Pallant House Gallery - Magazine No.31 (Full Version)

SEAN SCULLY The Art of the Triptych Gregory Perry talks to abstract artist Sean Scully Pauline Boty Dr Sue Tate on the pioneering female Pop Artist The Nicholsons and their Circle Vivienne Light explores a rare private collection Eric Ravilious Alan Powers introduces the celebrated Sussex artist

£2 Number 31 October 2013 – February 2014 www.pallant.org.uk

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Made in Britain, invitation to consign Sotheby’s is pleased to announce the inaugural Made in Britain Auction, taking place 26 March 2014 in London. The sale will celebrate twentieth century British creativity across the disciplines of Fine Art, Prints, Sculpture, Photography, Studio Ceramics, Silver, Furniture and Modern Design.

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— Andrew Gifford Two Cities: Paintings from Jerusalem and Ramallah

John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4 JG

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27 November - 20 December

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Kidron Valley 1, oil/canvas, 120 x 120 cm

Kurt Jackson ‘On top of the Shard’, July 2013, Mixed Media on Board, 51 x 51cm

Kurt Jackson The Thames Revisited 19 November 2013 – 23 January 2014

The Redfern Gallery 20 Cork Street London W1S 3HL 020 7734 1732 www.redfern-gallery.com art@redfern-gallery.com

Contents Features

Sean Scully, Red Robe, 2007, Oil on aluminium, Private collection Š Sean Scully

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

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"Abstraction has to be accountable" Sean Scully and Gregory Perry Pauline Boty, the forgotten Pop Artist Dr Sue Tate E.Q. Nicholson and the Mill House Collection Vivienne Light Eric Ravilious: Printmaker Alan Powers Clare Leighton: The Industrious Artist Simon Martin British Sculpture in Miniature Claire Shea Squalls and Murmurations Kate Bradbury and Vivienne Roberts

Friends 47 48 49

Chairman's Letter Tribute to John Morrish Friends' Events

Regulars 7 Director's Letter 11 Exhibitions Diary 15 News 53 What's On: Events 57 Gift Ideas 59 Pallant Photos 60 Collection in Focus:

Francis Bacon, Two Figures, 1975

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CONTRIBUTORS

WITH THANKS

EDITORIAL Editor Emma Robertson, e.robertson@pallant.org.uk Sub Editor Beth Funnell Editorial Assistant Kate Davey Gallery Editorial Simon Martin, Gregory Perry Guest Editorial Kate Bradbury, Martin Harrison, Vivienne Light, Alan Powers, Vivienne Roberts, Sean Scully, Claire Shea, Dr Sue Tate Friends' Editorial Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox, Julia Cooper Design, Editing and Production David Wynn

SEAN SCULLY SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS

ADVERTISING Booking and General Enquiries Paolo Russo +44 (0)207 300 5751 Emily Knowles +44 (0)207 300 5662

Sean Scully Supporters Circle

PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY Friends

PAULINE BOTY SUPPORTER

GALLERY SUPPORTERS Headline Sponsor of the Gallery 2013

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 Closed Tuesday–Saturday 10am–5pm Thursday 10am–8pm Sunday/Bank Holidays 11am–5pm

PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY Friends

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

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.

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TOOVEY’S AnTiquE & FinE ArT AucTiOnEErS & VAluErS

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Proud sponsors of Pallant House Gallery

Michael Buhler 1940–2009 The New Generation Paintings 1964–1972 16th October – 8th November 2013

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Catalogue available

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Mirage January 1972 acrylic on canvas signed, titled & dated verso 50.8 x 61 cm

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DIRECTOR'S LETTER

Photograph by Jason Hedges

The autumn season at Pallant House Gallery will be a particularly active one with a number of exhibitions representing a great variety of national and international artists. Our offerings in the main galleries will include an exhibition of the triptych paintings of the abstract artist Sean Scully; a retrospective of the seminal Pop artist Pauline Boty whose contribution to the movement is being duly recognized after her untimely death in 1966; and an exhibition of rarely seen, small-scale studies of monumental sculpture produced by the Cass Sculpture Foundation including artists such as Anthony Caro, Lynn Chadwick and Ana Maria Pacheco.

In the house, we are very pleased to present an important private collection of works by members of the Nicholson family and fellow artists that will join the Collection at Pallant House Gallery on long-term loan.

The collection demonstrates the family’s artistic legacy through several generations and features work by Ben Nicholson, his father William, and sister-in-law the noted textile artist E.Q. Nicholson, among others as well as friends of the Nicholson families: Lucian Freud, Julian Trevelyan and John Craxton. The Nicholsons and their Circle: The Mill House Collection will be on display along with works by the Nicholson family from our Collection to illustrate how this addition to the Gallery will augment and strengthen our holdings of modern British art.

Elsewhere in this issue of the magazine, Julia Cooper recognizes the enormous contribution that long-time Friend and volunteer John Morrish made to Pallant House Gallery over the past 30 years. John was a tireless worker for the Gallery and a great supporter of his passions: the library and conservation of works of art. He will be greatly missed by his many friends from among the staff, Board, Friends and volunteers.

Our great appreciation is also due to the many artists, volunteers and staff who have helped to make the Outside In programme the remarkable success it has become. Many of you will have heard of the national recognition the programme received lately; it was a finalist for the Museum and Heritage Award and the winner of the Charity Awards 2013 in the Arts, Culture and Heritage category. We are all happy to have the work of the many participants in this programme recognized by peers from national panels and we congratulate Marc Steene, Pallant House Gallery Deputy Director, who created the programme in 2006 and has achieved excellence with its development and growth since its inception.

Gregory Perry, Director of Pallant House Gallery

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De’Longhi holds exclusive preview at Pallant House Gallery

Enjoying its fifth year of sponsorship of Pallant House Gallery, De’Longhi – the UK’s number one Italian coffee machine brand * - continues to invest in the arts and local community.

Visitors to Pallant House in September were delighted by a unique exhibition, where they were able to see a sneak-preview of some special works of art from the seventh annual Macmillan De’Longhi Art Auction collection, which raised £70,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support.

A selection of fabulous paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs, which were donated by a number of high profile and celebrated international artists and designers, were on display at Pallant House Gallery 8

from names including Jake & Dinos Chapman, Gordon Cheung, Tomma Abts, Enrico David and Walter Nessler.

Donated pieces on display were just a sample from the 70 artworks which went under the hammer at the Royal College of Art on Monday 23rd September.

The art auction has raised over £900,000 to date and De’Longhi would like to thank Pallant House Gallery members and visitors for their continued support, without which the auction would not enjoy its success in raising crucial funds for Macmillan Cancer Support.

De’Longhi will continue to contribute to the work of the Gallery for the remainder of 2013, and Pallant House Gallery visitors can also look forward to the opportunity to sample a De’Longhi coffee at the forthcoming Family Open Day on Sunday 19 January 2014.

For more information about De’Longhi, its products, offers and coffee events please visit www. seriousaboutcoffee.com Left Gordon Cheung, Afterimage (Still Life Study), 2013, Stock Market List (Financial Times), Acrylic on canvas, © The Artist Right Jake & Dinos Chapman, Bunny Dreams, 2012, Gravure etching, © The Artist

* GFK July 2013

Visitors enjoyed advanced viewing of high profile artworks ahead of charity art auction at the Royal College of Art

Autumn 2013 In Arundel: 19 Oct – 9 Nov Colour Compositions: an exhibition of “visual music” paintings and ceramics by abstract expressionist Felix Anaut 16 Nov – 7 Dec A solo exhibition of new interpretations on his Beach paintings by Nick Bodimeade

“Terra Blue I”, canvas, 150 x 120cm

by Felix Anaut

This is followed by our mixed Christmas exhibition of painitngs, ceramics, prints and sculpture.

In London: 29 Oct – 10 Nov Form and Process: an exhibition of paintings by Piers Ottey demonstrating his views on this subject in art and other objects at The Gallery, 50 Redchurch St, London E2 7DL See www.zimmerstewart.co.uk for details of these exhibitions and the artists we show.

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EXHIBITIONS DIARY

Pauline Boty, Colour Her Gone, 1962, Oil on canvas, Wolverhampton Art Gallery © Artist’s estate

THE NICHOLSONS AND THEIR CIRCLE: THE MILL HOUSE COLLECTION 12 OCTOBER 2013 – 1 FEBRUARY 2014 The Nicholsons were a significant family of artists who, along with their circle of friends, had a major impact on Modern British art in the first half of the 20th Century, most famously through the close association of Ben Nicholson with the artistic legacy of St Ives.

This exhibition of paintings and drawings, drawn from an important private collection which joins the Gallery on long-term loan, features work by members of the family such as William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde, Ben and Winifred Nicholson and the celebrated textile designer E.Q, and friends including Lucian Freud and John Craxton who congregated at the home of E.Q. at Alderholt Mill House during the Second World War. Main galleries 3 and 4

SEAN SCULLY: TRIPTYCHS 2 NOVEMBER 2013 –26 JANUARY 2014 Best known as a painter of monumental works in oil, Sean Scully (b.1945) has gained international prominence as one of the most admired painters in the abstract tradition, fusing the conventions of European painting with the distinct character of American abstraction. Working in the mould of Matisse, Mondrian and Rothko, Scully reduces painting to its simple rudiments of form and colour, revealing the medium’s capacity for expressive power. This is the first exhibition to explore the artist’s engagement with the triptych format, which has obsessed him for nearly three decades. It will feature major paintings, drawings and etchings from across the last 40 years.

Main galleries 12–14 ARTISTS’ MAQUETTES FROM THE CASS SCULPTURE FOUNDATION 19 OCTOBER – 17 NOVEMBER 2013 An exhibition showcasing highlights from the Cass Sculpture Foundation’s private archive of maquettes and studies for sculptures. Artists include Anthony Caro, Lynn Chadwick, Mark Quinn, Philip King, Bill Woodrow, Laura Ford, Langlands & Bell, John Davies and Ana Maria Pacheco.

