Small is Beautiful: Kettle's Yard and the Fry

'Von Ribbentrop in St Ives' at Kettle's Yard

Thank you to everyone who came to my Ravilious talk in Saffron Walden on Wednesday, and to the organisers - Nigel and Iris Weaver and staff at the Fry Art Gallery. I was just reading a post by Jonathan Jones about cuts at Tate Liverpool and it made me appreciate all the more the virtues of small, quirky galleries. I feel the same about bookshops, but we'll come back to them another day...

I had to go to Cambridge en route to Essex and, while there, braved the bikes and crowds of French schoolkids muddling about in the road to visit Kettle's Yard. I hadn't been for years and had completely forgotten that the permanent collection lives not in the gallery but in the house itself, the former home of Tate curator and collector Jim Ede and his wife Helen.

Having worked at the Tate during the 1920s and 1930s, Jim amassed a diverse collection of British art from the period, and in 1966 he donated house and contents to Cambridge University. His vision was to create not 'an art gallery or museum, nor ... simply a collection of works of art reflecting my taste or the taste of a given period.'

HS 'Jim' Ede at Kettle's Yard

Christopher Wood, Jean Bourgoint, 1926

Instead he sought to preserve 'a continuing way of life from these last fifty years, in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability.'

At a time when exhibitions tend to be dominated by great walls of explanatory text, it is a pleasure indeed to wander around this eccentric dwelling, looking at paintings in a domestic context and, quite naturally, unlabelled. With interest in 20th century British art on the rise, I can think of few better places to see work by Ben Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Winifred Nicholson, David Jones, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Christopher Wood and others, alongside work by modern European artists. The selection is eclectic, reflecting not the depth of Ede's wallet but the warmth of his friendships. The paintings, sculptures and other objects BELONG in the house and are all the more enjoyable for that.

Kettle's Yard interior

The strangeness of the experience is heightened by the fact that you have to ring a doorbell for admission, much as if you were popping round to visit a friend; the staff are helpful but you can't get hold of a guidebook (which has a numbered plan of all the art) until you've been all the way round. When I was there a woman was trying to buy a guidebook but had given up her handbag, as requested, at the front door. You'll have to go and get it, she was told firmly - NOT the handbag, JUST the purse.

From there it's a half-hour drive to Saffron Walden and the Fry Art Gallery, where 'Ravilious in Essex' is entering its final month - 4000 visitors and counting. The Fry was also established by public-minded collectors, a succession of them in fact, going back more than a century - it takes its name from a scion of the Bristol family of chocolate makers who owned it in the 19th century. Nigel and Iris Weaver discovered the place in a ruinous condition when they moved to Saffron Walden in the 1980s, restored it and in 1987 opened the building to the public once again. Like Tate Britain in miniature, it is a gorgeous building with a fascinating permanent collection.

With a focus on the artists of Great Bardfield (John Aldridge, Edward Bawden, Tirzah Garwood/Ravilious, Kenneth Rowntree...), the Fry has become the principal port of call for admirers of Eric Ravilious, who lived in north-west Essex for the last eleven years of his life. Paintings, lithographs, Wedgwood china and wood engravings are beautifully presented, with a collection of the artist's wood blocks a particular treat.

David Oelman at the Fry... now those books look familiar!

Both Kettle's Yard and the Fry have mildly eccentric opening hours, so do check before you set out. I was just too early for the Kettle's Yard show 'Von Ribbentrop in St Ives', which opens on July 16th. 'Ravilious in Essex' runs until August 14.

Mary Fedden at the RWA

Mary Fedden, Fruit Dish, 1992

These are strange times at the Royal West of England Academy, an institution which has traditionally served the region's artists with a genteel lack of concern for footfall or fashion. With the appointment of a new director, Trystan Hawkins, the old dowager has been given a thorough makeover, with a cafe installed where the New Gallery used to be and a summer exhibition designed to pull in the crowds and - judging by the merchandise on offer - part them from their cash.

There's a giant Damien Hirst sculpture of a 1960s Spastics Society collecting box on the balcony and an exhibition, combining behind-the-scenes photographs and paintings, of professional ballroom dancers. The paintings are by Jack Vettriano, who is 'arguably one of the country's most popular living artists', according to the exhibition flyer. The photos, by Jeanette Jones, capture the tension, excitement  and fear of a tough competitive world; the paintings offer a less emotionally intense, more glamorous vision.

Mary Fedden, Window Still Life, 1994

The president of the RWA, Simon Quadrat, has recently resigned in protest at the populist programming, and you can see his point. The director's response is that people will come to see Hirst and Vettriano and, having paid their £5, will have a look at paintings by Lisa Milroy, sculpture and works on paper by Elisabeth Frink, and a mini-retrospective of Mary Fedden.

There are three gorgeous etchings made by Frink in the 1970s, but I really came to see Fedden, an RA and former president of the RWA who is now in her nineties and still painting. She was born in Bristol during World War One and, after studying at the Slade, returned to paint and teach here. The Second World War and marriage to Julian Trevelyan took her away from the city, and today she lives beside the Thames in London.

