Eric Ravilious and John Piper
British Modernism is often imagined as restrained: rebellions conducted in tweed jackets; revolutions staged politely over a pint of mild. Which is why one stubborn story continues to fascinate. Sometime in the early 1930s, in the port of Newhaven, two rising figures of British art, John Piper and Eric Ravilious, are said to have come to blows.
Or perhaps they didn’t. Or perhaps they merely shoved. Or argued loudly, a few drinks down. The uncertainty is the point.
Churchill Rose Garden Mystery
Where was Winston Churchill in June 1916? If a humble painting of a rose garden is to be believed, he was staying at Herstmonceux Castle, a grand Sussex institution from medieval days.
The Mystery of the Headless Statue
I have for a long time wondered about the story behind the headless Roman-looking statue that has for many decades stood, back to a wall, in the open-to-the-public gardens of Lewes House.
There was little doubt that it had something to do with Edward Warren, the eccentric American antiquarian who lived in the Georgian building from 1890 until his death in 1928, for many years using it as a base for his business, largely pertaining to the buying and selling of classical artworks from Greece and Rome. But why had it remained on the premises, while all Warren’s other artworks – including Rodin’s The Kiss – had been sold off?
Mountains Green
If you visit Blake’s Cottage in Felpham, you will recognise that his home afforded him a fine view of the Downs. Since the countryside around Felpham was the only countryside Blake ever got to know, it is far from fanciful to surmise that the ‘mountains green’ and the ‘pleasant pastures’ were inspired by the nearby downland hillsides, grazed by livestock.
Meeting Mussolini
Brighton Gazette, Henry D Roberts MBE, the director of Brighton Library and Municipal Art Gallery, enjoyed a private meeting with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, at Mussolini’s HQ at Palazzo Chigi. How on earth, you could be forgiven for asking, did such an extraordinary event come about?
Anyone for doubles?
At first glance, Eric Ravilious’s 1930 triptych Tennis reveals a typical afternoon of leisure enjoyed by a group of privileged young men and women, some rather amateurishly playing a game of doubles, a couple canoodling on the bank, two leaving the scene to do something else.
A Sussex Farmhouse
At the 2023 edition of the British Art Fair, on the wall of London dealer Harry Moore-Gwynn’s first-floor stand, a vibrant little oil painting caught my eye…
The Missing Henry Moore
Students sat on it, danced around it, draped themselves across it, loved it, loathed it, ignored it… and then it was gone…
Wren in Sussex
2023 marked the 300th anniversary of the death of the polymath Sir Christopher Wren: astronomer, mathematician, physicist, anatomist and undoubtedly one of the country’s greatest architects.
Is there any truth to the attribution of Wren’s name to the design of several buildings in West Sussex?
Mystery Castle
This collage by John Piper, Newhaven, The Castle, 1934, raises several questions. Like: where was the pub called ‘The Castle’ located? And: ‘how come there are two lighthouses?’
The Peril of Yellow
It’s one of those yarns that has gone down in art history folklore. When Oscar Wilde was arrested for gross indecency, at the Cadogan Hotel in Sloane Street on April 5, 1895, he was carrying a yellow book under his arm…
Picasso’s Pint
Pablo Picasso, visiting friends in Sussex, walks into the Six Bells in Chiddingly, and orders a pint. The landlord pours it, and asks him to pay. Picasso says he has no cash, but offers to draw a sketch, instead…
The Mystery of the Missing Long Man
This familiar Eric Ravilious image, entitled Train Landscape, is not all it seems. In fact, it is not entirely Eric’s own work…