John Piper1903·1992

THE FINE ART SOCIETYDealers since !"#$

!%" New Bond Street · London &1' 2()+%% (*)+* #$+, -!!$ · ru@faslondon.com

30 MAY TO 22 JUNE 2012

John Piper1903·1992

THE FINE ART SOCIETY · 2012

John Piper (!,*.–!,,+) was an important and distinctive /gure in modern British art in a long career that spanned seven decades, from the !,+*s through to the !,"*s. Throughout this time he was constantly evolving and changing and re/ning the nature of his style, and the trajectory he followed was a singular and interesting one. Piper started as an artist of pure landscape, but in the early !,.*s he switched to become wholly abstract, creating constructivist pieces that were among the most advanced objects produced in Britain at that date. He was a supporter of Ben Nicholson, and was Secretary of the Seven and Five Society which pioneered abstraction in Britain. Piper gained /rst hand knowledge of the European avant-garde by visiting the studios of Hans Arp, Jean Hélion, César Domelar and Constantin Brancusi in Paris in !,.-, and Alexander Calder became a friend. Picasso too was a constant source of inspiration and reference, and Piper kept up a book of cuttings of his art and made copies based on works he had encountered.

But by the end of the !,.*s Piper turned again towards /guration, albeit synthesising elements of abstraction, such as the strength of solid form and the compelling visual quality of scumbled and incised paint, accompanied by collaged components. The subject of his art revolved around the familiar topics of topography and architecture, but treated in a manner

that harmonised familiar motifs with and a highly innovative and original expression that derived from the avant-garde. This approach was applied dramatically to the bombed churches and cities of the Blitz, themselves emblems of the destructive, exterminating potential of the modern world.

We are delighted to present an exhibition of Piper’s work that brings together paintings and watercolours from all periods of his career, and that includes an abstract and a /gurative painting from the !,.*s, a group of works made during the war, highly inventive and resourceful landscapes from a0er and some very /ne examples of Piper’s skill as a printmaker with a set of hand-coloured Brighton aquatints and his nursery prints.

We are most grateful to the leading Piper scholar David Fraser Jenkins who has written the stimulating essay in this catalogue. David has curated the major appraisals of Piper’s art: the lifetime retrospective exhibition held at the Tate Gallery in !,".; the exhibitions devoted to Piper’s work of the !,.*s and !,%*s held at the Imperial War Museum and Dulwich Picture Gallery respectively; and most recently the beautiful selection of Piper’s Snowdonia landscapes exhibited at the National Museum of Wales. 12341) 56')274

FOREW ORD

Coventry Cathedral from Five Blitzed Churches, !,%*–%!(cat.no.$)

PIPER FOR NOW 89:;8 <19'41 (47=;7'

The key work in this exhibition is the most unexpected, the one seemingly most unlike the others, the early abstract painting Tall Forms on Dark Blue (cat.no.+, !,.#). Before this time Piper had been a slow starter, and had not got into the Royal College of Art until his early twenties. But from then on he was an immensely quick learner, with an instant love of Picasso and the moderns, whose productions he had already admired in the costumes, sets and music of the Russian Ballets in London. His /rst British mentor had been Ivon Hitchens, and his /rst public sign of allegiance to the avant-garde was a pioneering article he wrote in The Listener in March !,.., praising Hitchens, and Winifred and Ben Nicholson.

To experience the /rst dose of modern painting in Britain in the !,.*s must have been amazingly exciting, and the evidence of this is in Piper’s work. He borrowed from Nicholson the idea of using paper doyleys in a collage, and in the /rst rush of his surviving early pictures made a series of these on the South Coast, which he could get to easily from his studio-house on the North Downs. The Harbour at Night (cat.no.!, !,..) is indebted to new paintings by Georges Braque of boats on the beach, which Piper had seen reproduced in the Cahiers d’Art, but is broadened to give a feeling for coastal buildings, especially in the visual pun of the bricks in the tobacco sticker of a sailor. He had a genius all his

Detail from Easegill Cave, Lancashirec.!,%% [cat.no.!+]

#

tradition has to include anything and everything that has a pointed reference to life … People think it dishonest to be chameleon-like in one’s artistic allegiances. On the other hand, I think it dishonest to be anything else’.2 In this way of experiencing his subject Piper was readily able to implicate a feeling of imminent destruction into his !,.,–%* paintings of ruined abbeys like Byland and Rievaulx (cat.nos. ., %), and then to forward this into paintings of burnt out churches in Coventry and London in !,%*–!. The /ve sketchbook-size versions of his o>cial war paintings of the Blitz are abstracted, with pure colours looking like patriotic ?ags, and an arti/cial illumination (cat.nos. $–!*).

