During my research project in the photographic library of the Courtauld Institute of Art, I looked through a box of black-and-white photographic prints. In a collection of architectural images, it was amazing to observe images that featured people. These photos record moments of the real world within a past time; the people captured look and dress differently, the culture and atmosphere are different. I found celebrations, weddings, revelry, lonely climbers, busy markets and ports. In choosing the pictures to illustrate my process of creation, I looked specifically for lonely, quiet or peaceful moments, as I get more inspiration from characters who look into the distance in a photograph, or people’s figures seen from behind. I looked at these portraits against the background, at the fascinating relationship between the people and the environment. So I ‘cut’ these ‘characters’ from these moments and turned them into black and white watercolor illustrations, and then combined them with other elements to explore different effects and create an image of a wonderful parallel world. I study costume design for performance, so I often need to do a lot of research on context in my learning process. Different characters tell a different story depending on their surroundings. Looking at the charm of light and shadow was fascinating, I found it so interesting and I really enjoyed the process.
As a separate project, I made miniature versions of a costume, moving towards the project’s more technical aspect. When I finished the illustration series, I was thinking about how to gain more from my Courtauld placement, so I choose a photograph from the photographic library and ‘copied’ the costume in the image. This time, the process was more to do with practicing creating the costume pattern, sewing and doing texture research.
The key aspect, for me, is that all the characters in these photographs and drawings are authentically dressed for their time, which is very important; as my tutor said: costume design is to create dresses for story characters, the clothes help the actors get into character for the role, but they also let the audience believe the story more fully.
During my time at the Courtauld I gained a lot, people were very friendly and it was an unexpected pleasure to get to meet a lot of nice, interesting people who participate to the digitisation project as volunteers. As a foreign student, starting a placement experience in another country can initially induce a sense of tension and anxiety, I worried about my language communication skills and that my behavior might mean that I wouldn’t fit in or even be a nuisance to others. But throughout the whole process I received plenty of help, the communication was friendly and I even made new friends. This is my first internship, and I feel very lucky. This experience made me more confident and encouraged me to seek more opportunities in the future.
During a recent visit to Northampton I soon realised that this Midlands town is a treasure-trove of interesting architecture and so it seemed like a good idea to find out what images the Conway library holds.
The first building I came across was the Guildhall, a striking example of the high Victorian Gothic revival by architect E.W. Godwin and completed in 1864. It is wonderfully ornate (or horribly ornate depending on your point of view):
CON_B04117_F002_002. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
This was Godwin’s pièce de résistance and established his reputation. He was only 26 when he won the commission to design it.
Amongst the many friezes and sculptures adorning the building is a series of scenes of Northampton life, carved on the capitals of the columns. At the time, Northampton’s most important industry was shoe-making, but it also had a racecourse. Both these are referenced in the Conway, along with many more:
CON_B04117_F002_043. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.CON_B04117_F002_048. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
These capitals are by R.L. Boulton who had a successful business in Cheltenham. He worked on a wide variety of sculptures, mostly ecclesiastical, for many of the well-known architects of the day, including Pugin.
It turns out that the Conway does not carry any general photographs of the interior of the Guildhall, so here is a snapshot of the colourful main hall:
Interior. Image by Jane Macintyre.
Jane Macintyre
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
(If you enjoyed this post, you will also love the second Jane wrote on Northampton architecture.)
For almost ten years, I have had an intense love affair with Canada. Why exactly I love Canada has always eluded me; maybe it’s the friendliness of the people, or the vastness and natural beauty of its varied landscapes from sea to shining sea, or the numerous films and TV shows that are reeled out every year.
While the entire country inspires me, no other region of Canada inspires me more than the east coast. My dream of visiting Canada was finally realised a couple of years ago, when I visited Nova Scotia and Newfoundland for a week – in the midst of winter. Although the weather was far less than ideal, it did help me discover what life in Canada was really like, away from how I’d imagined it to be in my mind.
