'Century' at Jerwood: John Piper

John Piper, Beach and Starfish, Seven Sisters, mixed media, 1933-4 (Jerwood Collection)

Like many British artists of his generation Piper was inspired from an early age by places – rather than people – and here he has used the avant-garde medium of collage to bring the venerable British genre of coastal painting up to date. Look carefully and you can see how cleverly he has combined paint and other media, like the fabric of the flag and the seashells borrowed from an old book, to make a familiar scene seem new and strange.

Piper is one of 100 modern British artists featured in my exhibition 'Century', which opens at Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, in a couple of weeks. In fact we're starting the hang this week (touches wood, tries not to think about railway strikes)...

Garn Fawr & Trehilyn, with John Piper & Griff Rhys Jones

This autumn has had something of a Welsh theme. Having visited Clive Hicks-Jenkins in the Ystwyth valley and publishers Frances and Nicolas McDowall on the banks of the Wye, we headed to Strumble Head, Pembrokeshire for a half-term break. Over the years we've had odd winter weekends at one or other of the fabulous old cottages managed by Under the Thatch, but Trehilyn turned out to be grander (and warmer) than most.

Trehilyn, nr. Strumble Head - as seen on TV!

The house is divided in two. Our end had four outside doors, crog lofts for sleeping and a woodburner. Also underfloor heating, which was a surprise. In fact the place had evidently been done up with considerable care, but I would never have guessed how much skill, cash and labour had been poured into this out-of-the-way farmhouse. It turned out that Trehilyn had been bought some years earlier by Griff Rhys Jones, and subjected to a televised renovation, which we watched one evening.

Sunshine in west Wales...

I'd never much fancied the idea of buying a doer-upper, but this BBC series, 'A Pembrokeshire Farm', put me off for good. The 'before' pictures showed a farmhouse neglected almost to dereliction, hideous 70s wallpaper peeling off the saturated walls. The house had a grouted roof, a regional speciality, which had persuaded architectural historian Greg Stevenson (founder, incidentally of Under the Thatch) to enlist as a consultant to the series. But the roof was in terrible shape and had to be replaced with slates, every one of which was drilled and then pegged down.

Cottage interior, with apologies to Hammershoi

In fact the house was stripped down to its stone walls, and then rebuilt as authentically as possible. Of course, as the programme pointed out, there's nothing authentic about an 18th/19th century house with underfloor heating and a power shower, but I do see the point in using traditional building techniques - as a living record, if nothing else. So the walls were plastered on the inside and rendered on the outside with lime plaster that had to be applied by hand. It didn't look particularly fun. Griff was given the job of building a bed, which, rather bizarrely, we slept in. Is that a claim to fame?

Indigenous building: John Piper's studio, Garn Fawr.

When we arrived it was dark, but the following morning we trudged up the hill in the direction of Strumble Head. As we approached a rocky outcrop the scene began to seem familar, but it took a bit of research to jog my memory. This was Garn Fawr, John and Myfanwy Piper's Welsh retreat for many years, and the subject of innumerable paintings. In the 1960s they bought two tumbledown cottages, one to the left of this picture where they stayed, and this one, John's studio, which looks as though it sprouted from the bracken.

Cottage and rocks, Garn Fawr

There's a nice post here on Garn Fawr, with some paintings illustrated, and I could see why the quintessential Romantic Modern was attracted to the place. It was wild enough on a mild day in October. In a January storm it must seem like the end of the world. Strumble Head is about half a mile beyond the chimney above, but Garn Fawr is much more atmospheric.

The view south from Garn Fawr

Artists' Textiles in Bermondsey

Popped into the Fashion and Textile Museum in the old warehouse district that is apparently now known as Bermondsey Village... Fascinating to see how Dali, Picasso and co were marketed to the fashion-conscious, and intriguing how many post-war British artists became involved - although my favourite pieces were the few pre-war block-printed textiles in the first room. There's a nice intro to the exhibition here, with much better photos. Rather less women artists than men, but the other way round I think with the dress designs.

Not many artists could turn a scribbled date into a commercial design.... Viva Picasso!

Salvador Dali a textile designer? 

Produce books like this and who'd want a plastic one?