Main galleries 15–17 PAULINE BOTY: POP ARTIST AND WOMAN 30 NOVEMBER 2013 – 9 FEBRUARY 2014 A friend and contemporary of Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and David Hockney, Pauline Boty (19381966) was one of the few female artists associated with the British Pop Art movement of the 1960s, producing work exploring themes of female sexuality, gender, race and politics. Yet since her untimely death aged just 28, she has been largely overshadowed by her male Pop counterparts. This touring exhibition from Wolverhampton Art Gallery is the first public exhibition to survey Boty’s career as a whole, reinstating her at the forefront of British Pop Art. It features paintings, collages and ephemera from public and private collections including rarely seen pieces that have not been exhibited for 40 years.

Main galleries 15–17

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EXHIBITIONS DIARY

STUDIO EXHIBITIONS COLIN HAMBROOK: KNITTING TIME 8 OCTOBER – 3 NOVEMBER 2013 A combination of art and poetry that focuses on loss and bereavement and the impact this has on people’s mental health. Timed to coincide with World Mental Health Day (10 October).

KATE BRADBURY: SQUALLS AND MURMURATIONS 5 NOVEMBER – 1 DECEMBER 2013 An insight into the world of Kate Bradbury, her drawings and the imaginative sculptures and stories that she creates from found objects. Kate is an Outside In: National 2012 Award Winner.

Eric Ravilious, Amusement Arcade, 1938, Lithograph on paper, Private collection

DE'LONGHI PRINT ROOM ERIC RAVILIOUS: PRINTS 8 OCTOBER – 8 DECEMBER 2013 A painter, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver, Eric Ravilious (1903–42) was one of Britain’s most popular and versatile artists, producing distinctive watercolours, lithographs, and graphics for companies such as London Transport and ceramics for Wedgwood which are hugely evocative of the era. His work is rooted in the landscape of pre-war and early wartime England, particularly the South Downs in Sussex where he grew up. This exhibition, timed to coincide with the publication of a new monograph, includes woodcuts, lithographs and blocks by the celebrated artist.

CLARE LEIGHTON: WORKING LIFE 10 DECEMBER 2013– 24 FEBRUARY 2014 Best known for her wood engravings illustrating agrarian life in England, Europe and the American South, Clare Leighton (1898–1989) also produced designs for Wedgwood ceramics, illustrated at least 65 books, as well as writing and illustrating her own books. This exhibition features key examples from throughout the artist's career including a series of wood engravings from her celebrated book ‘The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry’ (1933), produced in response to her concern about the loss of the traditional ways of agriculture in the 1930s.

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TOM SHAKESPEARE: INCARNATE 3 DECEMBER 2013– 5 JANUARY 2014 A trilogy of works by Tom Shakespeare, The Nightmare (after Fuseli), 2007, Dead Christ (after Mantegna), 2008 and Figure with meat (after Bacon), 2009. Timed to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Persons with Disabilities (3 December).

NIGEL KINGSBURY: LOVES NIGEL 7 JANUARY – 2 FEBRUARY 2014 An Outside In: National 2012 Award Winner, Nigel Kingsbury’s work reflects his fascination with women, portraying them as mystical goddesses, attired in glamorous ball gowns, decadent 1920s outfits and floating dresses.

Clare Leighton, The Lumber Camp - Loading, Wood engraving, 1931

A once in a once-upon-a-time opportunity.

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A wonderful, original etching

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Letterpress printed and handmade with love and care by Stoney Road Press. Presented in a gorgeous slip case. £1,500

INCLUDES ORIGINAL SIGNED STORIES BY Russell Banks John Banville Richard Bausch Anne Enright David Mitchell Joyce Carol Oates Annie Proulx Salman Rushdie Sam Shepard Colm Tóibín Edited by Roddy Doyle

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NEWS COLLECTION ON THE MOVE Coinciding with Pallant House Gallery’s exhibition of female Pop artist Pauline Boty, major works from our Pop Art collection will be on exhibit in London this autumn. Having toured from the Louisianna in Copenhagen and Moderna Museet in Stockholm the exhibition Pop Art Design finally Jann Haworth, Cowboy, 1964, Kapok and comes to the Barbican in unbleached calico, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through The Art Fund), © The Artist October. The exhibition, which emphasises the important contribution of British Pop artists alongside their American contemporaries, features significant loans from Pallant House Gallery such as Jann Haworth’s iconic soft sculpture ‘Cowboy’, ‘La Vern Baker’ by Peter Blake and ‘Hers is a Lush Situation’ by Richard Hamilton. Elsewhere, in October Patrick Caulfield’s ‘Portrait of Juan Gris’ will be on loan to the exhibition ‘When Britain went Pop’ organised

by Christie’s and Waddington Custot Galleries in London, whilst at Tate Modern Paul Klee’s watercolour ‘Bewölkung (Clouds)’ will feature in the artist’s major retrospective. Further afield, the Francis Bacon ‘Two Figures’ is at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (p.60) as part of their major exhibition ‘Francis Bacon & Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone’ and a group of Enid Marx’s ‘Marco’s Alphabet’ is on show at Compton Verney in Warwickshire as part of a new collections display of the designer and printmaker’s work.

LOWRY ON DISPLAY 87 YEARS AFTER BEING BOUGHT FOR JUST £10 One of L. S. Lowry’s very early paintings ‘Going to the Mill’, currently on long-term loan to Pallant House Gallery, was originally bought for just £10 by the then literary editor of the Manchester Guardian, Arthur S Wallace. Now on display among the 20th Century Landscapes collection, the painting had been kept in his family for the past 87 years. An early fan of the painter for the time, Wallace promoted three of Lowry’s

pictures in a supplement he edited in October 1926 to support ‘Civic Week’ which included ‘The Quarrel’, ‘A Manufacturing Town’ and ‘Going to the Mill’. Wallace went on to buy ‘Going to the Mill’ and Lowry then gave him another painting, ‘A Manufacturing Town’, as a ‘souvenir of the Civic Week’. Dale Thomson, granddaughter of Arthur Wallace says: “The whole family are very proud that our grandfather was the first person to give Lowry publicity and the first to buy one of his pictures at a time when nobody else was interested. We hope others will now enjoy the painting we’ve known and loved as a family for 87 years.”

OUTSIDE IN GOES TO SCOTLAND Outside In has travelled north of the borders for the first time with two exhibitions – one at Perth Museum & Art Gallery and the other at Project Ability, Glasgow. The Perth exhibition showcases over fifty artists from across Scotland working in a variety of media, whereas the Glasgow exhibition showcases just three Outside In artists living in Scotland, selected by two artists who attend a group at Project Ability.

NEW ACQUISITIONS Continuing their generous support in developing the Gallery’s collection of contemporary prints, Mark Golder and Brian Thompson have recently donated a new screenprint by the emerging artist Anthea Hamilton, Manarch (Pasta), 2013, Anthea Hamilton called Screenprint, © The Artist ‘Manarch (Pasta) which resonates with the Pop Art prints in the Gallery’s collection by artists such as Richard Hamilton and Allen Jones. Other additions to the Golder-Thompson Gift include a mezzotint called ‘Sea Shack’ (2012) by Sussex-based printmaker Tom Hammick, a handcoloured etching by the same artist called ‘Doom Doom Doom’ (2012) which is a comment on the art world showing Munch’s ‘Scream’ making huge figures at auction; and an etching of a cityscape of London by Chris Orr RA, signalling a new direction for the Gift of acquiring prints by Royal Academicians.

Scotland has not been left behind and the latest group of works also includes a self-portrait by the early twentieth-century artist William Strang.

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"ABSTRACTION HAS TO BE ACCOUNTABLE" Ahead of a new exhibition exploring his engagement with the triptych format, internationally-acclaimed artist Sean Scully talks to Gregory Perry, Pallant House Gallery Director

GREGORY PERRY Though abstract, your paintings have subjects; there can be elements of narrative, references to people, places, time, and to literature.

They are about something in the world besides themselves or about art. What drove that decision?

SEAN SCULLY I thought that abstract painting had lost its ability to communicate and was ready to fall – which it duly did. I wondered what I was going to do; was I going to stop painting, or be a figurative artist which is the way I started out – or find some other way? I took my minimalist work and my early figurative work that was influenced by the German Expressionists principally (Schmitt-Rottluff and Müller and so on) and I blended them. I made abstract paintings that were very connected to subjects, to bodies, proportion, nature, and what I believed – and believe to this very day – is that abstract painting must be accountable. You cannot build abstraction on abstraction because it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. It doesn’t communicate anything and you can’t connect with an audience.

I am talking about a kind of conceptual abstraction that re-appeared in the ‘90s, that was all elegant and coloured and had a lot to do with the phenomena of what you do when you subject paint to a certain process. All that sort of stuff is incapable of breaking out of the art world lingo cocoon. I made paintings with titles like 'The Bather' or 'Secret Sharer' that forged a connection between the painting and a subject. I think the metaphor is what drives art Photograph by Steve Joy © Sean Scully

and causes empathy. So, what I’m saying is that abstraction has to be accountable.

GP How do you communicate this to the viewer of your paintings? Is the title the first point of entry or is it, for example, information in a label?

SS I think it’s useful for people to have something written – not to explain the work – but if you’re making a painting that is black and white, it’s helpful for people to understand what the metaphor is. The kind of whites I was using for example in a painting like 'Stare' are referring to the colour of bone, dried out bone on the beaches of Long Island, and the black of the night to burnt out wood or old ships. And the title is about the painting’s ability to stare you down. I think it’s interesting for people to have an explanation about how they might relate to the work. Abstraction is like music without words and figuration is like music with words. Of course music with words is a lot more popular than music without words, but music without words is deeper: Beethoven, Miles Davis, the other stuff’s folk music in a way.

GP You’ve said you want your paintings to engender an empathetic response. Are you striving for a shared experience or are you open to the fact that people bring their own backgrounds and may respond to them in a way that was unintended?