Mary Fedden, Red Tulips, 2010

The Portland Gallery in London held a major retrospective of her career a couple of years ago, but the RWA show is different. For one thing, it has the great virtue of being small. While a big show can be a lot of fun I think I prefer a one-room exhibit; rather than rush from picture to picture, trying to take them all in, you can relax, focus on one or two favourite paintings, and compare work easily. It's fascinating to see a still life painted in the early 1950s (and perhaps in need of a clean) beside one made in the 1990s.

There are some intimate details - a watercolour of an elephant painted for a friend - but most of the work is of a familiar kind: still lifes of fruit and flowers and jugs, with perhaps the view from a window beyond, also some landscapes. What one tends to lose when looking at reproductions, apart from the texture of the paint, are the subtle variations in colour that add so much to the feeling of a painting. There really is no substitute for seeing a painting live...

Perhaps the next stage in the 'Your Paintings' scheme should be for participating museums and galleries to put on a whole host of one-room shows - not massive, expensive affairs but small, manageable exhibitions. Look what 'Ravilious in Essex' has done for the Fry Art Gallery and tourism in Saffron Walden (3000 extra visitors in a couple of months). Many other artists have a dedicated hard core of fans who would willingly travel for a small, well-thought-out, show.

Mary Fedden, Lilies, Bird and Zebra, 1999

The pictures shown are from the database of Mary Fedden's work at the Portland Gallery, London, which represents her.

You can see photos of the work hanging at the RWA here (scroll down a bit)...

'Ravilious in Essex': Location Location Location

Eric Ravilious, Village Street (1936)

I'm looking forward to visiting Saffron Walden on 13 July for my 'Ravilious in Essex' talk. I was there for the opening of the show a couple of months ago and took the opportunity to do a little detective work around Castle Hedingham and Great Bardfield.

One can get a bit obsessed with finding the locations of paintings, but I love exploring an area with an artist as a sort of invisible companion. I find I look at everything that much more closely and remember what I've seen, heard, smelt and otherwise noticed that much more clearly. In September 2008 I spent a crazy day racing around London looking for shops, pubs, etc that Rav depicted in 'High Street' and that journey is etched into my memory along with incidents that happened along the way.

Falcon Square, Castle Hedingham, today

Similarly, I can close my eyes and picture the walk up from Glynde station to Bedingham Hill, scene of so many of the pictures in 'Ravilious in Pictures: Sussex and the Downs'. As the popularity of Radio 4's literary walks show 'Ramblings' demonstrates, there's something tremendously appealing about walking with a cultural goal, or with a writer or artist as a ghostly guide. So often I seem to walk without noticing my surroundings - mind elsewhere, daydreaming or worrying. On a Rav walk I'm focused, alert, looking for clues.

The Hovis Mill

The weekend of the Fry launch I camped near Castle Hedingham and walked (child-free!) for miles, into the village, on to Sible Hedingham and along the river to Hull's Mill. One of the things I love about Ravilious is his fascination for both the conventionally beautiful - fine Georgian architecture, for example - and for places, objects and scenes that other people might dismiss as ugly or inappropriate as a subject for picture-making.

Hull's Mill, 1935

Junkyards were a favourite haunt, and brickworks, and coalyards. He plucked abandoned vehicles from a jumble of rubbish and made them into things of beauty, and preserved for prosperity humdrum industrial scenes that few others thought worthy of notice.

On my rambles I found places that had scarcely changed in the seventy-plus years since Ravilious lived and worked in Essex. Other scenes had disappeared under housing developments or become overgrown, and it was interesting to see just how change had occurred and to compare Rav's vision with reality. I'll be showing some of the pictures I took at the Fry talk - and at future events.

The highlight of the Castle Hedingham walk was reaching Hull's Mill - which you can get to via a circular walk from Sible Hedingham that runs along the river and then back up over the hill and through a glorious old wood. The old Hovis Mill has been a private house for years, but it still looks much the same as it did in 1935. What really struck me, though, was the noise. You can't tell this from Rav's painting, but the stream in the foreground goes over a weir just after it crosses the road and the sound of falling water is almost deafening.

Hull's Mill today

To sit at the water's edge is to be lost in the white noise of falling water, and I wonder if that was why Rav kept going back there in the weeks before and after the birth of his first child...

David Hepher at Kings Place

David Hepher, La Francaise, 1985

Eric Ravilious, Vicarage, 1935

The view today

Artists leave a legacy beyond the inventory of their work and the story of their lives. The influence of artists who have been dead a half-century or more can still be seen in the work of living painters and sculptors - and not just in the work. As David Hepher explained in Saffron Walden the other day: in his case it was probably the fact that he knew Eric Ravilious that made him become a painter at all.