Wonderful designs from the 1930s

Even Cubists have to earn a crust - this fabric is by Georges Braque

Fun to see designs (by Warhol) 'on the wall' and in frock form... 

I love this photo of Andy Warhol - not only sulky, but young too. Not unlike Julian Assange.

An intriguing take on Paddington Station in simpler times, courtesy of Saul Steinberg, 1952

Steinberg again, with cowboys

And again, with apologies to Picasso?

Fabulous John Piper design...

And a close-up... but did people make dresses out of this? And if so, who wore them?

Artist Textiles: Picasso to Warhol is at the Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey Street, Bermondsey, London, until 17th May 2014 .

Wanted: Good Home for John Piper Mural

John Piper, An Englishman's Home (section), 1951 (Liss Fine Art)

 

Before street art there were murals, and in 20th century Britain numerous public and corporate buildings were decorated inside and out. From Rex Whistler's wall paintings in the dining room at Tate Britain to the Gordon Cullen mural at Greenside Primary School in Hammersmith, murals were a significant feature of our everyday cultural life; there's an evocative piece by Ben Pentreath on the subject here.

At the more humdrum end of the scale we have a mural at the end of our road in Bristol, a massive picture of a balloon floating over the landscape; it's painted on the side of a pub overlooking a green and, like murals everywhere, it is gradually fading. The Twentieth Century Society is currently campaigning to preserve what it can of the thousand-plus murals painted in the decades after World War Two.

An Englishman's Home fills one wall of the gallery at 22 Old Bond St

Given our climate and the upheavals of the past century it isn't surprising that so many murals have disappeared, but some have survived. Among the stunning pictures on show at the Fine Art Society are several large works commissioned for the 1951 Festival of Britain and painted on panels rather than directly onto walls. There were no doubt good practical reasons for this, but one perhaps unforeseen result is that the murals have been preserved.

There are dramatic pieces by Peter Lanyon, Edward Bawden, Barbara Jones and Alan Sorrell, but the mural that really steals the show is John Piper's epic architectural painting, 'An Englishman's Home'. As you can see from my rather poor photos, this is a fabulously huge picture, painted in oils on 42 panels. Exhibited in 1951 it subsequently languished in an Essex barn for years before being displayed for the Festival of Britain anniversary in 2011.

Right hand end with Brighton-Aquatints-style rooftops, chair included for scale

As the archetypal Romantic Modern, Piper has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity in recent years. But although good paintings from the first half of his career are hard to come by and expensive, no institution has yet come forward to buy 'An Englishman's Home'. This seems rather odd to me. Given the quality of the mural, its historical significance, its beauty and the standing of the artist who made it, I'd have imagined that art museums would be desperate to get their hands on those 42 panels.

Why has nobody come running, chequebook in hand? And how, if no major institution gets behind modern British murals, are the rest of us to be persuaded that it's worth preserving those pictures that still adorn the walls of schools, hospitals, restaurants and village halls around the country?

FFI: Fine Art Society
Twentieth Century Society

A Lost World Rediscovered: 20th Century Murals at the Fine Art Society

Colin Gill, Allegro, 1921 (FAS London/Liss Fine Art)

Around 90% of the murals painted in Britain in the last century have been lost; the work of some artists, notably Eric Ravilious, has suffered so badly from neglect, bomb damage and what have you that only photographs and studies survive. The remaining murals, meanwhile, languish in obscurity. I had no idea, despite living in Bristol, that there's a fabulous painted ceiling by Thomas Monnington in our post-war Council House. Murals tend, by their very nature, to be fixed to a particular place, and if you never visit that place you're unlikely to see the painting.

So how, I wondered when I heard about the Fine Art Society's new exhibition of 20th century British Murals and Decorative Painting (in association with Liss Fine Art), do you go about putting on a mural show? In 1969 the Hayward Gallery held an exhibition of frescoes rescued from damp and crumbling buildings in Florence; these pictures were removed in ingenious ways from the walls on which Renaissance artists had painted them and transported around the world. Would something similar happen here?