Piper’s abstraction was a process of learning, but he was always a painter of architecture, of real buildings in their own place, not idealised or taken out of context. He was a convinced localist, and a scholar of places and their history, as learned in architecture as was his friend John Betjeman, who published an immense guide to English parish churches. The two men worked together on the Shell Guides to British architecture, county by county, which were devoted to local characteristics. Piper was always keen on the inter-connectedness of what he saw, and the way that the sight of a major building from the past rubbed o@ into other interests. This lead to their emotional implication, and his

expression of this in colour. The interior of WolAamcote Church (cat.no.!.), exhibited in !,%" as a ‘Favourite Church’, glows with a strange gold and reddish light in the chancel, pulpit and the vaults, bringing to mind not just these churchy terms but a feeling of the aged and long-term worship that has been witnessed there, so much so that it seems full of the liturgy and the spoken word.

Piper’s research into architecture extended into an interest in the life of stones, both in Snowdonia and quarries on Portland Bill, and on the surfaces of walls. He became super-sensitive to their colour, and to the geological sense in which they had a long term life, following in this his outstanding English points of reference, Turner, Cotman and Ruskin. He twice visited the Yorkshire limestone caves, in !,%+ and !,%., going to places painted by Turner, and also painting Gordale Scar, showing them as if livid wounds in ?esh, in savage colours. His designs for stained glass and tapestries for cathedrals and small churches were always related to the colours of the walls around them, and di@er in the most contemporary buildings, such as the cathedrals of Coventry, Liverpool and the new Sanderson’s London headquarters, and in the medieval buildings like St Margaret’s Westminster and St Peter’s, Babraham.

One of his most original projects was to design abstract reliefs in /breglass resin

,

life for making such a direct short cut to the character of buildings. The doileys, painted dark, stand in for the seaside-villa net curtains, as well as for the shiny surface of the sea, in a piece of brilliant illusionism and wit.

For more than a year he had been making purely abstract paintings in primary colours, much a@ected by his friends Hélion and Calder in Paris. But Piper then took a crucial step. He went on to construct a free-standing sculpture of painted shapes, known now only from his photographs. He then made paintings of this object, so that the delight of Tall Forms in Dark Blue is that it is both abstract and a depiction of the secret space of this painted construction. It is beautiful and complex to look at, with contrasted shiny and matt paint and shapes cut away from the canvas, which is glued over a board. He made a colour lithograph of this subject, the /rst abstract print in Britain a0er Paul Nash and Ben Nicholson, and which unlike these was aimed cheaply at a popular market.

Tall Forms might have been included in Piper’s /rst solo exhibition in May !,." at the London Gallery in Cork Street (an occasion shared with a Picasso exhibition on the ?oor above). This was an exemplary gathering of Piper’s latest work, and he displayed beside each other his abstracts and collages of the coast, making apparent their shared abstraction and depicted space.

These collages were made of coloured papers, torn into shapes and drawn over, which looked rather like the two Nursery Friezes (cat.nos. +!, ++,) of !,.# with their paper shapes. As Paul Nash wrote in his Introduction: ‘The /rst remarkable feature of the exhibition, from the spectator’s point of view, is that so-called abstractions and pictures of a representational kind are shewn side by side. Beyond this even they are given nearly similar titles’.1

But now since contemporary art has exploited a new vision, in much the same way as had the modernists of the !,.*s, the way that Piper’s pictures are seen must be re-interpreted. Today’s exploded abstraction has shattered and re-created representation, bringing into a di@erent relation the observed place and its structural form. Paintings and sculptures, while insistently of a clear subject or a strident abstraction, conceal the one within the other in such a way that they have to be unpicked in a new language that can be felt rather than described. From this standpoint the work of Piper and his contemporaries Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash are also more clearly exposed to be making veils over the places depicted, that bury the implications of one subject within another.

Piper’s work had always a broad political reference, and changed in response to new situations. As he wrote in !,.#: ‘The

"

The Two Nudes (cat.no.!!) of !,%+–. were posed by his wife Myfanwy and their friend Kitty West (both of whom remembered posing, separately, when asked about it), and like others of that date it suggests an extraordinary open womb and luscious shapes. The contrived poses and nocturnal lighting give this picture a weird feeling of generative ?esh, as if the models were assisting at a birth as much as giving pleasure. It is this touch of paint that is used to give lighting to his buildings and mountains drawn at the time. This is an extreme of the pathetic fallacy, but throughout his painting a feeling of life unites /gure and architecture.