CON_B01160_F001_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
During my time at the Courtauld, browsing the Conway Library I discovered some old photos taken around Canada. Although it is a rather young country by political and geographical standards (it only became an independent dominion in 1867, and finally ratified its own constitution in 1982), Canada nevertheless does have a rich history – both socially and architecturally.
These photographs were taken in Charlottetown, the provincial capital of Prince Edward Island, in possibly the 19th century. PEI is very close to Nova Scotia, the province I went to, so I was naturally very attracted to these photos. The province is well known for being the setting of the classic children’s novel Anne of Green Gables, about a redheaded orphan girl with braids, Anne Shirley, adopted by a family on PEI. The family originally wanted a boy, but Anne – originally from Nova Scotia – was sent instead as a mistake. The story has enchanted many generations and has been adapted into TV shows and films countless times, including – most recently – a series release with a major online content provider.
CON_B01160_F003_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
As the former capital of New France (Nouvelle-France) and now the capital of Francophone Canada, Quebec is often called the Europe of North America. Its architecture is greatly inspired by Old France, with the castle-esque Chateau Frontenac – now a hotel – majestically overlooking the historic French fortress and the St. Lawrence River with its verdigris domed roof.
Quebec is one of Canada’s largest inland ports, being an important stop along the St. Lawrence River for cargo and passenger ships heading out to the Atlantic Ocean. It is also a pleasure port, as can be seen in this drawing, where rowers sail their boat along the river waves. Quebec’s history as a French fortress is clearly visible, as the city is raised above the river on a cliff.
CON_B01160_F003_012. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
I often watch a TV show called Murdoch Mysteries. Set in Toronto around the turn of the 19th and 20th century, the titular character is often called Canada’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. Using methods contemporary to the period, William Murdoch is on the trail of crime in Toronto, even meeting a few icons of the day in his pursuits, like Alexander Graham Bell and even Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock himself.
Upon seeing this photo, I immediately thought of Murdoch Mysteries and the Toronto of the turn of the century. Even the fashions of the people and the horses and carts remind me of the characters and how they get around the city on the journey to a crime scene, so if I didn’t know this was a real photograph, I would’ve thought this was a scene from the show itself.
So far, I’ve only seen two places in Canada – namely Nova Scotia and Newfoundland – but I want to go on a road trip there one day, visiting all the sights and cities that grace the country, and even make it my home.
Over the last few centuries, London has inspired architects to imagine how they would reshape the city to their own distinct styles. After the fire of London in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren proposed a new street layout for London, with streets dividing building blocks into rectangles around St Paul’s Cathedral but branching out from central points in the areas east and west of this. This plan was never carried out and the majority of the old irregular street layouts were maintained. Since then architects, either as individuals or groups, have presented their visions of how they would alter the skyline, buildings and roads of London. Many of these designs were never built and now all that remains of these abandoned plans are the drawings the architects produced.
Some of these designs can be found in the Conway Library of the Courtauld Institute, alongside collections of photographs showing buildings and monuments across the globe. The collection’s three boxes on the architectural drawings of 20th-century British architects reveal three planned design projects for buildings and streets which were never fulfilled which show great variation in their visions of a reshaped city with differing architectural inspirations from classical and romantic to more futuristic.
Sir Christopher Wren’s plan of London. CON_B04591_F005_016. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
Classical
Design for the Selfridges Tower. CON_B04816_F006_021. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. Jona Lendering [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.This monumental tower was intended to be built on the roof of the Selfridges store on Oxford Street and was designed by architect Philip Tilden in 1918. His other completed designs often included restorations and extensions of politicians’ houses although none of those quite matched the scale and ambition of this project. Not much is known about why Selfridge had commissioned this design or the exact reasons for why it was never built but it shows a vision of great grandeur and is reminiscent in some ways to the tombs for rulers and kings from the Classical period such as the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus which is believed to have had a similar large podium with colonnaded areas and sculpted figures but the proposed tower appears to be larger in scale than even these monumental tombs.