Mary Adshead, An English Holiday: The Village Inn (detail), 1928 (FAS London/Liss Fine Art)

The short answer, judging from the exuberant catalogue, is no. The works on display are either studies for wall paintings - which vary from small watercolours to large-scale oil paintings - or murals painted on canvas or wooden panels. So, for example, we have two beautiful pictures painted by Mary Adshead in 1928 for Lord Beaverbrook, part of a series called 'An English Holiday'; these large-scale oils were designed to fill the walls of the press tycoon's dining room, but in the end he cancelled the commission, supposedly because a friend persuaded him that he was bound to fall out with the various grandees who had modelled for the paintings, and then be stuck with them every night at dinner.

There are some well known pieces here, including John Piper's 42-panel epic 'An Englishman's Home', which he painted for the 1951 Festival of Britain, and Edward Bawden's 'The English Pub' (1949-50), which spent a quarter century adorning the First Class Lounge of the SS Oronsay. But you'll also find plenty of delightful surprises. I'm looking forward to seeing John Armstrong's design for the Telecinema Mural (also painted for the Festival) and Barbara Jones' astonishing 3-panel picture 'Out in the Hall', which features a giant bear standing in a hallway the walls of which are bright yellow with a design of large white polka dots.

Alan Sorrell, Working Boats, 1951 (FAS London/Liss Fine Art)

This is one of the murals discussed in depth in a new book published by Sansom & Company to coincide with the exhibition: 'British Murals and Decorative Painting, 1920-1970'. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds wonderful, with an array of experts each focusing on a particular piece: Ruth Artmonsky on Barbara Jones, David Fraser Jenkins on Piper and so on. I'm interested to read what Alan Powers has to say about Alan Sorrell's delightful mural 'Working Boats from Around the British Coast' (1951), which includes the Norfolk Wherry but not, I was sad to see, the Severn Trow. With Stanley Spencer and Rex Whistler also featured, this book sounds like a must-have.

FFI: www.faslondon.com
www.lissfineart.com
www.sansomandcompany.co.uk

Help Beachy Head Lighthouse Keep its Stripes!

Eric Ravilious, Beachy Head, 1939 (DACS/Artist's estate)

Visiting Eastbourne recently I learnt about the campaign to keep the red and white stripes on Beachy Head lighthouse. At the moment they don't seem to be in too much danger of disappearing, but apparently Trinity House (which controls and maintains the nation's lighthouses) announced last year that it would no longer be repainting them, and that the distinctive structure would gradually fade to its natural granite grey.

Understandably the people of Eastbourne and environs feel strongly about their lighthouse, and a campaign was swiftly launched to raise money for two very large pots of paint, one white and one red, and all the other equipment you need to paint a lighthouse that stands seventy metres seaward of the chalk cliffs. Bill Bryson commented:

'Beachy Head Lighthouse is one of the most uplifting sights anywhere along the English coastline - indeed, along any coastline - and those jaunty red stripes are what make it literally outstanding. It would be a tragedy to lose them.'

It's difficult to think of a type of building that has nobler associations than the lighthouse, an edifice constructed and maintained to preserve the lives of strangers. Our folk history glitters with tales of heroic lighthouse keepers who died or risked their lives to ensure that the light remained always lit. Most celebrated of all was Grace Darling, whose father was the keeper of Longstone Lighthouse in the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland. In 1838, when she was 23, she spotted a ship wrecked on a nearby rock and, with her father, rowed in heavy seas to rescued 13 people; her death from TB only a few years later ensured her fame as one of the great Victorian heroines.

John Constable, Harwich Lighthouse, 1820s

Today all of Britain's 69 lighthouses are automated, and monitored from the Trinity House operational headquarters in Harwich, but the old associations remain. As Sue Clifford and Angela King put it in their wonderful book 'England in Particular',

'Lighthouses have saved ships and inspired us. John Constable, Eric Ravilious and Virginia Woolf responded to their melancholy and constancy.'

John Piper, Dungeness

For Ravilious, and for his friend John Piper, lighthouses were also fascinating as man-made objects - buildings that were functional, decorative and idiosyncratic. In the 1930s a lighthouse like Beachy Head was still a relatively modern wonder - its light was switched on in 1902 - whereas its neighbour Belle Tout had a more eccentric, Victorian air. By day Ravilious drew the newer lighthouse from within the disused lantern of the older one, and by night he painted the light of Beachy Head in a composition that counterbalances the geometric beams of artificial light with the ragged line of the clifftops.

