Between: sutherland

Showing posts with label sutherland. Show all posts

Friday, 31 October 2025

Artlyst - Into Abstraction Meaning Connection And Hope Firstsite

My latest review for Artlyst is on ‘Into Abstraction: Modern British Art and the Landscape’ at Firstsite Gallery:

'Spirituality was a major source of inspiration for many in this period. Nash shared a Christian Science practitioner with Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Sue Hubbard has noted that Hepworth produced her first ‘pierced’ sculpture ‘at the height of her commitment to a religion that denied the reality of material existence’. Piercing her compositions, as here with ‘Mincarlo, Three Curves with Strings’, ‘allowed her to sculpt not only with matter but with space’, to elide the formal with the spiritual. Christianity informed the work of both Sutherland (a Roman Catholic) and Piper (an Anglican), as it had earlier for Constable. Both Sutherland and Piper were inspired by the spiritual landscapes of The Ancients, particularly Samuel Palmer. They went on to receive major ecclesiastical commissions, as also did Hepworth, Heron and Moore. The access to emotion and atmosphere that Abstraction offers was particularly well-suited to spiritual engagement.'

For more on the spirituality of these artists and of abstraction see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

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Mumford and Sons (With Hozier) - Rubber Band Man.

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Saturday, 15 October 2022

Controversy and conversation: Churches and art

Here's the talk I gave at last night's Unveiled event in St Andrew's Wickford:

St Andrew’s has a hidden painting – ‘The Descent from the Cross’ by David Folley – which illustrates some of the issues involved in showing modern art in churches. In this talk I want us to look at Folley’s painting and other controversial art commissioned for churches to see the ways in which they open up conversations about faith for those who wouldn’t ordinarily come to church or consider faith.

David Folley is an English painter based in Plymouth. He paints subjects that range from abstracts, landscapes, seascapes, portraits, and race horses, including a life size painting of the famous British racehorse Frankel. He has completed portrait commissions for Trinity College, Cambridge, and University College Plymouth and has had major commissions from Plymouth City Council and Endemol UK (a production company for Channel 4). He describes himself as “a twenty-first century romantic with a belief in the spiritual and redemptive possibilities of art.” Exploring the spiritual and redemptive possibilities of art is the foundation of his “romantic associations with the aesthetic tradition of Northern Romantic painting.”

Revd Raymond Chudley, a former Team Vicar at St Andrew’s, knew Folley and had supported him in his artistic career. As an act of gratitude, Folley made this painting as a gift for Chudley when he got married, around the time he retired from parish ministry. The painting was too large for Chudley’s home, so was gifted to St Andrew’s and was dedicated by the Bishop of Bradwell in 1996.

Folley’s friend Alan Thompson has described the work well. Thompson writes: “David Folley has painted The Descent from the Cross, the melancholy depth of hopelessness, in a major work of heroic proportions. It is a large canvas painted traditionally to inspire the viewer to contemplate all that had culminated in what seemed at the time to be the final act of a tragedy. The viewer cannot share the utter despair of the participants in the painting because he or she knows what they didn't - that the body will be resurrected.

The way David has painted the body expresses the physical suffering Christ endured, whilst the dripping blood from the wound the soldier inflicted on Him, is shown as a rainbow. The explanation of this is that God told Noah that the rainbow was the sign of the new covenant with the earth. This is just one of many examples of Christian iconography illustrated in this work.

Mary, looking up at her son, is depicted as a modern provincial character in the manner we have associated with Stanley Spencer. Behind Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, with a moustache, is painted in blue to denote spiritual love, constancy, truth and fidelity.

At the extreme right hand side of the picture, the Revd. Raymond Chudley, who commissioned the painting, is shown in the traditional fifteenth century role of the donor, kneeling in prayer, with his attention fixed upon the body of Christ.

Facing him is the artist. He has included himself, portrayed as holding a broken spear as if to suggest that he had been responsible for the wound in the side of Christ. He is balancing precariously on a skull, a memento mori, signifying the transitory nature of life and also reading across to Calvary, which is derived from Golgotha, which is Hebrew for skull. He is also 'pregnant' with a foetus, which the artist sees as humanity giving birth to the Christ within, and transforming themselves into Sons of God rather than sons of man.