The proposed tower would have fitted stylistically with the pre-existing Selfridges building which features more Ionic columns along the shop front, conforming to the concepts of “Beaux-Arts” architecture which was particularly popular in the 19th century. This was achieved by including classical and neoclassical decoration while using more modern features such as steel frame interior.
The expense of such a construction may have contributed to it never being built but its existence would have also radically changed the skyline of London at the time. The drawing makes the tower appear to be around 4 to 5 times taller than the main building. Since Selfridges is already five storeys high, the tower would have equalled or potentially surpassed the 111m high St Paul’s Cathedral which would have been the tallest building in London in 1918 and had been since 1710. Even today, it would have probably ranked among the hundred tallest buildings in London.
Futuristic
Design of Bond Street. CON_B04816_F006_004. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
20 years later, the Glass Age Town Planning Committee proposed their own vision of a changed London. This time, these architects were not limited to a single building but instead proposed plans for rebuilding the entirety of both Bond Street and the Strand. Luckily for the Courtauld, Maxwell Fry seems to have allowed Somerset House to remain intact in the upper right corner of his drawing. Alongside a reimagined Bond Street by Howard Robertson, these designs formed part of the February 1939 issue of Architectural Review. The two images in the Conway Library would have been among designs for several other parts of the country including Princes Street in Edinburgh and parts of Liverpool, all depicting buildings using glass as their main exterior material.
The large scale destruction of older buildings required for these plans to happen and a lack of any form of planning permission are both factors which prevented these designs from becoming a reality. But the purpose of the committee itself was initially mainly to be part of an advertising campaign by Pilkington Brothers Ltd., a glass production company, to both promote their product as a building material and also present concepts of how buildings in the 21st century could look with further developments in technology and modern architectural styling. These designs could subsequently be as radical and unrealistic as the architects wanted because they were so unlikely to ever be built. Yet it still presents an interesting insight into how architects in the 1930s may have thought architecture could develop and how they imagined a future London could look.
Design of the Strand. CON_B04814_F006_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.Modern Strand (Google Earth)
The view of the Strand now is different to how the Glass Age Committee would have seen it but it may not have changed as much as they would have expected. The formation of tower blocks has never occurred in this area although the redevelopment of Charing Cross station later in the 20th century increased the amount of glass in its design. The skyline of London is also now dominated by glass skyscrapers, most prominently the Shard. In some ways, the Glass Age committee’s ambitions for greater use of glass in building came true, although not necessarily in the ways they had imagined or proposed in these drawings.
Romanticism
Less than a decade after the designs which aimed to promote modernist architecture and technology to 1930s Britain, the Royal Academy Planning Committee took a very different approach to how they would redesign London.
Drawing of St Paul’s Cathedral. CON_B04816_F006_007. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.Modern St Paul’s Cathedral (Google Earth).
This picturesque drawing of St Paul’s Cathedral was published as part of a book, London Replanned, by the Royal Academy in 1942 in response to 1940 and 1941 bombings of London causing large scale damage. Unlike the clear and precise images of Bond Street and the Strand produced by the Glass Age Town Planning Committee, this pencil drawing is much more delicate with atmospheric clouds, a focus on more traditional architecture and featuring several small steamboats in the foreground. This image could depict a Victorian or Edwardian period London, a contrast to the emphasis on modernity proposed by other architects only a few years before and has much greater stylistic links to drawings and paintings by 18th and 19th century Romantic artists.
Although it is the only image from the Royal Academy’s book stored in the Conway Library, it would have been part of a building project even more extensive than that of the Pilkington commission. Among their plans for most of central London were a new road layout around St Paul’s, wide roads around Piccadilly Circus and a redevelopment of Hyde Park.
Royal Academy Hyde Park Corner drawing (www.royalacademy.org.uk).Modern Hyde Park Corner (Google Earth).