SS Well, that’s what I love about abstraction. I’m trying for the latter, I want to give people maximum freedom and that’s why I chose abstraction in the 19

first place. The viewer in a sense has to bring them of course there’s Mark Rothko, who made a lot to life. They need to be resolved by people looking of terrible figurative paintings but managed for a at them – this is something you find a lot in Matisse, decade to make some radiant abstract paintings. he provokes a great empathy in people. You see it in The reason, I think, that my work has managed to Picasso too, 'Les Demoiselle D’ Avignon'. You’ve got remain engaging to people is this difference in the to put it together yourself, and I love that quality. I power of the metaphor. If the metaphor is not really like people to play around with my paintings in their deep and genuine and expressed it won’t cross minds. A great American writer said that I used the over, it won’t get out of its art world cocoon. You’ve "language of Lego" – and of course Lego is genius. got to find a way to make a painting that touches The possibilities are infinite, an infinite kind of people, that they can relate to. You can do that with cannibalisation and remaking and re-creating; it’s like Rothko because of the sense of the figure and the an IQ aid. So I make paintings that can in a sense be ground, the metaphor he talked about of characters taken apart and put back together again. But to that on a stage – the canvas being the stage and the I add the pathos of the history of art, so I paint them figures moving on it. In the case of Rothko, people like Tiziano. have got on board and his work seems to have GP You mention art history–art historians would touched people universally. My paintings are a lot make distinctions between ‘disegno’ and ‘colore’ more energetic and a lot more positive in to refer to the spirit of design/line in Renaissance terms of drawing.

Florence and the use of colour by Venetian artists.

I make a kind of drawing that’s very directional You have described yourself as a linear artist, but you and rhythmical which brings me in a funny way in are also a great colourist - you apply layer upon layer, correspondence with Rock and Roll, with Blues. as you said, like Titian. Do you think there is a natural What’s really amazing about Rock and Roll is that distinction to be made or can you embody both? it’s been inexhaustible and it’s made with small SS I think I want to differences. Yet, the results "You've got to find a way to make are full of personality embody both. I have grown to admire Raphael who was and some of it is just a painting that touches people, living in the time of Leonardo miraculous; popular music that they can relate to." and many others – Antonello can be very moving. and Michelangelo. So, what does Raphael do? He I’ve tried to make my work rhythmical, not just just puts it all together in one body of work. He’s compositionally correct because I’m not interested saying you don’t have to run from Leonardo to in perfection. I’m interested in imperfection and Michelangelo, you can have it all in my work – the expression, because beauty is not something that’s School of Athens. And what I’ve done is work my static; it’s something that’s got some kind of grit to way through a kind of linearity to become a very it, rough edges. passionate body painter – extremely soft edges, GP You went against the grain with painting in complicated colours that can only be made on the the late 70s/early 80s, when Neo-Expressionism surface – making it into a very emotional, poetic and was the predominant style. Did you consciously deep experience. think that you wanted to reinterpret or revivify GP Mark Rothko used to say that the ideal Abstract Expressionism? position to view his paintings was 18 inches away, so SS That’s a good question. Basically what I think that you’re enveloped by the colour and you have I’ve done is taken abstract expressionist vitality, this immersive experience. Is there an optimal way to passed it through Minimalism and came out the approach a Sean Scully painting? other side with a fusion of the two. So my work SS Well, I think people should be able to do what isn’t mystical in the way that a lot of Abstract they want and if they want to stand 18 inches away, Expressionism was. There was a lot of excessive let them! But this brings up an interesting point nonsense written on that work that the public soon because very few abstract painters have managed got fed up with. I’ve made it in a sense modular – to touch people. There are only really a handful of like minimalist drawing because I was a practising abstract painters who crossed over: there’s Mondrian post-minimalist for five years. The fusion of the two who made a lot of beautiful figurative paintings is a new kind of abstraction, an abstraction that first, some that dealt with extreme spirituality, and has the advantages of both. I’ve made it a lot more 20

Top of page Sean Scully, Pink Dark Triptych, 2011, Oil on linen, Pallant House Gallery, Presented by an Anonymous Donor through Timothy Taylor Gallery (2012) © Sean Scully Above Sean Scully, Stare, 1984, Oil on linen, Private collection © Sean Scully

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physical, sculptural, and of course serialised. There is the very end of this huge amount of space, next a sort of repetitive, modular quality to the drawing to a window that had a diffused blind over it. I was that underpins all the feeling that connects convinced that was the only place I could make it to Minimalism.

“Doric” paintings. Then I made these little stripey GP You don’t use diagonals in your paintings. Do paintings and I made a version of Picasso’s 'Child you find that this limitation frees you up in a way? with a Dove' for my kids’ bedroom. I do things like SS That’s a profound question. I’ve used that when I’m there, and I feel very free. diagonals in a very limited way, because I think I’m When I’m in Barcelona the paintings tend to be searching all the time for profundity; something smaller and darker and greyer, sometimes with a lot deep. Of course, the horizon and the vertical – the of red. In New York I make a lot of ambitious, more figure against the horizon, or the tree, are just competitive paintings one might say. So, I use all fundamental to human existence. I’m very attracted three places, and I suppose my favourite place is to diagonals, they would offer me a huge number of New York. So there is a relationship between where possibilities pictorially but it doesn’t make for better I am and what I do. I had rough wooden floors art. For example, Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg in my studio in the 80s, it was dark, aggressive, famously fell out over exactly that issue – the use and the paintings that I made then were dark and or not of diagonals. These things have value, they aggressive. But the paintings, as I’ve become older have great importance. I’ve considered it a lot, I’m and more successful, have opened up and become very attracted to diagonal lines but so far I haven’t a lot more lyrical. 'Dark Pink Triptych' (in the Pallant given into it. But I must say I’ve got a couple of House Gallery collection), for example, is imbued paintings with diagonals in that are very beautiful. with a kind of colour that I wasn’t using in the It’s not a closed subject.

80s.The birth of my son has lifted a great sorrow GP You’ve mentioned that your work is autooff me – because my first son died. Now I would biographical – you’ve say I am even a happy "I'm an equal opportunity triptych maker. person, so he’s brought had this transnational existence. You were born in They're extremely democratic paintings" me an incredible amount Ireland, moved to London of light and beauty. before you were four, moved to New York when you GP The triptych is closely associated, at least were about thirty. Now you paint a lot in Germany in the West, with altar pieces or smaller works and Spain. How does that inform your work – that for private devotion, although the number three experience of being a world citizen? has an association with non-Christian traditions SS If you go to different places and speak and religions as well. How much of these Western different languages, as I do, your mind has to practices or non-Western traditions have informed function ‘newly’. You cannot avoid that, because life your work or your decision to choose to work in a through the prism of Spanish is different than life triptych format? through the prism of English, or German. So when I SS I would say all of it. Because it’s the basis of go to these different countries I have to construct infinity and the number three is very beautiful; it’s my thoughts in a slightly different way, and I allow not dividable in a certain sense. I have been inspired the place itself to influence me. I can’t be just in one of course by Quattrocento paintings. I made an place, and I don’t like the idea of somebody being a homage to my son, Paul, that’s in the Tate– it’s one national artist in some way I’m not thinking about of my greatest paintings, and a very important what it’s like to be a British artist or what it’s like painting for me. I love the idea that the triptych to be an Irish artist. It’s necessary to be a little off is connected to religion in the Christian sense, but balance, not to be too comfortable. also to other religions and to the number three GP Is there a different look to the paintings you that is so special in so many ways. It’s interesting make in Germany versus Spain? that ‘Winter Triptych’, which will be in the show, SS Yeah, I think there is. When I’m in Germany is owned by a Chinese collector, who absolutely I’m in the countryside; my view out of the window adores it because it has some kind of relationship is a field inhabited by cows. Nobody knows where to a Zen feeling. So, in Western art of course, you the studio is and that provides a certain kind of have a hierarchy. In Duccio’s 'Maestà' you have a freedom. The “Doric” paintings I made in a room at hierarchy. You have the Madonna and Child in the 22

Sean Scully, 1.5.91, Watercolour on paper, Private collection © Sean Scully

middle, with the angels at the side, and the apostles and the lesser figures on the sides supporting the central panel. They’re always very centrifugal. What I like to do is bust that open, so I make a narrative and I give them titles like ‘River’. The idea of the river is that it’s flowing from left to right, or from the mountains into the sea, so there’s movement in my triptychs.

GP As you’ve said, there’s not always a hierarchy.

Certainly with 'Paul', there is, but in something like ‘Dark Pink Triptych’, for instance, there’s no hierarchy with the central panel. There’s more of an equal relationship among the three.

SS Well, I’m an equal opportunity triptych maker! They’re extremely democratic paintings, but I put these areas in a kind of competition, so that they’re in a sense figures that have to stand up for themselves in different ways. 'Dark Pink Triptych' has a very beautiful delicate area on one side which in its own way can stand up to the more strident area on the other end. So there is definitely a dialogue about different kinds of power in my paintings. In these triptych paintings there’s always this sense of areas standing up to each other.

GP You’ve said that your work has aspects of

intimacy and monumentality. There are relatively intimate spaces at Pallant House Gallery. How do you think the work’s going to respond to being hung there?

SS In big spaces they can look majestic and take on the kind of spaces that sculpture can in a way that most painting can’t. That’s because of the lack of pictorial space, because they are so emphatic and emblematic. That said, my most successful exhibitions in New York, certainly in the 80s, were in the David McKee Gallery before he got a big space.

The paintings just looked fabulous and terrible, all at the same time. People just loved it because there wasn’t enough space for them, and it made them very alive. There’s some quality about that that could be very interesting with relation to Pallant House Gallery. We’ll see!

Sean Scully: Triptychs is in galleries 12-14 from 2 November 2013 to 26 January 2014. A new publication containing essays by Sean Scully and Simon Martin is available from the Pallant House Gallery Bookshop. Sean Scully will talk in conversation with Kelly Grovier at the Gallery on Sat 2 Nov 2013, 3pm (p.53). Visit www.pallant.org.uk for more information.

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THE FORGOTTEN POP ARTIST Pauline Boty was a pioneer of British Pop art yet her work has been largely overlooked since her death aged just 28. Dr Sue Tate argues for a timely reassessment

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Pauline Boty, The Only Blonde in the World, 1963, Oil on canvas, Image courtesy of the owner Š Artist’s estate/Tate, London 2013

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Pauline Boty, Countdown to Violence, 1964, Oil on canvas, Image courtesy of the owner Š Artist’s estate

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Pauline Boty painting Derk Marlowe with Unknown Ladies Š Michael Seymour

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E.Q. NICHOLSON AND THE MILL HOUSE COLLECTION As highlights from a rare private collection go on display in the house, art historian Vivienne Light introduces the people and stories behind it The Mill House Collection consists of a hundred paintings and drawings spanning the period from 1880 to 1960. These works are intimately bound up with the life, family and friends of Elsie Queen Nicholson (1908-1992).

