Author: Robjn Cantus

My Pictures for Schools

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 Chloë Cheese – Tea and Cake (In My Collection)

This is a post about the Cambridgeshire County Council Pictures For Schools Collection. It was a brave project founded in 1947, in part as a reaction to the brutalities of the war, but also to brighten up classrooms and schools with modern works of art and improve the minds of young children. 

I am apt to using the word utopian a lot, but personally I believe projects like these were important in rebuilding Britain after the war. Not just bringing art into the home, but taking it to the public spaces; from the windows in Coventry Cathedral to the Festival of Britain, there was a manufacturing ‘brave new world’ of Britain and they used the artists as part of the team, maybe from champions of design like Robin Darwin at the Royal College of Art and exhibitions like Britain Can Make It in 1946.

The driving force behind the Pictures for Schools project was painter and educator Nan Youngman, art adviser to Cambridgeshire’s Director of Education, Henry Morris. Youngman was a student of painting at the Slade from 1924-1927, winning a prize at the Slade in 1926. She painted still, but focused on education for most of her life. 

The ideas motivating Pictures for Schools were very much of their time. During and after the Second World War, as the rebuilding of Britain was debated in both the public and political spheres, educators called for art education to be given a central position in the new school system. This received support from the Ministry of Education, as part of a project to promote British culture, improve the public’s standards of taste and create a new generation of citizens and educated consumers who were capable of exercising judgement in aesthetic matters and making informed choices and purchases.

The Pictures for Schools project came out of and alongside many other famous ‘utopian’ projects like the Contemporary Lithographs (1937-38), AIA Everyman’s Prints (1940) and the School Prints series of lithographs where major artists would be paid to design a lithograph that would be printed in thousands and then sold to schools cheaply.

Youngman was involved in the Everyman’s Prints series and it may have helped inspire the running of Pictures for Schools.

In the founding of the Pictures for Schools project, one of Youngman’s big successes was after she accompanied Morris to London in 1945 to buy a painting by L.S.Lowry from the Lefevre Gallery for 30gns for the Cambridge Schools Art Collection as part of Pictures for Schools. At the start of a recession in 2009 the Cambridge County Council sold it for £541,250 at Christie’s. The commission on that sale would have been around £125k.

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 L. S. Lowry – A Market Place, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1935

The rest of the works were due to go up for sale with Christie’s too, some of the works I own still have catalogue assignment stickers from the auction house on the back, but with the economic climate the Cambridge Council pulled the collection from auction and in 2017 they would come up again for sale with another auction house.

Although Nan Youngman was the organiser and originator of Pictures for Schools, she had the support of long-running exhibition secretaries, who themselves had interesting backgrounds and careers.

Slade-trained painter and writer Sylvia Pollak was the first Organising Secretary. She had, like Youngman and many of their circle, links with the Artists’ International Association and the Women’s International Art Club.

She was succeeded by art historian, writer and lecturer Alison Kelly, who had a particular interest in furniture and pottery, from 1950-1957, when she resigned to spend more time lecturing… During the war, Kelly had been flown around the country working on camouflage schemes for possible bombing targets such as factories.

Katharine Baker, who had been treasurer for the Society for Education through Art, took over from 1958-1967. She had previously worked for the British Institute for Adult Education, which during the war organised good design exhibitions, put pictures in air raid shelters, armed services establishments and British Restaurants, and sent exhibitions to outlying districts. She received a New Year’s day MBE in 1948 for her work on the ‘Art for the People’ travelling exhibitions.

Finally, Joan Bartlett was Organising Secretary from 1967 until after the exhibitions’ close in 1969, when the exhibitions were held at the Royal Academy’s Diploma Galleries.

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 Stephen Bone – Yachts Racing at Loosdrecht, (In My Collection)

The Stephen Bone painting above was bought direct from the artist himself as on the back are various notes and bills on Bone’s headed paper.

Youngman donated some of her paintings and linocuts to the collection, other artists in the collection are like a who’s who of British Art. Gertrude Hermes, Richard Bawden, John Piper, Anthony Day, Patrick Hughes, Enid Marx, Michael Rothenstein, Malvina Cheek, Robert Tavener, Julia Ball, Peter Nuttall, Richard Beer, George Chapman, Alistair Grant, Edwin La Dell, Rosemary Ellis, Tirzah Garwood and Evelyn Dunbar are but a few.

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 Nick Lyons – Between You and Me, 1977 (In My Collection)

As the Pictures for Schools scheme ended in the 1960s, in Cambridge the project continued under the name ‘Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire’.