There is something geological about these ‘Two Nudes’, in their stone colours and uncertain scale, exposed in an open landscape. But Piper’s most frequent subject, and e@ectively the motivation for his art which had endured from the beginning, was the discovery and revelation of English architecture, especially country churches. This included the Scottish, Welsh and Irish, and later on, when he drove abroad in August and September, he took the same treatment to buildings in France, especially the Romanesque of the south-west. But he o0en leapt into his car to drive wherever he could get to, and not only for the Shell Guides. He accumulated a long shelf of topographical sketchbooks, which were typically drawn with grey

washes and covered in hand-written notes. From these sketchbook studies he elaborated drawings like St Andrew’s, Cotterstock (cat.no.-), a church in an area of northern Northamptonshire which he particularly liked. His photograph of the church, published later in the Shell Guide to Northampton by Juliet Smith (!,$"), was of the same view as this large watercolour. Of course it is accurate in detail, and shows the idiosyncratic tracery, gargoyles, buttress walls and a slightly comic tomb. The surface of the stone is emphasised, and light seems to radiate from it as it does with the two nudes. Such studies of churches were his equivalent to life drawing, and the stocking-up of his art as well as a resource, as if a new model had walked into the studio.

!. John Piper, ‘Aspects of Modern Drawing’, Signature, November !,.#, p.%!

+. Paul Nash, London Bulletin, no.+, May !,.", p.!*

!!

for the exterior of a North Thames Gas Board building in west London, which were installed in May !,$+. The dispiriting blandness of this o>ce block was echoed but turned into a riot of Miro-like dancing shapes in playing-card colours by his long wall of decorations, taken in fact from his studies of rocks on the beach at Brittany, and clearly designed as cut-out shapes. It is di>cult to believe that these have been installed on the walls for /0y years, both because they still look modern and because they have survived so well. Piper’s closest set of artist friends were architects rather than painters, and he worked with the pioneers Holford, Gibberd, Spence and Pace. For years he advised the Royal Fine Art Commission on architecture, where he was o0en able to speak in favour of modern buildings in terms of their surroundings. And he was able to deliver large projects on time, one a0er the other, and the scale of his work exceeds that of any of his British contemporaries.

Piper’s own visual advances always began in his studio at home near Henley-on-Thames, but were repeatedly paralleled, in surprising ways, in the building and landscape that he visited. He chose those places a0er much research, but they fell into just the sight that he needed. In !,-+ and then again in !,-% he became obsessed by an odd French-style private house in Niton in the Isle of Wight (cat.no.!"). Its

symmetrical façade /tted into a pattern of positive and negative reversals, and it happened to be on a roadside with three tra>c signals in front, brightly coloured red and white. This became in the paintings the re?ection of a face, and a play on the colours green and red.

For a brief period during the war Piper was the paradigm of the British ‘Neo-Romantics’, who were entranced by some paintings of Samuel Palmer and by the topographical tradition in English poetry. It was only then, and with his designs for a revival of the ballet Job a0er William Blake, that Piper took up pastoral subjects, which were otherwise foreign to his attitude. He was European in his art, and his closest comparisons were probably Alexander Calder, Jean Hélion and Raoul Dufy. There is no similar British artist either in career or art. But he was certainly also a romantic in style, notably in the relation between his landscape and the /gure.

His work constantly returned to his study of the nude, a subject he made privately through his life, until in the early !,$*s he was able to insist that his dealers Marlborough Fine Art should exhibit his ‘Eye and Camera’ of nude photographs and life studies. His /rst abstract paintings developed from paintings and drawings of ‘Beach Girls’, and his Neo-Romantic pictures were paralleled by several sketches of women friends posed naked out of doors.

!*

1 THE HARBO UR AT NIGHT!,.. · Oil and collage on board

+* B x +% B inches · -!.- x $!.-cm

612:4797C4: Myfanwy Piper; Jonathan Clark; Private Collection; Phillips London, , June !,," (%!); Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: Durham, Grey College, University of Durham, John Piper: A Retrospective, +, April – !- May !,,,, cat.no.!, illustrated p..; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, John Piper in the !"#$s: Abstraction on the Beach, ! April – ++ June +**., cat.no.#, illustrated p."*–!.