These drawings in the architectural drawing collection of the Conway Library give a snapshot into how different architects and groups thought London could be redesigned and how these views changed throughout the first half of the 20th century in response to the emergence of modernist architecture or the damage to London in the Second World War presenting the possibility of a significant redevelopment. The drawings of Bond Street, the Strand and St Paul’s also form parts of wider projects to redesign large proportions of London which were never fulfilled and little evidence remains of their ideas other than in these types of drawings. When considered together, these designs present interesting contrasts between a structure with links to classical features alongside more contemporary building materials, plans which imagined how the future London would look and a redesign of London combining traditional buildings with large expansions of roads and parks. If any of these plans had been carried out, they would have significantly reshaped the layout and design of London as it is today.
Hannah Wilson
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Intern
References:
Parnell S (2014) In praise of advertising. Architectural Review.
CON_B00756_F007_025. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
Whilst digitising the Conway Library, I often come across confusing visual anomalies like the one at the bottom left of item CON_B00756_F007_025. Understanding what has caused the image fault requires a bit of a technical explanation. In this case, what we are seeing is an example of vignetting, which happens when using large format cameras capable of perspective adjustments.
CON_B00734_F001_005. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
Anyone interested in mastering these issues should study the fantastic Ansel Adams‘ The Camera, in which he states the vignetting “occurs when part of the negative area falls outside the image-circle of the lens and thus receives no exposure” (see chapter 10 “View-Camera Adjustments”).
In this image we can see that the photographer has adjusted the camera movements to control perspective in order to construct an accurate representation of the building that is aesthetically pleasing and free from distortion. However, in making such adjustments, they have inadvertently moved the lens out of the negative area, cutting off part of their image (either by tilting or shifting the front standard too far).
These kind of errors are fascinating as they exhibit the high levels of control required to practice the medium of photography successfully. This type of image control is still carried out by architectural photographers today when they choose to utilise tilt/shift lenses on modern digital cameras. Here, minimising lens distortion and configuring perspective to meet highly rigorous visual requirements.
Reference:
Adams, A (2003) The Ansel Adams Photography Series 1 The Camera. Little, Brown and Company.
Mark Long
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
When I started volunteering on the digitisation programme, I never thought it would reignite my interest in the history of art. Yet here I am in the second year of a part-time M.A. in History of Art and Photography, and loving every moment of the challenge. I am about to start my final essay before commencing the dissertation, and I have chosen as my final option This is Tomorrow – Architecture and Modernity in Britain and its Empire, 1930-60.
CON_B04266_F005_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
Professor Mark Crinson (University of London) describes the option module as a study of the entanglements of architecture and ideas of modernity, the home and the city in mid-twentieth century Britain, as well as how these issues related to Britain’s place in the world and its relation to its empire. Modernity, whether through the arrival of modernism or the various forms of state modernisation, has long been the focus of written accounts of modern architecture in Britain.
CON_B04266_F001_022. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
The Conway library has led to this and is already proving a fantastic resource in my initial reading and research. There is an excellent collection of London photographs, which I am slowly helping to label, while also identifying useful images for use in the Architecture and Modernism essay and for discussion in seminars.
While I am looking forward to studying the Conway photographs in relation to mainstream Modernism, the influence of émigré architects and the search for utopia is already evident and enthralling in the photographs I have labelled and catalogued. The amazing Bevin Court (a personal favourite) is one of several post-war modernist housing projects in London designed by the Tecton architecture practice, led by Berthold Lubetkin, a Russian architect and pioneer of modernist design in the 1930s.