E.Q. (as she was familiarly known) was the daughter of cultured and wealthy parents. Her father was the novelist Leopold Myers, her mother, Elsie Mellen Palmer, was the daughter of the founder of Colorado Springs. E.Q. herself was a woman of indomitable spirit, energy and magnetism. After a privileged early life she faced challenging times, personal loss and financial insecurity, in the face of which she showed great courage and stoicism.

A painter and textile designer, she designed celebrated fabrics and produced some 120 works in gouache, inks, pencil, watercolour, pastel and collage which evidenced an “infectious pleasure…in the everyday world”.The Mill House Collection includes nearly 30 of her own works and over 70 by other artists. These were for the most part pictures that she owned, many of them given to her by the artists themselves, including members of the extended Nicholson family and friends such as Frank Dobson, John Craxton, Lucian Freud and Julian Trevelyan.

The first paintings of the collection hung on the walls of Mill House – originally the miller’s house adjacent to Alderholt Mill, half way between the villages of Alderholt and Sandleheath, not far from

Fordingbridge and the New Forest. E.Q. took out a lease in 1941 at a time when she was looking to move away from the South Coast which had become a prime target for Luftwaffe bombing. On the walls she hung paintings by her father-in-law William Nicholson, his first wife Mabel Pryde and her sister-in-law Winifred Nicholson.

E.Q. had become a member of the Nicholson family when in 1931 she married Christopher (Kit) Nicholson, the younger son of William and Mabel and brother of Ben. Mabel Pryde was a fine painter; Marguerite Steen (William’s partner in later life) wrote that she would “occasionally paint one of the children, or the cat, or a family group, with an ease and certainty hair-raising to William”. One of Mabel’s paintings that came to E.Q. is 'The Grange, Rottingdean' (1912) which has the resonance of a Dutch 17th century interior. In the painting a thirteen-year old Nancy Nicholson resignedly sits in a chair staring ahead while her brother Kit is framed in a far-off doorway.

William Nicholson was very fond of E.Q. and found his relationship with Kit easier than with Ben. One painting he gave E.Q. and Kit was 'The White House, Sutton Veny' (c.1926). This house had been a gift from William’s father-in-law, Sir Lionel Philips, when William married Philip’s daughter, Edith Stuart-Wortley, after the death of Mabel. Much to the horror of the neighbours, William had the beautiful stone manor house painted white.

On more than one occasion Kit Nicholson found himself called upon to be peacemaker between

John Craxton, Alderholt Mill, Coloured ink on paper, On loan from Private Collections (2013) © Estate of John Craxton

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William and Ben. The relationship between the two was complex and often strained. William financially supported Ben into his early forties; it was not until much later that Ben, as a leading figure in British modernism, eclipsed both his father’s earnings and his reputation.

In trying to moderate tension between these two, Kit was supported by Ben’s first wife Winifred Nicholson. A portrait of Kit (1928) by Winifred is in the collection. It shows a young man fully absorbed reading a book. Painted straight from the palette, the brushwork is loose and soft; paint is transmuted into light itself. During her time in India in 1919 Winifred learned that one did not necessarily need to resort to mixing colours with white or black. Colour was to become a vital matter for her, an emotional, spiritual and physical affair, on a par with the abstract language and qualities of music.

Winifred encouraged Kit in his drawing and whilst staying with her at Banks Head in Cumbria or at her parents’ house in Boothby, Brampton, he drew several landscapes capturing light and texture in the strong spare line of a Nicholson. These, together with early portraits of school friends, are part of the collection.

Though Kit wished to be a painter, he was strongly discouraged by William. Instead, he studied architecture at Cambridge and Princeton Universities.

This allowed him not only to “give full reign to his love of art but also to satisfy his pragmatic nature”. In 1933, after setting up practice in London, Kit quickly won commissions. One was to make alterations to Durham Wharf, the Thames-side studio and home of Julian Trevelyan and his wife, the potter Ursula Mommens who had been a girlhood friend of E.Q. A 1946 painting of Durham Wharf by Trevelyan is one of Trevelyan’s works in the Collection.

Inspired initially by the buildings of Le Corbusier and André Lurçat, Kit became a devotee of Modernism. His brother Ben, discovering the paintings of Mondrian and the Parisian avantgarde, became equally committed to the Modern Movement. In the collection there is a 1934 woodcut

by Ben, ‘5 Circles’, made at a time when the painter was also constructing his white-painted carved, incised reliefs with layered and juxtaposed circles, squares and rectangles. The spirit and harmony of these reliefs, their formality and geometry, purity of line and unencumbered space were an added inspiration to Kit as an architect, and he brought these qualities to his design of Augustus John’s studio at Fryern Court, Fordingbridge in 1935. Two years 30

Lucian Freud, Portrait of John Craxton, c. 1942, Ink on paper, On loan from Private Collections (2013) © Estate of the artist

later Kit designed a new club house and hangar for the London Gliding Club, of which he was a member.

Niklaus Pevsner rated these buildings as a significant breakthrough in 1930s design.

E.Q. worked closely with Kit on many of his projects, designing the interiors. She had the ability to transform and create rooms with seemingly little effort. When she moved into Mill House she furnished the rooms with a mix of modernist and antique furniture and painted the walls white, quickly changing a gloomy chocolate and cream house into one of “optimism and light”. A nineteen-year old John Craxton helped her in part of this venture. He was to stay with her many times in the early 1940s. He later said that her “infectious joie de vivre” was the catalyst that caused him to start painting landscapes in earnest.

Craxton described himself as “a kind of Arcadian”, a linear painter subscribing “to that peculiar northern predilection for investing … visual language with some quality of mystery and enigma”. The collection has several of Craxton’s paintings made whilst at Mill House.

Lucian Freud, a fellow student of Craxton’s at Goldsmiths, sometimes accompanied him to Mill House and he too became very fond of E.Q. The collection

E. Q. Nicholson, Still Life with Cornflake Packet, c. 1946, Gouache and pencil on paper, On loan from Private Collections (2013) © Estate of the artist

has a drawing by Freud of Craxton in the sitting room at Mill House. Craxton himself is drawing with a nib pen and ink. In the background is Kit’s plan chest.

Another Freud drawing is of E.Q.’s donkey facing the viewer head on. It is a position that Freud repeated in subsequent horse paintings..

It was the presence of the young painters, particularly Craxton, which encouraged E.Q. herself to begin painting. Like Craxton’s, her work was linear and poetic, touched by the brushstrokes of the romantic and surreal. Most of her paintings are still lifes. Like her brother-in-law Ben she enjoyed the collision and occlusion of objects, creating a playful “virtuosic fantasia”.

Ben always held E.Q. in high esteem and loved her directness and outspokenness. One of the collage greetings cards he made for her and Kit is in the collection. When Ben returned to live in England in 1971 one of its attractions was to be near E.Q. again.

In 1950, two years after Kit tragically died in a gliding accident, Ben invited E.Q. and his sister Nancy to go with him on a painting trip to San Gimignano in Tuscany. E.Q.’s and Ben’s Tuscan drawings evidence a shared practice in the “bold omission” of some features and “selective detail” of others. One of E.Q.’s

Tuscan drawings is in the collection, as is a subsequent painting based upon it.

In the mid 1950s E.Q. ceased to paint or acquire much of the new art that was now emerging in Britain. In 1956 the first of two exhibitions of American Abstract Expressionist art took place in London. These were followed in the early 1960s by exhibitions of Op and Pop art; all was on the change.

A seemingly impenetrable barrier developed between the old and the new art. Neo-romanticism (and indeed all painting that made direct reference to subject-matter) fell very much out of favour. Only in fairly recent years has public interest in this strand of early twentieth century British art begun to revive.

As well as being a significant artist in her own right, E.Q. Nicholson gave support and inspiration in her lifetime to many other artists. It is a fitting memorial to her that the Mill House Collection is now available at Pallant House to offer similar inspiration to others today.

The Nicholsons and their Circle: The Mill House Collection is in Rooms 3 and 4 from 12 October 2013 to 1 February 2014. Vivienne Light is the author of Circles and Tangents: Art in the Shadow of Cranborne Chase. She will give a talk on Thurs 5 Dec, 6pm (p.53).

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THE MASTER ENGRAVER Alan Powers introduces the celebrated illustrator, painter and book engraver Eric Ravilious

Different decades of the twentieth century can be matched to particular printmaking techniques. In terms of such a schema, the Edwardian period was an age of etching, the 1940s and 50s the time of lithography, and the 1960s the triumph of the silkscreen. For the 1920s and 30s, wood engraving was the ascendant medium, particularly in England.

The 1920s saw an upsurge of general interest in printing in Britain unlike anything before or since, which included the incorporation of wood engraving into the mainstream of book publishing as well, in succession to the earlier use of the medium for private press limited editions. Since the collapse of wood engraving as a mainstream commercial activity in the 1890s, the technique had been resurrected within the Arts and Crafts movement, where its tactile qualities and unmediated impression of the artist’s touch were appreciated. Like etching, it is normally used as a monochrome medium, and for artists of the early twentieth century embracing the new creed that all art was fundamentally a question of design, the wood engraver’s task of arranging pure black and white into lines, masses and textures within a confined field imposed a requirement to think in an abstract manner even when treating a representational subject. There was no room for fudging or smudging.

Born in 1903, Eric Ravilious was just starting his art training in Eastbourne when the Society of Wood Eric Ravilious, Commander Looking through the Periscope, from the Submarine Series, 1940-41, Lithograph on paper, Pallant House Gallery, The Dennis Andrews and Christopher Whelan Gift (2008)

Engravers was founded in 1920. Proposed by Paul Nash, he was elected as a member five years later, as he was leaving the Royal College of Art where Nash was teaching. Ravilious began to make his name as a watercolour painter and a mural artist as well as an engraver, associated with other members of the student group that Nash described as “an outbreak of talent”, including Enid Marx, Edward Bawden and Barnett Freedman. In his early career, wood engravings were his most reliable source of income, apart from teaching.

