enjoy rare footage of the building of Chichester Festival Theatre and other archive films that make this celebration of fifty years such a special event.

Professor Pamela Howard obe is the curator and designer of The Art of Chichester Festival Theatre: A Celebration (3 March to 3 June 2012). She will be talking about her experience of 'Designing for the Stage' on Thurs 29 March at 6pm (p.53). A speciallycommissioned limited edition print has been produced to coincide with the exhibition (p.57).

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Ann Curtis, Costume design for Diana Rigg in Antony & Cleopatra, 1985, Š the artist

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Portrait of the artist Catherine Lampert talks to Lucian Freud's model and studio assistant David Dawson about capturing the late great artist and painting each afternoon

Catherine Lampert I began going to your studio around 2003 and remember pictures of dramatic events on the streets near where you live in Kensal Rise.

David Dawson The paintings I did before depended on photographic source material. As I drove to Lucian's every day I had the camera with me in the car; as events unfolded on the streets, maybe teenagers stopped by the police or some disturbance, I would make a quick documentation through photographs and then would use these as a start to make the paintings. The narrative and the drama were really, really fascinating but I was disappointed by having to take the information from photos. I wanted a more direct impulse or connection to achieve what I believe painting is about today. Since I work at home and my studio is at home on the first floor, I began to look out of my window and use the immediate motif as a structure, more than a subject.

What I see is the source for all the information I need to make a painting that might become very alive and mean something to me.

I re-invent the scene on the canvas by creating volume and form, by using colour, which is how paintings are made up. This fascinates me more than a narrative. I don't think of these paintings of my street as a series, yet they are ongoing. They began about 2005; perhaps there are eleven finished paintings of which two will be shown in Chichester. What is outside the window, nature, is changing every day, I am changing every day, you feel in synch with nature, and it all helps you make a better, a more robust painting.

Lucian Freud, David Dawson, Etching on paper, Private collection ŠThe Lucian Freud archive

CL It stands out that there aren't any humans around?

DD Well, there is human habitation but not humans.

I manage to make about three paintings a year and during the process of painting, I see people walking down the road, or cars and they are registered as marks, however, I seem to take them out before the end of the work. I live at the end of a cul-de-sac so there is a circular roundabout with trees on the island which is surrounded by houses and vegetation. Luckily my next door neighbour has a very overgrown front garden with bushes. I know how the plants like to live and grow within each other, but for a painting I don't need to describe or name the acorn leaves and rose hips, I don't need to delineate each of these.

CL It seems the works are getting chromatically more intense and bold, especially 'Attack of the Zebra'.

DD It is a reference to an incident that happened between me and Lucian (as he said every painting is autobiographical). I arranged for a zebra to come to London from Shropshire to meet Lucian. The zebra was incredible but is a wild animal and not a pet pony.

It was this wildness in the animal that could never be tamed that was so exhilarating CL Hearing this, I might suggest an analogy between the pictorial drama and intensity and a peril that might have been foreseen and stopped, like a painting, but you allowed it an inevitable momentum.

DD Yes. I wanted the colour to dominate and determine the forms, to make the painting sing or make it coherent and not be concerned with what 31

David Dawson, The Vigil, 2011 , Oil on canvas, Marlborough Fine Art © the artist

type of roof was opposite. The architecture might be relevant to another painting. While I am working one picture will take hold and I'll concentrate on that one until it is finished or I feel I have painted myself out of the painting and can't add anymore to it, since it demands its own language and life.

CL 'The Vigil' (2011), which was finished in July when Lucian died, seems more temporal, as if you went back and forth each day, and each afternoon you responded with changes.

DD I was pushing these colours and building up forms. There is an abstracted quality – the tree trunks, houses – it is about seeing it all as a whole. Even the indication of perspective, for me, is about trying to find my own language.

CL The area of pavement is very alive and varied, monochrome and transparent, somewhat like skin, and the bare trunks of the trees with their individual postures rather serve as signs. Well, that's my first impression. How do you begin?

DD Paint does have this extraordinary quality that builds up. I tend to draw straight onto the bare canvas with the paint, sometimes using a very robust brush to set out the main forms, where the ground lies and where the sky begins. The new painting [in progress] 32

is absolutely dominated by the sky, as the one before, 'The Vigil', was by the road.

Up until recently it was always afternoon work.

That's changing already – lately I just get up and paint.

This exhibition is the last about working with Lucian.

In the two rooms you will see photographs taken in the morning, these two paintings worked on in the afternoon, and then more photos of Lucian in the evening.

CL Why have you avoided painting people?

DD I feel the pressure of the sitter would be too strong, if I became aware that they were really fed up, I couldn't overcome that and keep working. If I fell in love with somebody, I think that would be a real impetus to try and do a portrait. It's a whole new chapter for me – of course, Lucian will always be a side of me.

CL What kind of sitter were you?

DD Lucian was able to paint me. I was alive to what he needed, and understood how he would do things, so I never wanted anything to finish nor did I ask too many questions. I was patient and punctual.

CL When I'm sitting for Frank [Auerbach] I am partly there and partly into my own inner world. When he works he's very active, while you are sitting it is his

David Dawson, Lucian Freud with David Hockney, 2002, Photograph Courtesy of Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert

time; you might make up your own amusements but not interfere, and not drift too far away.

DD My goal was to be alive to what Lucian needed; to give him total freedom to do whatever he wanted to do. Being a painter myself I understood this. Sitting was what I did every day – it suited me anyway, my personality, to be able to do that. We also just got on; it was easy. I wouldn't watch him too closely; I was very aware of when to really hold back CL Earlier he used to hate being photographed, some shots taken for newspapers were awful, and he was so tense. I remember one by Jane Bown.

