Two Exhibitions

     Thursday was spent in London, in Mayfair and St James's.  I took in two exhibitions; one a planned visit and the second a happy happenstance. 

     First then off to the RA and, having braved the rather officious woman at the desk, the 'Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec' exhibition.  This, it has to be said, a slightly misleading title as the hanging did not begin and end with either.  It ended, if I remember rightly, with the Symbolists, or was it perhaps Cezanne? I can't rightly remember. Maybe it was the chest infection that I was incubating, but to be truthful there was a lot of work on display that has completely eluded my recollection. And here I have to confess that Impressionism does not do much for me. I mean it's pleasant enough, the oil paintings and all that, but 'is that all there is?' I always go to this sort of exhibition in the hope that I'll get it, and this particularly exhibition - which in this week's Speccie is described as a 'once-in-a-lifetime show' - sadly, did little to alter my opinion. It really must be me then.
     So what do I remember actually remember? Well, there were a number of studies of dancers by Degas - obligatory, really - some rather brooding studies by Seurat and a couple of fine portraits; a Renoir - rather sugary, perhaps, but a wonderful lesson in the use of pastel and one, alive and spikey, by Toulouse-Lautrec.
     And, oh, there were also a couple of watercolours by Pissarro. Alas. I've encountered his watercolours before at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge way back in 2015. I'm never quite sure why they're ever displayed as they really are quite dreadful.  His talents obviously lay elsewhere.  Cezanne's 'Flowerpots on the Terrace of the Artist's Studio at Les Lauves' is a watercolour on a completely different level.
     Afterwards I went to the RA Grand Cafe, which is a space I rather love. Designed by the great Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912), it still appears fresh and original today. In addition, the room is decorated with large mural paintings by RA members.

     I then had a wander around that net work of streets behind the RA, popping into Messums on Cork St. where there were some wonderful ceramics by Makoto Kagoshima were on display. I crossed Piccadilly for shopping and quite by accident found 'One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours from the eighteenth to the 21st centuries' curated by Freya Mitton, Guy Peppiatt and Harry Moore-Gwyn. Much more to my liking than the RA exhibition what with work by Mark Hearld, John Sell Cotman, John Nash, John Piper, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Keith Vaughan, Barbara Jones, Barnett Freedman, Robert Taverner and Edward Bawden. My cup did overflow.

British Transport Films: 'An Artist looks at Churches'

     We are back in the world of British documentary films, a place that this blog has not visited for far too long a period - the sort of thing that was played in British cinemas before the main feature, and also, I can just remember, aired on BBC2 way back in the late Sixties and early Seventies. That was where I first saw 'Shellarama' and, I think, 'An Artist looks at Churches', which was written and narrated by the British Neo-Romantic artist John Piper. The latter was produced by 'British Transport Films', the former by the 'Shell Film Unit'. Thanks to the BFI both films are available on DVD. Piper was more than an artist - perhaps more of a Renaissance Man - the designer of tapestries and stained glass, graphic designer, writer, photographer, editor, theatre designer.

     'An Artist looks at Churches' forms part of six disc compilation of work by the BTF entitled 'Railways Forever!'. Another three compilations, at least, are available, but for me this and 'A Future on Rail' are the most interesting selections. All of these box sets, however, are very evocative, sometimes moving, and one cannot help but feel a wave of nostalgia. British Transport Films was established under the direction of Edgar Anstey (1907-1987) in 1949, a year after the nationalisation of the railways. Anstey, who was also a film critic at 'The Spectator', was stepped in the British Documentary tradition, having previously worked John Grierson at the Empire Marketing Board. I suppose the BTF's remit was not unlike that of Lord Reith's BBC: 'Inform, Educate, Entertain', as well, of course, as drum up custom for the railways. In addition they made films for other transport bodies such as London Transport. In all the product of that same class and culture that was chronicled by the novelist C P Snow. A somewhat better class of 'product' it has to be said. And one which seems to easily blend both the progressive and the conservative strands of post-war culture.