From the bottom of the painting is an outstretched arm, which just fails to touch Christ's hand, because the hand is withdrawn. This is intended to signify man's desire, through science, to explain the laws of the universe and so become almighty. He is almost there but cannot touch. There is a visual tension between God and man.”

Folley says, “I sum up this painting as being made up of a composite of the works of great masters of the past. Not copying them slavishly but developing my own concept of individualism with emphasis on vivid imagery, technical refinement, complex iconography and innovation.” Among the artists referenced are: El Greco, Grunewald, and Donatello.

The painting disturbs some through a mix of its expressionist style, its strong colouration, and its unusual symbolism. As it dominates the space in the church where children’s activities have often taken place it was eventually decided to cover it with a large curtain and banner.

Such a response to contemporary art in churches is not unusual. During my sabbatical I visited churches linked to three significant controversies over the commissioning of modern art:

(i) a set of Stations of the Cross and an altarpiece, The Death of St Teresa, commissioned from the Flemish artist Albert Servaes for the church of the Discalced Carmelites in Luithagen, a suburb of Antwerp. This led, in 1921, to a decree from the Holy Office based on Canon 1399.12, which states that images may not be ‘unusual’, resulting in first the Stations and then the altarpiece being removed from the chapel;

(ii) the rationalist design for Notre-Dame du Bon Conseil in the Swiss Alps by architect Alberto Sartoris (who had strong links to the Futurists) created a scandal in the Swiss press in 1931, the same year that the publication of a 'Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art' led to a censure from Pope Pius XI in a speech at the inauguration of a new Vatican Art Gallery and;

(iii) Germaine Richier’s Crucifix was removed from Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce at Assy and a subsequent instruction on sacred art issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1952, which was the beginning of two year initiative by the Vatican that severely constrained the modernizing programme of the French Dominicans and represented a victory for the traditionalists within the Church.

Many church commissions are controversial because they introduce something different and therefore dissonant into a familiar building, as is the case with David Folley’s painting. That was the case with modern images of the crucifixion by Servaes and Richier and, in the UK, Graham Sutherland at St Matthew’s Northampton and St Aidan’s East Acton. These viewed Christ’s sacrifice as emblematic of human suffering in conflict and persecution. They were controversial as they challenged sentimental images of Christ and deliberately introduced ugliness into beautiful buildings. On my sabbatical I spoke to parishioners in both Northampton and East Acton who stated that they did not like Sutherland’s Crucifixions but who also appreciated why the paintings were as they were and the challenge that they provided as a result.

I was particularly moved to find, on entering Saint Martin’s Kerk in Latem in Belgium, that the baptistery contains a Passion charcoal by Albert Servaes. Servaes and Richier were both affected by decrees from the holy office which led to the removal of their artworks from the churches for which they had been commissioned. Servaes, with his Stations of the Cross and altarpiece for the Carmelite Chapel in Luithagen and Richier, with her crucifix for the church at Assy. Given all that Servaes experienced in the controversy over the Luithagen Stations, including the removal of work which was a genuine expression of his faith by the Church of which he was part, I found it profoundly moving that a work of his, in the same vein as the Luithagen Stations, should be displayed in the church and area where his faith and art first fused. Richier’s crucifix was later returned to its place in the sanctuary at Assy and the church, like many other churches in France with modern art commissions, is now classed by the Government as a national monument and has become a significant tourist location.

It seems, therefore, that scandals of modern art, whether the reception of the works themselves or that of their challenging content, are, with time, resolved as congregations live with the works and learn to value the challenge of what initially seems to be scandalous.

My main personal experience of this kind of situation was when a sculpture by the Street artist Ryan Callanan was moved ahead of a Stations of the Cross exhibition at St Stephen Walbrook. Complaints from several parishioners at the church prompted, after considerable discussion, the rehanging of the exhibition although initially it had seemed as their complaints would result in the work being removed from the exhibition. That possibility attracted press interest which then calmed down after the work was moved to a different position in the church. Controversy of this sort and attempts to ban, remove or censor artworks thought to be in some way blasphemous or challenging, are, as we have seen, part of the story of faith and art in the modern period.

