Here is a brief bit of information and some photographs from the church in Kingston, Cambridgeshire. It’s within cycling distance from my home so I went and took some photos of the church and surroundings.
The most interesting features of Kingston Church is the wall paintings with-in. Many didn’t survive the reformation and ‘whitewashing’ of churches and fewer still the later Victorian fashion of stripping plaster from walls in favour of stonework and totally refitting the woodwork.
Above is a wall painting of the Crucifixion, with unusual iconography. On a red ochre ground decorated with a brocade pattern there are three silhouettes, of a crucifix and two figures. On either side of the crucifix is a kneeling angel holding a cup which catches Christ’s blood; beyond these a pair of angels playing musical instruments and a pair censing. The censers, with their chains, were probably appliqué wood or metal. Above the rood are two faint circles, representing the sun, to the left, and the crescent moon, to the right, symbolising life and death.
One of the paintings on the walls is of the Devil standing on a tree. He has bat wings, a tale and horns.
The Seven Acts of Mercy – Wheel of Mercy.
Six of the seven acts, intended to counter-balance the Seven Deadly Sins, were derived from the gospel of St Matthew, Chapter XXV:
feeding the hungry;
giving drink to the thirsty;
offering hospitality to the stranger;
clothing the naked;
visiting the sick;
visiting prisoners.
burying the dead – this one comes from the Book of Tobit, Chapter I.
The wheel is turned by two angels with outstretched arms, one to the lower left, the other to the lower right.
The University College London and the Slade School of Fine Art are linked and in the UCL art archives are many painting from the Slade’s past. Many are nudes and it turns out, they are the winners of the Slade School of Art prize for Figure Painting. I have not included all the paintings – some are un-named and un-dated but must fit in the missing spaces. I have put them in order of date and many of the names listed are surprisingly famous.
Frederick Brown was appointed as Slade Professor in 1892 and introduced new prizes for the 1893-4 session. The prizes for life painting and drawing, anatomical drawing and new figure composition. The prizes were abandoned in 1965 and in 1966 students could choose what they presented. I don’t know what the prizes were for Figure Drawing but I do know Stanley Spencer won the Slade Summer Composition Prize in 1912 and it was £25, today with inflation that is £2,800.
Augustus Edwin John – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1898
Evelyn Cheston – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1898
William Orpen – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1899
Albert Rutherston – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1901
Elinor Proby Adams – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1906
Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1909
Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1909
Elsie McNaught – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1910
Edward Alexander Wadsworth – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1911
Thomas Saunders Nash – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1912
Dora Carrington – Figure Painting, Second Prize, 1912
Eileen Lambton – Figure Painting, Third Prize, 1912
Dora Carrington – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1913
Thomas Tennant Baxter – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1914
Thomas Tennant Baxter – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1914
Arthur Outlaw – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1914
Grace English – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1916
Neville Lewis – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1916
Helen G. Young – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1916
Enid M. Fearnside – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1917
Rita Nahabedian – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1917
Henry Charles Bevan-Petman – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1917
Alice Joyce-Smith – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1918
Dorothy Josephine Coke – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1918
L. A. (Ida) Knox – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1918
Mabel Greenberg – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1919
Ralph Nicholas Chubb – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1919
Amy Nimr – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1919
Robin Guthrie – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1920
C. E. Roberts – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1920
Rodney Joseph Burn – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1920
Daphne Pollen – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1920
Daphne Pollen – Figure Painting, Second Prize (Equal), 1920
Rodney Joseph Burn – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1921
Walter Thomas Monnington – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1921
Muriel Holinger Hope – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1921
Allan Gwynne-Jones – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1922
Theodora Meares – Figure Painting, Second Prize, 1922
Robert Boyd Morrison – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1923
John Hookham – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1923
William D. Dring – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1924
Rex Whistler – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1924
Robin Bartlett – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1925
Leila Faithfull – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1925
Jesse Dale Cast – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1925
Alice van den Bergh – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1926
Francis E. Hopkinson – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1926
Glynn O. Jones – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1926
Kathleen Hartnell – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1926
Ena Muriel Russell Higson – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1927
Helen Lessore – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1927
Joseph H. Rogozen – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1928
Dorothy I. Reid – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1928
Bryan William Bodington – Figure Painting, First Prize,
1930
Olga Lehmann – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1931
Elizabeth Brown – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1931
Margaret A. Berry – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1932
Thelma Carstensen – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1933
Guy Anthony William Burn – Figure Painting, First Prize,
1937
Mary Kent Harrison – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1938
Nora B. Braham – Figure Painting, First Prize, 1939
William D. W. Paynter – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1940
Jean Muriel Brett – Figure Painting, Second Prize, 1943
Nancy Mellor – Figure Painting, First Prize (Equal), 1948
This week, Robjn discusses six things which he thinks should be better known. Each week, a guest makes a series of recommendations of things which they think should be better known. Our recommendations include interesting people, places, objects, stories, experiences and ideas which our guest feels haven’t had the exposure that they deserve.