     Odd really, this nostalgia of mine, for it is for a time I did not know, for by the time I was born most of the best work by the BTF was past, as films made from the late Sixties onwards tend toward the utilitarian and the commonplace. Occasionally they succeed but too often the films lack a sort of heroic quality that can be found in works such as 'Ocean Terminus' and 'Snowdrift at Bleath Gill' - the 'Heroic Materialism' described by Kenneth Clarke in his landmark television series 'Civilization'. In some respects, this tilt towards the banal is mirrored in other aspects of contemporary British film making and in the culture generally. Perhaps it reflects a crisis in Modernity, a loss of narrative. Certainly 'Heroic Materialism' failed to satisfy, failed to make up for the absent God. But it did for a while, at least, supply a common narrative structure. All that said the GPO Film Unit was still capable of producing a film like 'Picture to Post', directed by Sarah Erulkar, that could brilliantly combine the post-war ethic with the visual language of 'Swinging London'. Certainly the BTF didn't come to terms with the changes of the 1960s. Edgar Anstey retired in 1974, the BTF finally closing in 1982.

     Back, finally, to the film in question, and it is a classy production - atmospheric cinematography and a score by John Racine Fricker (1920-1990). We briefly see Mr Piper at the beginning of the film, strolling through an autumnal looking churchyard but otherwise he is an invisible presence. Just his very flat, rather mundane accented narration guiding us through a thousand years of English church history - one church, at least, for every hundred years. Not that architecture over predominates - space is given to the other arts, stained glass and sculpture for instance. Perhaps the choices are not the most obvious, but the film is none the worse for that. Though those choices are mainly from the south west, if memory serves me right. It is good, however to see the somewhat unknown St Philip's Cosham by Sir Ninian Comper included (and filmed so beautifully). The more well-known churches, such as Lavenham or Ottery St Mary, appear in the two 'collages' that bookend the film. In common with nearly all of these short documentary films of the early Post-war period there is a note of optimism - rather misplaced here at that. We have not entered into a new period of church building, or a golden age of church patronage of the arts. Far from it.

An Artist Looks at Churches                                                                                               1959

Producer                                Edgar Anstey
Director/Cinematographer   John Taylor 

Grongar Hill II

   After lunch we ascended to the parish church, dedicated to St Cathen, to find where Piper had sat and sketched Grongar Hill and Paxton's Tower. The area wasn't that had to find at all - at the bottom of the churchyard or perhaps in the pasture below.  Though looking at my photo now, I think, I was a little too far the north to be entirely accurate.

     The church itself is rather typically Late Medieval Welsh.  A tall unbuttressed tower with small bell openings, built of rubble and perhaps once plastered and limewashed.  The rest of the church in contrast is rather low slung.  The detailing is very simple.  The south chancel chapel is post medieval, built in the early 1600s.  John Dyer's memorial is on the exterior. The graveyard is its usual quota of Victorian polished red- granite memorials. Quite atmospheric in places.

     Inside it is more spacious than expected - much broader rather than it is tall.  Each nave and the south aisle, which must be as wide, are covered with wooden barrel vaults. To the north of the nave is a tall transept separated from the nave by a round arch. In all I was reminded of the architecture of an another two peripheral areas of the Late Gothic World: Cornwall and Scotland.  And then quite unexpectedly in the south chancel chapel a large, extravagant Jacobean memorial to Bishop Rudd of St David's who preferred to be buried here in his home parish (his family then owned Aberglasney) rather than in the cathedral. (The chapel was constructed to take the tomb - though the east window is now Victorian.) Plain now but surely it must have once of been bright with paint? Relatively free of clutter, the church is unhappily much darkened by a Victorian restoration, and by the lack of windows in the s chancel chapel, though judging by the hood mould on the exterior there must once have been a 'gothic survival' window of some description.  Gothic survival too, apparently, is the well detailed arcade between the chapel and the chancel.  A real contrast to the crudely designed nave arcade.

   Really there was nothing now to do but visit Paxton's Tower and its great views up the Towy Valley to the Black Mountain and Brecon Beacons.  The tower, a monument to Lord Nelson, was constructed by Sir William Paxton in 1811.  It was originally lavishly furnished but the windows are now open to the elements.  It is currently owned by the National Trust.

