As part of preparation for my
'People and Stone' talk on
'Broomfield Artists: Thomas Huxley-Jones and Gwynneth Holt' (8 February, 2.00 pm, Broomfield Parish Church), I visited
All Saints Stock Harvard briefly this morning to photograph their rood figures carved by Holt.
These are now on the north wall at the west end of the North Aisle. Before 1986 this area housed the Sacristry and was cleared with the building of the new Vestries on the North side of the church. The Rood Figures of Our Lord, Our Lady and St. John were designed in 1955 by Holt and are carved in lime wood. As part of the post war restoration these figures were originally position in the Chancel Arch on a Rood Beam. The figures were incorporated in a hanging rood, still in the Chancel Arch, as part of the 1981 re-ordering but were moved to their present position in about 1990 to open up the view of the East Window.
The Parish Magazine of Stock Harvard (May 1955) contains the following comment about the figure of Christ on the rood beam at All Saints Church: "The figure speaks to us of eternal wisdom combined with eternal youth, and there is about the whole figure and its expression a strength and calmness which communicates itself to people who look at it long enough with a really open mind ... The figure has that strange factor of timelessness which some of the medieval artists secured."
The
blue plaque information from Chelmsford City Council records that “In 1952, Holt was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. She also produced works in the United States when she visited the Hopkins Centre at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in both 1963 and 1968. Holt was also known to be one of the Royal Society of Sculptors earliest female members, where she expressed frustration at the sculpture profession being dominated by men. Following her death, Holt’s work has been showcased in many places by both the Royal Society of Sculptors and Chelmsford Museum.”
In expressing her frustration with the male-dominated nature of her profession, she said: “Women are just as intelligent as men, and their contribution to art is just as valuable: They are not given a chance to take art up seriously. What with looking after the house, there is not much time left for concentrating on art."
Joan Weedon writes that from the time Holt married
Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones (also a sculptor) “both exhibited at the London, Scottish and West of England academies, the Society of Portrait Sculptors and the Paris Salon. Among the awards Gwynneth won were the Feodora Gleichen award (for 'outstanding work by a woman sculptor') for her 'Mother and Child' exhibited at the Royal Academy, and two at the Paris Salon for 'Arts Decoratif and for sculpture. A set of her wartime figurines of a semi-humorous character [‘Our Gang’], which were cast by the Bovey Tracey pottery, is now in the Imperial War Museum. While living in Aberdeen she also exhibited work in ivories, woods, copper, terracotta and bronze in London and Edinburgh.
[They] moved to Broomfield, Chelmsford, in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden [at High House] and both achieved high personal success. Huxley-Jones's brilliant, imaginative figures gained him wide recognition, and he undoubtedly influenced Gwynneth's own style, although her life studies at that time may be perceived as more naturalistic than the style of her husband's large symbolic works.”
“Holt completed many works with a religious theme, or for ecclesiastical buildings, such as His Holiness Pope John XXIII, Hands, The Resurrection and Mother and Child. She completed commissions for the pulpit of St. Andrew’s Church in Hornchurch, Essex; the chapel of the East Mission in Stepney and the limewood The Immaculate Conception for the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Chelmsford.”
“It was for her work in ivory, however, that Holt was most celebrated as a sculptor, and her ivory sculpture Annunciation (1946) received particular praise for her carving skills. Annunciation depicts the Virgin Mary, her palms raised to God, with Gabriel depicted beneath her feet. In the 1972 book Modern Ivory Carving, Holt was described as ‘Britain’s foremost ivory carver’.”
Weedon also notes that: “The demonstrable piety of many of Gwynneth's exhibits created a demand for interpretations of Christian figures and symbols. Eight churches in and around Essex contain her important representations of such figures, and there are other such works traceable to her 'Chelmsford phase'.
Examples of her work may be seen in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Chelmsford; Stock Harvard Parish Church, Essex; Balsham Parish Church, Cambs; St Andrew's, Hornchurch, Essex: Downham Church, Essex; Methodist East End Mission, London; Navestock Church, Essex; Buxhall Church, Suffolk; St Leonard's Parish Church, Eynsham.”
Broomfield Parish Church has a prayer desk of light oak decorated on the plain apron front with an applied carved head by Gwynneth Holt. The head of the Virgin Mary is in 20th C style, her bare head emerging from a cowl.
The grave of Holt and Huxley-Jones is to be found in the churchyard St Mary with St Leonard in Broomfield.
My poem
'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations together with that of
Rosemary Rutherford. For more on the artists of Broomfield, all of whom are commemorated there with
blue plaques, see
here,
here,
here,
here and
here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