DD My first one happened by accident. I was taking a photo of David Hockney as the portrait of him had just finished. As I pressed the button Lucian walked in the door and then it turned out to be an amazing photo, and he reacted and thought it was something special that should be shown. I have a little point and shoot camera – which I get out and put away with the least amount of disturbance. I liked the man. If it had upset him, it would have stopped.

CL I think how special the photographs taken in the stable and those of eating in the garden with friends are. The one of Lucian working stripped to the waist is so believable.

DD I was sitting for Eli and David 2005–06 (the painting where Eli is on my lap) and that summer there was an incredible heatwave. It was a night picture, under the 500 watt light bulb, so Lucian had to take his shirt off as it was 40°. You see what I was looking at whilst I was being painted – perhaps I shot four or five photos and then the camera went back down the side of chair. During the time spent trying to invent a painting you believe in, you are always working out form and structure. I think being a painter helps me makes the photographic composition faster. The build-up of paint requires a continual re-examination and re-looking at the subject and the painting. I'm not aiming to make a painting full of thick paint. I want each brush mark to have a meaning; it's about making one mark that resonates next to another, or affects the canvas, something I can believe in. I want a huge variety of feeling or empathy or mood in my work. How it comes about, that is the excitement for me.

David Dawson: Working with Lucian Freud runs until 20 May 2012. David Dawson will be in conversation with Dr Barnaby Wright on Thurs 10 May, 6pm. Catherine Lampert will talk about Lucian Freud and his Circle on Thurs 19 April, 6pm. (p.53) 33

king of pop-up Artist and Circle Press founder Ron King talks to Emma Robertson ahead of a new solo show, On and off the Page, to mark his 80th birthday year

Emma Robertson You have said you don't like to be tied down to a particular label as an artist but how would you describe yourself and your work?

Ron King I was trained as a painter, never as a printer, although I was to find out after a few years that I come from an uninterrupted line of printers and binders dating back to 1735. Although I am principally recognised for being a book artist, and for setting up the artists' book publishing collective Circle Press in 1967, I have always been involved in making all manner of work 'off the page' including painting and sculpture and this exhibition will include proof of that variety both large and small.

ER You use word play a lot in your titles (the exhibition at Pallant House Gallery is called On and Off the Page). Can you tell me a bit more about how you use titles in your work?

RK I think I am good at titles for shows. Our big Circle exhibition at the National Theatre (in 1997) was called The Looking Book because it was about using books mainly in a visual way. Cooking the Books (our show at the Yale Center for British Art in 2002) was taken from a comment by Braque who referred to his sketchbooks as cook books. As Andrew Lambirth said of me in the introduction to the catalogue, 'Different recipes require different ingredients and cooking times', and I like 'neither a bland diet nor the same meal served up repeatedly.'

ER What inspired you to start creating artist's books and what was the first one you made for Circle Press?

Ron King, 'Squire' from The Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 1967 © the artist

RK There used to be a room in the V&A devoted to artists' books (or beaux livres as they were known at that time) by artists such as Matisse, Picasso and Derain which had always fascinated me. They inspired me to design my first book, 'The Prologue' to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in 1967 which I was commissioned to produce by Editions Alecto. However the publishers failed to fulfill their contract and I was forced to publish myself (which ultimately led to my forming Circle Press). I had always been fascinated by Chaucer's motley troupe of characters but I wanted to get away from the usual illustration of them as 'horse back' pilgrims. Before starting the book I had worked on a series of prints influenced by African mask designs and I wanted to represent the pilgrims as mask presences rather than human characters. The images were all designed on a cross form and I incorporated medieval heraldic symbols in most of them.

ER What challenges did you face in the UK when you first started the Circle Press?

RK Since the publishers had failed to fulfill their contract I undertook to distribute 'The Prologue' myself, basically selling from door to door. I didn't have much success in England; dealers and collectors were not accustomed to unknown artists producing their own 'beaux livres', let alone one with silk-screen images (which was not recognised as fine - art printmaking process). I remember Lord Eccles ordering the book from the House of Lords but then returning it 'as not worth the money' (£50), and the Curator of the 35

National Library at the V&A (John Harthan) remarking, 'thank goodness the images were not silk-screen'.

Having been assured they were, and not lithographs as he had thought, he referred me to the advertising department under Carrel Hogben who bought it and moved it to the library later when he became Curator himself.

ER What part did the US play in the development of Circle Press? How did attitudes differ there?

RK Having had little encouragement here in the UK, I went to the States where the first people I showed the book to, Chief Curators at the Houghton Library at Harvard University Eleanor Garvey and Phillip Hofer, were most encouraging, bought it and referred me to no end of other interested collectors and institutions in New England and New York. From that time on, having formed the Press to include other artists and poets, I made regular visits to the U.S. and Canada with my own work and that of the other Circle Press artists, spreading the news, giving talks and selling the artist book. Not only were we producing the expensive limited editions, but with Ian Tyson's input into the Press we were making smaller first edition poetry books and posters and pamphlets. Since that time Circle Press has worked with over 100 artists and poets and the artist book scene has enlarged and spread unimaginably.

ER How do you think artist's books are regarded in the UK today?

RK There are literally thousands more artists' books published than when I started Circle Press in 1967. Once accepted as a legitimate art form, many art schools have given books and book-objects degree status and interest from collectors and institutions has spread through exhibitions and book fairs. Though there is still a hardcore of artists making fine autographic books both traditional and experimental, the advent of digital printing has made it easier and cheaper to print and publish. This, to my mind, has resulted in a disproportionate number of small one-look books and the sale of the kind of production with more thought, form, content and craftsmanship, such as we produced at Circle Press, has suffered.

ER Appropriately your exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of Chichester Festival Theatre. Can you tell me about how you use theatricality in your work?