Although members of the Society were encouraged to exhibit single, stand-alone prints at its annual group shows, Ravilious was immediately drawn into book illustration with a novella, 'Desert', by Martin Armstrong, in 1926. His style at this time was closer to the more painterly engraving of Paul Nash and his brother John, but Ravilious was best known for his neat cutting, using a variety of strokes that provided equivalents for surfaces and effects of light. His human figures tended to be slightly doll-like and he seemed most at ease when he could place them in meticulously detailed landscape or interior settings.

Illustration in the 1920s was sometimes burdened with a false rusticity, but while drawing inspiration from the primitive classicism of Elizabethan needlework and similar folk art imagery, Ravilious brought his imagination in line with his technical skill in design and 33

Eric Ravilious, Letter Maker, 1938, Lithograph on paper, Private collection

Eric Ravilious, Sadler and Harness Maker, 1938, Lithograph on paper, Private collection

and learning about these signs. As a result, he achieves cutting to make works which, while full of traceable something similar to Sylvia Townsend Warner who influences, are distinctly his own and which wore their in 'The True Heart', published in the same year, set a false naivety without sentimentality. retelling of the Cupid and Psyche legend in There seems to have been something about the Victorian Essex. rustic classicism of that time, distantly refracting the As his engraving became more ambitious, Ravilious Renaissance yet, as we know from the poetry fully showed the skills he also employed in dancing attuned to its Neoplatonism, that enabled Ravilious and playing tennis – a to create some hauntingly memorable emblem pictures.

"His contemporaries commented that spontaneity and physical control associated with He was commissioned by while he enjoyed a party, there was rhythmic movement. He the Lanston Monotype also something aloof and slightly made pencil drawings Corporation, an enlightened unworldly about him." onto the blocks before pillar of the printing trade, cutting, as most engravers to engrave twelve images do, more beautiful, his RCA friend Douglas Percy Bliss for its 'Almanack' for 1929, a slender pocket diary for tells us, than the prints that emerged from them. presentation to clients. Each of the symbols of the Bliss describes how “he fashioned ‘scorpers’ (a sort of Zodiac (with a few variants of his own invention) miniature gouge) from odd pieces of metal, and soon enters the East Sussex countryside and coast, was obtaining upon box-wood these qualities of dot suggesting that modern lives are as much ruled by and speck and dash and dab in white-line with which mythological archetypes as any before them, and that he enriches his blocks.” When working at his parents’ the landscapes of today contain, for those who can see house in Eastbourne in a trance of concentration, them, the radiance of the cosmos. To assure us that sometimes whistling in thirds on an intake of breath, his symbology is in earnest, Ravilious wrote a short the family canary sat on his shoulder watching him introduction to the booklet, his only official writing at work. Ravilious spent hours ‘covering a passage about his own work, in which he discourses with charm 34

Eric Ravilious, Newhaven Harbour, 1937, Lithograph on paper, Private collection

with tiny dots or flecks to get an even gray effect, such as the ground beneath the figure of his 'Boy Birdnesting.’ This and other single prints of the late 1920s such as 'Children in a Park' display a farouche quality in the awkward poses of their young subjects yet more tender than grotesque, suggesting a wry reflection on the phase of life he had just left behind.

His contemporaries commented that while he enjoyed a party and while his letters testify to his humorous approach to life, there was also something aloof and slightly unworldly about him.

Ravilious’ engravings divide between single items from imagination, those done to illustrate given texts and those commissioned for other purposes – book covers, abstract emblems and advertising images.

As a watercolour painter, by contrast, his work depicted actual scenes, places and objects. The book illustrations include Shakespeare’s 'Twelfth Night' and plays by Christopher Marlowe. For a book of rather feeble verses by Martin Armstrong, '54 Conceits', 1933, he produced a series of vignettes, somewhat like a 17th century emblem book, that spring from the subjects of the poems while far surpassing them in feeling and wit.

'The Writings of Gilbert White of Selborne', 1938, his last major commission, was one of his favourite books.

The engravings have a quality of intensity like a hot summer’s day with thunder ahead.

Perhaps the best known of all Ravilious’s engravings is the vignette commissioned for Wisden’s 'Cricketers’ Almanack' for 1938 as part of a redesign of the existing typographic cover undertaken by the advertising agent extraordinaire, Robert Harling – also a designer, magazine editor and novelist. The early Victorian batsman remained poised at his wicket every year until, ironically, Ravilious’ centenary in 2003, and was soon reinstated by popular demand. As early as 1937, the print curator Basil Gray wrote that “of modern wood engravers he is certainly the most perfect.”

Ravilious was lost at sea while serving as a war artist.

By that time, his printmaking interest had moved on to lithography, in which he developed a personal style with the book 'High Street' and the wartime series of submarine prints. His perfection was combined with an attractive and approachable way of seeing the world, so that his work is as much appreciated and circulated today as it has ever been.

Eric Ravilious: Prints is in the De’Longhi Print Room from 8 October to 8 December 2013. Alan Powers will talk about Time and Place in the Prints of Eric Ravilious on Thurs 28 Nov, 6pm. www.pallant.org.uk 35

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THE INDUSTRIOUS ARTIST To mark an exhibition of prints by Clare Leighton, Simon Martin explores the depiction of labour in the artist’s work

Portrait of Clare Leighton in her Studio Opposite Clare Leighton, Breadline New York, 1932, Wood engraving

During the course of her long life the artist Clare Leighton (1898-1989) produced a remarkable body of work – over 840 wood engravings, twelve books that she both wrote and illustrated, as well as paintings, glass and ceramics, and celebrated lecture tours that led her to be described as “one of America’s most dynamic platform personalities.” Whilst Leighton was able to produce finely detailed botanical engravings, she avoided the cliché of a woman artist depicting flowers and decorative motifs as a leisure activity. Not only hard-working herself, she was drawn to create images of physical labour: farmers toiling in the fields, fishermen pulling in their catch, dockhands off-loading goods, and women washing clothes or mending nets.

No one seems to get a moment’s rest in Leighton’s images, except perhaps in a powerfully bleak engraving called ‘Breadline, New York’ produced at the height of the Great Depression in which men warm themselves before a fire at the end of a seemingly endless queue that stretches through the city. The skyscrapers that tower above the unemployed men are a stark contrast to the lyrical forms of the rolling hills and beautifully described trees that feature in Leighton’s more typical depictions of the countryside. There seems to be an implicit virtue and contentment in the rural labour that she depicts, and a fear of the possibility of unemployment.

Leighton’s extraordinary work ethic was rooted in her unconventional upbringing. Both parents were writers, but Leighton’s father who wrote Wild West boys’ stories

was also a frustrated painter, and her mother would scold him ruthlessly for “neglecting his money-earning writing” whilst she wrote pot-boilers for the dailies in order to keep the upper-class household going. Leighton later wrote a novel about her Bohemian mother called ‘Tempestuous Petticoat: The Story of an Invincible Edwardian’ and she recalled how “normal behaviour in the household was one of unceasing work.” Her background perhaps explains to some extent the dual career that she was to follow as both writer and artist.

She was from a generation of young women whose opportunities and outlook changed following the First World War in which so many of their brothers, husbands and fiancés were killed. Her own brother Roland, killed in 1915, was to be immortalised by his fiancé Vera Brittain in her memoir ‘Testament of Youth’.

Leighton’s mother and uncle Jack, an artist and illustrator, had declared that she would never become a successful artist and it seems that the young Clare was determined to prove them wrong. After the family moved to Sussex she persuaded her parents to let her go to Brighton Art School, an environment that she found “intoxicatingly new” and subsequently to the Slade School of Art, where she was taught by Sir Henry Tonks from 1920-23, which meant hard graft: “months on end sitting before a model and drawing and drawing and drawing.” Faced with the reality of needing to earn her living she left the Slade and began illustrating her father’s Wild West stories, enrolling for evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in order to learn about black and white reproduction. Her tutor, Noel Rooke, engendered her passion for the art of wood engraving, and the sense that her efforts could be immediately rewarded in the printed image. She later wrote of being “spellbound with the feeling of creating light. I was able to imitate the first day of Creation. Each line and every speck made by the tool were to print white.” Her second attempt at wood engraving was bought from an exhibition by Eric Gill, which was a huge endorsement as he was widely considered the leading exponent of the medium at the time.

Leighton had an enlightened attitude towards teaching and inclusion, having been fascinated as a child by a disabled pavement artist she used to encounter when out on walks with her nanny. She later wrote of how “Nanny’s scoldings were of no avail. All I wanted to do was to sit beside this real artist and learn from him. Perhaps – who knew? – he might lend me one of his crayons.” As a young woman she got a job through William Rothenstein teaching children from one of the poorest slum districts of London, taking them to the 38

National Gallery and encouraging them to see beauty in the shapes and forms of chimney pots around them, which no doubt shaped her own approach to mechanical forms.

Whilst teaching she continued to engrave “countless wood blocks, aware of neither fatigue or impatience. It did not seem to matter that three days a week I had to take trains to separate schools in the country. There were weekends and evenings in which to get excited over new designs.”

As Leighton built up a reputation as a book illustrator her teaching career gave way to lecturing, and in 1928 she embarked on a lecture tour of the United States through her then partner the journalist Noel Brailsford.

A subsequent trip to a lumber camp on the QuebecOntario border in the winter of 1930-31 led to the creation of Leighton’s series of engravings of Canadian lumberjacks at work in remote snowy woodland.

During the 1930s Leighton worked on several celebrated books, including ‘The Farmer’s Year’ (1933), which depicted rural activities such as threshing, haymaking, apple-picking, lambing and ploughing associated with the months of the year. Other books that she authored and illustrated included ‘Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle’ (1935) which was inspired by her garden, and the very influential manual, ‘Wood-engraving and Woodcuts’ (1932). Leighton never seemed to stop, later commenting that “actually the artist is always working. By this I don’t mean sitting at a desk engraving or at an easel painting. Probably the most important part of the work is when one is doing nothing but observing and tucking away into the unconscious those things perceived that seminally wait to be transformed into rhythms and designs.”

In 1939, with the break up of her relationship with Brailsford and the approach of World War II, Leighton permanently moved to the USA. The landscape and rural activities of the American South, such as cotton picking and corn shucking, inspired her 1942 book ‘Southern Harvest’, whilst activities such as cranberrying, whaling and lobstering in Connecticut were the focus of a series of twelve designs for Wedgwood plates on the theme of ‘New England Industries.’ After a lifetime of dedicated activity Leighton could rest in the knowledge that she was regarded as one of the most important wood engravers not only in Britain, but also in her adopted country where she had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York City, and accorded the honour a substantial retrospective at the Boston Public Library.