Let’s think for a moment about the reasons why displaying a crucified stormtrooper in a City church might stimulate those viewing it to think about Christ afresh. In the Star Wars films, stormtroopers are the main ground force of the Galactic Empire, under the leadership of Emperor Palpatine and his commanders, most notably Darth Vader. They are on the dark side in that conflict. That the artist Ryan Callanan chose to create a ‘Crucified Stormtrooper,’ provides Christians and others with the possibility of experiencing something of the sense of scandal that Christ’s crucifixion originally generated.

The imagery of the dark side in the Star Wars films can be seen in this context as equating to the Christian belief that we are all sinners. If we use the imagery opened up for us by ‘Crucified Stormtrooper,’ then we are forced to reflect, much as we dislike the thought, that we are all on the dark side. We are all stormtroopers.

The amazing message of love at the heart of Christianity is that God does something about that situation. God becomes one of us in Christ. He becomes a stormtrooper in order that, through his death, he can take the darkness onto himself and enable us to live in the light. That is the original heartbeat of Christianity, which continues to radically change people's lives on a daily basis around the world when they genuinely acknowledge their own sinfulness. The scandal - the stumbling block - that is the cross, was brought home to us afresh by including this artwork in this exhibition; particularly to any who view their own assets as the basis for their own self-esteem. To show this work in a church enabled that reflection on Christ's love to be seen and shared in a new way and that is why it worthwhile for the Church to show art, especially controversial art, and to explore the questions that it opens up to us.

In the context of the Private View, I was able to talk to people, for whom churchgoing is not necessarily a regular feature of their lives, about the art in relation to the love of Christ. That is both a great privilege and opportunity. Many of those who saw the exhibition described it as 'striking', 'intriguing', 'uplifting' and 'interesting.' It was commended as an extraordinarily broad-minded, human and thought-provoking exhibition in an extraordinary place with others asking that the church reach out to current artists more often. As a result of the controversy, the curator of the exhibition wrote publicly about his own faith.

Additionally, the conversations generated by the exhibition have an ongoing life online at a website documenting Art Below’s Stations of the Cross exhibitions: https://stationsofthecross.co.uk/blog/how-does-a-crucified-stormtrooper-glorify-god and https://stationsofthecross.co.uk/blog/controversial-art-protest-or-engagement.

The reactions from some within the Church to Art Below’s Stations of the Cross exhibitions suggest that we still need to learn that it is far better to engage with art and artists by discussing and debating the questions they raise, instead of seeking to suppress or censor. One example of this being done effectively would the many Da Vinci Code events, bible studies, websites etc. that the Church used to counter the claims made in The Da Vinci Code featured reasoned arguments based on a real understanding of the issues raised which made use of genuine historical findings and opinion to counter those claims. The Church, it seems, still needs to learn that the way to counter criticism is not to try to ban or censor it but to engage with it, understand it and accurately counter it. In other words, to enter into conversation with art and to generate conversations about faith with those who come to visit to see art.

That is what we are seeking to do here with David Folley’s ‘Descent from the Cross’; to make the painting itself and the story of how it came to be hidden talking points that encourage people to explore the ways in which the painting engages with Christ’s Passion and our understandings of it. To put those things in dialogue and encourage people to visit in order to engage in that conversation; a conversation about Christ and the nature of atonement.

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Bob Dylan - Sign on the Cross.

Sunday, 12 April 2020

I come alive

I come alive

When I stand in snow on a mountain slope viewing a cobalt lake,
I come alive.
When the morning mist forms a white sea on the Somerset levels, islanding trees,
I come alive.
When my daughter nestles up and hugs me tight,
I come alive.
When my wife and I lie, skin touching, sweat mingling in the heat of summer and passion,
I come alive.
When a friend listens with understanding and without advising,
I come alive.
When I sing and dance in the echoes of an empty Church,
I come alive.
When words cannot express Your praise and I sing in tongues,
I come alive.
When I hear the rustle of angel’s wings above me in the eaves,
I come alive.