At that time the lighthouse was painted with a thick black stripe against the natural grey, which was evidently judged sufficient to make the edifice stand out against the bright white cliffs, but in 1951 the red bands were painted. I wonder whether black was used before because there wasn't a red paint tough enough to withstand constant exposure to strong winds and salt water.

Today the stripes are not considered necessary for mariners equipped with modern navigation equipment, although the light (two flashes every twenty seconds) continues to keep sailors safe from harm. For tourists and for local people, meanwhile, the lighthouse itself is a special kind of landmark, both a symbol of human vigilance and an object of wonder. Given Ravilious's fondness for lighthouses in general, and this one in particular, the Mainstone Press has donated some books to the cause. I'm not sure what the Beachy Head Lighthouse Campaign is planning to do with them, but they're very good at posting news and information on their website...

FFI: www.keepthebeachyheadlighthousestripes.org.uk

A Point of Departure: Eric Slater to Wolfgang Tillmans

Eric Slater, Cuckmere Haven, 1930s

These days departure from Britain tends to involve taking off into the sky or descending into a tunnel, but until recently the idea of doing either would have been fantastic. If you wanted to leave these islands at any point up to about 1960 you had to take a boat. Ports were not only strategically important but emotionally charged; people left London, Bristol, Liverpool and Southampton knowing that they might never return. During the Great War the ports of southern England were gateways to France and the Western Front, particularly Portsmouth and Newhaven. How many soldiers watched the chalk cliffs recede, wondering whether they would see them again?

This thought struck me when I first heard about the current exhibition at the Towner in Eastbourne. 'A Point of Departure' refers specifically to Newhaven, a port which played such an essential part in supplying men and materials to the battlefields just across the Channel that it was taken over by the military for the duration of the conflict. In peacetime the quickest route from London to Paris was by train and steamship via Newhaven and Le Havre, and during the war men and materials followed a similar route.

Eric Ravilious, Beachy Head, 1939 (DACS/artist's estate)

One can imagine the delight of the surviving soldiers when, returning at the war's end, they came in sight of Beachy Head or the Seven Sisters. But if the white chalk cliffs symbolised home to the returning armies, they soon came to mean something different: freedom from the constraints of modern urban life. This is what I feel, certainly, in the coloured woodcuts of Eric Slater, which are featured in the Towner show (there's a nice introduction to his work here). At the very edge of the land, the cliffs and beaches offered the promise of escape to sea and, more literally, the possibility of a new life in the unplanned housing developments and bungalow towns springing up along the south coast.

Artists continued to come to Sussex, as they had done for generations. Where John Constable had found inspiration in the marine light and nautical incident of Brighton, artists of the 1930s were now drawn to Newhaven. I've posted before on Ravilious, Bawden and Piper, all of whom stayed at The Hope Inn beneath the ramparts of Newhaven Fort, and looked out to sea. It was the light that interested Ravilious, as it had the film-makers who set up a studio on Shoreham Beach before the Great War, whereas Piper seemed more attuned to something wild and elemental in the place.

Ravilious returned on numerous occasions to this coast, exploring clifftops and estuaries and finding novel approaches to famous sights. After World War Two Roland Collins built on the foundations laid by Ravilious and the rest, creating colourful multilayered pictures that present familiar scenes in new ways. One of the fascinating things about this exhibition is the artists' ability to look again and again at the same old places, finding new inspiration where most of us would think none could be found.

Wolfgang Tillmans, End of Land 1, 2002 (Towner)

In this spirit, look at Wolfgang Tillmans' photograph 'End of Land 1', which shows a woman approaching the clifftop at Beachy Head in the only sensible manner. But where is the photographer taking the picture from? We seem to be looking back at the cliff, as if slipping down the face, and it isn't a comfortable sensation. We are a long way here from Slater's woodcuts, or Vera Lynn's bluebirds over Dover. Although an island nation, we're becoming increasingly cut off from the sea; to previous generations the white cliffs may have been a Welcome Home sign chalked across the horizon, but today they mark the edge of our world.