RK I have always been interested in the drama of storytelling. I was born in Brazil so I grew up with a carnival background. Many of my works have been theatrical in character. Pop-up literally animates the 36

story of course and I love the way that with books you can put on a complete show. In presenting them you are responsible for the performance and the action so it is like a theatre in miniature. My first collaboration with poet Roy Fisher was also my first pop-up book, 'Bluebeard's Castle', which we based on the story in Bartok's opera with its seven secret doors. The verse was incorporated into each design seeming to come, as it were, from inside the chambers themselves.

'The Left handed Punch' was a modern day Punch and Judy show with photo collage vignettes, drawn tableau compositions and even twelve movable puppets and for 'Anansi Company' based on the Caribbean folk stories, I created removable puppets made from handbent brass wire and card which can be taken out of the book and manipulated.

ER You have collaborated with writers a great deal.

What do you look for when choosing a collaborator?

Which do you think have been particularly successful?

RK The poet I have mostly collaborated with is Roy Fisher. Basically it boils down to the fact that 9/10ths of our work together would suffer, one without the other.

Like Jazz it comes from the sustained improvisation, one player with the other. My other major co-operation came from the book 'The Burning of the Books' which I published with George Szirtes based on the novel by Elias Canetti, 'Auto da Fe'.

ER This exhibition marks your 80th year. Looking back over your career, what are your highlights?

RK Winning the Biddulph Scholarship for Painting two Years running at Chelsea School of Art in the 1950s, 'The Looking Book' exhibition at the National Theatre and 'Cooking the Books' at The Yale Center for British Art for myself and Circle Press, and helping found Full Circle Editions, the new publishing unit started by Liz Calder and John Christie for East Anglian poets, writers and artists in 2008, with their reproduced version of my book 'The Burning of the Books'.

ER What projects are you currently working on and do you anticipate a retirement?

RK Since giving up my publishing workshop in London I have been working mainly with wood, making sculpture such as Codex 1 and Codex 2, made from a large Cedar of Lebanon trunk. I am also working on the first stage of an alphabetic bestiary (A-G) with poet Richard Price and carving a double portrait of myself and Willow, my wife, out of a butt of Ash wood. I am slowing down but I'm definitely not ready to retire yet!

Ron King: On and Off the Page, is in the De'Longhi Print Room (24 April to 18 June). Ron King will be talking about his work on Thurs 14 June, 6pm (p.54).

Ron King, 'The Garden' from Bluebeard’s Castle, 1972 Š the artist

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the doors of perception As the first museum exhibition for 40 years of the work of the visionary artist Robin Ironside (1912–1965) goes on show in the De'Longhi Print Room, agony aunt and journalist Virginia Ironside introduces the impressive legacy of her 'eccentric relation' in the centenary of his birth.

Every child needs an eccentric relation. Their inspiring presence makes one realise that the exciting and perhaps dangerous life which we can all imagine, can actually exist. In my family, it was my uncle, Robin Ironside, who provided the eccentricity. And I only wish he were still here to enjoy the forthcoming exhibition of his work at Pallant House Gallery.

My father and he had been born one year and one day apart, in 1912 and 1913. Robin was thin, lively, wiry, original and obsessive; my father solid, dogged, contemplative, sedentary. Robin never attended art school; my father studied life drawing at the Central School, and could draw anything from ears, to tigers, to flying saucers, to gasworks.

After attending courses at the Courtauld and the Sorbonne, my uncle became, in 1937, Assistant Keeper at the Tate under the director John Rothenstein. But nine years later, after the war, Robin's loathing for the bureaucracy of the gallery, his passion for writing and painting and the urging of his creative demons, forced him to resign. Thereafter, he lived in penury in Victoria where he devoted himself to writing about art – for Horizon, Encounter, the World Review - and painting minutely detailed romantic pictures. He revived an interest in the Pre-Raphaelites almost single-handedly and coined the term 'neo-romantic' in one of his many essays.

To execute his immensely detailed paintings, Robin often used a magnifying glass, and it is almost possible to see the very weave of his painted silk

Robin Ironside, Rossetti's Willow Wood, Watercolour and gouache with pen and ink on paper Š Estate of the artist

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Robin Ironside, Break for Music, Watercolour and gouache on paper ©Estate of the artist

drapes, the skeletons of leaves, or the tiniest veins on a hand on one of his haunted figures. The subjects of his pictures, which owed a lot to John Piper, John Martin and perhaps Fuseli and classical sculpture, were nearly all totally imaginary, usually with literary, scholarly or classical themes.

Often the brothers worked together. They designed the scenery and costumes for Delibes' ballet, Sylvia, and an Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream; one year they designed the setting for the Ideal Home exhibition – with Robin conceiving a giant classical chariot of horses which leaped out above all the bungalows at Olympia, threatening, it seemed, to stampede the visitors beneath their hooves.

Robin was addicted to the stomach-settling medicine, Dr.Collis Browne, which contained opium.

He liked to experiment, too, with other drugs. Once, under the influence of mescaline, he became so captivated by the colours and shapes of a cabbage on his kitchen table, he drew a meticulous picture of it at four am. He woke to find he'd executed a perfect and immaculate drawing – of a cabbage.

In order to exist, Robin needed patrons. He knew Emerald Cunard, Ann Fleming, the Hultons, Lady Clementine Beit, and he was great friends with Sir 40

Kenneth Clark and his daughter Collette, Joan and Patrick Leigh-Fermor, Cyril Connolly, Maurice Bowra and Angus Wilson - he was responsible for getting Angus's first stories published in Horizon.

Gradually, Robin, who never looked after himself, burned himself out with non-stop creative activity.

He smoked over 60 cigarettes a day, stayed up till all hours and slept less and less, he took Benzedrine to keep awake and sleeping pills to sleep, and only rarely had meals – all of which resulted in him getting progressively thinner, giving his eyes a nervous, glittering look. He died, aged 53, from a heart attack.