Clare Leighton: Working Life is in the De’Longhi Print Room from 10 December 2013 to 24 February 2014.

David Leighton, nephew of Clare, will give a talk on Thurs 16 Jan, 6pm (p.54)

From Top Clare Leighton, April ‘Sowing’, The Farmer’s Year, 1933, Wood engraving; Clare Leighton, February ‘Lopping’, The Farmer’s Year, 1933, Wood engraving

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BRITISH SCULPTURE IN MINIATURE Claire Shea introduces an exhibition which provides a rare glimpse into the archive of Cass sculpture Foundation

Cass Sculpture Foundation was started in 1992 by Wilfred and Jeannette Cass who retired to their home in Goodwood and, upon placing a couple of modern sculptures by Henry Moore and Elizabeth Frink in their back garden, decided that they wanted to find a way of supporting future generations of sculptors. Wilfred had developed a relationship with Henry Moore as part of his work with Reeves, an art materials supplier, and Moore had encouraged Wilfred’s interest in sculpture in the landscape.

Following their move to Goodwood, Wilfred and Jeannette spent a year travelling around the world, visiting all of the major sculpture parks in existence at the time. They decided that the two largest challenges facing sculpture parks were that they became quickly overcrowded and outdated. They returned to Goodwood and established a new model for commissioning and exhibiting contemporary sculpture: the Cass Sculpture Foundation. The Foundation’s model is designed to be self-funding and constantly changing through sales. All of the works on the Foundation’s grounds are for sale and the proceeds from each sale are split evenly between the artist whose work is sold and future commissions.

The Foundation’s archive houses a history of its commissions and provides an overview, in miniature, of a unique history of British sculpture over the past 20 years. We always ask artists to make a maquette when we are discussing a new commission. The maquette process allows us to imagine what the work would look Zadok Ben-David's, Horse Power, 1999, Painted steel and wood base.

like in large-scale, and it also helps the artist to work out any issues that may arise in the fabrication process of the large-scale work.

At the start of every commission, the Foundation meets the artist and, in most cases, asks them what they have always wanted to make, but never had the opportunity to produce. For example, Wilfred and Jeannette met with Lynn Chadwick shortly before he died and asked him if there was anything that he had never made. He pulled out a small maquette for a work entitled ‘Ace of Diamonds’ which is now on the Foundation’s ground. This was his last large-scale work and a departure from his previous works however, the result is a unique and unexpected kinetic sculpture.

For this exhibition we have pulled out maquettes by well-established artists such as Anthony Caro, Lynn Chadwick, Marc Quinn and William Tucker alongside examples of commissioned works and other objects that we have accumulated over the years from artists such as Thomas Heatherwick and Tony Cragg, providing a unique representative of the early stages of the commissioning.

Over the past 20 years the Foundation has commissioned more than 400 large-scale sculptures by more than 250 artists. In the coming years, it will be extending its model to commission international artists and the archive of maquettes and works on paper will grow to present a broader view of the history of contemporary sculpture.

Artists’ Maquettes from the Cass Sculpture Foundation is in galleries 15-17 from 19 October – 17 November 2013 41

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SQUALLS AND MURMURATIONS Ahead of her solo show in the studio, Outside In Award Winner Kate Bradbury talks to Vivienne Roberts, Curator of the Julian Hartnoll Gallery, London

VIVIENNE ROBERTS ‘Squalls and Murmurations’ is an interesting title for your show, what does it mean?

KATE BRADBURY I really like the sound of those words and I’m always listening out for words that I like because I write songs with my brother. There are lots of birds in my work and the actual meaning of murmuration is either a quiet murmuring sound or the collective noun for a flock of starlings. A squall is a storm and that suited the swirly patterns in my drawings. The monoprints often have a stormy sky and a lot of the sculptures are crude and brutal in texture.

Murmuration is playing on the word murmur, a much quieter space like the fine lines and delicate paper that I draw with. So it’s loud and quiet and reflects both sides of my work.

VR At first glance your work seems very varied ranging from the intricate black and white ink drawings to the large, colourful suitcase characters, dancing dervishes and your latest work, the humorous goats.

Are they connected?

KB The materials I use for each are the same, they are all made from found objects often with plaster heads and there are always groups of them. Even in the drawings there are always groups of characters or buildings. I do like to experiment and to work on different things so that may be why they look different and it also depends on what I find.

VR Do you have a favourite piece in the show, something that is particularly special to you?

KB It’s difficult to choose what to take and what to Kate Bradbury, Detail of The Dust Gatherer © Kate Bradbury

leave behind. I do have old favourites but at the same time I want to take new work. There are a couple of the suitcase people that I really like, 'Railroad Jim' and 'The Doctor' and there are others in cupboards that I’ve got to dig out to see if I still like them enough to take them. Some of the drawings I prefer to others ‘Underground’ with the thumbprints and the circles and ‘Peter’s Opera’ which is the one with colour in it.

VR How do you feel about exhibiting your work and moving it from a private space into a public arena?

KB It is difficult as a lot of the time you don’t make it with anyone seeing it in mind. You make it because it needs to be made. I get a picture of something in my head and then need to make it, to offload it and then I can think about something else. I get obsessed with an idea and try and see it through.

VR Where do your ideas come from?

KB Anywhere. At work I’m just making sandwiches.

I don’t even have to think about it so my mind is always on what I’m going to do when I get home. The job is good in that way as I have the space to be able to go to a different room in my head while I’m buttering the bread. I find the stage sets in theatre inspiring and I also like architecture. Sometimes my ideas come from other artists - some ‘Outsider’ artists that I have got to know and others that are famous. It was interesting when Phil Baird (another Outside In Award Winner) said he liked Paul Klee because he’s my favourite artist as well - Klee and Miro and I also like some abstract painters, like Franz Kline. I listen to music while I’m 43

Kate Bradbury, Detail of Railroad Jim © Kate Bradbury

working so that’s probably an influence. A lot of the songs have got stories in them and it always creates a visual image in my head so I’m sure those images bleed over into the pictures that I draw and the characters that I create.

VR When you are working on an idea do you just focus on that or do you work on different artworks at the same time?

KB I work on different things, but only in a practical sense. I work on drawing in the evenings, disappearing into it, as at the end of the day at work in the cafe I’m tired. Making constructions is noisy. I use a hammer and saw and I have neighbours both sides so out of respect to them I don’t use the hammer and drill all night. If I had a studio I might do that. When I’m here by myself on my day off I will be drilling, hammering and sawing all day from the time I get up. I do a bit every day. I get restless sitting down and I like the physical exertion of making something.

I’ll pick up pieces on the way to work and on the way home - it doesn’t have to be people’s rubbish; it could be just a feather, a stone or a piece of wood.

VR Has art been a part of your life from a young age?

KB Not really, although we were always taken to galleries and museums. Some friends were good archaeologists and they would take us off into caves and at the time it was great fun as a child, but now I’m 44

starting to realise that finding stuff and seeing the cave paintings with crude handprints meant something.

I didn’t understand art, but I knew it was important and it was only much later in life that I got what it was all about, but I didn’t start doing it for myself. When I did start doing it I didn’t think “I am going to be an artist.”

VR Did you start drawing first or making the sculptures?

KB It was about the same time really. I lived in this house in Stamford Hill that was falling down and the basement was full of rubbish that the previous tenants had left behind. I had this horrible, little room and I used to sit there making things and drawing pictures to relieve how I felt. I didn’t really know what I was doing or how much I was doing until a friend who was an artist came in one day and saw it all. To me it was natural and just something I was doing. I wouldn’t have thought of it as art but my family have always been very encouraging and I was persuaded to frame a few pictures and a local library has a great gallery and they persuaded me to put on a show there. It was good fun and people showed an interest and I just kept doing it after that.

VR It’s been just over a year since you became an Outside In Award Winner. How do you think you have been affected by Outside In? KB They have given me a lot of opportunities to exhibit and to promote my work on their website. I’ve also been able to see the work of their other artists and have realised just how many people are out there also working at home. I’ve got to know a few of them and, from what I’ve heard, some have had the same experiences as me where they were told that they were rubbish at school if they couldn’t draw a still life and so were discouraged early on from producing art which is a shame because art is about expression and there is more than one way of expressing something.

I think that many people are afraid to do it, afraid to pick up a piece of paper and pen thinking ‘I’m not an artist, that’s not what I do’, but they might enjoy it or find some fulfilment in it if they did.

VR Any dreams or goals you’d like to pursue in the future?

KB I’d love to get a studio and be able to make some bigger or noisier work and I like the idea of making a stage set, working with animation and just to keep finding inspiration.

‘Squalls and Murmurations’ is in the studio from 5 November to 1 December 2013. For more information about Outside In and Kate Bradbury visit www. outsidein.org.uk

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YOUR LEGACY TO ART

If you have been inspired by Pallant House Gallery, why not consider leaving a legacy in your Will? A gift, however small, will help us maintain our pioneering Community work, innovative exhibition programmes and help conserve the Collections for future generations to enjoy. Thanks to a new government initiative, by leaving at least 10% of your estate to charity, the rate of Inheritance Tax applicable to the rest of your estate is reduced to 36%. Therefore, by giving to Pallant House Gallery you could benefit your beneficiaries as well.

All legacies are paid into the Gallery’s endowment fund which, until 30 June 2016, will be matched pound for pound with a grant from the HLF Catalyst Endowment Fund. To discuss leaving a legacy to Pallant House Gallery, please contact Elaine Bentley, Head of Development (01243 770844 / e.bentley@pallant.org.uk).

Thank you.

Paul Catherall, Pallant, 2006, Linocut on paper, Courtesy of the artist, Š Paul Catherall

CHAIRMAN OF THE FRIENDS' LETTER

Clare Leighton, The Lumber Camp - Limbing, Wood engraving, 1931

DEAR FRIENDS, PATRONS AND GALLERY CLUB MEMBERS, I am happy to tell you that our Director Gregory Perry and his wife Sue have joined the Friends of the Gallery and we welcome them very warmly.