A Point of Departure runs at Towner, Eastbourne until 11 November 2012

Sutherland, Ravilious, Piper: Why I Love 'Works on Paper'

Graham Sutherland, Setting Sun

If you haven't made it to Modern Art Oxford to see the exhibition of work by Graham Sutherland it still isn't too late, not quite at any rate: the show closes tomorrow. I finally got there yesterday, spurred on by the imminent deadline, and was immediately struck by a similarity between this exhibition and the Ravilious show that opened last week at the RWA Bristol. No, I don't mean that the pictures were all works on paper. I'm talking about the frames.

When I sold paintings I used to spend a lot of time helping people choose frames or come to terms with frames they didn't much like but couldn't afford to replace. The choice of frame says a great deal about the collector (ostentatious, tasteful, lacking a sense of proportion, etc) and the condition of the frames on show in an exhibition say a lot about the paintings and the artist on display.

Sutherland show: note mismatched frames (pic: Marcus Leith)

With these eighty-plus Sutherland pictures, many of them studies and sketches, you get a veritable survey of 20th century British framing. There are frames with grubby old mounts and others with no mount at all; you find a hefty frame in dark wood with a neighbour that is light and delicate. Frames are rarely photographed, but they can change your perception of a picture; in one instance the serrated edge of a frame cast across the painting a shadow like battlements on a castle wall.

This splendid variety of frames is also found in the Ravilious show, which reflects the history of the paintings themselves. These are pictures (the frames tell me) that have hung in the homes of collectors or family members for years. They have been loved for themselves, as magical objects belonging to a lost past, rather than as treasures to show off. One can imagine glancing at the battered frame and thinking, hmmm, better get that seen to... And then doing nothing about it.

Ravilious paintings on arrival at RWA (pic: Lottie Storey - I think!)

Perhaps the state of the frames also says something about the new-found popularity of these neglected painters. The will now exists to put on exhibitions, but does any institution have the cash to go round reframing these old pictures? These are, lest we forget, works on paper, which for some reason I have never understood makes them less precious than works on canvas. No, I can see why a canvas would be worth more money-wise, since the medium is longer-lasting. But in artistic terms?

Some of Sutherland's Pembrokeshire pictures are gorgeous. I would have been quite happy to save his work as a war artist for another day and linger in front of those fat, melting suns and swooping lanes. They show a sensitive soul inspired to delirious levels by his surroundings. I'm going to St Davids in the summer and look forward to studying the paintings through the landscape and vice versa...

Graham Sutherland, The Wanderer, 1940 (V&A)

But while I was in Oxford I had one more treat, a visit to the Western Print Room at the Ashmolean. Actually two more, because I popped into the Blackwell Art Bookshop on the way and saw 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' prominently on display.

I love the Ashmolean because it seems to have just the right amount of stuff in just the right amount of space, and the print room is old-fashioned in all the right ways. There are little wooden signs on the tables advising that fountain pens may not be used, and the staff are wonderful, treating top scholars and ordinary members of the public with the same courtesy and attentiveness.

And this is the kingdom of works on paper: boxes and boxes of prints, drawings and watercolours, all carefully mounted, catalogued and stored away from the light. I pulled out a Cotman watercolour of the interior of Norwich Cathedral and a red in it just leapt off the paper. But it was Piper I had come to see, for the sake of comparison with the Sutherland show. The Lewin bequest of assorted sketches, prints and paintings is a mixed bag, with a couple of the artist's sparkling 1939 Brighton Aquatints alongside some pretty rough pencil sketches of Windsor Castle.

My favourite picture is a study for Piper's famous painting of Coventry Cathedral, the morning after it was bombed. The finished painting is famous for good reason, but the study, though only a few inches across and little more than a scribble of black ink coloured roughly with yellow and blue, shows us his first reaction. Like the Sutherland studies, where you can sometimes see the marks of raindrops on the paper, this picture shows the artist's spontaneous response to a scene of great drama. It's a gem.

Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World ends tomorrow
Eric Ravilious: Going Modern / Being British runs until April 29
There's a show of work by John Piper at Blenheim Palace
And don't forget Long Live Great Bardfield, coming soon to the Fry, Saffron Walden

John Piper, David Jones & The Queen: Art in Cardiff

John Piper, Llanthony Priory, 1941 (private collection)

By the time I'd worked my way through both rooms of the The Queen: Art and Image at the National Museum of Wales, one thing was clear: this is a monarch who likes having her picture taken. There are photos of her smiling, photos of her tight-lipped, magisterial pictures in which she looms over the viewer. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the monarchy, but one or two of the photos oozed power. Never mind all that democratic nonsense, I found myself thinking, she's the boss. By contrast, Lucian Freud's tiny painting makes her look like a camp little man of a certain age. I guess he was trying to tell us something too.

