Why History?

In 1976 I arrived from my country grammar school at the Historical shrine of Peterhouse. At the time, although the smallest of the colleges of Cambridge, it had the highest number of History dons.

The study of History was taken seriously and the effect on me was to be lifelong. The key people for me were Maurice Cowling and Brian Wormald. Sitting in front of these strange, intense men reading an undergraduate essay was profoundly challenging. Historical writing involved seeking to understand the reality behind why men acted in the way they did; and that reality was hugely complex and not to be confused with the descriptions of it in the work of historians. For those writing about the past always have an agenda. The identification and evaluation of that agenda is part of the reader’s challenge. The effort to abandon – or at least admit to – that agenda is part of the historian’s challenge.

Kenneth Rowntree at the Redfern Gallery

I love the work of Kenneth Rowntree. After I had been to this show, I  counted how many works I own by him and it is 5 quite large oils. So it is a great treat to see a reasonable selection of his work on display, especially as I missed him at the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden. I did catch the little show at Pallant House, which has just closed, but the Redfern has a much larger selection.

He was a fine colourist and he became highly inventive in his approach to form. He tried all sorts of things to achieve the effect he was seeking. For example, a number of works have pieces of wood attached to represent in 3D the thing being depicted (eg a table). The surface texture of a lot of his work shows evidence of multiple finishes. Sometimes he amused himself too much as he took ideas to extremes. He went down a path of reduction at one stage, turning images into symbols (for example in his pictures of Venice). Then the symbols escaped too far from their origins and only the titles indicated what he was doing. There are a couple of these abstracted works at the Redfern and they are the only weaknesses. Far more successful was where he got the balance between abstraction and representation right; the image caught beautifully between something recognisable and something signalling something recognisable.

I strongly recommend a visit. It is a great example of an artist who wasn’t afraid to use representation and abstraction in whatever blend he chose. He clearly felt no awkwardness about either form or about something halfway inbetween.

Posted Monday, October 26th, 2015, filed under: 20th century British art, Kenneth Rowntree, Redfern Gallery

John Armstrong at Piano Nobile

I went to the opening of this fascinating show last night. Although inevitably a small selection is all that can be squeezed in to a private gallery, the quality of what was on offer was high. One detected the guiding hand of Jonathan Gibbs, who is such an Armstrong expert. There is a nice hardback catalogue, with text by Julia Fischel, which I shall read with interest. The gallery has an excellent tradition of producing serious hardback catalogues, which do it great credit.

As for the art, the neutral observer might struggle to like every picture, but they should certainly find work to admire and to respect. Armstrong was an unusual, but clearly serious artist. Hard to characterise, one might think in terms of Edward Wadsworth and Tristram Hillier as sharing at least some characteristics.

Posted Wednesday, October 21st, 2015, filed under: 20th century British art, John Armstrong

Gerald Wilde

It is always exciting to note that a new show will open in London of an obscure but fascinating artist like Gerald Wilde. It does the Gallery in question great credit that they are prepared to promote someone whose reputation is, by definition, a little challenged.

I for one am very much looking forward to seeing what promises to be a good spread of his work at the October Gallery at 24 Old Gloucester Street, WC1. It lasts from 27 November to 23 January. He may not be a fashionable artist but his work, at its best, nags at you and anyone interested in serious 20th C British Art should go and see it, especially as his work is very difficult to see anywhere else. As far as I know it isn’t often on display in public galleries and it is extremely rare in the main London auction houses.

Once I have seen the show, I will comment further.

Posted Tuesday, September 29th, 2015, filed under: Uncategorized

Neo-Romantics in Herefordshire

My attention has been drawn to a lovely -looking show in distant Herefordshire.

The Monnow Valley Arts Centre has a show of the collection of Nicolas and Frances McDowall. It consists of lots of super works by a range of good artists. The collectors clearly have a good eye. Some of the examples have been excellently chosen (for example the early work by Alan Reynolds). Their tastes overlap remarkably with my own and I have a number of pictures by the artists they represent. A particular connection is their showing of a 1953 landscape by Roy Turner Durrant (pretty well the only year he produced work of that type). I have about four of those from that year!

Well done to everyone involved and to whoever generated the catalogue.

Posted Wednesday, August 26th, 2015, filed under: 20th century British art, Alan Reynolds, Roy Turner Durrant

Edmond Brock at Mount Stewart

On our annual visit to Northern Ireland we visited Mount Stewart, as usual, and saw the largely invisible reconstruction that has taken place (as recorded in 6 programmes on UTV.) Everything spick and span, but not too modern-looking. A peculiar form of reinstatement of some imaginary period chosen as the house’s finest moment. Such are the vagaries of curatorial taste and fashion.