There is always the thrill of what comes next in my hunt for things to buy and own. I found this artist’s work, printed in black and white in the studio magazine and knew I would love it. The magazine was from 1958 and I think the art that I have been able to find so far by Henderson Blyth makes him an unknown treasure, to me anyhow.
Among the younger established painters of the Contemporary Scottish School none has attained a more prominent place than Henderson Blyth.
Blyth is a true Scot. He has inherited the characteristic temperament of his people and his art is the embodiment of all that is nordic, elemental and discrete. In addition he has inherited the Scots intellectual curiosity and insatiable appetite for intimate knowledge of the phenomenal world. Together these ingredients account for the peculiarly personal and indigenous quality of his work.
Trained at Glasgow, he was early initiated into the poetry of tone and the ‘logic’ of form. A year’s study under the late James Cowie, R.S.A. at the country Art School at Hospitalfield enabled him to continue and develop his personal interests and leanings. Cowie was an impeccable draughtsman, a fastidious classicist and a man of profound artistic integrity. To a young romantic the environment at Hospitalfield could hardly have been better adapted to his intellectual and spiritual requirements. A prodigious worker. Blyth’s reputation rests primarily upon his landscapes which are burdened and sombre. †
Robert Henderson Blyth – Rain on the Hill
Robert Henderson Blyth – Thunder Light, 1967
Robert Henderson Blyth – Self-portrait as soldier in trenches – Sub-titled ‘Existence Precarious’, 1919
Robert Henderson Blyth – The Artist’s Wife Hanging out the Laundry, 1947
Here to go on with the Great Bardfield Cookery Collection are some of Chloe Cheese’s illustrations for Big Flavours and Rough Edges by David Eyre and the Eagle Cook, published in 2001.
Chloe Cheese is an English illustrator, painter and print-maker. She was born in London, the daughter of artist and printmaker Bernard Cheese and artist and illustrator Sheila Robinson. Her childhood was spent in Great Bardfield, Essex. She studied at Cambridge School of Art and the Royal College of Art.
There are three villages in a remote area of north Essex which, for different reasons, attract attention: Thaxted for its magnificent church, Finchingfield as a near perfect example of a picturesque English village, and Great Bardfield, which in the immediate post-war period attracted artists as a place to live and work. The coming together in one area, of several artists happened by chance, rather than design. †
Hoyle moved first to Great Bardfield in 1952, living for a time in a farm cottage on the outskirts of Bardfield near Great Lodge Farm.
The farm was once part of a royal estate belonging to Anne of Cleves with large barns to hold hay to feed deer and other animals. In the 1950s some of the barns were pulled down but there is a brief visual record of the time the farm was working, rather than the wedding venue it has become today.
Walter Hoyle – Great Lodge Farm, 1955 (Fry Art Gallery)
Denise Hoyle – Great Lodge Farm, 1955 (Fry Art Gallery)
The view out of the front window of Walter and Denise’s home overlooked barns and the main farm house. Some of the sheds to the left of the house have gone now. Above Denise must have drawn the picture standing with her back to the barn, whereas Walter’s painting has a wider viewpoint and was done inside the house, with the oil lamp, staffordshire dog and the milkman. The workmen and people of the village made it in to many of the paintings Hoyle made. A lot of the machinery is painted in red too.
