Tag: Festival of Britain

60 Pictures

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 7th May 2020

60 Pictures in ‘51 was part of the Festival of Britain celebrations, a touring exhibition of art with 60 paintings by Britain’s leading artists. It came with a booklet but like many books of the time, all the images were in monochrome. I thought it would be entertaining to present the pictures in colour and though I haven’t found all of the paintings, here is what I amassed.

Gerald Wilde cover for the book 60 Paintings for ‘51.

If the Festival of Britain is to achieve its avowed aim of showing the British way of life in all its various facets it is clearly appropriate that a number of our distinguished painters and sculptors should have been given an opportunities to make their contribution.

With this very end in view – and also in the hope of handing down to posterity from our present age something tangible and of permanent value – the Arts Council has commissioned twelve sculptors and invited sixty artists to paint a large work, not less than 45 by 60 inches on a subject of their own choice. †

Keith Vaughan – Interior at Minos, 1950

L S Lowry – Industrial Landscape, River Scene, 1950

Lucian Freud – Interior Near Paddington, 1951

Rodrigo Moynihan – Portrait Group, 1951

John Tunnard – Return, 1951

Michael Ayrton – The Captive Seven, 1950

Ceri Richards – Trafalgar Square, London, 1950

John Nash – Afon Creseor, North Wales , 1951

Keith Baynes – Hop-Picking, Rye, 1950

Elinor Bellingham Smith – The Island, 1951

Martin Bloch – Down from Bethesda Quarry, 1951

Edward Burra – Judith and the Holofernes, 1951

Prunella Clough – Lowestoft Harbour, 1951

Roy de Maistre, Noli Me Tangere

Hans Feibusch, The Prodigal Son

Carel Weight, “As I wend to the Shores…”

Ivon Hitchins, Aquarian Nativity, Child of this Age

Gilbert Spencer, Hebridean Memory

Charles Mahoney – The Garden, 1950

Claude Rogers, Miss Lynne

Ruskin Spear – River in Winter, 1951

Victor Pasmore – The Snowstorm: Spiral Motif in Black and White, 1951

Robert Medley – Cyclists against a Blue Background, 1951

William Gillies – The Studio Table, 1951

Patrick Heron – Christmas Eve, 1951

William Gear – Autumn Landscape, 1950

Peter Lanyon – Porthleven, 1951

Robert MacBryde – Figure and Still Life, 1951

Below are some of the sculptures mentioned in the forward, but these really had their own booklet and part of the Battersea Park Festival Of Britain Pleasure Garden.

Henry Moore – Reclining Figure, 1951

Jacob Epstein – Youth Advances, 1951

Barbara Hepworth

Contrapuntal Forms, 1951

Frank Dobson – Woman and Fish, 1951

The statue above stood in Frank Dobson Square, Tower Hamlets until it was vandalised and she had her head destroyed. Now with scars she sits in Delapre Abbey, Northampton, pictured below.

† Philip James – 60 Paintings for ‘51, 1951

Tags Festival of Britain, Sculpture

Twa Corbies

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 16th March 2018

Here are two poems read and drawn as an interesting collaboration of artists as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951. The drawings were used to make a series of scenes for a short film, the spoken or sung content added over this.

In this clip there are two poems. Twa Corbies narrated by John Laurie and illustrated by Michael Rothenstein and Spring and Winter (Shakespeare) sung by Peter Pears to music by Thomas Arne and illustrated by Mervyn Peake.

Both of these poems are available to be seen on the BFI for free. Here is the link.

Michael Rothenstein – A Still from Twa Corbies, 1951

Tags Festival of Britain, fry gallery, great bardfield, Mervyn Peake, Michael Rothenstein, Peter Pears

Miranda and the Festival of Britain.

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 16th March 2017

Arthur Fleischmann with his statue, Miranda, 1951

Arthur Fleischmann was a Slovak-born, London-based sculptor, who pioneered the use of Perspex in sculpture. He spent time in Bali, and in Australia, where he was at the centre of the Merioola Group, before settling in London in 1948. He married his wife Joy in 1959 and their son, the photographer Dominique Fleischmann, was born in 1961.

For the 1951 Festival of Britain, Fleischmann was commissioned to produce a sculpture entitled “Miranda”. The larger than life-size Mermaid was sponsored by the Lockheed Brake and Clutch Company.

Miranda fountain in a press advert for the Lockheed Company, to the left the Festival of Britain and their logo’s are combined, 1951.

Miranda graced the exhibition area in Battersea Park and, after the Festival closed, it was transported to the Lockheed headquarters in Leamington Spa.

Arthur Fleischmann with the statue and on the sofa, the model Joyce Odiase (née Taylor). Photo by Russell Westwood, NPG, 1951.

The statue stayed at the Lockheed headquarters for nearly 50 years before “disappearing” mysteriously over the Christmas holidays of 2000.

A historic bronze statue by sculptor Arthur Fleischmann has been stolen from its home in Leamington Spa. Miranda, a bronze sculpture 2.5m long and 1.2m high, was stolen some time between 14 and 17 December 2001 from the main entrance of the AP (Automotive Products) company in Tachbrook Road.

The sculpture, commissioned by AP’s predecessor, the Lockheed Hydraulic Brake Company, was created for the 1951 Festival of Britain and first displayed in London’s Festival Gardens. A spokeswoman for Leamington Spa police put the value of the work at between £50,000 and £100,000. So far police have no idea as to its whereabouts or who might have stolen it.

Miranda attracted a great deal of press coverage during the Festival of Britain, in part for its unconventional portrayal of a mermaid with two legs instead of a fish’s body, and fins instead of feet.

Mr Fleischmann said at the time: “I think that mermaids with fish tails are rather dull. “Why should not a beautiful mermaid have nice legs? She can still swim with her fins on her feet. At least that is how I imagine a mermaid.”

The work, intended as a tribute to the skill and industry of the people of Britain, took three months to create and involved two models. The bronze was cast by Vincent Galizia foundry at Battersea, south London, and was returned to Leamington Spa after the Festival closed. It was set in a fountain and was listed as a Grade II building, and remained on its site until the theft. †

Front cover of Precision Magazine, 1951.

The Henry-Moore Institute acquired two terracotta maquettes of Miranda created by Fleischmann in around 1948 (at the same time that he did the portraits of the actor Trevor Howard) and these are on display in the Institute gallery space in Leeds. When a cheeky reporter quipped at Fleischmann during the Festival that everyone knows a mermaid has a tail and not two legs with fins, my father replied that he had never seen a mermaid and so couldn’t comment.

Joyce Odiase (née Taylor) in a riske shot with the maquette of Miranda.

Sources:
† BBC News Website – 2002, Festival of Britain Bronze stolen http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1749497.stm
The Courtauld Institute of Art and Archiecture. http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/stories/fleischmann_fleischmann/fleischmann_fleischmann3.html

Tags arthur fleischmann, Festival of Britain, fountain, miranda, Sculpture