CON_B04279_F001_002. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
An organised visit to the penthouse at The Isokon Building (Lawn Green Flats) was impressive. Built in 1934, The Isokon is a rare Grade 1 listed modernist building and an example of a progressive experiment in urban living at the time. The building was home to Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer, designer of modernist furniture, and László Maholy-Nagy, headteacher of art at the Bauhaus school. Early advertising stated: “All you have to bring with you is a rug, an armchair and a picture.” Acquired by Camden Borough Council in 1972, it gradually deteriorated until the 1990s, when it was abandoned completely. Avanti Architects, specialists in refurbishing modernist buildings, restored the Isokon in 2004. The Conway photographs and images from the current sales listing of the Isokon penthouse – at nearly a million pounds – provides a fascinating insight into the concept of ‘one-room living’.
CON_B04279_F001_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
Then there is BRUTALISM! I really am spoilt for choice, as photographs of key Brutalist buildings in London are also found in the Conway archives. Watch this space, as I delve further into this incredible resource and identify a research title worthy of the Conway collection of London’s 20th century architecture.
While digitising a box of photographs of Oxfordshire churches with fellow volunteer Muny, we found a wonderful wall painting in a Kersting print; a welcome surprise after the usual mix of white-walled naves and pillars.
CON_B00607_F007_005. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.CON_B00607_F007_006. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
In the Middle Ages, it was common practice to paint the walls of churches. Few people could read, so it was necessary to teach by using pictures. During the Reformation, these images were covered over as they were considered symbols of Popish idolatry.
The painting is on the wall which separates the nave from the chancel, and is an example of how certain images became assigned to specific positions in the church. One of the most common is Doom, or the Last Judgement. The symbolism explains the positioning of the Nave as representing the ‘Church militant’ and the chancel as the ‘Church Triumphant’, separated by the judgment before which all souls must pass.
The Last Judgment in South Leigh follows a traditional pattern. Two angels with trumpets are waking up the dead. On the left, an angel in white is calling to the saved, with a scroll above announcing ’Venite Benedicte Patris Mei’ (Come you blessed to my Father). They then move towards the north wall where (not visible in the photograph) St Peter awaits them at the gates of Heaven. On the right, the angel wears dark clothing and summons the damned, the scroll above saying ‘Discedite Maledicti’ (Depart you cursed). They are bound together with what looks like barbed wire and are being pushed towards the jaws of hell, which are just visible on the south wall.
The image is clearly designed to scare the wits out of the congregation:
“The damned are dragged into the mouth of hell propped open by a devil.” Image courtesy of www.wasleys.org.uk
The original paintings were discovered in 1870, when the old layers of whitewash were removed after the new vicar, Gerard Moultie, decided the church needed restoration. The work was carried out for £85 by Messrs Burlison and Gryllis, a firm heavily influenced by William Morris. This is particularly evident where the originals were too faint to copy and were effectively replaced by 19th-century design, for example in the painting of flowers and birds beneath the Last Judgment.
The original artists were probably trained in monasteries. They were not necessarily monks, but young men who showed artistic ability and were trained in monastic scriptoria. There is also evidence of a growing number of itinerant painters who were associated with the Guilds of Painter-Stainers in London and other cities.
For a small village church, South Leigh has several associations with the famous. The ancestors of William Morris owned land there, and it is only 10 miles or so from Kelmscott Manor, Morris’s country house.
In 1725, John Wesley preached his first sermon from the pulpit (he returned in 1771 and was refused entry).
Between 1947 and 1949, the poet Dylan Thomas and his wife lived in the village and maintained an eccentric lifestyle. This was many years after he wrote ’It is the sinner’s dust tongued bell claps me to churches’, though it would be wonderful to imagine him seeing the Last Judgment through an alcoholic haze and wondering which way he would go.
John Ramsey
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
When I catalogued a box of London photos from the Conway Library I came across this image of the Wellington Arch.
CON_B01022_F006_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
The view today looks very different.
The Arch was originally commissioned by George IV to celebrate the victories of the Napoleonic wars and was positioned at the entrance to Green Park, opposite the screen wall on the south side of Hyde Park. In that position, it was straight in front of Apsley House, the Duke Of Wellington’s London residence. The Duke was, of course, a national institution, Napoleonic war hero of Waterloo, statesman, Prime Minister, and pin-up (look at the statue of Achilles behind Apsley House, it was funded by a charitable body known as ‘The Ladies of England’, and originally it did not have a fig leaf.)