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 Malvina Cheek – Cornstooks at Furlongs, 1962 (In My Collection)

The Malvina Cheek drawing above came with some provenance. 

I was staying at Furlongs when I drew the Corn Stooks . It was then a magical place, a shepherds cottage set in the shadow of the Downs. A gap in the wall leads up to the Downs. There was no electricity, no gas, only oil lamps and wood fires; a telephone the only concession to modern life.

In the fields alongside the cottage were pyramids of corn. The exciting shapes of the corn stooks attracted me. There was only time to draw, my daughter was very young, so I made studies hoping to develop them later. I also drew Dick Freeman, the farmer from whom Peggy leased her part of the cottage; he used an adjacent room where he rested after tending his sheep. There was always a pleasant speaking voice, a fine hooked nose and large hands like those in a Permeke drawing. Later I would use both the drawings of corn stooks and of Dick the farmer, I was commissioned to illustrate Gulliver’s Travels

Cheek also worked as part of the Recording Britain project.  

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 Bernard Cheese – The Lemon Seller (In My Collection)

Walter Hoyle the Great Bardfield artist took over the scheme in the 1970s. Hoyle donated a few pictures and convinced other artists to donate works to the project too. Hoyle came to be involved as he was working at the Cambridge School of Art, now part of the Anglia Ruskin University. He would teach printmaking in the St Barnabas Press, a premises that the art school rented and he would encourage his pupils to donate a print to the collection. It may also explain how a fellow Bardfield artist, Bernard Cheese gets into the collection. Hoyle retired from teaching in 1985, moving from Cambridge to Hastings and Dieppe. 

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 Warwick Hutton – Adam and Eve, 1986 (In My Collection)

We know the Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire continued until 1985 when the project was run by the council and in the mid 1990s, the Council wound down the project citing the expenses of transporting the art around, hanging and administration costs and the works were stored in a shed outside Huntington Library and in a community centre in Papworth for the next 15 years.

The works by Walter Hoyle and Warwick Hutton in the collection were given with expenses for framing to the artists. Warwick Hutton’s painting of ‘Adam and Eve’ followed with a book he published in 1987 under the same name by Hutton with Atheneum Books.

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 Poul Webb – Petersfield (In My Collection)

Many of the works that Hoyle encouraged his students to make were prints, Poul Webb remembered making the print above in various colourways to me when I contacted him and he now works mostly as a painter with a totally different style. The picture below by Glyn Thomas is unlike his style now too, he works in drawings and etchings but Hoyle must have been an interesting man to work under as many of the artworks have a bit of Rothenstein or Bawden in them, I guess due to the Bardfield connections.

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 Glyn Thomas – Corn Exchange, Cambridge, 1965 (In My Collection)

It wasn’t just Bernard Cheese and Walter Hoyle that had works in the collection from Great Bardfield. Tizah Garwood had a painting in the collection of two donkeys. Chloe Cheese also had two prints in the collection.

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 Tirzah Garwood – Nathaniel and Patsy

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 Chloë Cheese – Figs and Coffee, 1972 (In My Collection)

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 Norma Jameson – Black Cockerel (In My Collection)

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 Marion Crawford – Agriculture (In My Collection)

Duncan Grant in Lincoln

I am unsure what the public perception was of Duncan Grant in the 1950s, if people knew he was homosexual or if Vanessa Bell’s infatuation with him masked that. 

Either way it is surprising to see murals by Grant in a Cathedral given attitudes to such bohemian artists in the church. But in Lincoln Cathedral there is a cell with his homoerotic murals designed on the theme of Lincoln’s history in the wool trade.

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As with anything Bloomsbury, nothing is simple, so here is a bit of background on Bell and Grant:

Vanessa Bell, married Clive Bell in 1907, and had two sons in quick succession. The couple had an open marriage, both taking lovers throughout their lives. Vanessa had affairs with art critic Roger Fry and with the painter Duncan Grant. Vanessa succeeded in seducing Duncan one evening and she became pregnant in the spring of 1918, having a daughter, Angelica in 1918, whom Vanessa and Clive Bell raised as his own child.

In 1942, aged 24, Angelica married David Garnett. The relationship had begun in the spring of 1938, when Garnett was married to his first wife, Rachel “Ray” Marshall, who was dying of cancer. Angelica had four daughters with Garnett.

