I did say this blog would be an occassional rummage through art, collections and heritage, but, admittedly, there has been quite a lengthy gap between posts. No matter, The Sift is now back!

Eleanor Hughes, West Penwith Landscape, watercolour on paper, Private collection

This post has developed from a recent visit to Cornwall, where I was re-introduced to a small privately owned collection of watercolours and etchings by the artist Eleanor Hughes (1882 - 1959). My interest was piqued by the combination of my work with collections and my connection with Cornwall. Although I was already aware of the artist, encountering the collection again spurred me on to discover more about her background and her work.

Eleanor Hughes was an active member of the Newlyn School of Art, part of the Lamorna Colony of artists in West Cornwall and a friend and associate of other artists including Lamorna Birch, Laura & Harold Knight, and Ella & Charles Naper. She specialised in painting the Cornish landscape surrounding her,  mainly in watercolour, and in the 1930s she also took up etching. She was especially interested in depicting trees, as well as the farming and mining heritage of the area.

Eleanor Hughes, A Farm Near Trewoofe, watercolour on paper, Private collection

Eleanor Mary was born in Christchurch New Zealand in 1882 to Frederick and Alice Waymouth, both with West Country origins. Eleanor was initially educated in New Zealand and grew up in a home where artistic talent was encouraged. In 1900 she was awarded a medal by the Canterbury Fine Art Society for her drawings of trees. She first visited England in the early 1900s and went to study for a short time with Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes at their Newlyn Art School in Cornwall.

In 1907, she left New Zealand once again to pursue further study in England at Frank Spenlove’s Yellow Door Studio in Beckenham, before returning to the Forbes School in Newlyn, where she met fellow artist Robert Morson Hughes. In 1910 they were married in St Buryan and from 1912 she signed all of her work as Eleanor Hughes. After spending some time travelling in Italy, the couple began building their house, Chyangweal, near St Buryan, with a studio in the Lamorna Valley. They both lived there for the rest of their lives.

The small privately owned collection of work by Hughes grew slowly, following an initial purchase of a watercolour long ago in an antique shop in Chapel Street in Penzance. It was the subject of the watercolour, the Crowns engine houses of Botallack Mine near St Just (pictured below), which first attracted the collectors because of their professional interest in Cornish mining.

Eleanor Hughes, Crowns Engine Houses, watercolour on paper, Private collection

The collectors’ interest in the artist and her work grew and more examples were purchased. They were not all bought together, but acquired gradually over time and from a variety of sources. Some were bought locally but others were acquired from further afield. Several works were, for instance, an early internet purchase from the United States, which was something of a gamble at the time. The Collection now includes a mix of watercolours, pencil sketches and etchings.

The collectors have spent many enjoyable times touring West Cornwall, identifying the locations of the pictures and making a contemporary record of the scenes depicted. Sadly, these contemporary records were not available for comparison here. 

 Eleanor Hughes, View to St. Michael's Mount, etching, Private collection

Eleanor Hughes was active artistically until she sold her studio in 1940. She died at her home in Cornwall in 1959. Throughout their working lives she and Robert had travelled regularly to paint in France and Spain, but West Cornwall remained their home and the inspiration for their work.

Eleanor was active in organising the exhibitions of the artists of Newlyn and St Ives and exhibited her own work widely. From 1911 she began exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the Institute of Painters in Watercolours and many other institutions throughout her career including the New English Art Club, the Walker Gallery and the Glasgow Institute. She also sent work regularly for exhibition and sale to New Zealand. Today her work is represented in many collections, including in the Christchurch Art Gallery in New Zealand and closer to home in the Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance. 

Working with collections always takes me to interesting intellectual and physical places and this time I've enjoyed my tour of West Cornwall through Eleanor Hughes's art. 

All images are copyright of the Estate of Robert Morson and Eleanor Hughes. I have not been able to contact the Estate at the time of publishing. If you represent the Estate, or know how I can contact them, please let me know via the Get In Touch page. 

 

Welcome, welcome and Happy New Year!

I don’t know just how occasional this occasional sift through art, collections and heritage will be, but January 2022 seems like a good time to get things started, so here goes. 

I love a good book. Much of what I read is influenced by, and influences, my work. My current reading stack is no exception and offers a cultural crosscurrent of books about curators, artists (both real and fictional), material culture and collections.

In December I went to see the exhibition Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life at The Hepworth in Wakefield (on until 27 Feb 2022) – the largest exhibition of Hepworth’s work since her death in 1975. 

Many moons ago, I worked at The Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St Ives and feel like I’ve retained a decent baseline of knowledge about Hepworth. But seeing so many of her sculptures gathered in Wakefield (her birthplace) really offered me new perspectives on her work and insight into the variety of media she employed throughout her career. By my reckoning, The Hepworth also win the prize for the best exhibition poster in 2021. I’d never visited the gallery before, so that was a treat. I also won a competition (these things never happen to me) and was given a copy of the book accompanying the exhibition written by the show’s curator, Eleanor Clayton. Bonus!

The book discusses a retrospective of Hepworth’s work that was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1954 (pg 169). Bryan Robertson (1925-2002) was the Director of The Whitechapel at the time and is someone I’ve been interested in since cutting out his obituary from The Times in 2002 (ever the collector!). I was working in a gallery with a collection of Modern British Art at the time and my interest was piqued by the description of Robertson as someone who “…administered an immense stimulus to the renaissance in British art that took place over his 16 years in post”. He was Director from 1952 to 1969. 

So I was delighted to be given a copy of The Life of Bryan, A Celebration of Bryan Robertson by Andrew Lambirth. The book is not a straightforward biography but recalls Robertson’s work through his own writings and the memories of his friends. It now also provides a perfect hardback home for Robertson’s newspaper obituary!

Robertson wanted to offer new perspectives on artists and the next book in my stack, Slavery in Small Things, Slavery and Modern Cultural Habits by James Walvin, is offering me different ways of thinking about material culture. I’m currently working on a project which seeks to contextualise and update catalogue entries for historic objects connected to slavery and colonialism, and I came to this book through that work. It explores the history of African slavery and its long-term cultural legacy through an analysis of a variety of commonplace objects and commodities, such as sugar and tea, and is a fascinating read.

Much of Walvin’s commentary discusses the movement of objects and this theme is continued in National Treasures, Saving the Nation’s Art in World War II by Caroline Shenton, which documents the covert wartime evacuation of Britain’s historic art and heritage collections. The system swung into action speedily at the time and the book is equally fast-paced.

I also sometimes need fictional relief and having been laid low with a festive dose of Covid that stopped me returning home to Cornwall, I opted to re-read Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale, which is set in Penzance. With a focus on artists and exhibitions it’s not wholly off topic for me, but it’s the evocation of West Cornwall which made me turn to the novel again and that I'm really enjoying. 

So, there you have it. A glimpse into what I’m reading as 2021 turns into 2022. What are you reading? Can you recommend any good books, blogs or podcasts about art, collections, and heritage? I’d love to hear from you.

Until the next time.

Charlie