Walter Hoyle – Great Lodge Farm Cottage, 1952 (Fry Art Gallery)
Above is a photograph by James Ravilious (son of Eric) and was taken in Devon, but I include it because the painting below has the same item in it. The painting by Hoyle depicts a grain elevator, designed to get grain or hay into the higher windows of a barn. Again it is painted in bright red, maybe because it was iron and was rusting, or it might have been a motif of his at the time.
The figure with the shotgun and dog may actually be a distant relative of mine on my mother’s side who worked on the farm in this period. Most of the men usually had a gun about them to shoot down deer, pheasants or most commonly, rabbits.
Walter Hoyle – Great Lodge Farm, 1952 (In My Collection)
Walter Hoyle – Great Lodge Farm, 1953 (Fry Art Gallery)
Walter Hoyle – Winter – Great Lodge Farm, 1953c
From what I can understand of the area, this painting above is also taken out of the Hoyles house window in the winter time.
Walter Hoyle – Great Lodge, 1952 (Fry Art Gallery)
† Printmaking Today – V6#2 – Great Bardfield Artists, 1997
This is from my student days when I studied Graphic Design. It is a little off topic but I thought it was rather good fun. It was from a module when we had to design tourist merchandise. My idea was for Wedgwood chocolate bars made from milk chocolate with white chocolate cameos on top using some of Wedgwood’s designs.
This is a small post, based on a little business card for the A.I.A. Gallery just because I liked it. It is designed by Edward Bawden. I have posted some text from the book on the A.I.A Gallery below. It sums up the organisation far better than I could.
The A.I.A was also known as the Artists’ International Association
An exhibiting society formed in 1932 by a number of left-wings artists and writers who wanted to publicise, through their art, their commitment and resistance to the ‘Imperialist war on the Soviet Union, Fascism and colonial oppression’. Its aim was the ‘Unity of Artists for Peace, Democracy and Cultural Development’. The Association originally termed ‘Artists International’ provided a forum for regular discussions on communism, and its membership included Clifford Rowe, brothers Ronald and Percy Horton, Peggy Angus, Pearl Binder, James Boswell, Edward Ardizzone, Hans Feibusch and Misha Black the first Chairman. Most of the group’s early exhibitions were held at galleries in the Soho area of London, such as Charlotte Street, Frith Street and Soho Square. Its inaugural exhibition was entitled ‘The Social Scene’. In 1935 ‘Association’ was added to its title. A subsequent exhibition in that year called ‘Artists Against Fascism and War’ included works by Robert Medley, Paul Nash and Henry Moore.
The AIA supported the left-wing Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) through exhibitions and other fund-raising activities. It attempted to promote wider access to art through travelling exhibitions and publicly available mural paintings. In 1940 it published a series of lithographs known as Everyman Prints in large and consequently low-priced editions. By the end of World War II, membership numbered over a thousand and in 1947 a gallery, founded by Claude Rogers was established at 15 Lisle Street, Soho, London which flourished until the lease expired in 1971. Initially it pursued an obvious Marxist programme, with its affiliates producing satirical illustrations for the magazine Left Review but by 1951 the Association was showing non-figurative work and in 1953 a new constitution abandoned its left-wing commitment and it continued solely as an exhibiting society. Distinguished foreign artists occasionally exhibited work at the later exhibitions: these included Fernand Léger and Picasso.
The Artists’ International Association should not be confused with the International Artists’ Association which was established in 1952 and was an affiliated organization of Unesco.
It tried to promote wider access to art through travelling exhibitions and public mural paintings. In 1940 it published a series of art lithographs titled Everyman Prints in large, and therefore cheap, editions.
A.I.A.: Story of the Artists’ International Association, 1933-53 by Lynda Morris and Robert Radford, 1983
Barnett Freedman worked in various ways for Guinness, not just advertising but also with the Guinness Lithograph print series. But here are three visual rhyme adverts I thought you would enjoy.
Barnett Freedman – Stick to Guinness & be well.