Garnett was a member of her parents’ circle, a former lover of Duncan Grant who had also attempted to seduce Vanessa Bell. When Angelica was born, Garnett had written to Lytton Strachey saying of the baby: “Its beauty is the remarkable thing … I think of marrying it; when she is 20 I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous?”

In fact Garnett was nearly 50 at the time of their marriage. Despite their consternation, Angelica’s parents did not inform their daughter of these details of Garnett’s past, although various associates of the family did attempt to warn her against the marriage: John Maynard Keynes had her to tea. Angelica lost her virginity to Garnett in H.G. Wells’s spare bedroom. ‡

They were a bohemian lot.

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 The Russell Chantry, Lincoln Cathedral, before the Duncan Grant murals. 

The Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Fund, set up in 1952 by the widow of the illustrator and historical painter to promote murals in public places, had placed a notice in The Times on 2 May 1952 inviting proposals. One of these had come Duncan’s way, helped no doubt by Vanessa’s presence on the Fund’s committee, and he was to decorate the chapel dedicated to St Blaize, patron saint of the wool industry, in the Russell Chantry at Lincoln Cathedral. †

St Blaize was a doctor from a rich family who renounced his possessions and lived in caves and hillsides, caring for the animals.

After seven years the murals where finished in 1959, they where effectively hidden from public view. The subjects Grant painted were just too homoerotic for the church at that time. The space was used a broom-cupboard for a while in the 1970s. 

With the mass publications of various Bloomsbury books and the rise of interest in Duncan Grant, the chapel was re-opened for public view after restoration in 1990. However when I went in the summer of 2018 the room was locked and wasn’t mentioned on the handout map given when you enter the building.

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Below is a study for the Christ figure that Grant painted, the study is likely of Paul Roche, Grants lover and painting model.

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In London, Duncan had begun to draw Paul in some of the poses that he needed: for the men shearing sheep and for the full-length figure that dominates the altar wall, the Good Shepherd, carrying a sheep on his shoulders. 

On the wall opposite he was to paint a view of medieval Lincoln, with a busy harbour scene in the foreground. On the right-hand side men heave bales of wool, their balletic poses echoing the curves found in the ships’ prows, while on the left three statuesque figures (Angelica, Vanessa and Olivier) are linked with the men by the small boy pulling at Olivier’s hand. †

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The large ships with the homoerotic and suggestive men are likely what caused the greatest offence to Anglican eyes in the 1960s. The men bending over normally in front of other men’s groins and perfectly painted bums. 

As mentioned above the three women below are from Grant’s household. Angelica Bell his biological daughter, Vanessa Bell and Olivier Bell, the wife of Vanessa and Clive’s son Quentin Bell. 

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Even the little boy looks a little phallic with his flag stuck out at a saucy angle. 

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In October 1955 Duncan, while painting his Lincoln murals, jumped off a high stand on to a stool that overturned, and cut his head on an electric fire. The accident was minor, but the murals he was painting played a large part in helping him through a low period, for the public at this time showed little interest in his work. †

In the image below you can see a round window above the door painted in with St Blaise looking toward the alter. By the time Grant had finished the works he was in his mid-seventies.

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In 1958 Duncan completed the Lincoln murals, which had for so long dominated the studio at Charleston. In order to see them installed, he and Vanessa travelled north and booked in at the White Hart. †

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He had put a great deal of thought and labour into this decorative scheme, and at one point had used paper cut-outs to help him decide on the exact positioning of the sheep on either side of the Good Shepherd. Paul had modelled for the young beardless Christ. Consciously or unconsciously, Duncan had drawn on an early Christian tradition which, to ease the transition from paganism to Christianity, depicted Christ in a manner reminiscent of Mercury. Duncan’s Good Shepherd, surrounded by a mandorla of light, fills the centre of the altar wall and faces the view of medieval Lincoln on the wall opposite. †

The picture below is a study in the art gallery in Lincoln of the mural back wall with the original headdresses on the three women and the rest of the scene remarkably similar to the final result, other than Lincoln looks more Italian in the final mural. 

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Study for The Wool Staple in Medieval Lincoln

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The final work was painted in oil on fibrous plaster-boards, which gives to the oils an impression of the chalky surface of fresco. Once the panels arrived in Lincoln in the summer of 1956 they were attached to the walls on battens over the following two years. Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell attended the unveiling in July 1959, when they stayed as usual in the White Hart Hotel. Vanessa died two years later, while Grant was to live to ripe old age, still travelling and painting and enjoying exhibitions, often with his friend Paul Roche, the model for The Good Shepherd. †

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† Frances Spalding – Duncan Grant, 1997
‡ Angelica Garnett – Wikipedia

The Garden of Barbara Jones

This a post from the The New Small Garden book by Marjory Allen and Susan Jellicoe. The book features Barbara Jones’s garden for her house on Well Walk, and the garden that backed on to Willow Road, her house has been split into two flats and the garden now is even smaller, divided into two. However below is the garden as she would remember it. 