As we make new Friends, we lose others. We were extremely saddened by the death of John Morrish in July. John had a great understanding of what membership of the Friends offers, as Julia Cooper describes on page 48. He became immersed in every aspect of our organisation which gave him much pleasure and he will be greatly missed. We are deeply indebted to John for his loyalty and generosity to Pallant House Gallery.

The new exhibition which opens on 2 November, Sean Scully: Triptychs, featuring work by the acclaimed contemporary artist will run through the winter and be supported by an interesting programme of events. We hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to see the exhibition ahead of its public opening at the Friends' Private View on Sunday 3 November (p.49).

The Pallant Proms 2013/14 season is already underway and the first recital took place on 28 September. Details of the next three performances are on page 49. We would appreciate it if Friends

could book tickets in advance as due to their growing popularity we have on occasions experienced queues into North Pallant minutes before performances were due to start.

The Art Book Club season has also begun, dates and the books to be discussed at the next three meetings are on page 48. Once again the Book Club is very popular so we would recommend booking in advance for these meetings to avoid disappointment.

As you know, the Friends are very important to the Gallery, your loyalty and generosity are greatly valued and we always aim to present an exciting programme of events. The recent Edinburgh trip was a great success with a busy programme which included a visit to an artist's studio and an invitation to the work floor of the Dovecot Tapestry studio to talk to one of the weavers about her work. We are always open to suggestions about visits so please do let us know of any ideas you might have.

Once more my thanks to you all for your support.

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

Pallant House Gallery Friends

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John Leslie Morrish

1929–2013 Julia Cooper

Photograph by Simon Martin

Those of us who attended the recent celebration of John’s life learned much about the man we thought we knew. By the same token, his family expressed surprise at how much they had discovered about John from the cards, letters and emails sent by Friends of Pallant House Gallery. All this speaks of an intensely private man and one who would have hated a fulsome eulogy on these pages. Happily there is no need for that: the facts speak for themselves.

John was not only an active Gallery Friend, but became a great friend to many at the Gallery. His involvement began some 30 years ago, when he helped hang the opening exhibition on Mary Potter, the landscape and interiors painter. The newly appointed Curator, David Coke, recalled arriving for his first day in 1981 to find John, sleeves rolled up, helping to hang another exhibition, and added “John knew much more about 20th century art than our callow younger generation!” Indeed, John brought to the developing Gallery not just willing enthusiasm to help but solid experience of the art world, gained at Christie’s art valuation department, Craddock and Barnard, print dealers in Museum Street, London Arts and working for Eugene Schuster, an eccentric young American millionaire, for whom he trawled Europe buying artworks for his New York gallery – and had a lot of fun in the process!

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Pallant House Gallery Friends

John was equally happy helping with mundane tasks for the Friends and the Gallery: endless envelope stuffing for mail-outs, packing Peter Blake badges into boxes and other menial, but necessary jobs. All were tackled with good humour over cheerful conversation and coffee.

We are truly indebted to John for his financial generosity, like his time, given discreetly and without fuss. He set up and devoted time to three funds, supporting the printing of catalogues, artworks on paper and library books. He has also left a wonderfully generous bequest to the Gallery. In smaller ways, his generosity included small gifts for the Friends Office, and John would always find the perfect travel book for friends about to go on holiday. I treasure mine on Alexandria, a city John knew well. He gave it complete with witty annotations eg. “here be pastries!”

John’s long association with Pallant House Gallery provided a focus for his abiding interest in the arts.

He also took much pleasure in his membership of the Friends, enjoying arts-related day trips, holidays in the UK and abroad, lectures, private views and other social events. Moreover, he valued sincerely the friendships made through these shared activities. John hated sentimentality, but I hope he would allow me to say that his quiet and genial presence will be missed by all of us who had the privilege and pleasure of knowing him.

WHAT'S ON FRIENDS' EVENTS

Pallant Prom: Maria Immaculata Setiadi Sat 26 Oct, 12 noon Music from Debussy, Messiaen, Lutoslawski and Chopin will be performed by Immaculata Setiadi, prize winner in several British piano competitions. £5. Friends free but voluntary contributions towards expenses will be appreciated. Please book all tickets in advance.

Friends’ Private View - Sean Scully: Triptych Sun 3 Nov, 10–11am Enjoy exclusive access to the exhibitions prior to their public opening, which includes Sean Scully: Triptychs, Maquettes from the Cass Sculpture Foundation, The Nicholsons and their Circle: The Mill House Collection and Eric Ravilious: Prints.

Free (Coffee and biscuits included).

Behind the counter at Hoare’s Bank, Fleet Street, London Tues 5 Nov, 10.30am – 4pm This Friends’ trip includes a visit to the suite of rooms attached to Hoare’s Bank, predominantly unchanged since the 1820s, as well as an exclusive look at the private museum which is generally closed to the public and the bank’s interesting collection of portraiture. Following lunch, there will be an introduction to the major new exhibition of the Cheapside Hoard at the Museum Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)

Courtesy the Artists and Victoria Miro, London © Elmgreen & Dragset. Photography: Stephen White

of London, the priceless 16th and early 17th century jewels and gemstones which are being displayed in their entirety for the first time since their discovery in a cellar in 1912. £15 (excludes lunch). Make your own way to Hoares Bank, 37 Fleet Street for 10.30am.

Gallery Club visit: Curator’s tour of Tomorrow at the V&A and exclusive invitation to Ken Howard’s Studio Tues 12 Nov, 4 – 8pm This exclusive Gallery Club visit features a special invitation to the studio of the acclaimed artist, Ken Howard OBE RA, which is featured in so many of his paintings.

Howard, who is known for his depiction of light and high degree of draughtsmanship, uses models in his studio and city scenes as his subject matter. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1991. At the V&A. Louise Shannon, curator, will accompany us through the major site-specific installation

which has transformed the former textile galleries into an apartment belonging to a fictional, elderly and disillusioned architect, featuring over 100 objects from the V&A’s collection. We will then leave by taxi for the studio visit. £45 (includes tea, Curator’s tour, taxi fare and evening drinks). We will meet at 4pm at the Rembrandt Hotel, easily accessible from South Kensington tube station, for a cream tea at a specially reserved table in the conservatory.

Art Book Club: Five Women Painters by Teresa Grimes, Judith Collins and Oriana Baddeley Sun 17 Nov, 2.30–4pm A reappraisal of the lives of five 20th century British women painters: Laura Knight, Nina Hamnett, Dora Carrington, Winifred Nicholson and Eileen Agar - all of whom deserve to be recognised as significant creative figures. £5 includes tea and cake cont...

Pallant House Gallery Friends

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Pallant Prom – Natsumi Ikenaga Sat 30 Nov, 12 noon Works by Haydn and Schumann will be played by Natsumi Ikenaga, who has performed in many international concert halls. £5 Friends free but voluntary contributions towards expenses will be appreciated. Please book all tickets in advance.

Pallant Prom – Yoshio Hamano Sat 25 Jan, 12 noon A recital of works by Rachmaninoff, Bach and Shostakovich played

by Yoshio Hamano, a JapaneseRussian pianist. £5 Friends free but voluntary contributions towards expenses will be appreciated. Please book all tickets in advance.

Art Book Club: The Matisse Stories by A S Byatt Sun 19 Jan, 2.30–4pm Called “a masterpiece” by the Sunday Telegraph, this collection of three short stories is inspired by the paintings of Henri Matisse. The myriad ways in which art plays into the drama of human relationships are explored with all the visual, verbal and theatrical flair typical of A. S. Byatt’s writing. £5 includes tea and cake

Art Book Club: Burning Bright

by Tracey Chevalier Sun 16 Feb, 2.30 – 4pm The story of a family who leave behind tragedy in rural Dorset and come to late 18th Century London, where William Blake is their neighbour. Two children get to know this extraordinary poet and painter. £5 includes tea and cake

Friends' Tours The Nicholsons and their Circle: the Mill House Collection Wed 4 Dec, 11 am Katy Norris, Assistant Curator, will give a tour of the exhibition which features work by members of the legendary Nicholson family and their friends such as Lucian Freud and John Craxton. £5 (£2.50 Student Friends) includes coffee and biscuits Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman Wed 15 Jan, 11 am An opportunity to find out more about Pauline Boty, friend and contemporary of Peter Blake and David Hockney, and one of the few females associated with the British Pop artist movement of the 1960s. £5 (£2.50 Student Friends) includes coffee and biscuits

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: Mrs Judy Addison Smith Keith Allison Lady Susan Anstruther John and Annoushka Ayton David and Elizabeth Benson Edward and Victoria Bonham Carter 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 James and Clare Kirkman

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Pallant House Gallery Friends

José and Michael Manser ra Robin Muir and Paul Lyon-Maris Angie O'Rourke Denise Patterson Catherine and Franck Petitgas Charles Rolls and Jans Ondaatje Rolls Mr and Mrs David Russell Sophie and David Shalit Tania Slowe and Paddy Walker John and Fiona Smythe Tim and Judith Wise John Young André Zlattinger

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Grimm Girls:

Otter Gallery, 23 November 10 January 2014 Illustrations, books and artefacts from six much loved fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood;͞ Cinder-­ ella;͞ Snow White;͞ Sleeping Beauty;͞ Rapunzel;͞ Beauty and the Beast. Artists include Arthur Rackham, Charles Robinson, Mervyn Peake and Mabel Lucie Attwell. Grimm Girls: Picturing the

is curated by Dr Anne Anderson.

University of Chichester, College Lane, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 6PE Free Admission 01243 816098 gallery@chi.ac.uk A one-­day symposium on the art of illustrating fairy tales, sponsored by Scrivener Writing Software, will be held at the University of Chichester on 25 November.

Visit www.sussexfolktalecentre.org/events. Â Â Â Â

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WHAT'S ON GALLERY EVENTS Find the rest of the public programme including workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557

TALKS All talks £8.50, Friends £7 Students £7.50 Unless otherwise stated A New Hope, a New Jerusalem: An Artistic Response to a Century of War Thurs 20 March, 6pm Two industrialized world wars forged a shared experience of suffering and conflict in Britain.

It fell to artists and their patrons to give voice to this new national consciousness. In different ways artists sought to acknowledge the personal tragedies of war with an un-compromising honesty.