But I wasn't in Cardiff to look at Royal portraits. In fact I didn't know the exhibition was on until I walked into the room and saw the same face repeated over and over, reimagined by Warhol, Gilbert and George and sundry others but still essentially the same unknowable woman. If there is a real, hidden Elizabeth beneath the public persona, this exhibition leaves her in peace.

Pietro Annigoni, Queen Elizabeth II, 1969 (Nat Port Gall)

I'd been meaning to visit the Welsh equivalent of the National Gallery for a while, to see a temporary exhibition of work by David Jones, and when I read that a Piper exhibition had just started as well I rushed down to Temple Meads and took a train Across the Border. It's been a while since I visited Cardiff, and I was struck on arrival by how different it is: flat, expansive and conceived on a grand scale. The place has the air of a provincial French city, a character best expressed in the flamboyant old stone palaces that house the City Hall and National Museum, and in the neighbouring parks and boulevards.

Once inside the museum I headed straight for the Piper show, a public display of a private collection comprised mostly of dramatic mountain scenes. I hadn't realised before quite how much time that quintessential wandering artist spent in Wales, but it seems he practically lived in Snowdonia in the 1940s and 1950s. Personally, I don't think that the mountain paintings, which are dramatic but rather formless, show him at his best, but there was one gorgeous treat: a painting of Llanthony Priory from the 1940s. Nobody has ever captured the peculiar atmosphere surrounding an English or Welsh church quite like Piper, and here the dramatic contrast of darkness and light (the wall on the right is a dazzling golden yellow) is enhanced by a wonderful texture; the paint surface is covered in swirls and squiggles that almost form a pattern but instead reinforce the sense of age and beauty.

Thank heavens he gave up abstraction.

David Jones, Capel-y-ffin, 1926/7 (NM Wales)

I got distracted by the Queen after that, but presently located the corridor where a dozen or so paintings by David Jones hang in light so carefully controlled that you peer at the pictures as if through a Welsh mist. Which I suppose is authentic. Jones is less well-known than Ravilious, Bawden and other watercolourists of the age, partly because his subject matter and style are eccentric, to say the least, and partly because he chose to work so lightly that he makes Rav, by contrast, seem as bold as Matisse.

A Londoner of mixed Anglo-Welsh parentage, Jones served in the Great War and subsequently suffered two nervous breakdowns that hampered his career just as he was becoming established. This was in the early 1930s, after a productive decade which he had spent working alongside Eric Gill, first at Ditchling, Sussex, and then at Capel-y-Ffin in the Welsh Marches. In later years Jones produced increasingly odd pictures, often in pencil and crayon, covering the paper with mythical figures, plants and flowers and symbols of one kind and another. These are fascinating but less accessible than his landscapes from the 1920s which, though sometimes agonisingly delicate, are beautifully crafted and highly original.

Gwen John, Girl in a Green Dress (NM Wales)

I was hoping to see some of his work from Capel-y-Ffin, and was rewarded with one lovely picture. The man was evidently brilliant (TS Eliot described his epic 1937 war poem 'In Parenthesis' as a work of genius) but with little interest in artistic fame. I want to see more!

Another artist of that productive era of whom the same could be said is Gwen John (who was born in Pembrokeshire), and it was a pleasant surprise to happen upon a clutch of her portraits hanging next to a group of her brother's. Where Augustus John's pictures are bright and expressive - crying out to be noticed, you might say - Gwen's are self-effacing and thoughtful. In a couple of the portraits the subjects seem about to fade into the background, but they are beautiful nevertheless.

James Dickson Innes, Arenig, 1913 (NM Wales)

The art galleries of the National Museum are full of treats like this. I'd been wanting for a long time to see some paintings by James Dickson Innes, a bohemian friend of Augustus John who died of TB in his twenties, and here were half a dozen or more, scattered through the collection. I could see right away why people used to rave (maybe they still do) about the jewel-like colours in his landscapes, which are mostly small but striking.