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This exquisite little garden has been evolved by Miss Barbara Jones, artist and writer, from as unprepossessing a back yard as can be imagined. It is essentially a collector’s garden, where each plant is valued as an individual. 

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The tiny scale makes the individual treatment of plants not only appropriate but necessary. It is her delight to arrange her plants so that the shape and texture of each will act as a sympathetic foil to its neighbours. 

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Notes on the Building of Broadcasting House by Val Myer

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 A newly finished Broadcasting House, London, 1933

It is imagined, in many quarters, that “modern” architecture has revolutionised the whole of present-day practice, whereas the truth is that good architecture has always been a matter of common-sense, plus a leavening of aesthetic instinct. In reality, its vital principles are no different today from those which guided the old Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.

In planning a building, the first essential, of course, is to make it suitable for the purpose for which it is intended. That it should be pleasing to the eye is, obviously, a further necessity, but, if it looks suitable, its designer is already halfway towards achieving his object.

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 Broadcasting House – Under Construction and surrounded by Poster Billboards

In the case of Broadcasting House, we had first to consider its functions. These are twofold; the actual broadcasting, and the administration of broadcasting. Obviously, the studios, Control Room, and the accommodation of technical equipment come first, with the actual studios as the most important factor of all.

Accordingly, it was the planning of the studios which had to be the key to the whole scheme. At the outset, it was thought that the ideal arrangement would be to place all the studios on one floor and, as protection against inter – studio interference, to surround each by a complete circuit of brick -built corridor. As protection against extraneous noises, the studios would be placed at the top of the building.

The site of Broadcasting House, however, though picturesque in form, is irregular, which fact would have caused studios so grouped to be of awkward shape. Besides this, although the B.B.C., at that early stage, contemplated fewer studios than have now been built, the system of individual insulation by corridors and walls would have been so extravagant that the areas left for studios would have been quite inadequate. Moreover, owing to the high value of a site in the heart of London, the space available for the studios is necessarily limited. Hence the open -area system of insulation, adopted elsewhere, was out of the question.

After exploring scores of different systems of planning, the problem of accommodating a large number of studios and their suites within the space available was quite suddenly solved. Instead of the studios being all on one floor, or on two floors, they would be all in one tower, so that, given a good service of lifts, circulation would be actually easier than if they had been all on the same level, and, of course, larger and more shapely studios could be provided. Once this key idea had been found, the plan was rapidly developed and, one after the other, its benefits appeared. The evolution of the plan proceeded on simple lines which can best be expressed as follows :

  • Studios must be insulated from sound Put a thick brick wall round them, omitting the usual steel framework.
  • Studios must be artificially ventilated, so need have no windows
  • Put them in the centre of the building, where there is least daylight to waste.
  • Offices must have daylight
  • Put them all round the outside of the building, where plenty of daylight is available.
  • Studios need to be sound insulated from one another
  • Put between them horizontal layers of rooms such as Music Libraries, Book Stores, etc, which neither create noise nor are disturbed by it.

In this way, item by item, the plans were wrestled with and were slowly developed to their present form. Sometimes, as a result of much thought, whole features had to be discarded. Such was the fate of a huge parking garage, at one time accommodated in the basement. I could fill many pages with the history of planning this building, with all its exacting requirements, but, interesting as this would be to myself, this is, perhaps, hardly the place for such a story.

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 The Entrance Hall 

Before speaking of the exterior, I will just say a word about the internal decoration of the principal apartments. The Entrance Hall, semi -circular in plan, is simplicity itself, devoid of ornament, and depends for its effect upon the grace of the natural curves which arise from its circular form and the rhythm of its vertical lines. The beauty of the English marble (Hopton -Wood stone), which lines the walls, is an added charm.

The central feature of the Hall is to be a lovely figure of “The Sower,” for which Eric Gill has already made his model.

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 The Entrance Hall with The Sower by Eric Gill.