Although a few of Robin's pictures are kept in public galleries, they're rarely seen and most of them are in the hands of relatives, private collectors or personal friends.

While one finds her picture so creepy that she keeps it hidden behind a door, I'm delighted that the work of my uncle, with his strange, esoteric talent is finally being given the recognition it deserves.

'Robin Ironside: Neo-Romantic Visionary' is in the De'Longhi Print Room (27 Feb to 22 April). Virginia Ironside will give a talk about the artist on Thurs 22 March, 6pm (p.53). A fully illustrated book by Virginia Ironside and Peter Boughton will be published to coincide with the centenary(p.57).

The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art Otter Gallery, 2 March-15 April The Otter Gallery is delighted to collaborate with The Lightbox gallery and museum, Woking, for this exhibition of modern and contemporary British art. The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art has been amassed over the last 20 years by Chris Ingram, an entrepreneur and owner of Woking Football Club. Now on longterm loan to The Lightbox, the collection includes over 350 works that span nearly 100 years of art from the 1900s to the present day, by artists including Sir Anthony Caro, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Edward Burra, Eric Gill, Barbara Hepworth and Leon Underwood. This exhibition features a selection of paintings and sculpture from the collection.

Otter Gallery University of Chichester College Lane Chichester PO19 6PE

Free Admission 01243 816098 www.chi.ac.uk/ottergallery infoart@chi.ac.uk

Image: Leon Underwood (1890-1975). Atalanta, 1938. Bronze with a dark brown patina. The Ingram Collection The Lightbox gallery and museum, Woking, Surrey. Š JP Bland Photography

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Jenna Burlingham fine art

Leonard Appelbee

Alethea Garstin

Ivon Hitchens

Ffiona Lewis

Alexander Mackenzie

William Scott

A new Modern British Art gallery Specialising in 20th Century British paintings, prints, sculpture and ceramics, as well as work by selected contemporary artists.

Do visit the gallery or website to view our extensive and ever changing selection of work. For further information or to receive details about our exhibition schedule, please contact us at: info@jennaburlingham.com

2a George Street, Kingsclere Newbury RG20 5NQ 01635 298855 / 07970 057789 info@jennaburlingham.com

www.jennaburlingham.com

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 10:00 - 5:00 Wednesday 10:00 - 8:00 Saturday 10:00 - 2:00 and at other times by appointment

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back to the future To mark his solo studio exhibition, 'Artefacts from the Contrarium', artist and Partner in Art Ian Sherman gives an insight into his technology and organic-influenced paintings and assemblages.

I have always had visual inclinations. I still have a wooden church that I made when I was about seven years old out of a piece of driftwood. Being so young, my hands were very small and I remember finding it difficult to saw and being frustrated that I was not more skilful at it. My father was always making things and I wanted to be more like him. Now, with my assemblages, I tend not to mind if they are quite primitive. I am not striving for them to be highly finished.

I studied product design at college but I was a bit too eccentric for the course. I was in my early 20s and had just completed a Foundation Course in Fine Art. I remember being asked to do a piece for a watch project and I made a sort of wire structure featuring yellow coffins. The tutor asked me why I had chosen to do that and I explained that I saw time as partly to do with death but I also knew that he wanted it to be saleable so I had chosen to paint the coffins yellow (well people like bright things!). I took the course because I had thought I might have a more industrial side to my nature but it hasn't really worked out like that.

Art is very much a freedom from repression for me, a way of stopping a sense of being restricted Ian Sherman, Monument to Time, 1997, Mixed media Š the artist

or controlled. After college I took a job in the civil service at the Ministry of Defence. I felt a bit of a failure at leaving without employment in the art world but I ended up becoming influenced by the ethos and aesthetics – the locked cabinets and corridors - and the weirdness and strange practices of the job. Later I worked in the Dockyard Laboratory in Portsmouth which, like the MOD job, was very institutionalised.

There were some extraordinary characters there.

I had a boss whose philosophy was that employees are Government property and so are their thoughts.

He was incredibly obsessive, and, after the lab had been closed due to Government reductions, I found a drawer full of sea shells which he had painstakingly numbered. The episode inspired one of my sculptures, 'Apparatus for numbering sea shells'.

I tend to see a tension between formality and anarchy in my work - the world itself is like that.

I work in essentially two bodies of work: the genre paintings and the assemblages and related paintings.

It is a bit like a split personality and the process is cyclical with one a diversion from the other. This exhibition will be drawn almost entirely from my assemblages and related paintings. I first started them in the early 1990s when I threw some molten wax into cold water and then added small fragments and found objects using resins. I had a vision of a room filled with eerie monolithic objects that tended to evoke silence.

It was like seeing a life-time's work that had to be made. I am still working on this twenty years later.

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Left Ian Sherman, Experimental Compulsive Aviator, 2004 Above Ian Sherman, A Comedian

The assemblages usually start with a title, for instance 'Guardian of Solitude' and then certain objects are arranged and begin a relationship with each other.

In that case I found a broken ceramic boy's head for the solitude element while the guardian was a stone which resembled a gargoyle. Sometimes I will change things quite drastically, even taking a hammer to them if I have a sudden change of heart. I find it difficult to say that any are completely finished and in fact I don't like selling them as I am always adding to them. Some of my friends find it odd when I am delighted by finding just the right small stone or fragment. My related paintings are often ideas which I do not envisage in three dimensions. The floating and flying things lend themselves to painting and seem to stretch my imagination. I try to infuse some unity between these 2D works and the assemblages. I have often thought that an artist's relationship with an inanimate object is that of a remote puppeteer. I explored this in a painting in 2005 called 'I the inanimate' in which a ventriloquist's dummy appears to be pushing itself up from a table.

It was quite uncanny.