I come alive to endurance
when I see a hesitant smile form on the face of the Big Issue seller.
I come alive to pain
when I hear a friend’s story of depression and unanswered pleading.
I come alive to patience
when I see a husband answer again the question from his alzheimered wife.
I come alive to injustice
when the Metro contrasts Big Mac obesity lawsuits with African famine victims.
I come alive to suffering
when I see Sutherland’s Crucifixion and read Endo’s Silence.
I come alive to grief
when I remember the aircraft shattered and scattered across Kosovan heights.

I come alive
when I am touched and see and hear
the beautiful or broken, the passionate or poor.
The mystery or madness
of the Other in which God
meets and greets me
and calls forth the response
that is love.

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Aretha Franklin & Mavis Staples - Oh Happy Day.

Thursday, 25 July 2019

Artlyst: Art, Faith, Church Patronage and Modernity

My latest article for Artlyst is about two recent publications that explore the place that religious Art occupied in 20th century Britain.

Paul Liss writes in ‘Art, Faith and Modernity’ of the under-researched nature of religious Art in 20th-century British visual culture which has meant that those artists who created art often for a church, are among the unsung heroines and heroes of Modern British Art. ‘Art, Faith and Modernity’ is the catalogue to an exhibition of 172 works by 73 artists which, together with art historian Alan Powers' catalogue essay, presents a strong argument for a reassessment of the critical place that religious Art continued to occupy in 20th century Britain.

‘Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain: Walter Hussey and the Arts’ by Peter Webster is the first full-length treatment of Hussey’s work as a patron between 1943 and 1978, first for St Matthew’s Northampton, and then at Chichester Cathedral. Hussey was responsible for the most significant sequence of works of Art commissioned for British churches in the twentieth century including works by Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Marc Chagall.

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:

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C.O.B. - Solomon's Song.

Friday, 20 July 2018

Graham Sutherland: Attracted to the Cross

My latest review for Church Times is of the Graham Sutherland show 'Beneath the Tapestry' in Coventry Cathedral:

'This exhibition is small but significant, as it brings together important works by the artist which are unlikely to be seen together again in my lifetime.

Sutherland’s religious works may be few, but they are not only supremely realised conceptions of key moments in salvation history, but icons of the renaissance in the Church’s artistic patronage which, across Europe, also engaged George Bell, Jacques Maritain, Maurice Denis, and the Dominicans Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie Raymond Régamy. In Britain, it led to the conception of the new Coventry Cathedral as a “treasure-box” of significant commissions. But Sutherland’s wider creative imagination was stimulated, too: his Thorn Trees and Thorn Heads, a new strand in his work, derived from his reflections on the crown of thorns. Vibrant Thorn Trees lithographs can be seen in the complementary exhibition of Sutherland prints organised by the Goldmark Gallery in the Chapel of Christ the Servant.'

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Candi Staton - His Hands.

Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Coventry Kids & A Picture of Faith

Back in 1962, the schoolchildren of Coventry donated their pocket money to help fund a 70ft stained glass window in the new Cathedral. Last Saturday the authors (Diana Coulter and Bob Smith) of a new book about Keith New (the artist of the window) invited the original Cov Kids, who are now in their sixties to early seventies (and probably have children/or grandchildren of their own!) to reunite.

The event was a great success with a terrific turnout, many of whom wanted to be involved in similar events in the future. Many of those who came, while they may not have been to the Cathedral for many many years, were moved by "their window in their Cathedral."

Over the past four years Diana Coulter and Robert Smith have been researching the stained glass of Keith New, one of the three-man team who designed the nave windows at Coventry Cathedral. New (1926–2012) was a significant pioneering British modernist stained glass artist in the 1950s and 1960s.

Coulter and Smith have published their monograph Keith New: British Modernist in Stained Glass with Sansom, a Bristol-based publisher specialising art and design of the 20th century onwards. This is the first monograph devoted to his work. It examines New’s career in the first part, while the second part comprises a comprehensive catalogue of his stained glass.