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 The Council Chamber

The Council Chamber, sixty feet across, is of semi- circular shape, like the Entrance Hall. This room, whose acoustic qualities are strangely happy to the naked ear, is lined with Tasmanian oak and, at night, is entirely illuminated by reflected light from lamps concealed in wrought – oak urns. The pedestals of these urns serve as relieving accents of interest to the simple panelled walls.

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 The Concert Hall 

The Concert Hall , in the heart of the building, is wedge – shaped in plan. The splay is not sufficient for one to realise, at first sight, its existence, but it has the strange perspective effect of making the Hall appear very much longer from the back than from the stage. The treatment of the ceiling is entirely novel; it is hoped that, with the semi – indirect lighting indicated, the ceiling will provide a very distinctive feature.

Now, a word as to the exterior. First, let me explain the reason for the eastern side being cut away as with a draw knife. This part of Langham Street is narrow and, not only have the opposite owners rights of light which had to be respected, but there are three -sided mutual covenants with other neighbours which could not be broken. Hence, the whole of the building above the fourth floor had to be  sloped back and restrained within a limiting angle. In Portland Place, the only limit of height was that imposed by the London Building Act..

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 The East Side of Broadcasting House

The south end of the building, facing down Regent Street, suffered under the same difficulties as the Langham Street front, but at this vital point, realising my troubles, the parties concerned made certain concessions of real value. In the circumstances, the obvious course seemed to be to design a symmetrical façade to Portland Place which would dominate the whole building, to emphasise the main doorway facing south by placing a Clock Tower above it, and to be satisfied with a modest elevation to Langham Street which, without being striking, would be suitable.

The marrying together of these three components was a particularly interesting problem, which was helped by the I provision of a third aerial mast over the Clock Tower.

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 All Souls Church and Broadcasting House

At an early date I realised that the site possessed a rare virtue in the long curve of the western side, and so, in organising the proportion of my masses and the play of light and shade, I tried to make full use of the gracious horizontal lines which this curve suggested. Broadcasting House is said to look bigger than its actual dimensions. This is due to the scale and number of the windows, necessitated by the provision of an immense number of small offices. Endless flexibility of subdivision of offices was required by the Corporation, which fact, naturally, weighed with me in preparing my design for the façade. Although economy was essential to the whole scheme, and the sculpture at my disposal limited, I insisted that it be as good as possible, and then placed it, with other architectural features, at the most effective points, hoping to set it off to advantage by the contrast of plain walling and the considered rhythm of the windows referred to above.

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 Eric Gill – Prospero and Ariel, 1933

As a footnote it is worth looking at the Eric Gill’s views on the building and his work for it.

His (Gill’s) frustration with the BBC work must have been compounded by the trouble over the size of Ariel’s penis already recounted, and with ‘Bad weather, bad stone and bad health’ – though it was on his own choice to work on inadequate and exposed scaffolding. From this perch he was heard to shout to a passing friend, ‘You know, this is all balls’. ‘The Sower’ was also done with some cynicism as he wrote to his brother Cecil; ‘I am about to begin the statue, representing a man ‘Broadcasting’, to stand in the entrance hall. Comic thought, whe you consider the quality of BBC semination, to compre it with the effords of a simply countryman sowing corn! However, it’s their idea, not mine. Mine not to reason why… mine simple, to carve a good image of a broadcaster”. †

† Malcolm Yorke – Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit

Discover Ralph Maynard Smith

 Ralph Maynard Smith – Surfaces Floating above a Beach at Sunset, 1950

Ralph Maynard Smith was born in 1904. He was the son of an English architect who had emigrated to South Africa in the late 1800s and had set up a productive architectural practice in Cape Town. He was educated in South Africa and England and even as a boy was devoted to drawing and painting.

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 Ralph Maynard Smith – Vertical Surfaces on a Beach, 1951

In 1923, while a student at the Architectural Association in London, he travelled to Scotland, and crossed the island of Mull on foot. He spent six weeks there, finally reaching the white shell beaches of Iona. He carried with him a rucksack containing full painting gear and the five volumes of Ruskin’s Modern Painters. He drew and painted all the way, with much of the study being around Loch Scridain. He alluded ever afterwards to the importance of those weeks, but spoke only once of the day when in the silence of the mountains a running stream talked to him. From then on his devotion to the practice of art dominated his life, but was played out in secret. But if for some reason it had to be secret, how could the artist organise his life in practice to follow this ideal and achieve concrete results?