Grongar Hill I

'Grongar Hill invites my song'

John Dyer

'Romantic art is the result of a vision that can see in things something significant beyond ordinary significance; something that for a moment seems to contain the whole world and when the moment is passed carries over some comment on life or experience beside the comment on appearances.'

John Piper

     Last week was spent in south-west Wales staying with the bf in the Infernal City.  Monday was wonderfully spring like, if a little chill at times.  We drove north on a return (3rd) visit to Llandeilo and then down the beautiful valley of the Towy - the ancient heartland of the kingdom of Deheubarth - a sort of literary and artistic pilgrimage for me.  Llandeilo, as I must have said before on this blog, is a wonderful little town, built high above the river at a point where the valley narrows.  A strategic point then.  A place of royal and religious authority, where in the 6th century St Teilo established a clas, a type of monastic settlement, on the site now occupied by the parish church.  It would be nice to think that the large oval graveyard perpetuates the shape of the original monastic enclosure.  Anyway it is always a pleasure to explore Llandeilo with its nest of winding narrow streets and alleyways.  There are fortunately a number of old shop fronts and still proper shops including two butchers. The best streetscape is Kings St where Georgian and Victorian buildings overlook the churchyard.

     Then on, westward, down the Towy valley to the village of Llangathen and Aberglasney, the wonderful old manor house and garden and the goal of my secular pilgrimage. I'm not at all sure how the geology works but the north side of the middle Towy valley is quite complex with a ridge of hills rising up on the edge of the valley side, like a broken palisade.  Aberglasney nestles in a fold between two of those hills, Bryn Castell-Gwrychion to the east and Grongar hill to the west. From the gardens there are delicious glimspses down between trees onto the wide floodplain of the river. The valley sides opposite are thick with woods. The gardens themselves are really delightful with plenty of the sort of formal gardening I like - the Cloister garden is very rare and could be Jacobean - with contrasting areas of informality including a sort of Sacro Bosco limping down the valley side.  All in all pretty much perfect.  A place where sensibility and imagination take wing.  It is not surprising then that the Towy valley and in particular Grongar Hill have inspired a continual stream of artists particularly those associated with the Picturesque and Romantic movements.
     In the 17th century Aberglasney was the home of John Dyer, the poet and artist.  He is particularly remembered for his long lyric poem 'Grongar Hill' (1720).  A minor poem by a minor writer, yes, but not without importance for 'Grongar Hill' marks a turn in English literature towards Romanticism. John Piper, the twentieth century Neo-romantic painter, said it was: 'one of the best purely topographical poems in existence [ ] I have loved the poem ever since I first read it, and I return to it whenever I feel depressed about the countryside getting spoilt.'  In later life Dyer took up Holy Orders and ended up as parish priest in Conningsby, in this my own dear county.  I've wondered what he felt about living amidst the looming flats of the Lincolnshire fens.  William Gilpin visited the Towy valley, and wrote briefly about it in 'Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales. etc. relative to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770'.  Turner, Pocock, Rooker and others followed.
     It continued to attract artists into the 20th century too. I'm lucky enough to own a small lithograph by John Piper. (I think you can guess where this is leading.)  Nothing grand, just a small, open edition illustration using merely four colours that, I think, was made by the Curwen Press to illustrate John Betjeman's anthology 'English, Scottish and Welsh Landscape Verse' (1944). It is, if you haven't already realized, of Grongar Hill, and I love it dearly. Dark, brooding and fraught with significance. Hence my pilgrimage. Piper in fact made four images of Grongar Hill, including an oil painting dating from the early forties, and the last, a present to Albert Hecht the frame maker, dating from the early eighties.

Lettering

   I'm quite fascinated by lettering and have periodically made various attempts at lettering.  Here, for instance, is a font that I have been working on in the last few days.  The initial inspiration for the lettering below came from reading that John Piper - an artists whose work I greatly, but not always, love - used lettering he found for his graphic work.  By found I mean in this case the lettering he found on gravestones.  I went to Bourne Abbey and took some rubbings from the slate tombstones there.  The variety was quite amazing.  It was all so beautifully cut.  Even on one stone you might find at least three styles of lettering used.  The initial design is for the sans serif 'e' directly inspired by the 'V' cut lettering I found.