New’s career was launched with the 1952 Royal College of Art’s commission to design the nave windows for Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral. The three-man team, led by Lawrence Lee, included Geoffrey Clarke, another pioneer in the medium. Each artist designed three windows. The commission brought New to the attention of other prominent architects, including Robert Matthew and Denys Lasdun, as well as artists and critics like John Piper and John Betjeman, and resulted in many commissions for churches either in post-war rebuilds or in medieval buildings.

Also at Coventry Cathedral currently is 'Graham Sutherland: Beneath the Tapestry', a curation of works that inspired and helped develop the iconic tapestry that hangs in Coventry Cathedral.

As part of Basil Spence’s ground-breaking design for the New Coventry Cathedral (consecrated 1962), he commissioned several high-profile artists to create new works. One of the most significant works included in his design was to be a tapestry, depicting Christ in Glory, to be hung behind the altar in the new Cathedral. Spence invited Sutherland to produce designs for Coventry Cathedral’s iconic tapestry - beginning a 10 year collaboration that resulted in one of the world’s largest modern tapestries, Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph that now sits at the very heart of this special space.

Precentor and Vice-Provost at Coventry Cathedral, Michael Sadgrove declares these years (1987-1995) amongst the best years of his life. The Cathedral is where he wrote his first book, 'A Picture of Faith'. The book's theme was Graham Sutherland's Tapestry of 'Christ in Glory' and took a look a the piece not so much as a work of art, but as an icon for meditation. In his lecture last Saturday, he revisited some of the book's themes and asked, from a personal perspective, how it continues to speak today, a quarter of a century later.

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The Brilliance - Yahweh.

Sunday, 15 April 2018

Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion

My latest article for Artlyst explores powerfully expressive crucifixion images found in two of the Tate’s current exhibitions. In 1932, the ‘year of wonders’ explored by Tate Modern’s Picasso 1932: Love Fame Tragedy, Picasso created thirteen seminal ink drawings of the Crucifixion, while All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life at Tate Britain showcases the fearful and terrible grandeur of the 1959 Crucifixion by F.N. Souza:

'Between the two World Wars and in the aftermath of World War II, Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece with its brutally realistic depiction of the suffering endured by the crucified provided a frame and inspiration for artists such as Picasso, Rouault, Buffet, Bacon, Sutherland and Souza to protest the violence unleashed by human beings in that most bloody of centuries. The Tate’s current exhibitions provide an opportunity to explore some of less well-known and less frequently exhibited of these images, which ultimately stand as a warning against our human tendency to attack and destroy those we scapegoat.'

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:

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Sufjan Stevens - Ring Them Bells.

Saturday, 22 April 2017

Sussex Modernism and the Church

In the first half of the 20th century Sussex was home to major artists and collectors namely the Catholic art and craft community in Ditchling (home of Eric Gill and David Jones), Charleston (home of the Bloomsbury Group), Farley Farm House, Chiddingly (home of Roland Penrose and Lee Miller) and West Dean (home to surrealist Edward James). In the communities they created, artistic innovation ran hand in-hand with political, sexual and domestic experimentation. Both are explored in Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion at Two Temple Place until 23 April 2017. Surprisingly in the context of modernism, links to churches is a thread running through this exhibition.

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the formation of many artist's colonies and communities.

The most successful of these was probably at Gödöllő in Hungary, which was based on the writings on John Ruskin and William Morris. Its closest equivalent in Britain was Ditchling in Sussex where the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic was formed.

Eric Gill, later followed by Edward Johnston and Hilary Pepler, moved to Ditchling, in 1907 seeking the advantages of country living, and this move led directly to the formation of the Guild in 1920. Earlier, in 1914, the three men issued their first edition of 'The Game', an occasional magazine which was to become the main forum for the views of the Guild. The arrival in 1917 of Fr. Vincent McNabb, prior of the Dominicans at Hawkesyard in Staffordshire, became the catalyst for the transition from three friends living and working close by to the formation of the Guild. On 29 July 1918 Pepler, Gill, his wife Mary and his apprentice Desmond Chute joined the Third Order of the Dominicans.