One final surprise awaited me in the room devoted to Welsh landscape: a picture I've been thinking about a lot over the past year. 'Waterwheel' is one of my favourite Ravilious paintings, and one that features in 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist', and it was fascinating to come across it like that, unexpectedly and in a room full of landscapes by other artists of different generations. What struck me instantly was the quality of the light, both the luminous sky and the radiance surrounding the waterwheel like a halo. In that brightness I felt the motion of the waterwheel and heard the gurgling water - a place (Capel-y-Ffin) and a moment (dawn, early March 1938) brought to life.

Eric Ravilious, Waterwheel, 1938 (Brecknock Museum)

'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' is being bound, and will be available very soon! Come and say hello at the RWA, Bristol on Saturday March 10th, when I'll be signing copies...

Dungeness

Miniature railway, lighthouses, shingle - Dungeness!

In the autumn I enjoyed a whistlestop tour around Rye and environs, a part of the world I knew well from the work of artists I love but hadn't visited in years. The place I had heard most about was undoubtedly Dungeness, that great parson's nose of shingle jutting out from the flat Kent coast a few miles south of the hilltop town.

Actually I read about it first, in Derek Jarman's wonderful, elegiac book 'Modern Nature'. This must have been twenty years ago, but both the tone of the book and the descriptions of the film-maker's strange, stony garden stayed with me. A dying man attempting to tease life out of salt-encrusted shingle, in the shadow of a nuclear power station? I didn't like his films, particularly, but this was a wonderful tale.

Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman's former home (private - please respect)

Other stories about Dungeness reached me over the subsequent years. I remember the sound of feet scrunching over shingle in a Radio 4 documentary, a programme which left with me an image of stones lying in great undulating waves, so that when you stood in the midst of them you could see nothing else.

Then I came across the painting by Eric Ravilious that features in 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist', which gives a completely different impression. His version is more like a scene from an old-fashioned Sci-fi movie, with improbable modern structures dotted around a desolate shore. Dungeness had been popular with artists since at least the mid-19th century, when dramatic scenes of ships in peril were so much in vogue. More recently, that intrepid travelling artist John Piper had made several lovely pictures of the lighthouse and attendant buildings, using his favoured media of pen and ink, gouache and collage. Ravilious may have seen these, which would partially explain his idiosyncratic choice of subject and angle.

Eric Ravilious, Dungeness, 1939, private collection/DACS

Anyway, one bright morning in September I set off from Rye. As I drove south the weather changed, the clouds not so much moving in as forming around me, and by the time I reached the deserted holiday camps and hotels of Camber Sands it was drizzling. The country beyond reminded me of Lincolnshire or the Baltic coast, but that was probably just the weather. To the right the land was fenced off, miles of it, and looking at the map afterwards I realised it was an army range. I drove through Lydd, read a report in a local paper that trumpeted the expansion of the local airport as the only hope for the local economy and lambasted the bird lovers of Dungeness for their opposition to the plans, and carried on.

Approaching my destination on a narrow lane it was clear that this was one of the world's stranger and more wonderful places. To the right the industrial bulk of not one, but two nuclear power stations. To the left, an evenly-spaced row of houses, each slightly different to its neighbour, which stretched away along the coast towards Dymchurch, as far as I could see. And all around, the most extraordinary landscape - a kind of miniature Lake District with hills ten feet high and no plant taller than a gorse bush.

As I got closer to the coast the vegetation grew sparser, the shingle more obvious, until I was driving along an even more makeshift road with the odd wooden chalet on one side and on the other a wave of stones that formed a crest above the shoreline. On this crest, outlined against the grey sky, brightly painted boats were perched ready for launching, while closer at hand lay the skeletons of older, abandoned boats with bleached and broken timbers. Among these were other relics - huts and bits of winding machinery, and long, snaking sections of narrow gauge railway track. Up ahead were the lighthouses and on my right, as I went slowly along, Prospect Cottage with its matt black walls and bright yellow trim, and the bizarre ornamental garden created by Derek Jarman in the last years of his life.

The Low Light, built C19, converted to foghorn station C20

Few places I've visited have such a powerful and unique identity as Dungeness and I could see instantly why Ravilious had felt at home. The lighthouses and miniature railway and power stations and eccentric little houses were part of it, but what appealed to me most was the evidence of passing time.