CON_B01022_F006_001_detail. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
In 1836, a decision was taken to erect a statue of the Duke on horseback on top of the Arch. It was huge, the biggest equestrian statue of its time, 28 feet tall. As a result, it was widely ridiculed and the arch became known as the Wellington Arch. Despite the derision, and it being considered an eyesore visible from Buckingham Palace, Queen Victoria refused to allow it to be moved as she did not want to offend the Duke in his lifetime.
And so it stayed until 1882, when, in order to improve the traffic flows in that part of London, the Arch was moved 60 feet to its present position at the top of Constitution Hill.
The statue being moved to storage in 1883. Illustrated London News. Public Domain.
The statue was replaced, however, and the current ‘Quadriga’ (Nike goddess of Victory riding a chariot pulled by four horses) took its place.
View of the Arch today. John Ramsey.
The Wellington statue was sent to the Army Barracks in Aldershot, where it remains, for those who may wish to see it!
Wellington Statue, Aldershot. Lewis Hulbert. CC BY 3.0
John Ramsey
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
While transcribing one of the A.F. Kersting’s ledgers, a volunteer came across an illegible entry: KER_NEG_W1013-6. It was posted on SLACK for all the volunteers involved in the Courtauld Connects digitisation project and yet despite our best efforts the entry remained unidentified.
The clues were numerous but confusing: Revivalist or Georgian, Heraldic or Masonic, double-headed eagle or griffin, Country house or lodge, demolished or renovated. Although the town was illegible, it was agreed that the county was Northamptonshire, which became our starting point. Pattishall, Puxley, Pytchley, Padley? I think we researched every town in the county beginning with the capital P.
I contacted the foremost expert on Northamptonshire country houses, who worked with Pevsner, HHA, Historic England, images of England, the AA, and Country Life photographic archives; and Nick Kingsley, archivist and architectural historian, but none could identify the images. One suggestion was that it could be a scheme by Claud Phillimore or even an early work by David Hicks, which led me in another direction for a short time.
I made a last-ditch attempt to identify the building by contacting the Northamptonshire Heritage Group, the National Council on Archives, and the National Archives. However, it was while in Brixton library, reading through the Arthur Mee and Nicolas Pevsner Northamptonshire editions within The Buildings of England Series and Pevsner Architectural Guides, that I started to question if it was indeed Northamptonshire.
After this exhaustive research into architecture, I decided to turn to the paintings. I emailed several experts and Paul Cox, Associate Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, kindly took the time to compare one of the portraits with many from the late 1590s-c1610, but again with no success. I am known as a passionate advocate of contemporary art but a visit to the National Portrait Gallery reminded me of the beauty of 16th century Tudor portraiture.
The clothing in the stunning portrait painting at the bottom of the stairs in the mystery house identified the period as early 20th century, and this led to some fascinating and extensive research into the work of several British artists. A visit to the National Portrait Gallery and its newly refurbished 20th century gallery confirmed I was in the right artistic period and I was amazed that early 20th century British realist painting is so under-rated.
At the same time, I continued to delve into the mystery of the double-headed eagle. I discovered a 1780 Satirical print of the arms of the Feilding family superimposed on the Habsburg double-headed eagle lacking one head, dedicated to the Garter King of Arms and mocking the family’s pretensions at ancestral connections to the Habsburg dynasty and the Feilding family of Warwickshire.
Thus, Warwickshire and the Feilding family became to focus of the next stage of this investigation. To cut a long story short, research into the Feilding family and their fascinating history led me to Newham Paddock, the family home in Warwickshire.
It was interesting to read that Lady Dorothie Feilding-Moore became a highly decorated volunteer nurse and ambulance driver on the Western Front during World War 1. She was the first woman to be awarded the Military medal for bravery in the field. She also received the 1914 Star, the Croix de Guerre and the order of Leopold II.