The Guild was set up to be a revolutionary community of artists and craftspeople living, working and worshipping as Dominican Tertiaries. The January 1918 edition of 'The Game' stated 'The object of the Revolution is to replace the worship of Mammon by the worship of God. We adhere to the principle of human freedom, which we believe to be possible only by obedience to God and by recognising the institutions which are of God.' Johnston was unable to follow in their ardent Catholicism and did not join, although he continued to live in Ditchling. David Jones joined the community in 1921 and then, in 1924, moved with Gill to Caldey in Wales as part of an attempt to establish a similar Guild there.

As Fiona MacCarthy has noted: ‘Gill was revolutionary in his attitude to making, a pioneer in reviving the medieval practice of "direct carving" … For Gill, direct carving was part of a whole philosophy of life, a campaign against coyness and adulteration wherever he found it … He developed what became a religion of explicitness, "the making out of stone things seen in the mind".’ Gill also went on a ‘long and sometimes agonising quest to reconcile the sexual and the spiritual.’ However, he eventually became ‘a Catholic artist in a primarily Anglican country, working almost exclusively for Catholic clients’; the Guild likewise.

Timothy Elphick describes much of the Guild's work as being devotional: 'Wood engravings of religious subjects were cut in profusion by Gill and Chute and the newly arrived David Jones, many for use as illustrations in THE GAME. Pepler's St Dominic's Press was printing Mass-sheets, ordination cards and music for psalms and canticles, as well as books and pamphlets written by guild members and their friends. One such book, a translation in 1923 of Jacques Maritain's Art et Scholastique, was to be of the greatest importance'.['Eric Gill and the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic', Hove Museum and Art Gallery, 1990]

As a result, the specifically Christian modernism of the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic was part of The Third Spring, a flowering of Roman Catholicism among artists and intellectuals which had G.K. Chesterton and Jacques Maritain as its guiding lights and which saw a flourishing of sacred art societies, similar to that at Ditchling, across Europe.

A similar flowering of Anglicanism among artists and intellectuals also occurred in Britain, primarily as a result of the ministries of George Bell and Walter Hussey. On 27th June 1929, the day he became Bishop of Chichester, Bell expressed, in his enthronement address, his commitment to a much closer relationship between the Anglican Church and the arts:

‘Whether it be music or painting or drama, sculpture or architecture or any other form of art, there is an instinctive sympathy between all of these and the worship of God. Nor should the church be afraid to thank the artists for their help, or to offer its blessing to the works so pure and lovely in which they seek to express the Eternal Spirit. Therefore I earnestly hope that in this diocese (and in others) we may seek ways and means for a reconciliation of the Artist and the Church—learning from him as well as giving to him and considering with his help our conception alike of the character of Christian worship and of the forms in which the Christian teaching may be proclaimed.’

Bell had been intent on re-establishing the link between the Church and the arts from his early days as Dean of Canterbury where he had begun with religious drama, commissioning in 1928 a new play for the cathedral from John Masefield; an event which in large part led to the establishing of a series of Canterbury plays, including Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot. He went on to commission drama, music and visual art, put structures in place (e.g. the Sussex Churches Art Council and its ‘Pictures in Churches Loan Scheme’) to support a wider commissioning of artists, placed his trust in the vision of artists when they encountered opposition and he was called on to adjudicate on commissions and strongly supported the appointment of Walter Hussey as Dean of Chichester Cathedral to take forward the commissioning programme he had initiated there.

Bell viewed his drive to re-associate the Church and the Arts as being ‘an effective protection against barbarism, whether the barbarism was Nazism, materialism or any other threat to civilization.’ Murals commissioned from Duncan Grant, Vanessa and Quentin Bell in 1941 for the Sussex Church of St Michael & All Angels Berwick represented a fulfilment of his vision to be a catalyst for promoting the relationship between the Arts and the Church. As Sir Kenneth Clark wrote in 1941: ‘...with a little judicious publicity it might have the effect of encouraging other dioceses to do the same. If once such a movement got under way, it would have incalculable influence for the good on English Art.’