While the cliffs of Beachy Head, just along the coast, are constantly being worn away, the shingle bank is continually growing, and as the sea retreats so the fishermen and other inhabitants of this peculiar settlement follow it, leaving behind on the stones whatever they no longer need. Everywhere was evidence of past endeavours, although I found no trace of the lighthouse on which Ravilious focused his attention, the so-called Low Light installed in the 19th century to supplement the main lighthouse.

Prospect Cottage

What a place to create a garden in the face of death. What a place for a painter of everyday marvels. I can't wait to go back.

'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' is published by The Mainstone Press at the end of February.

Ravilious, Nash, Piper: Newhaven, Eastbourne, Rye

Eric Ravilious, Newhaven Harbour, 1936

Last Sunday I managed to see the John Piper show at Towner, just a couple of hours before it closed. An interesting experience: as anticipated there was some fabulous work from the 1930s, especially those collaged visions of Newhaven and other places on the south coast. Some of the later work was less fun, but all in all a lovely exhibition that confirmed my view that you often have to travel out of London to see the best work by British artists. Can we have Paul Nash in Kent and Sussex next?

I was in the happy position of having a couple of days to charge around the region, taking pictures for forthcoming talks about Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious. It's possible to get a bit obsessed about finding the settings for particular paintings, but it is interesting to see how an artist redesigns reality for a particular composition. Perhaps more important, though, is seeing what it is about a place that attracts artists - feeling the atmosphere and getting a sense of the light.

Closed for the duration... West Pier, Newhaven

Take Newhaven, a port that might seem rather humdrum in comparison to Lewes and Eastbourne. Ravilious,  Edward Bawden and Piper all loved the place, but why? I went there first, having left Bristol early in the morning, and parked on the West Quay. I set off walking towards the sea, past wooden piers piled with fishing stuff, through a new marina development and on, and on - I'd mistakenly parked miles from the sea. Here was Newhaven Fort on the right, finally, and some boats perched in a yard, and then the sea came into view, between a lowly breakwater to the east and the magnificent curving arm of the West Pier or, as Tirzah Ravilious called it, 'the mole'.

Giorgio de Chirico, Ariadne, 1913

The sense of space was breathtaking and the light pearly - I could imagine that at dawn, with the sun rising over the sea and the cliffs of Beachy Head, Rav for one would have been in his element. The breakwater with its arches borrowed from a de Chirico painting has evidently been closed for some time, so one can't walk to the lighthouse at the end as Ravilious did in a storm in September 1935 (the night an old man was swept off the same pier to his death).

However the Hope Inn, where he and Bawden stayed several times, is going strong. I was wondering when it was transformed from traditional old pub into its groovy modern form, and a letter from EB to ER seems to pinpoint the date to 1936/7. With his usual waspish humour Bawden points out that the improvements are both to the layout of the pub, with a balcony now running in front of the bedrooms, and to the food: ‘Meals and service have brightened; gone are those soft, stale oyster-eyed eggs and there is is less water and more gravy with the meat’.

Eric Ravilious, Beachy Head, 1939

From Newhaven, I drove through Seaford and on towards Beachy Head, only belatedly realising that the road crossed the top of Cuckmere Haven - a glimpse of water in fat sunlit coils almost sent me into the hedge then it was gone, as sights always vanish when you're in a car, and it was on to the next place. I'd been wanting to visit Belle Tout Lighthouse since I'd found out about it being a hotel, and overcame what I think is a perfectly sensible horror of cliffs to have a look at the place.

Beachy Head... not for the faint-hearted

It reminded me that, years ago, I visited Beachy Head with a friend who stood with his feet STICKING OUT over the edge of the cliff, while I cowered on all fours. There's something particularly daunting about those chalk cliffs, but what is it? The curving green hills that are cut off so abruptly? The stark white of the chalk? The sheer drop? Those white cliffs are scarier than the black granite of Pembrokeshire.

Belle Tout... the moving lighthouse, now a hotel

On then to Eastbourne and the Piper show, before heading for Rye. Quite what was going to happen in Rye I wasn't sure, but the idea was to camp... somewhere. And see the landscape and coast that inspired all three of these artists along with countless others...

To be continued