This artistic response would be bound up with a spiritual and political re-articulation of hope and nationhood; a fresh expression of Britain as the New Jerusalem.

Rupert Toovey will explore how a range of Modern British artists responded to this challenge and the place of Stanley Spencer’s work at the Sandham Memorial Chapel in this movement.

Includes a complimentary glass of wine courtesy of the event sponsor, Toovey’s Antique & Fine Art Auctioneers.

The Bloomsbury Cookbook: Jans Ondaatje Rolls in

conversation with Virginia Nicholson Thurs 3 April, 6pm Cookery writer Jans Ondaatje Rolls throws new light on the Bloomsbury Group with a particular eye on what members such as Virginia Woolf, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry were eating as they debated literature, life and the big issues of the time. Rolls, also author of Bosham Bisque and Chester Chowder, will be in conversation with the author Virginia Nicholson, grand-daughter of Vanessa Bell. A book signing will follow in the Gallery Bookshop.

Includes a complementary glass of wine courtesy of the event sponsor Thames & Hudson (TBC) The Art and Music of the First World War Thurs 24 April, 6pm Despite the devastation of the First World War the conflict led to the creation of some of the most profound and powerful art and music of the 20th century.

Marking the Centenary of the First World War, artist Tim Gwyther and music specialist Terry Barfoot explore the work of artists such as Paul Nash, Wyndham Lewis and CRW Nevinson and music

by Vaughn Williams, George Butterworth among others.

Stanley Spencer Title TBC

Tickets 01243 774557 (Booking Required)

Timothy Hyman Thurs XXXX Blurb to come….

Includes a glass of wine courtesy of the event sponsor Lund Humphries to coincide with the publication of Andrew Causey’s new book ‘Art as a Mirror of Himself’ (TBC) Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition Thurs 1 May, 6pm Artist, curator and writer Dr Michael Petry explores how leading artists such as Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Marc Quinn and Ai WeiWei have explored the genre of the still life, previously synonymous with 16th- and 17thcentury Old Masters. Whether in painting, photography, sculpture or video, contemporary artists have drawn on a tradition ripe with metaphorical and moral significance to create works of conceptual vivacity and striking beauty. A book signing will follow in the Gallery Bookshop.

Includes a glass of wine courtesy of the event sponsor Thames & Hudson (TBC)

John Craxton, Rotted Hen, 1943, Pencil and pastel on paper, Pallant House Gallery, On loan from Private Collections (2013) © Estate of john Craxton

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WHAT'S ON GALLERY EVENTS Find the rest of the public programme including workshops in the What's On guide or online at www.pallant.org.uk To book telephone 01243 774557

Stanley Spencer: Love and War Thurs 22 May, 6pm To coincide with the Stanley Spencer exhibition, celebrated biographer and critic Fiona MacCarthy, author of the book ‘Stanley Spencer: An English Vision’ discusses the strange life and visionary art of the 20th century’s major British painter.

Portraits of Artists: Nicholas Sinclair Thurs 5 June, 6pm Nicholas Sinclair has photographed many of the leading artists of our age including John Piper, Paula Rego, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton. In this talk he discusses his personal approach to taking portraits, how he composes and lights his photographs, how he edits a photo shoot and selects the pictures that are seen by the public, and why he has chosen to spend more than twenty years photographing Britain’s artists. A book signing will follow in the Gallery Bookshop.

Kenneth Clark by Dr Chris Stephens Thurs 19 June, 6pm To coincide with the major exhibition at Tate Britain Chris Stephens explores the impact of art historian, public servant and broadcaster Kenneth Clark 54

(1903–1983), widely seen as one of the most influential figures in Modern British art. The talk examines Clark’s role as a patron and collector of artists such as Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore, John Piper and Graham Sutherland, and celebrates his contribution to bringing art in the twentieth century to a more popular audience. A book signing will follow in the Gallery Bookshop.

Includes a glass of wine courtesy of the event sponsor Tate Publishing (TBC)

GALLERY TOURS Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War Thurs 6 March, 6pm (TBC) Amanda Bradley, Assistant Curator of Pictures and Sculpture of the National Trust will give a tour of the exhibition which showcases Stanley Spencer’s celebrated murals based on his experiences of the First World War. Price?

Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War Thurs 29 May, 6pm Another chance to find out more about the exhibition with Katy Norris, Assistant Curator of Pallant House Gallery.

Price?

Artists’ Studies: Pencil to Paint Date A chance to find out more about the exhibition with a knowledgeable Gallery Guide.

Price?

OTHER EVENTS Fine Art and Oriental Ceramics and Works of Art Valuations Afternoon with Toovey’s Mon 12 May, 10 - 4pm A valuation afternoon with Toovey’s in aid of Pallant House Gallery. Specialist valuers from Gallery sponsors Toovey’s Antique and Fine Art Auctioneers will be offering valuations of fine paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures and Chinese, Japanese and other Far Eastern antiques at the Gallery between 1pm

Pauline Boty, Portrait of Derek Marlowe and Unknown Ladies, 1962-3, Oil on canvas, Image courtesy of the owner © Artist’s estate

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

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TRIPTYCHS

SEAN SCULLY

GIFT IDEAS CLARE LEIGHTON CHRISTMAS CARD Traditional festive woodcut by the prolific artist known for her depictions of agrarian life in England, Europe and the American South. £5 (pack of six)

SEAN SCULLY: TRIPTYCHS CATALOGUE A perfect companion to the Pallant House Gallery exhibition, the first to explore the internationally acclaimed artist's engagement with the triptych format. £12.95 (Paperback) Pallant House Gallery

RAVILIOUS: WOOD ENGRAVINGS

BY JAMES RUSSELL Beautiful new title which explores the remarkable talent of this celebrated printmaker. £20 (Hardback), The Mainstone Press, Norwich ERIC RAVILIOUS: ARTIST AND DESIGNER BY ALAN POWERS The most comprehensive overview to date of the artist’s work in all media.

Special price £30.00 with free UK delivery (RRP £35.00, Hardback) Lund Humphries, London

PARTNERS IN ART CHRISTMAS CARDS Five original designs by members of the Gallery's pioneering scheme which pairs artists and people with support needs. £4.99 (pack of ten) NATIONAL BOOK TOKENS Pallant House Gallery Bookshop accept National Book Tokens.

CLARE LEIGHTON: THE FARMER’S YEAR The first book written by Clare Leighton and her most celebrated. £20 (Hardback) Little Toller Books, London

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CHICHESTER FESTIVAL YOUTH THEATRE presents

By ROALD DAHL Adapted by DAVID WOOD

31 OCTOBER - 30 NOVEMBER

Suitable ages 7+

7 DECEMBER - 4 JANUARY

MINERVA THEATRE 01243 781312 cft.org.uk

CHICHESTER FESTIVAL THEATRE

Eduardo Paolozzi: Collaging Culture Private View Photographs by Jason Hedges (www.jasonhedges.co.uk)

(Left to Right) Jane and Kim Slowe, Colin Finn, friend, Ruth Sherwin, Dr Jeffrey Sherwin

(Left to Right) Laura Hodgson and Andrew Jones, Michael Cooke, ACE, Dr Chris Horrocks and Gilly Booth

(Left to Right) Michelle Cotton and friend, Poppy Allard, Clare Hindle, Fay Humpherson, Joanne Williams, Claire Shea, Tony Nurse

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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Collection in Focus Two Figures, 1975 Martin Harrison

Like so many of Francis Bacon’s paintings, 'Two Figures' is rendered in free, tactile brushstrokes. One can feel the passion of the artist in the vigour of paint-as-sensation.

But what it represents remains an enigma, and it evolved, moreover, in highly unusual circumstances.

In 1975 Bacon made a large painting in which one of his attendant figures, a dwarf on a circular stool, sits at the right returning the viewer’s gaze, oblivious to, or uninterested in, two upturned figures writhing in a glass cage to the left. Possibly concerned by the potential narrative possibilities set up by the relationship between the two principal images, he subsequently discarded most of the background and cut out the two figural passages to form separate canvases, each in narrow upright format otherwise absent in his oeuvre. He retitled one of the surviving fragments 'Two Figures' and the other 'Portrait of a Dwarf' (1975). In 'Portrait of a Dwarf' the cross-legged pose recalls both Velazquez’s 'A Dwarf Sitting on the Floor' (c. 1645) and the ancient Egyptian statue of Seneb, Chief of all the Palace Dwarves, which Bacon is likely to have seen in Cairo Museum in 1951.

Bacon’s attendants, as he called them, occupied an ambiguous zone, somewhere between voyeurs or disengaged witnesses of a horrifying spectacle or of sexual intercourse. In 'Two Figures' the protagonists are intermingled in a kind of furious embrace, confined in a glass cage, except for the heads they are almost fused into one being. They resemble a sculpture on display in a vitrine, albeit a conspicuously kinetic sculpture - one 60

Francis Bacon, Two Figures, 1975, Oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery, On loan from a Private Collection (2010) © DACS

of the figures’ legs actually bursts out of the cage structure. Bacon had inverted Cimabue’s 'Crucifixion' in his 'Three Studies for a Crucifixion', 1962, and he may have been performing a similar rotation, as well as a re-gendering of the figures, on one of many examples with which he was familiar of the Galatea archetype.

He probably identified with these abject, inverted figures, but regardless of his motivations, in 'Two Figures' he succeeds in preserving an aura of mystery.

'Two Figures', 1975 features in the exhibition Francis Bacon / Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone at the Ashmolean Gallery, Oxford from 12 September 2013 to 19 January 2014. It is guest curated by Martin Harrison. www.ashmolean.org

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NOA 17th National Open Art Competition

the winning works will show in room 11 Pallant House Gallery December 3-15 2013 ALL WORKS FOR SALE Please contact Amanda Kings 07986697693 www.thenationalopenartcompetition.com

Sponsored by Towry The Wealth Adviser

invitation to consign Modern British and Irish Art © ESTATE OF CERI RICHARDS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2013

Please do not hesitate to contact us for a free and confidential valuation of your collection.

CERI RICHARDS (1903–1971)

CONTACT

AUCTION

The sculptor’s landscape Sold for: £103,875 South Kensington, March 2013

Alissa Mills amills@christies.com +44 (0) 20 7752 3383

20 March 2014 Consign by 10 January 2014

The Art People christies.com