We can only deduce what his plan may have been from the evidence of his life, which outwardly showed an unwavering consistency of purpose. He seems to have determined on a scheme that was never defined or spoken of, except tangentially in his journals. He called these journals “The Ravine”, after Van Gogh’s painting of that name, and drafted his first entries while still on Mull.

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 Ralph Maynard Smith – Shepherd Landscape

In 1923, as well as painting, Ralph Maynard Smith was studying architecture in London.  He was one of the youngest in his year to qualify at the Architectural Association in 1925. That was followed by a year’s practical work with a London architect, which led to his associate status at the RIBA.

Soon afterwards he got a permanent job with the then well-known architects Elcock & Sutcliffe, who had just had a notable success with their Art Deco Daily Telegraph building. Later on Ralph Maynard Smith became a partner in the firm. Having landed that job in 1928, he married Geraldine Lyles and set up home in Woldingham. Their son was born in 1929 and they lived for the rest of their lives on the Surrey Downs (after a few years just moving from Woldingham to Tadworth). We see Ralph Maynard Smith’s life plan unfolding. Practicing professionally as an architect, he gave himself a measure of security, while  devoting every leisure moment to realising his vision for painting.

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 Ralph Maynard Smith – Shadows,Shadows, 1949.

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 Ralph Maynard Smith – Circles and Moon, 1950

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 Ralph Maynard Smith – Eclipse of the Winged Embryo, 1949

Text via Ralph Maynard Smith Trust

How to read a John Piper painting

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 John Piper – Abstract I, 1935

It is always interesting looking back at an artists work in retrospective books, the early works and the friends around them to how they sailed on into life and the work progressed. This post is about the work of John Piper and how I look at his pictures.

Piper’s art education would have been set in a landscape were the tectonic plates of traditional art education of the last 200 years met with post-impressionism and modernism from the exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 by Roger Fry and other movements like Futurism (1912), Vorticism (1914), Cubism (1910-late 20s) and Surrealism (1921-50s).

But these shocks would have been picked up and absorbed by the young artists to come and change British art in the twentieth century, people that John Piper surrounded himself  whom were both artists and collectors; Henry Moore, Cedric Morris, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth where in the Seven and Five Society with Piper (he was the secretary), but also collectors and writers like Jim Ede, John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster and Benjamin Britten and John Rothenstein.

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 John Piper – Beach at Donegal, 1937

In the 1930s Piper was mostly active in two areas of art, collage and abstraction. The Seven and Five Society would give him a platform to showcase these works alongside other artists investigating both modernism in abstraction but form and function:

The Seven and Five Society was an art group of seven painters and five sculptors created in 1919 and based in London. The group was originally intended to encompass traditional, conservative artistic sensibilities. 

However, in 1924 Ben Nicholson, one of the pioneers of abstract art in Britain, joined the Seven and Five. He was followed by other modernists including Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and later, John Piper. They effectively hijacked the group, expelling the non-modernists. In 1935 they renamed it the Seven and Five Abstract
Group and held the first all abstract exhibition in Britain at the Zwemmer Gallery in London.

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John Piper – Knowlton, Dorset, 1936

In these blocks of colour, objects could be simplified to their basic
form. A really good example of this would be Piper’s collage of
Knowlton, Dorset. With almost no ink lines it is just colour and
form. From these types of collage you get more ink washes and
drawings over the top.

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 John Piper – Newhaven Harbour and Cliff, Sussex, 1936

Then when it came to returning to painting I always think that this is how Piper approached subjects, first with the base of colours and form, then the black line drawing, as if it were a trade illustration, much in the same way Raoul Dufy paints.

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 John Piper – Interior of Coventry Cathedral, 15 November 1940

It’s a technique that Piper mastered when painting in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. – the colour in blocks with black paint for texture. It would also be the way he approached printmaking and lithography.

He also used wax resists in his paintings to keep some of the bold colours and put chalk and pastels over the paintwork too. In time he would work out the form of a painting and the resist rubber gum would leave white lines over his many washes of colour.

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 John Piper – Buckden in a Storm, 1977

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 John Piper – Eastnor Castle, 1983

Tove and Tolkien

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Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki, and was an illustrator, most famous for her series of comics and books on the Moomins. She also wrote books for adults, notably The Summer Book and The True Deceiver. But this post is about the surprising choice of her by Swedish publishers as the illustrator for The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, in Swedish called, Bilbo, a Hobbit’s adventure.  

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 J. R. R. Tolkien – Bilbo: En Hobbits Äventyr – The Hobbit, in Swedish, 1962

As an author Tove was at one of the heights of her career when she illustrated The Hobbit in 1962, but the commission gave her space away from the Moomins and a much needed chance to experiment.

