Near the top of our list of exhibitions we want to go and see: retrospectives of relatively neglected women artists. Also right up there: Nordic painters we would like to learn more about. So it's no surprise we were keen to explore Harriet Backer (1845-1932): The Music of Colours at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Backer was Norway's most renowned female painter of the 19th century, if little known outside her homeland. We must have seen her work in the past in the old National Museum in Oslo, but she'll have been one of many unfamiliar names. Now, though, she's getting the full retrospective treatment with a show that's already been seen in the Norwegian capital and in Stockholm. Backer's paintings are mostly intimate depictions of interiors, both domestic and church. There's a calmness to them, and often a very interesting treatment of light, with Impressionism showing an influence from time she spent in France. One or two of the pictures on show are
If you lived in Britain, particularly in London, during the middle of the 20th century, Barnett Freedman was all around you. As the go-to commercial artist during a period spanning the 30s to the 50s, his work was all over the Tube and London buses, on advertising, stamps and book tokens, as well as adorning the covers of collectable books and providing their illustrations. It's a career that's celebrated, more than six decades after Freedman's death, in a hugely enjoyable exhibition, Barnett Freedman: Designs for Modern Britain, at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, which has just reopened after months of coronavirus-induced closure.
The Pallant is our local art gallery, and its director, Simon Martin, said he didn't want to "sanitise the experience" of museum-going on reopening. So, while visitor numbers are limited and timed tickets are compulsory, we were pleased that once you got inside, there's actually very little that you would notice that has changed from pre-lockdown, apart from the wearing of masks, which is now mandatory in English museums and galleries. While the Pallant is not exactly the largest of galleries, it's by no means cramped, so there's plenty of room for social distancing, as is, let's face it, the case in most museums outside the really big league.
So, climb the stairs to the Pallant's main exhibition space, and get to know Barnett Freedman, contemporary of Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Edward Burra, but with a distinctive feel of his own. Designs that are relatively unfussy, with muted colours. Very direct, but somehow not intrusive. Greeting you at the start of the show are some of Freedman's posters for the London Underground before the war:
The pale spotlights ensure even the rushing commuter could not miss the price of a season ticket -- 51 shillings and three pence (that's £2.56).
If you wanted someone to help communicate a clear message in a crisis, Freedman was your man. Here, from the height of World War II, are a couple of posters for the GPO to ensure that these vital services were available for urgent war efforts, not idle chatter.
No confusion possible there....
It wasn't just the public sector that Freedman worked for. This was an era when some commercial enterprises saw the possibilities offered by the innovative use of art and culture to make them stand out from the pack. The oil firm Shell was at the forefront, launching a series of travel guides for example, and it was for Shell that Freedman devised a foldable peepshow as an advertising tool.
Seen from the front, the peepshow offers views of London in winter and a summer woodland walk, with the slogan "In Winter & in Summer You Can Be Sure of Shell," because its petrol was blended to suit the season in accordance with the variation in temperature. It's a delightful, delicate object, a true work of art rather than a crass piece of commercialism. Reminiscent of a Dutch Golden Age perspective box, perhaps.
You'll find Freedman's influence permeating many aspects of British culture, including that mid-century icon of the cinema, Ealing Studios, for which he designed the logo.
Freedman's work on books makes up a large part of this show. We particularly liked the Whistler cover at the bottom right here, and the walls of the Pallant are filled with Freedman's delicately lithographed illustrations for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Love by Walter de la Mare. Freedman was technically demanding and insistent that such illustrations had to be of the highest quality -- "not pictures stuck in a book."
There's more art-as-advertising later on in this exhibition, in the form of post-war lithographs for Guinness, designed to be hung in pubs and clubs, and for Lyons Corner House restaurants and tea shops, whose directors decided that such pictures were an economical way of covering up peeling paint and brightening up late 1940s drabness.
People was the first such Lyons Lithograph. A London scene, because Freedman was a Londoner through and through, and would talk about how much he disliked open air and the countryside.
Quite the contrast, then, with his contemporaries such as Ravilious and Bawden, who escaped London for rural villages in Sussex or Essex to find peace to work. Accompanying the Freedman show is a two-room exhibition devoted to those artists who worked at the same time, called An Outbreak of Talent: Bawden, Marx, Ravilious, and their Contemporaries.
Among their number was Edward Burra, not only the chronicler of the Sussex downs and coastline and of some occasionally seedy-looking nightlife, but also at times a proponent of the surreal or the semi-abstract, as here in Trees and Cow (sic).
While Freedman directly evokes that period around World War II, Bawden's vision is a little more complex; one wall is taken up by a couple of linocuts of Brighton Pier and Liverpool Street Station in London that are both very much of the moment in design terms from around 1960 yet celebrate feats of architecture and engineering from a century earlier. Freedman's work would certainly have been all over Liverpool Street....
You sense the townie Freedman might not have had much time for The Natural History of Selborne, that classic piece of 18th-century writing and scientific observation by the Reverend Gilbert White, who recorded the picturesque surroundings of the Hampshire village and the flora and fauna to be found there in minute detail. Selborne is only about 20 miles from Chichester, and a small show downstairs in the Pallant -- Drawn to Nature: Gilbert White and the Artists -- celebrates the book and the wonderful illustrations it has inspired in innumerable editions down the decades. It has never been out of print.
This is an intimate little show, made all the more so by the fact that only four people are allowed in the room at a time. Here Ravilious has immortalised White, who was born 300 years ago this year, with his tortoise in his kitchen garden at Selborne. Ravilious loved The Natural History. "I read it every minute I can spare from engraving and other jobs," he wrote in 1936.
