Victorian Dream Palaces
Shaun Castle 20 November 2006
Three British Artists: Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Henry Moore
Monday 27 November 2006
Of particular note is the sale of screenprints by John Piper, many drawn from the series ‘Victorian Dream Palaces’.
Though regarded by most as an offical war artist, The British avant-garde artist John Piper (1903-1992) also produced a substantive body of work on the country house which spanned his career.
While even the war was still in progress, Osbert Sitwell had employed Piper to paint views of his family mansion, Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, in the conviction that the end of the country house was inevitable. In visits between 1942-4 Piper painted more than fifty views of the gaunt Georgian house and it desolate temples, lodges and woodland. When the series was exhibited in January 1945, Sitwell introduced the catalogue:
“At the very moment the great English houses, the chief architectural expression of their country, are passing, being wrecked by happy and eager planners, or becoming the sterilised and scionless possessions of the National Trust, a painter has appeared to hand them on to future ages, as Canaletto or Guardi handed on the dying Venice of their day, and with equally immitable art.”
Studying a scene, he chose from its spectrum of colours those which seemed to represent its inner spirit, and intensified them. The pictures are as empty of figures as designs for stage-sets, but he succeeded in projecting a human presence in that intensity of colour.
The artist wrote of Seaton Delaval in 1945: “Ochre and flame-licked, pock-marked and stained in purplish umber and black. .... House and landscape are seared by the the east wind, and riven with fretting industrialism, but they still withstand the noise and neglect, the fires and hauntings of twentieth-century life. Its main block an untenanted stone shell, the Hall is somehow alive, unlike many stately homes”
The Bonhams sale includes Milton Enest Hall, Edttington Park, Flintham Hall, Harlaxton through the gate, Shadwell Park and Wightwick Manor from the ‘Victorian Dream Palaces’ series of 1977, as well as Buckden in a storm (1977), Willington Dovecote (1978), East Barsham Manor (1981), St Helen Hall (1981), Buckden Palace (1982), Carew Castle (1982), and Cannons Asby (1983), and others. Lot estimates are from £300 upwards.
To bid via the internet visit www.bonhams.com
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Lot 183 East Barsham Manor. Screenprint, 1981 | Lot 199 Red House. Screenprint, 1987 | |
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Lot 202 Royal Holloway College. Screenprint, 1981 | Lot 203 Waddeston. Screenprint, 1989 |