I am quite contrary. I do not tend to do myself any favours in that I am not interested in fashions. At a time when minimalism was fashionable and hurtling 44

to its inevitable conclusion of nothing at all, I was heading in the opposite direction of slow additions over a relatively long period. I am constantly working against the modern obsession that an artist's work has to be about now. I probably paint like it's the 1920s but I am not consciously doing that, it's just how I see things, I think I have a different perception of time. My work is sometimes compared to Steam Punk, a sub-genre of elaborate fantasy 'Victorian technology'. Until recently I had never heard of it, but I do admire it.

I see myself on the fringes of outsider art in the sense that I work in an isolated and intuitive way.

Some of the non-traditional artists at Pallant House Gallery are largely free from imposed doctrines so their work retains a humanity and life force which is often rejected in contemporary art. I had to consciously purge myself of most of the things I had learned at art school and look for a different kind of art practice. It was like starting from scratch.

Ian Sherman's solo exhibition, Artefacts from the Contrarium, is in the studio at Pallant House Gallery from 27 March to 29 April 2012. For more information about Outside In and to see more of Ian's work go to www.outsidein.org.uk.

FULL–TIME PROGRAMMES AND SHORT COURSES IN VISUAL ARTS MA Visual Arts/MFA Fine Art, Painting and Drawing, Sculpture, Tapestry and Textile Art University of Sussex validated MA/MFA Degrees, Graduate & Postgraduate Diplomas and West Dean College Diplomas Short courses in Botanical Art and Illistration, Drawing, Painting & Printmaking Foundation Diploma in Art and Design

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION (+44) 01243 811 301 reception@westdean.org.uk

West Dean College, West Dean, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 0QZ www.westdean.org.uk/college

ART WITHOUT WALLS Paintings by Philippa Paterson Nicola Hancock and Janet Branscombe One glorious weekend only: Fri 29th June to Sun 1st July 10am to 5pm daily and a celebration on Saturday 30th June 6–10pm

Home Farm Pop-up Gallery

Hollycombe, Liphook, Hants GU30 7LR

e. philippa.paterson@googlemail.com

07767678002 / 07985965570 / 07791005474

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MORE 46

plate expectations

Rosie Simmons is the founder of 3cubed, a design-led ceramics company in West Sussex, where she organises the production of her own ranges and the awardwinning company Timorous Beasties. Rosie has been commissioned to make a limited edition plate to mark 300 years of Pallant House which will be launched in April.

How do you describe your style? My style is eclectic; I could describe it as traditional with a modern twist since I work as a craftsperson and use industrial methods of production. I have a strong eye for detail and really enjoy the business of drawing and painting delicate and intricate patterns. I was able to develop and consolidate these skills during my time working for Wedgwood as a ceramics surface designer.

Who or what most inspires you? I have always loved drawing from nature, this is why I am particularly happy to be living in the Sussex countryside now where I am surrounded by possible sources of inspiration. I also enjoy delving into the past and researching into different cultures and different materials to explore various aesthetic influences across the world and throughout time. I am inspired by anything from a delicate Chinese 14th century porcelain bowl to a Victorian drain-pipe.

What drew you to ceramics? Ceramics could be said to be the oldest art form. I work with the most basic raw material of clay but many different disciplines are applied to the material and those disciplines have had differing degrees of importance and impact over time and within different cultures. I love the fact that this complexity of process produces endless variety in form and design. The technical challenges in the process are highly complex and there are so many exciting possibilities and I love the fact that in the end there will always be that element of surprise – what emerges from the kiln, or what becomes the final surface, will never be the same as one's original drawing. Where I am in my element is using pattern and form together. It is the practical functionality of the product that appeals to me in ceramics rather than the product as a piece of sculpture or installation.

What are you planning for the Pallant House commission? I am fascinated by all the stories connected with Elizabeth and Henry Peckham and the birth of their house. As both the inside and outside of the house is filled with fine detailed craftsmanship in so many materials – wrought iron, brick, plaster, wood – it is ideal to home in on some of these intricate pieces and highlight their beauty on to ceramics. I am also exploring connections between the 1707 Act of Union and the carvings on the façade of the house. The two ostrich/dodo carvings are so engaging I want to incorporate in some way the family crest containing the original ostrich. Obviously it was a significant emblem for the family so I want to highlight that too.

For more information about the limited edition plate contact the Bookshop on 01243 770813 www.pallantbooksop.com 47

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  

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    

 

Chairman of the Friends' Letter

Vivi-Mari Carpelan, Contemplating the Nature of Triumph, handmade mixed media collage with beads Š the artist

Dear Friends, Patrons and Gallery Club members I am delighted to be greeting you in this, our 30th Anniversary year, during which we will be celebrating with some special events to mark this exciting milestone. During the summer months of June, July and August we will be launching the 'Three for All Appeal' and I so much hope that you will support this and together make 2012 a year we will all feel proud to remember.

We are also celebrating two centenaries this spring.

Firstly Keith Vaughan, who is being commemorated by an important exhibition opening in March, and secondly Robin Ironside, whose centenary exhibition opened in the Print Room last month.

It also gives me great pleasure to congratulate the Chichester Festival Theatre on their Jubilee year.

We will be celebrating with them by showing The Art of Chichester Festival Theatre: A Celebration, which promises to be an interesting and exciting exhibition.

A number of Friends have generously sent donations in support of the exhibition David Dawson: Working with Lucian Freud, which will run until May. It is very encouraging to know that so many of you are interested in being involved with our exhibition programme. Your interest and your support are greatly appreciated and we thank you for the ÂŁ500 you raised towards the funding for this.

Looking to the future, we are very excited about

the Outside In: National exhibition for which plans are now being made. As you probably know we are the centre of excellence in this field of community engagement, and it will be for this exciting project that we will be asking for your support once more.