At Berwick, for the first time a modern artist of national standing, Duncan Grant, undertook ‘a complete decorative scheme for an historic rural church’. ‘Duncan Grant was the lead artist for the murals and put forward the initial proposals. He had moved with Vanessa Bell and her husband, Clive, to Charleston Farmhouse at the foot of the Downs, three miles to the west of Berwick Church, in 1916. Quentin Bell, the son of Vanessa and Clive, undertook all the paintings within the Chancel as well as ‘The Supper at Emmaus’ at the end of the north aisle.’

They ‘had in view a ‘decorative scheme’ which, rather than simply being a series of individual paintings within frames, would create an environment with its own particular feeling and aesthetic.’ A study for one of the six larger works in the scheme, Christ in Glory, can be seen in the exhibition.

Grant’s work was ‘influenced by his travels in Italy where, as an art student, he had seen the mosaics at Ravenna and copied the frescoes of Piero della Francesca (1420-1492) at Arezzo. Then in Paris he had copied works by Chardin (1699-1779) portraying scenes from everyday life, ordinary people in work or recreation. At the same time he studied the work of the Impressionists and was later greatly influenced by the Post-Impressionists such as Cezanne, Seurat, and others …

The murals at Berwick exhibit influences from all these traditions, but also something of the artists’ focus on the intimacy of the home and personal relationships and their love of the beauty and simplicity of the Downland landscape.’

The murals themselves looked back in terms of style to the grand ‘tradition of ecclesiastical art’ while their content was nostalgic for a past picture of rural England which was rapidly being lost. Both factors meant that the scheme at Berwick did not serve as a model for Church patronage of modern art as had been the hope of Bell and Clarke. Although the artists at Berwick were considered ‘avant garde’ in their day what they actually produced for the church was a scheme which looked back to earlier traditions of ecclesiastical art, rather than one which looked forward.

Bell’s colleague Walter Hussey wrote, in preparation for his final commission that it had been the great enthusiasm of his life and work ‘to commission for the Church the very best artists I could, in painting, in sculpture, in music and in literature.’ He was guided by the principle that, ‘Whenever anything new was required in the first seven hundred years of the history of the cathedral, it was put in the contemporary style.’ Like Bell, Hussey believed that ‘True artists of all sorts, as creators of some of the most worthwhile of man’s work, are well adapted to express man’s worship of God.’ When this is done consciously, he suggested, ‘the beauty and strength of their work can draw others to share to some extent their vision.’

Hussey, as noted in his Pallant House biography, “was responsible for commissioning some iconic works of twentieth century music and visual art, first as Vicar of St Matthew's Church Northampton and subsequently as Dean of Chichester Cathedral, from likes of William Albright, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and William Walton”:
Kenneth Clark spoke at the unveiling in 1961 of Graham Sutherland's Noli Me Tangere, another Hussey commission, this time at Chichester Cathedral, and reflected on the situation when Hussey first began to commission contemporary artists: ‘... when in 1944, a small body of artists and amateurs made a bomb-stricken journey to Northampton for the unveiling of Henry Moore's Virgin and Child, Canon Hussey had lit a candle, which is still very far from being a blaze ... The artists commissioned by Canon Hussey were ... little known outside the company of those directly interested in art. I think that even then collectors - both private and public - were shy of their work, and to put it in a church was a wonderful act of vision, courage and persuasive skill.’
Bell and Hussey made a major contribution to reinvigorating the Church’s patronage of the Arts, as evidenced in this exhibition by works from Hans Feibusch and Graham Sutherland related to commissions for Chichester Cathedral. The inspiration they provided for modernist commissions by churches continues in the permanent commissions, temporary installations and exhibitions undertaken by many British churches and Cathedrals today. This is a revolution, stemming initially from Gill’s 1915 Stations of the Cross at Westminster Cathedral, to which Sussex modernists made major contributions.

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Over The Rhine - All My Favourite People Are Broken.