It was Astrid Lindgren’s idea to commission Tove Jansson to illustrate a new translation of J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1959-1960. The two great Scandinavian children’s book authors had met only once or twice, but Astrid used all her rhetorical powers to win Jansson over. 

Tove Jansson needed only a few days to think it over before she got dwn to work, and in 1962 Bilbo: A Hobbit’s Adventure, in Britt G Hall-qvist’s translation was ready.

Literary cristics and Tolkien fans were less enthusiastic, however. ‘The children’s book of the century’ ran to only one printing, and must be considered one of Astrid Lindgren’s greatest flops as an editor. †

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Some of the illustrations were done on loose bits of paper collaged together. Other pictures were as one full ink image.

Her Moominland has its own place in the universe of fantasy, on a level with Tolkien’s Middle Earth or C. S. Lewis’s Narnia. Moomin valley, however, is not a mythical world. It is close to current reality; furthermore, it clearly depicts the character of Finland’s skerries.

Tove Jansson and Irmelin Sandman Lilius have both written “books for adults,” but the unquestionable emphasis is on the fantasy tales; both adults and children read their stories. ‡

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 Here is a page from Jansson’s sketchbook on the Hobbit. 

Below pictured is Gollum is pictured with a crown of laurel leaves, his wide eyes and looking far more innocent that he is.

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Below are two versions of dust jackets for the Hobbit in Finnish, one in 1973 that likely was issued for Tolkien’s death and one far more recent for the 80th anniversary of the Hobbit.

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 J. R. R. Tolkien – Lohikäärmevuori, Finnish Edition of the Hobbit, 1973

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 J. R. R. Tolkien – Hobitti eli sinne ja takaisin – The Hobbit or There and Back Again. 80th Anniversary Edition. 2017.

† Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking
‡ George C. Schoolfield – A History of Finland’s Literature – p743

A Trip to Covehithe

A trip to the Suffolk coast it is always nice, but if you don’t know it, try stopping at Covehithe church. It is placed on that part of the Suffolk coast that is crumbling slowly into the sea. Now only a field saves the church from the fate that Dunwich church suffered.

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The original church is now a ruin. The oldest fabric in the original large medieval church dates from the 14th century, although most of it is from the 15th century. During the Civil War much of the stained glass was destroyed by the local iconoclast William Dowsing. By the later part of that century the large church was too expensive for the parishioners to maintain, and they were given permission in 1672 to remove the roof and to build a much smaller church within it.

This small church is still in use, while the tower and the ruins of the old church are maintained by the Churches Conservation Trust.

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The church was painted by John Piper and Piper is shown painting it in a documentary on our Youtube channel.

John Piper – Covehithe Church, 1983

Discover John Norris Wood

The Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden have many artists under their remit of ‘North Essex’ and one of the more unexpected ones is John Norris Wood. A naturalist and teacher at the Royal College of Art, he was an influential figure in keeping nature and drawing part of the art syllabus at the college.

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Born in London on 29 November 1930, son of Lucy and Wilfrid Burton Wood, John grew up in Shalford Green, near Braintree, Essex. Educated at Bryanston School, being influenced by the art master, Charles Handley-Read.

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 John Norris Wood – Night Flight

At the age of 16, when he was introduced to Edward Bawden: ‘Edward phoned me up saying his wife Charlotte Bawden had been to see some pictures I’d been exhibiting in Braintree and that he would like me to come and visit him if I would care to. So I did, and it was all very amazing. There were so many things in his house designed by him, from fabrics to furniture to masses of pictures, of course, and I was enchanted. So I first came to know about the College when I was far, far too young to go there [through] Edward saying he taught at the Royal College and telling me about it.’

Bawden was impressed by John’s proficiency as a draughtsman, gave him some lessons, and allowed him to use his studio whenever he wanted – the anecdote goes – as long as he didn’t speak.

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 John Norris Wood – Country Garden Butterflies 

He studied at Goldsmiths’ College School of Art, under Clive Gardiner and teachers who included Sam Rabin, Adrian Ryan and Betty Swanwick and then went on to the Royal College of Art, where his teachers included Edward Ardizzone, John Minton and, most significantly, Edward Bawden; while there he won a silver medal for zoological drawing.

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 John Norris Wood – The Desire of the Moth for the Lamp 

In 1962 John married Julie, the daughter of Richard Guyatt, in 1962 and they led a blissfully happy, if unconventional, family life at his small nature reserve in East Sussex.