By Belgian Photographer (The Illustrated War News) [Public domain] via Wikimedia CommonsThe Feilding family have been Lords of Newnham Paddox since 1433. In 1622, James I made William Feilding first Earl of Denbigh, and this was an important clue which led to Monks Kirby, the home to the Earls of Denbigh, and their estate at Newnham Paddox.
Monks Kirby and the Earls of Denbigh led to Pailton House, and although there was no initial evidence, I did believe that Pailton House was our mystery Kersting.
Pailton House and gardens. 1910s IMAGE LOCATION: (Warwickshire County Record Office) Reference: PH, 352/105/55, img: 6462 Reproduced from the “Our Warwickshire” website
Looking through The Tatler 1940, I found that Lord and Lady Denbigh had lived at Pailton House while Newnham Paddock was being used as a convent school.
Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media at The Courtauld Institute of Art, found some images online where the architrave resembled Pailton House. However, the banisters were different and the beautiful oval hallway was still proving elusive.
I contacted the renovation company and their reply stated that the house had actually been split into two residences some time ago, as confirmed by a local tradesman. Tom Bilson then discovered some plans for Pailton House on eBay.
I decided to contact the Denbigh family directly, sending the Kersting photographs via email and was pleasantly surprised when Lady Denbigh graciously replied:
Dear Lorraine, thank you for your message. Yes, it is Pailton House, Pailton, Warwickshire CV23. The house at Newnham Paddox was demolished in 1953 and Billy and Betty (the 10th Earl and Countess) lived at Pailton House until his death. Betty then sold the house and it was divided up into 5 houses. Betty then built a wooden house on what would have been the carriage turning circle of the old mansion, we live in that today.
As for the paintings – the large portrait is by Harold Harvey painted in 1936 I think, of Betty. In the dining room the portrait is of Elizabeth Aston, mother of the first Earl – (along with the other oldest portrait, attributed to Zuccaro, but unlikely!). The other smaller one is also by Harold Harvey. The other picture in the drawing room is now with Billy and Betty’s daughter, Lady Clare Simonian. I hope this helps – I am afraid I cannot comment on the oval room as I have never seen it, by the time of our marriage in 1996 it had long been sold”.
Recently, Lady Suzy Denbigh, The Countess of Denbigh at Newnham Paddox, kindly sent information and photographs of the actual paintings.
Elizabeth Aston Courtesy of Lady Suzy Denbigh, Countess of Denbigh at Newnham PaddoxSir Basil Feilding Courtesy of Lady Suzy Denbigh, Countess of Denbigh at Newnham PaddoxBetty, Countess of Denbigh by Harold Harvey, c1931 Courtesy of Lady Suzy Denbigh, Countess of Denbigh at Newnham Paddox
Personally, it was a fascinating ‘journey’, informative and great fun to research. Jane MacIntyre and I have now moved on from this success and onto over 400 Kersting ‘illegibles’, which we have just completed, albeit with one or two individual words remaining to be identified. The challenge is now to revisit the entire Anthony Kersting ledgers.
By Lorraine Stoker, Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
You never know quite what to expect when a box of old engravings is brought down from the prints department for digitisation – that’s what makes it so interesting. The prints can depict anything from bland pastoral scenes to salacious classical carry-ons or gory biblical fire-and-brimstoning; all in a day’s work.
This print above turned up at the last session I volunteered at – the wheels with eyes, disembodied hand and hovering winged multi-headed creatures seemed odd, to say the least, so I thought I’d try and find out a bit more about it all.
The type below the print is a biblical quote from Isiah 6, a chapter which has “the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” (all quotes will be from the King James Bible) and describes “seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.” Isaiah 6:6 then has one of the sepaphims flying and having a live coal in his hand, which“he laid it upon my mouth”. The picture seems to have a scroll rather than a coal being put near a mouth, but the description of the seraphims seemed to possibly identify what the creatures were. But there was no mention of wheels bedecked with eyes.