Since Ravilious died almost seventy years ago there aren't too many people left who knew him. David was asked to share a few thoughts and memories at the launch of the show 'Ravilious in Essex', which is currently running at the Fry Art Gallery, and he began by admitting that his memories were few; he was only a child when Ravilious died.

The Old Vicarage (note Wellingtonia)

They knew one another because Guy Hepher was vicar of St Nicholas church in Castle Hedingham when the Ravilious family lived in the village. They had one of those rare family friendships where each member is friends with their opposite number - Eric with Guy, Tirzah with Evelyn, and David with John, who was his age - and during the very cold winters of the late 1930s Eric and family took refuge at the vicarage - where David remembered them all sweeping snow off the roof of the enormous house (today, the 'Old Vicarage').

St Nicholas, Castle Hedingham

Guy Hepher's Plan of St Nicholas, 1937

David's father was evidently both cultured and curious. The vicar explored his church and its records, and one winter's day Ravilious found him at work - as the artist wrote in a letter at the time - 'drawing out a plan of the church in seven colours – for each period – and cheered him on and offered him stick ink to pull it all together.’ The plan is there today, on the wall of St Nicholas, behind the main door as you go in.

David Hepher, Study for the Wandsworth Road Estate III, 2007

That plan was made in 1937. Over seventy years later David Hepher is a respected artist and teacher of artists, best known for his paintings of tower blocks and other architecturally-inspired urban scenes. His work is detailed, atmospheric and idiosyncratic, the canvases covered in graffiti like the walls of the buildings he represents. But he has for many years, on holidays spent in France, also been painting pastoral landscapes, and these are about to be shown for the first time alongside his urban pictures at the Kings Place gallery in Kings Cross. Entitled 'A Song of the Earth and the Cry of Concrete', the show opens on 6 May. Meanwhile, an hour or so up the M11, Ravilious's paintings of David's childhood home are hanging on the walls of the Fry Art Gallery. Together these two exhibitions tell a fascinating story of tradition, influence and change. FFI: Kings Place Gallery
Fry Art Gallery

'Ravilious in Essex' at the Fry

Eric Ravilious, 'Village Street', 1936

If you're motoring along the M11 this summer take a detour to Saffron Walden to visit the wonderful Fry Art Gallery, which is holding one the most impressive shows in its twenty-five year history, 'Ravilious in Essex'. You can continue the detour if you feel like it by driving into the lanes of north-west Essex, on a tour of Ravilious country.

Tim Mainstone at the Fry

The Fry is small, elegant and - one would imagine - just the sort of place where Rav would have enjoyed seeing his work. Of the two main rooms, the larger is devoted to the permanent collection, which now includes the fabulous 'Caravans', while the walls of the smaller room are lined with watercolours of Essex subjects painted by Ravilious.

Eric Ravilious, 'Ironbridge at Ewenbridge', 1941/2

You will find no better opportunity to survey his development as a watercolourist, with paintings from his time in Great Bardfield ('Attic Bedroom' and 'Two Women in a Garden'), Castle Hedingham ('Hull's Mill' and 'Village Street' and Ironbridge. In 'Ironbridge at Ewenbridge', which he painted in 1941/2, Ravilious takes a relatively humdrum, if eccentric, subject and makes it an object of wonder. I'd travel to Essex just to see this picture.

Yet the watercolours are only one part of the experience. Back in the main room are display cases filled with the artist's wood engravings, including book covers and other materials that haven't seen the light of day in a half-century. Best of all are the blocks themselves, ink-black still and showing the sureness of touch that Ravilious displayed whatever the medium... Explore the gallery further and you can compare his designs for Wedgwood with the engravings and watercolours.

Falcon Square, Castle Hedingham

Entry to this delightful exhibition is free, but do consult the Fry's website for their opening hours before visiting.

Bank House

If you fancy making a day of it, the villages of Great Bardfield and Castle Hedingham are not far away. I don't think I've ever seen so many fantastic old houses, in such good condition, as you'll find in the villages of north-west Essex, places like Finchingfield and Wethersfield. A walk around Castle Hedingham offers a free lesson in several hundred years of vernacular architecture, with many fine examples of decorative brickwork and plasterwork.

War Memorial, St Nicholas

Bank House has a blue plaque to commemorate the Ravilious family's time there, but the war memorial in St Nicholas' churchyard nearby bears more eloquent testimony. The Bell has a wonderful interior (not that much changed, I suspect, since the 1930s), and good beer. I can't vouch for the food but no doubt it's good too.

Hull's Mill 2011

I definitely can vouch for the loop walk out to Hull's Mill and back, which goes along the bank of the river one way and through ancient woods the other. I've been to quite a few of the locations Ravilious painted and the mill is the place that has struck me the most strongly, I think because of the distinctive sound of rushing water.

He evidently perched on a stool close to the ford to paint the mill, and this close the sound of the water thrumming over the weir is loud but soothing, a kind of white noise.

Eric Ravilious, 'Hull's Mill', 1935

Some interesting Ravilious locations here. When you visit the Fry, look out for 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Country Life.'