Barnett Freedman – For strength and energy stick to Guinness
Barnett Freedman – Oxford and Cambridge train crews on Guinness
As part of this series of posts looking at the illustrations of Great Bardfield artists in cookery books, here is Walter Hoyle’s contribution. In a previous post I have noted Hoyle’s biography.
Geoffrey Ireland – Walter Hoyle, 1956
In 1969 Walter Hoyle illustrated the ‘Women’s Institute book of Party Recipes’. This series of little illustrations are some of his best in my opinion.
They form a curious set of mixed media works that I believe to have been printed by Hoyle in lithograph then sent off to the book printers to be mass-printed, with the look of being a lithograph, but without it being so. Clearly the book was designed to be cheaply printed, for one it is spiral bound – but this is rather helpful in a cookery book. The other indicator of cheapness is that it has a very limited colour palate of orange, red and black. It was printed by Novello & Co Ltd, who mostly make sheet-music scores.
Walter Hoyle – Sauces, 1969
The illustrations are pencil and ink drawings with colour overlays in orange and red. I love the way that either the printer or Hoyle flood-fill the backgrounds of some of the drawings with pure colour. The method of printing used at this time was called ‘Simulated Lithography’, where any drawing could be put onto a printing plate and printed in one colour tone by using plastic films and scans of the original drawings. This process was easier than using lithographic stones and artists can line up the plastic films and work at a print to get the coloured edges correct.
Instead of drawing on lithographic stones or plates the artist drew on a transparent sheet of plastic grained like a lithographic plate. The advantages were that any opaque material, chalk, pencil, ink etc. may be used, because the sheets of plastic are not transferred but are used in the same way as a photographic positive would be. That is, placed in a printing frame against a lithographic machine plate and then exposed to light. By this means an offset printing plate capable of a hundred thousand run can be produced. Also machine plates can be duplicated from the plastic original without any deterioration in quality, for the artist can superimpose one sheet on another. It is possible that the use of plastic sheets came to be common with the scarcity of metal, being used for ammunition in wartime. †
Walter Hoyle – Poultry, 1969
Below I have separated two layers into Colour and Black (K), the chicken, duck and turkey picture above. What I like about this print is the colour layer is a mixture of line drawing and flicked ink splats to give texture. The black layer has a fine line children and the outline of a white duck using the almost scrubbed brush black turkey design.
Left: The Colour. Right: The Black overlay.
Walter Hoyle – Front and Rear Covers, 1969.
Below are a set of illustrations that in 1969 would have been more familiar than today’s shopping life. The picture of the antiquated scales is beautiful.
Walter Hoyle – Meat, 1969
Above is a drawing of the Cattle Market and although it could have been Braintree (closest to Great Bardfield) it is impossible to know. Below is Braintree Cattle Market by Walter Bayes in 1940 from the Recording Britain project, but this type of market was common all over Britain as many towns had their own cattle markets. I thought it would be nice to point out the scales and auctioneer’s hut next to the ring.
Walter Bayes – Braintree Cattle Market, 1940
Walter Hoyle – Sweets, 1969
Above is an illustration from the cookery book of a man picking apples in an orchard and, below is almost the same drawing made four years later for the BBC book of the Countryside by Walter Hoyle in 1963. As the WI book illustration have been drawn on to printing plate the image would have been reversed – so the ladder, man and fruit crate are a mirror image to the figures below. I know the picture from the Countryside book isn’t mirrored as it came from an ink drawing and I own those drawings.
Walter Hoyle – September, 1963
The rest of the illustrations I present below I can find nothing too remarkable to say other than Hoyle is cunning about the use of a soup tureen in an antique auction reminded me of the Cow for ‘Meat’ in an auction, rather than illustrating the food stuffs. There is a bit more imagination going on here.
Some of the scenes like Eggs and Sauces have a French and Italian flare, but it is likely because Hoyle and his French wife Denise spent many holidays there. The Sauces location looks like Civita di Bagnoregio but it’s very hard to know.
Walter Hoyle – Eggs, 1969
Walter Hoyle – Vegetable, 1969
Walter Hoyle – Soup, 1969
Walter Hoyle – Rear Cover, 1969
† Ruth Artmonsky – The School Prints – A Romantic Project – 2006, p98
