Recent Sussex-related publications and releases

Andrew Graham-Dixon, the Maresfield based art historian and broadcaster, has published a book about Johannes ‘Jan’ Vermeer, titled Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found (£30, Penguin UK). Strikingly, the painter himself doesn’t appear in the narrative until page 77.

It’s a bold move, and though the opening chapters are occasionally dense, the payoff is worth it. Because this isn’t just another book about Vermeer (of which an astonishing 825 have been published in English alone). It’s a staggering feat of art-historical detection, unveiling a plausible theory that reinterprets the painter’s entire career.

Those first 77 pages plunge into the turbulent religious history of the Dutch Republic in the years leading up to Vermeer’s birth. They explore the aftermath of the Republic’s bloody secession from Spain, in which an underground, free-thinking Christian sect – The Collegiants – took form, eschewing the trappings of the authorised religion of the state, the Dutch Reformed Church.

The Collegiants didn’t believe in churches or priests: they did believe in open discussion of the Bible in their own homes, in pacifism and in sex equality. The couple who acquired the majority of Vermeer’s paintings for their own walls – Pieter Claesz van Ruijven, the heir to a brewing fortune, and his wife, Maria – were Collegiants, Graham-Dixon argues, offering conclusive documented evidence.

As, in all probability, was Vermeer himself, the author infers. Which gives Graham Dixon a key to unlock the mysteries of the Dutch master’s paintings, which weren’t – as previously thought – simple domestic scenes. They were in fact, deeply iconographic religious depictions, rich in disguised symbolism, celebrating Collegiant beliefs and rites.

He even finds a plausible identity for the sitter of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, and an understanding of what her fabulous item of jewellery represented. Her name? I won’t spoil it, just as no reviewer of The Mousetrap would dare reveal whodunnit. I thoroughly recommend buying the book and discovering its revelations for yourself. Why not buy two, while you’re at it? I can’t think of a finer seasonal gift for any lover of Vermeer’s luminous art.

Another artist with a profound mastery of light was JMW Turner, though of course his paintings’ luminosity was significantly more dramatic. Thirty-two of Turner’s watercolour landscapes, including some of his breathtaking views of the Alps, early views, and late cloud and sea studies, are currently on show at Towner Eastbourne’s flagship winter exhibition Impressions in Watercolour: Turner and his Contemporaries. These are placed alongside works by other accomplished watercolourists of the period, such as his great friend Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman, drawn from the fabled Hickman Bacon collection.

Expert Ian Warrell, formerly a curator of several Turner shows at Tate Britain, has authored a book to accompany the exhibition, with 90 prints, including Turner’s works at the heart of the show. In an extended essay he explores the rapid evolution of plein-air sketching in the Romantic era, showcasing Turner’s most gestural, technically daring watercolours, charged with atmosphere and abstraction, alongside those of Girtin, Cotman, David Cox, Peter De Wint and Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding. Far from the genteel wishy-wash of cliché, these watercolours shimmer with urgency, invention, and elemental force. Impressions in Watercolour – Turner and his Contemporaries (£35) is published by Pallas Athene.

William Nicholson, though more restrained and formal than Turner, shared a fascination with light, shadow, and surface texture, and he too was drawn to the Sussex landscape as a frequent subject, especially while living in Rottingdean from 1911 to 1919. To accompany the first major exhibition of his work for over two decades, Pallant House Gallery has brought out a fully illustrated 176-page catalogue of the show, William Nicholson (£35), in which director and curator Simon Martin posits that the artist’s work, ranging from landscapes to portraits and still lifes, is significantly more complex than previous interpretations have suggested, revealing unexpected layers of symbolism and technique.

The ROSA team was delighted to be introduced to the octogenarian painter John Hitchens at a 2023 exhibition of his work at Weald & Downland Living Museum, close to the studio he works from, built by his artist father Ivon, in Petworth. The show was a retrospective of his abstracted landscapes, rooted in the South Downs, exploring the textures, rhythms, and patterns of the land, evolving from naturalistic scenes to richly symbolic, near-geometric compositions. These were placed alongside sculptures made of wood, stones and found objects, recalling the rhythmic mark-making of Indigenous traditions.

Thus it was a great pleasure to receive a copy of Elements of Landscape (£45, Sansom & Company) in the post, a whopping 300-page survey of Hitchens’ work from 1990 onwards, written by Sandy Mallens, with photographs by Anne-Katrin Purkiss. The book draws on extensive interviews by Mallens with the artist, whose own voice thus resonates throughout its pages. It’s worth noting here that Mallens also authored a book on Hitchens’ father Ivon, and that the Hitchens family represents a rare four-generation dynasty of artists (including John’s grandfather Alfred, a watercolourist, and his son Simon, a phenomenological sculptor).

Jason Mosseri, who you might remember as our cover artist for ROSA #7, spent years on the acid party scene in Goa, and two decades as a tattooist in Brighton, before trying out a ‘log-to leg’ chairmaking course in 2013 that convinced him of his true vocation. Having studied further with Tennessee chairmaking guru Curtis Buchanan, he returned to Sussex to set up full time in 2016, using traditional methods to make beautiful Windsor chairs, which he likens in his introduction to ‘creatures’ (they have legs, arms, a bottom and a back).

Mosseri now teaches log-to-leg courses himself, and has distilled much of his knowledge into a book, published by The Guild of Master Craftsmen Publications, titled The Art of Chairmaking (£25). It is divided into three sections, giving advice on setting up a workshop and sourcing the right equipment, on various chairmaking skills you will need to master, and finally offering step-by-step instructions on how to make different ‘projects’, from a three-legged stool to a Lobsterpot chair. Here’s a man who knows his adze from his elbow.

Words by Dexter Lee