In 1971 Robin Darwin, rector of the Royal College of Art, asked John Norris Wood to found the Natural History and Illustration and Ecological Studies course there.

During the late 1950s he spent periods at the East Anglian School of Painting and Design at Benton End, Hadleigh, Suffolk. Wood taught at Goldsmiths’ 1956-1968, Cambridge School of Art 1959-1970 and Hornsey College of Art and in 1971 he returned to the Royal College of Art becoming a Fellow in 1980. In 1962 Wood married the designer, Julie Corsellis Grant, daughter of designer, Richard Guyatt and they lived at Garretts, Shalford, Essex and had two children.

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 John Norris Wood – Stamps

Wood became a freelance artist and illustrator, working for a variety of book and magazine publishers in Britain and America. His series for children, ‘Nature Hide and Seek’, which he wrote and co-illustrated with Kevin Dean, was designated best children’s books of the year by the US Association for the Advancement of Science also writing and broadcasting for television on a number of natural history subjects. Wood has exhibited widely in London and the provinces, and also internationally. His solo shows include those at the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden 2001, the Chappel Galleries, Colchester 2002 and the Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge 2004. A member of the Society of Wildlife Artists in 1997 and also a member of the Society of Authors and the Thomas Hardy Society. He latterly lived Wadhurst, East Sussex and he died 17 October 2015.

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 John Norris Wood – An Alphabet in Praise of Frogs & Toads

Ewen Bridge Farm

In 1941 Eric Ravilious moved to Ironbridge Farm, Shalford, Essex. It was to be the last home he would know. The Second World War had come and he was touring the country painting works on behalf of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee.

The farmhouse, which dates from the 16th century is called Ewen Bridge Farm, though it is also confused as Iron Bridge Farm as there is a bridge with ironwork nearby on a footpath, however this is a coincidence and has no historical reference to the farmhouse.

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 Eric Ravilious – Iron Bridge at Ewenbridge, 1941

In the year before the move from Castle Hedingham to the Farm, Ravilious’s wife Tirzah, was diagnosed with breast cancer and just before moving in 1941, Eric’s mother Emma died, she was 77 years old. Tizah gave birth to Anne Ravilious (Ullmann) and they moved into the farm.

At the end of April, at very short notice, they all moved from Castle Hedingham to a new house, but still in Essex. It was called Ironbridge Farm, at Shalford, near Braintree, and was in the valley of the Pant. The country and the river were looking lovely in the spring. The house, an old one, with very few conveniences. ‡

Eric’s friend Peggy Angus rented Furlongs, a cottage on an a vast country estate and never bought the property, continuing to rent it all her life. Furlongs also had no electricity but did have running water. Peggy’s life may have been the inspiration for the move, and the desire for more space would have been obvious with three children now in the family. The farm was also five miles closer to Great Bardfield than Castle Hedingham.

They rented Ironbridge Farm at Shalton, near Braintree, paying half the rent to their landlord (the Labour politician John Strachey) in Eric’s pictures. †

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 Eric Ravilious – Farm House and Field, 1941

The house then looks to have been clad and whitewashed, however today the building has it’s beams exposed and is painted a light yellow, otherwise externally it is much the same.

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 Ironbridge Farm today.

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 Eric Ravilious – Tree Trunk & Barrow Ironbridge, 1941

The inside of the house looks a lonely whitewashed place. No time for decorating looks to have been spared and with the war and the fact it was a rented property it may not have happened at all, in the following paintings the rooms have few items of furniture in them, making every room look colder. On the wall is another of his paintings from the house. In the interior paintings Ravilious shows us his other works or tubes of paints, it is like he is looking at a mirror with out himself in it.

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 Eric Ravilious – Ironbridge Interior, 1941 

In the painting below (Flowers on Cottage Table), the vase on a coaster is an undecorated specimen from Wedgwood for Ravilious’s Boat Race Vase in 1938. It shows that he must have designed for the china with demonstration shapes in front of him.

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 Eric Ravilious – Boat Race Day Footed Bowl, 1938

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 Eric Ravilious – Flowers on Cottage Table, 1941 

Below is a draft copy of the same painting but in an unfinished state.

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 Eric Ravilious – Garden Flowers on Cottage Table, 1941

† Ian Carter – Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity, 2001
‡ Helen Binyon – Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist, 1983
  Robert Harling – Ravilious & Wedgwood, 1986