The top of the frame also has a biblical quote, but this one is Ezekiel 1, so off I went there and it was much more promising.
Ezekiel has four living creatures with “the likeness of a man. 1:5 And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. 1:6 As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle. 1:10”
This seemed more like it, especially as these creatures have wheels complete with eyes beside them:
“behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures. 1:15 As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. 1:18 And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. 1:19″
Ezekiel 10 appears to have the same creatures, with four faces, wings, wheels within wheels, and an even more generous allocation of eyes:
“And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel. 10:10 And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. 10:12″
Ezekiel then says “and I knew that they were the cherubims. 10:20″
So these seem to me more likely to be Cherubim rather than Isiah’s Seraphim. Cherubim is the plural of Cherub, which are not at all the chubby babies wafting about on mini clouds (these are putti) but are instead some sort of heavenly creatures which occupy the second highest sphere in the Christian angelic hierarchy (Seraphim are in the first). Cherub means ‘to be near’ or ‘near ones’ so they are close to God and seem to have a sort of servant/ bodyguard function.
Incidentally, it was from Ezekiel’s description of the four faces, the ox, the man, the lion and the eagle, that the symbols for the four evangelists were later adopted.
That seemed to solve some of the mystery of the fantastical subject matter, so I figured it was worth finding out a bit more about the print and the artist. Below the frame, in small writing are two names, one on the left one on the right. Usually, the name on the left is the original artist’s and that on the right is the engraver or craftsman who printed the image and that seems to be the case here.
On the left, it says ‘B. Picart. del’. The ‘del.’ means ‘drawn by’, so Bernard Picart is the artist who did the original drawing.
On the right, it says ‘Phil. Andr. Kilian, Sc. A.V.’ The Sc. denotes ‘engraved by’, so Philipp Andrew Kilian is the engraver. A. V. stands for Augusta Vindelicorum, which means it was published in Augsburg Germany. (Isn’t the internet only marvelous!)
Picart (b.1673) was an engraver and artist who worked on a lot of book and biblical illustrations. He is known chiefly for his 1723 tome The ceremonies and religious customs of the various nations of the known world. This was a widely distributed, early enlightenment encyclopaedia of religious life which aimed to describe the origins beliefs and rites of the religions of the then known world. It has been described as “a milestone in information gathering”, and even as “the book that changed Europe”. Here are some examples of his work.
Picart, Bernard. The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Known Nations of the World, London: Charles du Bosc, 1731-1739Picart, Bernard. ‘Puzza, or the “the Chinese Cybele,” sitting on a lotus flower’; from The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
Kilian, b. 1714 was one of a famous family of Augsburg engravers, and he did, amongst other things, 130 engravings for some monumental collection of illustrated Bible stories. So my assumption is that Picard did an engraving or drawing of this Cherubim scene, and then later, Kilian copied it or did his version of it for another publication. I haven’t however been able to find our image in online collections of Kilian’s biblical illustrations.
Doing a bit of research on this has been interesting – typing such word combinations as ‘eyes, wheels and winged creatures’ into Google leads you down some very weird and wonderful paths indeed; I have to admit to spending far more time than I should have with shimmering auras, vibrating orbs and whispering angels. I also found a somewhat less than convincing explanation of Ezekiel 10 in a book that billed itself as ‘possibly the most extensive literary work scrutinizing extra-terrestrial intervention and biblical scripture ever compiled’, which went into astonishing detail regarding the interior furnishing of the Cherubim spacecraft. Belief can be an odd thing.
Mind you, we came across the print on the day of hurricane Ophelia, when the sky above the Courtauld was an unearthly yellow and people were standing in the strangely still courtyard, quietly staring up as if waiting for something to appear – spaceships, disembodied hands, even churning ‘dreadful’ wheels with staring eyes perhaps.