I am sure you feel, as do I, that Outside In and the community aspect of our work is one of the most rewarding and worthwhile ventures with which we are involved.

It is very good news that over the past few months a number of Friends have upgraded their membership to become Gallery Club members and Patrons. This will give them a closer involvement with Pallant House (and access to additional benefits).

If you are considering doing this or would like to know more about upgrading, please contact the Friends Office by emailing friends@pallant.org.uk or calling 01243 770815 and they will be happy to give you details and answer your questions.

I hope that you will enjoy this anniversary year and I thank you all, longstanding members and new members alike, for the support you give to the Friends. During the past year the Gallery has increasingly attracted publicity in the national press and of course you, the Friends, by spreading the word have contributed greatly to this. I very much look forward to meeting many of you here in the Gallery during 2012.

Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Chairman of the Friends of Pallant House Gallery Pallant House Gallery Friends

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'Get people to look at the Art'

When I was asked to be a guide I was both flattered and scared. How could I learn about all the works in the collection? I don't have a degree in art history; I'm not a painter; could I really do this? But art has been my passion for years and I had done a course on Western Art. And you're not expected to know about all the works straight away. You start doing a highlights tour, choosing eight works and ensuring they are representative of the collection.

I was membership secretary of the Friends for five years and knew about the Gallery. I was a lecturer and had been taught how to address a group, which I should say for anyone considering guiding is a skill not a gift and so can be learnt.

Being a guide is tremendously rewarding. Partly, it is the intellectual challenge of researching the artists and works. And I was not left on my own; there is a camaraderie amongst the guides and people were willing to lend me notes and offer advice.

Helen Martin gives unwavering encouragement and Simon Martin updates us with tours of incoming exhibitions. Then there's the library, an invaluable resource where Sarah and Gillian readily give of their extensive knowledge about every aspect of the Collection. Like all guides I shadowed others on their tours, and still do. It is refreshing to see how another guide approaches a subject.

Secondly, there is the enjoyment of sharing your passion for the artists and their works. Every tour is different, no matter how many times you do it.

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Pallant House Gallery Friends

And people are so responsive; sometimes I find a comment shows me something new in a work, sending my thoughts in a different direction. That is very exciting.

Of course tours don't always go according to plan.

We have all experienced those who think they know more than you and want to prove it, who want to talk about works not on the tour, or sidetrack you into discussing their pet theory. The worst tour I did was my first highlights tour when I had just two women who were friends, one very interested in art and the other very obviously bored stiff. I staggered through trying to balance the interests of the two and at the end was convinced I wasn't cut out to be a guide. But it is from the difficult tours that you learn most and I quickly realised the importance of adapting to the group. After all, they come to enjoy themselves.

We all have our personal approach, some are born storytellers whose tours are spiced with gossip, others are knowledgeable about art history and provide in-depth appreciation of the works. But what unites us all is a passion for the Collection.

When I started guiding my greatest fear was, "what happens if I dry up?". The answer is quite simple: look at the work. After all, that's what we are here to do. Get people to look at the art. Beth Funnell For more information about becoming a guide please contact Helen Martin h.martin@pallant.org.uk. Highlights Tours run every Saturday at 2pm and Themed Tours on Thursday evenings at 5.15pm

what's on Friends' events

Ann Curtis, Costume design for Norman Rodway as Enobarbus in Antony & Cleopatra in 1985. © the artist

Friends' Private View Sunday 11 March, 10am An exclusive chance for you to enjoy your own private view of Keith Vaughan: Romanticism to Abstraction, The Art of Chichester Festival Theatre: A Celebration and Robin Ironside: Neo-Romantic Visionary.

Free. Coffee and biscuits will be provided.

Art Book Club Sunday 18 March, 2.30–4pm The book which will be discussed this month is Sir Roy Strong's Visions of England – a rural arcadia, he suggests, celebrated by painters and poets. Is he right? £5 includes tea and Field and Fork cakes.

Curator's Tour: Keith Vaughan Friday 23 March, 10.30am Friends only tour of the exhibition Keith Vaughan: Romanticism to Abstraction. £5 (£2.50 student Friends) includes coffee and biscuits.

Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)

Annual Friends' Party Monday 26 March, 5.30–7.30pm We now have 4000 Friends, come and meet each other! Meet the staff too and learn more about the forthcoming Friends' programme.

Fizz, canapés and conversation. £10 Art and Wine in Sussex Thursday 24 May, 2–6pm An opportunity to visit Arden and Anstruther's new home in Pulborough followed by a visit to nearby Nutbourne Vineyards.

Arden and Anstruther have an amazing collection of photographs including 20th century classics from Penn, Avedon, Salgado and Mapplethorpe. Nutbourne Vineyards are part of the renaissance of English wine, producing award-winning still and sparkling wines. We will be taken on a guided tour of the vineyards and then return to explore and understand the Winery. This will be followed by a tasting. £25 includes wine tasting and nibbles. Transport is not

included. Make your own way to Arden and Anstruther where the afternoon will begin. Maps and travel instructions will be provided. Please contact the Friends' Office if you need a lift.

SAVE THE DATE Fab Sixties Party Saturday 30 June, 7.30–10pm To coincide with Peter Blake and Pop Music exhibition (23 June to 7 October 2012) and to celebrate 30 years of the Friends. Relive the Pop Scene, dress the part and vote for the best Sixties gear. Fizz, food and fun. £30 Annual General Meeting Monday 30 July, 6pm All Friends are welcome to attend to meet our Chairman and Trustees to hear the review of the financial year. The meeting will be followed by a short talk by a guest speaker, details will be published in the summer issue of the Magazine.

Free. Followed by a glass of wine in the Garden Gallery.