John Nash, brother of Paul, illustrated White's account of how some ladies "took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size.... The reptile used to come forth every evening from a hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed."
These are three really excellent shows, and we do recommend them.
Barnett Freedman, Posters for General Post Office, 1943, Private collection
Barnett Freedman, In Winter and Summer You Can Be Sure of Shell, 1932, Private collection
Barnett Freedman, People, 1947, Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections Museum. © Barnett Freedman Estate
Edward Burra, Trees and Cow, 1929, Private collection
Edward Bawden, Brighton Pier, 1958, and Liverpool Street Station, 1960, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
The Pallant is our local art gallery, and its director, Simon Martin, said he didn't want to "sanitise the experience" of museum-going on reopening. So, while visitor numbers are limited and timed tickets are compulsory, we were pleased that once you got inside, there's actually very little that you would notice that has changed from pre-lockdown, apart from the wearing of masks, which is now mandatory in English museums and galleries. While the Pallant is not exactly the largest of galleries, it's by no means cramped, so there's plenty of room for social distancing, as is, let's face it, the case in most museums outside the really big league.
So, climb the stairs to the Pallant's main exhibition space, and get to know Barnett Freedman, contemporary of Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Edward Burra, but with a distinctive feel of his own. Designs that are relatively unfussy, with muted colours. Very direct, but somehow not intrusive. Greeting you at the start of the show are some of Freedman's posters for the London Underground before the war:
If you wanted someone to help communicate a clear message in a crisis, Freedman was your man. Here, from the height of World War II, are a couple of posters for the GPO to ensure that these vital services were available for urgent war efforts, not idle chatter.
It wasn't just the public sector that Freedman worked for. This was an era when some commercial enterprises saw the possibilities offered by the innovative use of art and culture to make them stand out from the pack. The oil firm Shell was at the forefront, launching a series of travel guides for example, and it was for Shell that Freedman devised a foldable peepshow as an advertising tool.
You'll find Freedman's influence permeating many aspects of British culture, including that mid-century icon of the cinema, Ealing Studios, for which he designed the logo.
Freedman's work on books makes up a large part of this show. We particularly liked the Whistler cover at the bottom right here, and the walls of the Pallant are filled with Freedman's delicately lithographed illustrations for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Love by Walter de la Mare. Freedman was technically demanding and insistent that such illustrations had to be of the highest quality -- "not pictures stuck in a book."
Freedman was born in London's East End in 1901 to Russian Jewish immigrants. He was in poor health as a child and was in hospital from the age of nine to 13. Without formal education, he was helped by staff to learn to read and write, play music, draw and paint. He trained as a draughtsman before going on to study at the Royal College of Art in the early 1920s.
There's more art-as-advertising later on in this exhibition, in the form of post-war lithographs for Guinness, designed to be hung in pubs and clubs, and for Lyons Corner House restaurants and tea shops, whose directors decided that such pictures were an economical way of covering up peeling paint and brightening up late 1940s drabness.
Quite the contrast, then, with his contemporaries such as Ravilious and Bawden, who escaped London for rural villages in Sussex or Essex to find peace to work. Accompanying the Freedman show is a two-room exhibition devoted to those artists who worked at the same time, called An Outbreak of Talent: Bawden, Marx, Ravilious, and their Contemporaries.
Among their number was Edward Burra, not only the chronicler of the Sussex downs and coastline and of some occasionally seedy-looking nightlife, but also at times a proponent of the surreal or the semi-abstract, as here in Trees and Cow (sic).
This is an intimate little show, made all the more so by the fact that only four people are allowed in the room at a time. Here Ravilious has immortalised White, who was born 300 years ago this year, with his tortoise in his kitchen garden at Selborne. Ravilious loved The Natural History. "I read it every minute I can spare from engraving and other jobs," he wrote in 1936.
Practicalities
Barnett Freedman: Designs for Modern Britain and An Outbreak of Talent are on at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until November 1, with the Gilbert White exhibition continuing until November 15. The gallery is open 1000 to 1600 Tuesdays to Saturdays and 1100 to 1600 on Sundays and bank holidays. Admission costs a standard £12.50 and you should book a timed-entry ticket in advance here. Allow yourself 90 minutes to two hours to see all the exhibitions.
The gallery is less than 10 minutes' walk from Chichester station, to which there's a train every half an hour from London Victoria on weekdays. The journey takes about 90 minutes. If you're travelling by car, the best route from London is via the A3 and A27, with plenty of car parks available in central Chichester.
More about Gilbert White....
You can now visit Gilbert White's House in Selborne again, and it should be possible to combine it with a trip to the Pallant in one day if you're travelling by car. The village is also a fine base for walks in the surrounding countryside.Images
Barnett Freedman, Posters for London Transport Advertising Season Tickets, 1936, Private collectionBarnett Freedman, Posters for General Post Office, 1943, Private collection
Barnett Freedman, In Winter and Summer You Can Be Sure of Shell, 1932, Private collection
Barnett Freedman, Display of book covers, Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections Museum and private collections
Edward Burra, Trees and Cow, 1929, Private collection
Edward Bawden, Brighton Pier, 1958, and Liverpool Street Station, 1960, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
Eric Ravilious, The Tortoise in the Kitchen Garden, 1938, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
John Nash, Some ladies… took a fancy to a toad, 1951, from Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (Ipswich: Limited Editions Club, 1972), Private collection. © Estate of John Nash
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