F;)419)514: Frances Spalding, John Piper Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, +**,, illustrated pl.$.

2 TALL FORMS ON DARK BLUE!,.# · Oil and ripolin on canvas laid on board

.* x !* G inches · #$ x +#.- cm

Signed and dated !,.#, inscribed ‘Abstract Composition’ and further inscribed on the reverse

612:4797C4: The Leicester Galleries, London, where acquired by Dr J.E.O. Mayne in !,-,; his sale, Christie’s, London, ++nd October !,,# (+!); Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: London, The Leicester Galleries, Artists of Fame and Promise, July–August !,-,, cat.no.,$ (as Abstract Composition (!"#%)); Durham, Grey College, University of Durham, John Piper: A Retrospective, + April–!- May !,,,, cat.no.+, illustrated p.%; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, John Piper in the !"#$s: Abstraction on the Beach, ! April–++ June +**., cat.no.%%, illustrated pp.!.+ and !.. (detail).

F;)419)514: S. John Woods (intro.), John Piper, Paintings, Drawings and Theatre Designs !"#&–!"'(, Faber & Faber, London !,--, illustrated pl.+$.

3 BYLAND ABBEY!,%* · Oil on canvas laid on board

Signed and dated ‘John Piper !,%*’, lower right, further signed, inscribed and dated again ‘Byland Abbey / by / John Piper / For Basil & / Frances. / Nov. !,%*’ verso

!! x !* inches · .* x +- cm

612:4797C4: Presented by the artist to Basil and Frances Creighton in November !,%*; Private Collection, bequeathed by Frances Creighton.

4 RIEVAULX!,%* · Oil on canvas laid on panel

$ x " inches · !- x +* cm

Signed ‘John Piper’ bottom le0, and inscribed ‘Rievaulx (oil) John Piper’ on the reverse

612:4797C4: Lefevre Gallery, London; Sir Duncan Oppenheim; his sale, Christie’s, London, $ June +**. (--); Private Collection.

5 COTTERSTO CK CHURCH!,%* · Watercolour, ink and bodycolour

+, H x ., inches · #- x ,, cm

Signed and inscribed ‘This is to certify that the big watercolour of Cotterstock Church is by me, John Piper. +, , $"’ on a card attached to the backboard

FIVE BLITZED CHURCHES

6 Coventry Cathedralillustrated on page (!,%*–%! · Gouache · - x $ H inches · !+.- x !$.-cm612:4797C4: Sotheby’s, London, +. June !,,, (-$); Private Collection.4DE;3;)48: London, Imperial War Museum, John Piper: The Forties, !, October +***–+" January +**! (.$).

7 St Mary-le-Port, Bristol!,%*–%! · Gouache · # B x - I⁄J inches · !".% x !%.- cm

612:4797C4: Sotheby’s, London, +. June !,,, (-$); Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: London, Imperial War Museum, John Piper: The Forties, !, October +***–+" January +**! (.+).

8 Redlands Park Congregational Church, Bristol!,%*–%! · Pencil, pen & ink, watercolour, gouache and oil

$ K x - L⁄J inches · !#.- x !..- cm

612:4797C4: Sotheby’s, London, +. June !,,, (-$); Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: London, Imperial War Museum, John Piper: The Forties, !, October +***–+" January +**! (..).

9 St John’s Waterloo Road, London!,%*–%! · Gouache · # M x - inches · !" x !+.- cm

612:4797C4: Sotheby’s, London, +. June !,,, (-$); Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: London, Imperial War Museum, John Piper: The Forties, !, October +***–+" January +**! (.%).

10 The Temple Church, Bristol!,%*–%! · Gouache · - H x % N⁄OP inches · !% x !! cm

612:4797C4: Sotheby’s, London, +. June !,,, (-$); Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: London, Imperial War Museum, John Piper: The Forties, !, October +***–+" January +**! (.-).

cat,no,# cat,no,"

cat,no,, cat,no,!*

11 TW O NUDESc.!,%+ · Pencil, pen and ink, crayon, watercolour and gouache

!% B x +! inches · .$ x -..- cm

Signed ‘John Piper’ bottom right

612:4797C4: Myfanwy Piper; Beaux Arts Gallery, London; Sotheby’s, London, +! June +*** (%#); Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: London, The Tate Gallery, John Piper, .* November !,".–++ January !,"%, cat.no.%+, lent by Myfanwy Piper; London, Imperial War Museum, John Piper: The Forties, !, October +*** – +" January +**!, cat.no.$-.