Pallant House Gallery Friends

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patrons of the gallery We are immensely grateful to our Gallery Club members, the following Patrons of Pallant House Gallery, and to all those who wish to remain anonymous, for their generous support:

Mr and Mrs John Addison Smith Keith Allison Lady Susan Anstruther John and Annoushka Ayton David and Elizabeth Benson Edward and Victoria Bonham Carter Henry Bourne and Harriet Anstruther Vanessa Branson Patrick K F Donlea Frank and Lorna Dunphy Lewis Golden Paul and Kay Goswell Mr and Mrs Scott Greenhalgh Mr and Mrs Alan Hill

Kevin A S Jamieson James and Clare Kirkman Lefevre Fine Art Ltd Robin Muir and Paul Lyon-Maris Angie O’Rourke Catherine and Franck Petitgas Charles Rolls Mr and Mrs David Russell Sophie and David Shalit Tania Slowe and Paddy Walker John and Fiona Smythe Jane and Anthony Weldon Tim and Judith Wise John Young

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          

     

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Pallant House Gallery Friends

what's on gallery talks

Robin Ironside, 'Death of a Good Woman (Unfinished)' c.1949, Oil and pencil on canvas © Estate of the artist

Virginia Ironside on Robin Ironside Thursday 22 March, 6pm A self-taught painter of Surrealist fantasies, designer for the theatre and writer on art, Robin Ironside was, according to agony aunt and journalist Virginia Ironside: 'thin, lively, wiry, original and obsessive' with a penchant for hard living (he dabbled in mescaline and smoked 60 cigarettes a day). She introduces her 'eccentric relation' to coincide with his centenary exhibition in the De'Longhi Print Room.

Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Pamela Howard: Designing for the Stage Thursday 29 March, 6pm Professor Pamela Howard OBE, curator and designer of the exhibition The Art of Chichester Festival Theatre: A Celebration, has worked as a stage designer and scenographer for over 40 years.

She will draw on her extensive experience of designing for the theatre, from her work as a headdress maker for 'The Broken Heart' at Chichester Festival Theatre in 1962, to realising over 200 productions at major national and regional theatres in the UK, Europe and USA. Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Gerard Hastings on Keith Vaughan's Journals Thursday 12 April, 6pm Keith Vaughan's journals which he kept throughout his life have become as celebrated as his artwork. First published in 1966 and more extensively in 1989 after his death they are, in the words of his publisher Alan Ross, 'a selfportrait of astonishing honesty: devoid of disguise in any shape or form, or hypocrisy. It is difficult to think of anything in literature they resemble.' Gerard Hastings, author of a new book on Vaughan's final moving journal, explores one of the greatest pieces of confessional writing of the twentieth-century.

Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) Catherine Lampert: Lucian Freud and his Circle Thursday 19 April, 6pm The late great painter Lucian Freud had an eclectic circle of friends, family and acquaintances drawn from all walks of life, reflected in the variety of faces and bodies that occupy his paintings. Freud has been the central character in the vibrant scene of post-war British figurative artists. Curator and writer Catherine Lampert explores the work of Lucian Freud and his contemporaries such as Andrews, Auerbach, Bacon and Coldstream Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)

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David Dawson, Attack of the Zebra, 2010, Oil on canvas, Marlborough Fine Art

Robin Child: Keith Vaughan and the Dynamic of Brokenness Thursday 3 May, 6pm Born in the nearby Sussex village of Selsey, Vaughan was one of the most significant artists of his generation, best-known for his painterly depictions of the male nude in the landscape. Robin Child considers Vaughan's work in relation to the classical tradition and his remarkable artistic technique using gouache and oil paint.

Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) David Dawson in conversation with Barnaby Wright Thursday 10 May, 6pm As the studio assistant, model, and friend of the late great painter Lucian Freud for 20 years, David Dawson was witness to the creation of some of the most celebrated paintings of our age.

His unique access led to the development of a portfolio of strikingly intimate photographs of Freud which have become

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iconic works in their own right. To coincide with his exhibition David Dawson will discuss his work and intimate relationship with Dr Barnaby Wright, Daniel Katz Curator of 20th Century Art at the Courtauld Gallery.

Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) Frances Spalding: Prunella Clough Thursday 24 May, 6pm A good friend of painter Keith Vaughan, Prunella Clough (19191999) was one of the best and most original artists to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century. Art historian, critic and biographer Frances Spalding celebrates Clough's outstanding contribution to British art, exploring the key themes and inspirations that informed the artist's work.

Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)

Charles Darwent: Mondrian and Nicholson Thursday 31 May, 6pm In 1938 the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian moved to London at Ben Nicholson's invitation, where the two worked in neighbouring Hampstead studios at the centre of an international community of avant-garde artists. Art critic of the Independent on Sunday and author of a new book on Mondrian, Charles Darwent explores the largely untold relationship between Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson during the 1930s when the two artists were leading forces of abstract art in Europe.

Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50) Ron King Thursday 14 June, 6pm Prolific printmaker and book artist Ron King is best known for founding the Circle Press in 1967, a private press formed to design, print and distribute artists' books. Since then he has collaborated with more than 100 artists, writers and poets to produce an extensive body of work unique in its variety and quality. To coincide with his exhibition in the De'Longhi Print Room, he will talk about his life and career.

Talk + wine: £12 (Friends £10.50). Talk only: £8.50 (Friends £7, Students £7.50)

Find the rest of the public programme including tours, screenings and workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557 or at www.pallant.org.uk

Booking Form Please print and check all details carefully. Incomplete forms and incorrect details will delay the processing procedure.