Anyway, one of the glories of this marvellous estate is the enormous portrait of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry, with her 3 daughters by the obscure English RA portraitist, Edmond Brock (1882-1952). It is called Circe and the Sirens and was painted in 1925, when perhaps the Londonderry fortunes were at their apogee. He seems to have achieved what little fame he had by being patronised by Lady Edith; there are a number of family portraits in the house. This one is stunning and very beautiful, in a rich, flowery, finely-painted way which would not meet with any critical favour now. It is an aristocratic swagger portrait and very splendid. Tucking it away in a room described (there is no table) as a billiard room (by definition, a man’s room), is odd, especially as the vast picture dominates one wall of the comparatively small and insignificant room just off the entrance hall. But there it is and at least one can get close to it to look at it.

The internet says little about this artist except that he got muddled up with another RA portraitist with the same name and overlapping dates.

Posted Wednesday, August 19th, 2015, filed under: Uncategorized

Kenneth Rowntree. A Centenary Exhibition

I have a plan to get to distant Chichester to wonderful Pallant House right at the end of the current Rowntree exhibition. There are some rare Chekhov plays showing at the Festival Theatre and my wife and I are going to combine the two cultural experiences.

In the meantime, I have read and perused the catalogue and what a joy it is. There are four good essays by well-regarded authors, Alexandra Harris, Professor John Milner (a very nice man who I had lunch with once), Alan Powers and Peyton Skipwith. That is a well-chosen group to analyse different aspects of this most multi-faceted of artists. By giving them discrete areas to cover, one avoids the risk of four different styles and viewpoints grating. They have clearly been given a brief to write succinctly and, of course, in the case of Professor Milner, he has written the only book about the artist, which I liked very much when it appeared over ten years ago. In a more scholarly environment, I feel each author could successfully be allowed to develop their themes to a greater and more satisfactory extent.

Credit should also be given to the art dealers backing the show.Harry Moore-Gwyn and Paul Liss have worked hard over a number of years to accumulate many of the works which are included in the show and, with an artist who produced such a range of work, they have managed to show many different aspects of his production.

Rowntree’s work is hugely satisfying.He simplified his visual signals to such an extent that some of his work is boiled down to a shorthand which the eye does not always translate, but which is always an intellectual and often amusing exercise. He was prolific and clever in what he did. Shows and catalogues like this are greatly to be welcomed and encouraged and all credit to those involved.

Posted Thursday, August 6th, 2015, filed under: 20th century British art, Kenneth Rowntree, Pallant House, Uncategorized

Musee de l’Annonciade in St Tropez

Visited this small art gallery in a disused church very close to the centre of St Tropez.It has an interesting little collection of works by such as Signac,Vlaminck,Maillol and so on.It opened in the mid 1950s. I saw my first work by Roger de la Fresnaye. Watson owned a picture by him at one time.

Posted Tuesday, August 4th, 2015, filed under: Peter Watson

Villa Noailles

I have just returned from visiting the Villa Noailles in Hyeres. It is a fascinating reminder of the extraordinary lives of the great French patrons, Viscount and Viscountess de Noailles.

One tends to hear more about Marie-Laure de Noailles than about her husband,Charles, but in fact they were both active patrons of a wide range of artistic and musical activities for a very long time. Marie-Laure seems to have carried on with her support right up to her death in 1970.

The house was designed by the modernist architect, Robert Mallet-Stevens, in 1923/4 and first occupied from 1925.  Large extensions, involving a gym, a swimming pool, a squash court, and many extra bedrooms (the villa eventually had 15), meant that it was not finally finished until 1933. It is built in an uncompromisingly modern inter-war style and parts of it resemble Wells Coates’ work at 10 Palace Gate in London.

Most of its original contents were dispersed after the death of the Viscountess, when the family sold it to the town. One gets the impression that the Villa was her passion rather than his, certainly in the later years of family ownership.A video was running in one of the rooms of the Viscountess being interviewed towards the end of her life, sitting on the lawn at the front of the house.The Viscount is said to have spent a lot of his time at a house in Grasse (East down the Riviera). There was also a large house in Paris.

I saw no mention of the two daughters, but I know that the family archives are still privately owned as I enquired a while ago about access for the purposes of my Watson research. The staff at the Villa were extremely helpful and quickly produced a charming photograph of Watson up a tree in the amazing garden with the two girls. I imagine there may be other mentions of Watson, as he seems to have stayed there a few times. The names mentioned in the various exhibits in the Villa read like a catalogue of Watson’s French friends: Auric, Sauguet, Poulenc and Markevitch on the musical side and Picasso, Giacometti, Berard , Dali etc on the artistic side.

All in all, this was a fascinating visit and highly recommended for anyone in the area.

 

Posted Saturday, August 1st, 2015, filed under: Peter Watson, Uncategorized

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