12 EASEGILL CAVE, LANCASHIREc.!,%% · Pen and ink and watercolour

, B x - H inches · +..- x !% cm

Signed ‘John Piper’ bottom right and ‘Easegill Cave, Lancashire’ on the reverse

13 W O LFHAMCOTE CHURCH, WARWICKSHIRE!,%" · Oil on canvas laid on board

+- x +, G inches · $..- x #-.-cm

Signed and titled ‘WolAamcote Church’ and inscribed on the reverse

612:4797C4: Sotheby’s London, ! May !,,! (-*); Private Collection; their sale, Christie’s, London, - November !,,, (.#); Private Collection.

15 PORTLANDc.!,-+ · Pen and ink and watercolour

!. G x !, G inches · .- x -* cm

14 PORTLAND BILL!,-* · Oil and collage on board

$ x " inches · !-.+ x +*.. cm

inscribed ‘621)F978 3;FF / !,-*’ on the reverse

612:4797C4 : Leicester Galleries, London

16 THE HELLENISTIC W ORLD – THE AMAZON SARCOPHAGUSc.!,-- · Watercolour, gouache and white chalk

!! x !# inches · +" x %..+ cm

17 MASSACRE OF THE INNO CENTSc.!,-+ · Pen and ink, watercolour and gouache

!. x !, inches · .. x %".. cm

Signed and dated ‘John Piper !,-+’ bottom right

18 THE HO USE AT NITON, ISLE OF WIGHTc.!,-% · Oil on canvas

+" x .$ inches · #!.! x ,!.% cm

612:4797C4: M.A. Orden;Private Collection.

19 RHYD FUDR!,-- · Watercolour, pen and ink, gouache and pastel

!-H x ++ inches · .,.% x -$ cm

Inscribed ‘Wet grass Rhyd Fudre [sic]’ along bottom and signed ‘John Piper’ bottom right

612:4797C4: Bought at The Leicester Galleries in !,-- by Dr E.W. Little; Private Collection.

4DE;3;)48: London, The Leicester Galleries, Recent Work by John Piper, May !,-- (.%)

20 DESIGNS FOR THE NORTH THAMES GAS BOARD DECORATIVE SCHEMEc,!,$+ · Each mixed media on gesso board

$H x - inches · !$.- x !+.# cm

612:4797C4: Gillespie and Manzaroli

Published by The Fine Art Society in an edition of #-* copies for the exhibition John Piper !"$#–!""& held at !%" New Bond Street, London &!, from .* May to ++ June +*!+

Catalogue © The Fine Art Society +*!+ Essay © David Fraser Jenkins +*!+

;'37 ! ,*#*-+ !. +

Designed by Dalrymple Typeset in Brunel and Ashley Script Printed in Belgium by die Keure

Jacket: details from Tall Forms on Dark Blue, !,.#Frontispiece: detail from The Harbour at Night, !,..

The Fine Art SocietyDealers since !)%*

!%" New Bond Street · London &!' +()+%% (*)+* #$+, -!!$ · ru@faslondon.com

21 NURSERY FRIEZE I!,.$ · Autolithograph · !" M x %# G inches · %$ x !+!.% cm

F;)419)514: Orde Levison, John Piper: The Complete Graphic Works A Catalogue Raisonné !"&#–!")#, Faber & Faber, London !,"#, no."; Art for Everyone: Contemporrary Lithographs Ltd, Ruth Artmonsky, Artmonsky Arts, London +**#, no.+%.

22 NURSERY FRIEZE II!,.$ · Autolithograph · !" M x %# G inches · %$ x !+!.% cm

F;)419)514: Orde Levison, John Piper: The Complete Graphic Works A Catalogue Raisonné !"&#–!")#, Faber & Faber, London !,"#, no.,; Art for Everyone: Contemporrary Lithographs Ltd, Ruth Artmonsky, Artmonsky Arts, London +**#, no.+-.

23 BRIGHTON AQUATINTSDuckworth, London !,., · !* B x !- G inches +-." x %* cm

Bound copy, hand coloured by the artist

F;)419)514: Orde Levison, John Piper: The Complete Graphic Works A Catalogue Raisonné !"&#–!")#,Faber & Faber, London !,"#, nos.!+–+..

THE FINE ART SOCIETYDealers since 1876