Sir John Soane Museum

      Just a few snaps which I took of the interior of the Sir John Soane Museum on my last trip to the Smoke.  Hard to think, looking these images just how crowded the museum actually  was.

  The museum is quite the most extraordinary of spaces in London - part house, part office, part museum.  If you haven't been then I strongly suggest you do!  It is a marvel.

Alan Sorrell at Sir John Soane's Museum

   Yesterday I went down to London to visit the exhibition of the work of Alan Sorrell currently on at Sir John Soane's Museum.  As regular readers of this blog will know I have written several posts on his work.  It is a particular favourite of mine.

   Perhaps it was the amount of scaffolding in the courtyard, but walking through Soane's house, (an experience I hadn't repeated since the 1980s), I was struck firstly by the progression from dark to light that the house possesses, from the sombre ground floor to the yellow drawing room on the first floor.  I was also struck with the amount of allusion and suggestion that the house evokes, for all the classicism the house is a monument to Romanticism. It is a short step, perhaps, from the evocation of a religious sensibility in light and space in Soane's house to Pugin and the Oxford Movement. From associative values to the real thing.  Thirdly the penumbra, the accretion of objects, seemed to presage so much of High Victorian aesthetic values.

   The exhibition space, located in the house next door, is a relatively new addition to the museum.  I believe it was this house - itself a work of Soane - that was lived in by the director of the museum.  I could be wrong.  The exhibition itself is small, though I was far from disappointed - occupying two rooms.  It is complimented by an excellent book.  The exhibits are particularly well chosen to illustrate the facets of Sorrell's work, both private as well as the public.  I responded in particular to his technique - often the paper surface, worked with paint, ink, pencil, gouache, wax resist, charcoal, has a wonderful tactile quality.  At one time, I guess, this technique would be considered impure.  But it suits me fine.  It must partly through these techniques as well as the heightened atmosphere of much of his work that links Sorrell to the Neo-Romantics; certainly there is desire in his work to evoke a sense of place and 'atmosphere'.  However I don't feel that abiding sense of unease in Sorrell's work that is often found in many Neo-Romantic artists.  In fact there is much that is cheerful, if not playful in his work.  Indeed sometimes there is an element of caricature about it.  In the mural, 'Working boats from around the British Coast' - a five panelled work in oil from the 'Nelson Bar' of  HMS Campania, two panels of which are on display at the exhibition - this is particularly so.  It's a light, happy piece.  Stylistically different too for being solely in one medium - oil.  I can't imagine many other Neo-Romantics being able to pitch their work so.  The murals were indeed a revelation.  Two stand out: 'The Seasons' at Myton (formerly Oken) School, Warwick, and the work he undertook at the Old Bexhill parish church.  If anything lets them down is that sense of  the grotesque, of the caricature that creeps in.  Thankfully it is kept mostly in check.  It is however a minor quibble and would that he had done more work of this type.  This light heartedness - dare I say charm? - stands in contrast to the serious, intense self-portrait he made in Nov 1928, as a Rome Scholar - does it reflect the influence of contemporary Italian artists?  I'm not sure.  It displays a crisp, angular analytical style - the influence also of Wyndham Lewis? - that soon gave way to his mature style.
   Rather like the work of the architect Stephen Dykes Bower, Sorrell's work is both, paradoxically, known and unknown, in that the work of both men are woven into the fabric of so many lives in Post-War Britain and yet go uncredited.  Who hasn't seen the work of Dykes Bower at Royal and National services at both Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral?  Who, growing up in Post War Britain hasn't seen Sorrell's illustrations in a library book or on a visit to a ruined castle or abbey?  That was certainly my experience and that of my friend Richard. Alas for Dykes Bower and Sorrell they both had the  misfortune of working under the high point of Modernism, and there reputation therefore suffered as a result.

Alan Sorrell Part I

    A month ago (can it really be as long as that?) Ben Pentreath on his blog 'Inspirations' shared his discovery of the work of illustrator and author Rena Gardiner.  Reading about Rena's work my mind turned to one of my favourite illustrators: Alan Sorrell.  I first discovered his work as a child, firstly I suppose in our local library, and then on our annual holiday in Scotland where I found his work on postcards and in the guides available at Ancient Monuments: St Andrews Cathedral and Priory; Dryburgh, Melrose and Jedburgh Abbeys.  A subsequent holiday in Wales brought further examples of his work.

    Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974) trained firstly at Southend School of Art and then, after two years as a commercial artist, at the Royal College of Art.  His contemporaries there included Bawden.  During WWII he served as an Official War Artist with the RAF.  His is mainly remembered today for the beautiful drawings he produced re-constructing ancient sites - this side of his work was the result of a chance meeting with Kathleen Kenyon, 'the most influential female archaeologist of the 20th century', in 1938.  Some of these were produced for the Ministry of Works, others as book illustrations, such as the series produced for The Lutterworth Press in the early 1960s - 'Prehistoric Britain', 'Roman Britain', 'Saxon England', 'Norman Britain' and 'Medieval Britain'.  Although Alan Sorrell illustrated every one in the series, each book had a different author.  In 'Roman Towns in Britain' he wrote the text as well as drew the illustrations (published posthumously by Batsford 1976).  He also produced a number of murals, including one for the Festival of Britain.
   
    Alan Sorrell's work is deeply atmospheric, evocative.  Neo-romantic.  The skies scowl with rain clouds.  Wind whips the smoke.  People gather in groups; they hurry to a race track in Roman Wroxeter; they flee a smoking Roman villa that is being sacked by Saxon raiders.  People shop, they listen to speeches and watch jugglers.  His pictures are more than mere re-constructions - they live.

    There will be an exhibition of Alan Sorrell's work later this year at the Sir John Soane's Museum (October 25th 2013 - January 45th 2014)

Roman Towns in Britain

Looking somewhat tatty.  As a child I bought, or was bought, this book in 'Bertram A Watts' - the bookshop in Sherringham, north Norfolk.  A visit to family in Norfolk would invariably conclude in Sherringham with a walk along the 'prom' and a visit to the bookshop.

   The quayside, London.  The stream to the left is the Walbrook

     Venta Icenorum, from the air

     The Balkerne Gate, Colchester

   The Forum, St Albans

   The Baths, Wroxeter