#pallanthousegallery

This afternoon I had the pleasure of taking one of the artist’s friends around the exhibition ‘Ben Nicholson: From the Studio’. It was great to get her insights and to see her evident pleasure at seeing old friends again. “Far-sinating” she declared in a voice we rarely hear today. Apparently Ben Nicholson listened to ‘amorphous music’ when he was in the studio. It was also provided an opportunity to get away from meetings and emails to have a proper look at works such as ‘1932 (Boque)’ kindly loaned by @artscouncilcollection . This is often read in terms of the influence of Cubism and Nicholson’s appreciation of Georges Braque. The ACC catalogue says that this table-top still life is painted on board, but in fact it’s on canvas nailed into board, giving it a hard object-quality with a surface effect achieved by scraping the paint back. I think the word is actually ‘Bocquet’ the brand name of a mustard made in Yvetot, Normandy (the T covered by a cup). At that time Nicholson was making trips to France and he was apparently inspired by seeing shop signs in Dieppe. #bennicholson #bennicholsonfromthestudioexhibition #pallanthousegallery #modernbritish (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CSFKcpboJMk/?utm_medium=tumblr

Jim Hawkins & Long John John Minton Drawing for Treasure Island, published by Paul Elek, 1948. @pallanthousegallery currently has a Minton exhibition which I'm trying to clear some time to get to. There's also a fabulous new book on the horizon,The Graphic Art of John Minton, due from @mainstonepress very soon. #johnminton #treasureisland #drawing #neoromantic #pallanthousegallery

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IVON HITCHENS (1893-1979) - (if we can say that about someone who died 42 years ago!) Here is Ivon in his birthday suit on the beach at Happisburgh in 1931 on that infamous holiday with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and his wife Irina. Sometimes people assume that he might have been staid and aloof, compared to the Bloomsbury Group et al, but that’s not what these photographs in the Tate Archive suggest, or indeed his vibrant, luxuriant works. All these works are from the @pallanthousegallery collection #ivonhitchens #bornonthisday #modernbritishart #pallanthousegallery (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CL96gBNFJru/?igshid=16t7tcxdfp2o3

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS: I bought lots of lemons yesterday and just having them in a bowl in front of me really brightens my mood. It reminds me of the Christopher Wood ‘Lemons in a Blue Basket’ in the @pallanthousegallery collection. In a letter to his mother from Sicily in May 1922, Wood described a drawing of lemons, which could apply to this painting: "… the tablecloth is all ruffled, crinkled and troubled with dark shadows and ups and downs which suggest to me the world that these lemons live in, everything that is going on around them. I expect you think all this is madness, but I have thought a good deal about still life and I think it is a means of expressing one's thoughts in a delicate manner which everyone else can't quite understand". Either they were tiny lemons, or that’s a big basket... It also brings to mind the little lemon at @kettlesyard which sits on a pewter tray under an Alfred Wallis and Wood’s Le Phare (the lighthouse). Missing art in museums currently, but thankful for real lemons in the meantime. #lemons #christopherwood #modernbritishart #pallanthousegallery (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKmfW4-l_Zg/?igshid=1u81ljyepqtxg

We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll be able to re-open @pallanthousegallery next week subject to tomorrow’s announcements about the tiers. Our team have been busy these past few weeks installing our new exhibitions including ‘Richard Hamilton: Respective’ which explores the influence of Marcel Duchamp and international modernism on Hamilton’s work. Here’s a picture I took of our Head of Exhibitions Louise Weller with the Duchamp/Hamilton collaboration ‘Oculist Witnesss’. So there’s much to look forward to once we reopen. #richardhamilton #modernbritishart #pallanthousegallery #behindthescenes #marcelduchamp #exhibitions (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIB1s8AFnXj/?igshid=1v3tukc92zqk5

D-DAY PREPARATIONS (and other works)... I love the quality of light in this interior by Barnett Freedman, and little details such as the open window and the colour spectrum chart stuck to the board. It’s on loan to the exhibition @pallanthousegallery from the @benurigallery and is one of a number of works Freedman produced when he was an Official War Artist. Others include works from @imperialwarmuseums and Tate. I shall miss all of these when the exhibition ends on Sunday. Until then we are opening the Gallery for an extra hour every day this week - extending out covid-19 hours until 5pm to enable more people through to see the show. It’s been the first opportunity to see many of his works together in 60 years, so don’t miss it! #barnettfreedman #warart #modernbritishart #history #secondworldwar #pallanthousegallery (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGz_9hDFYSf/?igshid=1qzwz6jq1uk1l

A ROOM WITH A VIEW: Paul Nash’s ‘Skylight Landscape’ (1941) is a painting of the view across to the Malvern Hills. It has such a strange composition, for it is framed by the opening mechanism of the window. It makes us feel like we’re up high seeking out an imperfect peek at a sublime scene. It was painted at Madams, the home of his friend and great patron Clare Neilson, near Newent in Gloucestershire. The celebrated ‘Monster Field’ was on the adjacent farm, and Clare collected numerous works by him, most notably ‘Event on the Downs’ now in the @govartcol - much of their correspondence, photographs and works on paper were donated to @pallanthousegallery through @artfund by her godson Jeremy Greenwood and his partner Alan Swerdlow. Amongst them are photographs of Nash at this window - for he created a kind of studio in the space from where he painted the view across to the Malvern Hills. It reflects Nash’s interest in the interplay of objects and landscape, which is almost metaphysical. Jeremy remembers meeting Nash when he was staying at Madame as child during the war, and watching him paint. This is part of our displays in the 18th century townhouse - amongst a group of works including Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Tristan Hillier and John Armstrong. #paulnash #interior #malvern #landscape #neoromantic #clareneilson #modernism #modernbritishart #arthistory #pallanthousegallery (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFgh2FOF_jM/?igshid=evuxejbrrpcn

EDWARD BAWDEN: the Palace Pier is a fairly constant backdrop to my daily morning swims in Brighton, and so I was interested to take a closer look at the wonderful linocut that is currently on display @pallanthousegallery in ‘An Outbreak of Talent: Bawden, Marx, Ravilious and their Contemporaries’. Bawden actually made two editions of this elongated print: one in 1958, and another nearly twenty years later. You can tell them apart as the earlier version has the word ‘PALACE’ in black, and the later one has it in black. It was apparently too big for a press so he had to walk all over it to ensure the ink took to the paper. Our copy was bequeathed by David Medd, an architect who knew Bawden and amassed a significant group of his prints. I got to know David as he used to visit the Gallery and map out the position of every work in the exhibitions. He did this in various institutions and I think they thought he was mad. But we struck a correspondence after I was called down to the desk one day, and he ended up bequeathing us his collection. It turned out that he and his wife Mary were hugely influential schools architects. His obituary described him as having revolutionised school design, replacing Victorian gloomth with light-filled rooms designed around the pupils that were influenced by the principles of Alvar Aalto. You can see why he would enjoy the playful imagery of Bawden, but also the appeal of his approach to architecture. (Clearly there’s a lot of artistic licence). As an aside, I have Bawden’s copy of ‘Brighton’ a book by Sacheverell Sitwell, with the faintly written words ‘Edward’s copy’ in the front. #brighton #edwardbawden #bawden #linocut #modernbritishart #pallanthousegallery #printmaking (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFcv5HKFckq/?igshid=1jg1ywj65vx9z