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We endeavour to accommodate any special requirements. Please ring 01243 774557 to discuss your needs.

bookshop

www.pallantbookshop.com Telephone 01243 781293

Keith Vaughan: Paintings & Drawings Exhibition Catalogue 2007 This Keith Vaughan publication accompanied the exhibition held at Osborne Samuel Gallery from 24 May - 23 June 2007. This title also includes an essay by art historian Andrew Lambirth and a biography compiled by John Ball. £25 (Paperback)

Chichester Festival Theatre: A Celebration

by Pamela Howard The first purpose-built thrust stage theatre in the UK, Chichester Festival Theatre was at the forefront of design innovation when it opened 50 years ago.

Renowned scenographer Professor Pamela Howard OBE began her career as a head-dress maker for one of the first productions in 1962. She has produced this specially commissioned limited edition print to commemorate the anniversary. £45

Freud At Work: Lucian Freud in conversation with Sebastian Smee.

Photographs by David Dawson and Bruce Bernard In this rare snapshot Lucian Freud talks candidly with Sebastian Smee about painting, the demands of his work and the painters he admires. The results reveal various stages of works in progress and the intensity of the activity in this very secret domain. £30 (Hardback) 'A is for armadillo' by Ron King 'A is for Armadillo' is an original signed limited edition taken from a Bestiary publication by Ron King, with poems by Richard Price. Edition of 50. £75

Robin Ironside: Neo-Romantic Visionary A fully-illustrated book by Virginia Ironside and Peter Boughton with contributions from Simon Martin published to coincide with the centenary of the birth of the visionary artist, Robin Ironside, and the exhibition in the De'Longhi Print Room. Price tbc Keith Vaughan: Gouaches, Drawings & Prints Exhibition Catalogue 2011 Catalogue produced for the exhibition held at Osborne Samuel Gallery from 20 October - 12 November 2011. Includes colour plates throughout illustrating the works included in the exhibition as well as an essay by Gerard Hastings, written especially for the catalogue. £25 (Hardback)

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CHICHESTER FESTIVAL THEATRE

THE NEXT 50 YEARS BEGIN SOON FESTIVAL 2012 WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN FEBRUARY

01243 781312 cft.org.uk

Opening of Edward Burra Spotted yourself on our photo pages? Photographs from all our previews are available to view and buy online at www.photoboxgallery.com/pallant.

The password is 'pallant'. All photographs by Jason Hedges

(Left to Right) Norman Coates, Yvonne and John Milwood, Pamela Howard, Rocky Hamilton

(Left to Right) Frank and Cheryl Cohen, James Holland-Hibbert and Inks Raphael, Jolyn Drury and Andrew Lambirth

(Left to Right) Patrick Donlea and Nigel Wainwright, Michael Regan and Katherine Crouan, Nigel and Paul Soper, and Howard Watson and Miranda Harrison

If you would like to hire the Gallery for a party, private dining event or a canapĂŠ reception please contact Helen Martin on 01243 770838

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Portrait of Richard Peckham Attrib. Thomas Hudson Alan Wood

Thomas Hudson (attributed), Portrait of Richard Peckham, c.1740 © Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK

300 years ago, in 1712, inhabitants of Chichester must have been very surprised to see an elegant townhouse being built in North Pallant which had been the preserve of leather workers and tanners for generations. The aroma associated with their crafts, together with brewing and malting, would have made the air unpleasant, to say the least. Nevertheless this was the site chosen by newly-weds Henry and Elizabeth Peckham to set up home. Elizabeth, a widow in her early 40s, brought £10,000 to the marriage, inherited from her brother, a Captain in the Royal Navy.

Henry, an ambitious 27-year-old businessman, came from a well-established, though financially troubled, local family. At 16, he had inherited his father's debts but by 1711, had eventually managed to pay them off.

Nevertheless his proposal was viewed with suspicion and a pre-marital contract was agreed which paid Elizabeth an annual sum of £50 and £2,000 for her to leave to whoever she wished in her will. Henry had many relations and Richard Peckham, the subject of the May Artwork of the Month, is a distant cousin who reportedly stayed at Pallant House in the 1730s. The painting is attributed to Thomas Hudson (1701–1779), a leading fashionable portraitist in London.

Henry and Elizabeth's marriage lasted for just over five years and ended acrimoniously with a lawsuit that 60

dragged on until 1720. Much of the dispute concerned the final cost of the building which, at £3000, was just under double the original estimate. Built over the cellars of a seventeenth century malting house with an external wall incorporated in the structure the house was one of the first in Chichester to have sash windows. The front door is approached by a flight of steps between gate piers surmounted by stone ostriches, the adopted crest of the Peckham family.

Together these would have formed a very impressive entrance for visitors. The door case, with pediment and classical pilasters served to create an image of an important resident. That is how Henry saw himself.

He wanted to become mayor, something he never achieved despite several attempts.

In the absence of an architect, it fell to a local master builder, Henry Smart, to interpret his client's wishes. He was responsible for the entire project and with his team of skilled craftsmen provided special features, including the staircase, with inlays and parquetry, the panelling and, externally, the wrought iron railings. Ironically it was he who became mayor.

Richard Peckham is the subject of the Artwork of the Month talk (12 noon) and workshop (1–3pm) on Wed 30 May. The new 300th Anniversary Pallant House tours start on 15 March 5.15pm www.pallant.org.uk

Art insurance specialists For further information, please contact Robert Hepburne-Scott Tel: +44 (0)20 7234 4307 Email: rhscott@heathlambert.com A division of Heath Lambert Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority

© The Estate of Keith Vaughan. All rights reserved, DACS 2012

Keith Vaughan (1922-1977) Fruit Bearing Tree . signed and dated ‘Vaughan/53’ (lower right) oil on board . 39½ x 28 in. . £40,000-60,000

20th Century British & Irish Art London s Evening Sale 23 May, Day Sale 24 May 2012 Consigment deadline

Contact

12 March 2012

Philip Harley +44 (0)20 7389 2681 pharley@christies.com 8 King Street, SW1Y 6QT

christies.com