John Piper's topographical paintings and prints offer an unparalleled record of mid twentieth-century Britain. While at one point in the 1930s Piper was poised to be one of the leaders of English abstraction, his sudden reversal to representational art in 1938 came just in time for him to re-evaluate both the natural and the built landscape at a time when both were under threat. The three lithographs in this post were made for an article by John Piper in
The Cornhill in November 1944, entitled Topographical Letter from Devizes, and form a loving record of the market town of Devizes in Wiltshire, "this most ordinary of English towns".
The Cornhill magazine was edited by Peter Quennell; this issue also includes contributions by John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster, Alan Moorhead, Elizabeth Bowen and others.
John Piper, Devizes: In Long Street (Levinson 57A)
Lithograph, 1944
Piper writes of Devizes with great fondness, celebrating "its good minor architecture, magnificent museum (contents, not building), brewery and tobacco factory (sensible, small-scale manufactures for such a town), branch-line railway, good inns and bars, hotels that are not over Trust-worthy, fair churches and chapels, canal of handsome appearance, sensible plan, bracing air, good-looking inhabitants, cinemas (old-fashioned and super, the super not ostentatious). Disadvantages: lack of second-hand bookshops, absence of sylvan walks, and the wind. It's hard to think of any others."
John Piper, Devizes: The Market Place (Levinson 57B)
Lithograph, 1944
"And so, taking coffee and a bun over the baker and confectioner's, next door but two to W. H. Smith & Son's, while the east wind blows across the Market Place, one looks out of the window on to a rarity: an English town that has not been spoiled and has not been preserved artificially."
John Piper, Avebury Restored (Levinson 57C)
Lithograph, 1944
The lithographs were printed by Butler and Tanner on what Orde Levinson, author of the catalogue raisonné of Piper's prints, calls "standard quality machine-made lithographic cartridge paper". They were printed back to back, so one can display either Devizes: The Market Place or the other two, but not all at once. Piper must have been particularly pleased with the four panel, two page Devizes: The Market Place, because he reworked it at a larger size and with much brighter colour for the double-page frontispiece and title page for his book
Buildings and Prospects in 1948.
I apologize to my readers for such a long gap between posts; circumstances mean that I have little time to devote to this blog at the moment, so although I have many new posts planned, their appearance will be sporadic.
19 comments:
Thanks for another new artist - to me. I think parts of the built landscape are always "under threat" or being re-evaluated, if you will, at any given time. The late landscape historian J. Brinckerhoff Jackson would have put it that one person's outhouse is another person's gem of vernacular architecture.
These are wonderful! I know Devizes well as I'm a Wiltshire lad.
I had no idea of Pipers connection with the town.
This post was well worth the wait, but I hope life is treating you OK... These lithos show Piper the gothic topographer at his best, and you can see why he particularly liked the market place pictures - they are as good as any he did. Avebury restored manages to be brooding and whimsical at the same time.
Jane - Thanks for the quick response after such a long lay-off. John Piper is a really famous artist in Britain - but because he concentrated on the British landscape and British architecture (he's especially well-known for paintings of churches, and for stained-glass, tapestries and so on for churches, most notably the post-bombing Coventry Cathedral) he has little international presence. The late landscape historian J. Brinckerhoff Jackson, on the other hand, sounds to me like someone Woody Allen might have made up...
Thanks, Matt - I don't know why Piper was in Devizes at that time and whether there was a deeper connection than wartime chance - though I do know that in later years he was one of the two external governors of Corsham College of Art, which is not far away (my father-in-law was the other one, and they used to drive down together).
Thanks, James. Life! Don't get me started... But these Pipers have been a blessing. In some ways they are rather modest things - not printed on special paper, issued in a literary journal, not even printed with blank versos. Yet to me they have a real life, a sense that Piper put something deeply of himself into them, especially the market place images, which are or were quite original, I think. It's interesting too to think that The Cornhill was probably printed in tens of thousands of copies, yet to find any particular issue now is like finding gold dust. My late bibliophile friend Victor Neuburg once told me that if a work is issued in a limited edition of 100, you can be pretty sure that in 100 years time most if not all of those copies will still be in existence; if it is printed in a million copies, in 10 years time you won't be able to find one.
John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909-1996) was born In France to American parents and studied at Institut le Rosey in Switzerland and at Harvard. He founded the magazine "Landscape" in 1951. His several books are well worth seeking out, especially in response to your article - "The Necessity For Ruins" (1980).
And you're right that he does sound like a Woody Allen character, a comparison that Jackson would have appreciated.
Jane - thanks so much for this extra information - I should have googled it myself rather than putting you to the trouble! He sounds a very interesting man. John Piper would have LOVED an article called The Necessity of Ruins.
Jane - That last reply was badly phrased! Of course I didn't mean that you would need to resort to Mr. Google for the info, I know you just have to dip your silver cup into the ever-running stream of your aesthetic knowledge... Neil
Neil, excellent point about ltd editions and survival... I suppose that in the end it comes down to the question of their perceived worth when it's time to choose which books to keep and which to throw out... I shall keep my eyes pealed for old issues of the Cornhill magazine!
By the way I'm doing a talk at Blackwells in Oxford on Nov 24th - a launch event for 'Paul Nash in Pictures: Landscape and Dream' (which isn't a limited edition!). Be great to see you there
I've always admired the Devizes lithographs, in their reprinted form in Piper's Buildings and Prospects (which also includes a reprint of the Cornhill article) and it's good to see them again here. Although known for his images of churches, Piper was rather good at towns, and the book also contains interesting essays, but no Piper prints, alas, on Norwich and Middlesborough.
Thanks for creating this blog dedicated to the forgotten illustrators Neil. While Chagall, Rouault and Dufy are revered, masters like Boussingauly, Moreau, Falke, Laboureur, Dignimont etc etc etc are consigned to dusty bookshelves. Have you ever done a piece on the illustrators of The Colophon?
Philip - The little cache of Cornhills I acquired also include an essay by Piper entitled Introduction to Middlesbrough, illustrated with photographs and a reproduction of a Piper watercolour, "Middlesbrough from the Slag-Tips". Not only are the contents still readable, the mags are full of great adverts. That issue has one for Cogene pain-relief tablets with the great strapline, "It's a fortunate head that has never ached", credited as Old Proverb...
thhq - Many thanks for this comment and several others (I'll try to get round to replying to them all). I'm so pleased you have found the blog and will value your contributions. No, I haven't written about The Colophon.
James - Sorry not to respond - I'd love to come to your Blackwell's talk, but I won't be able to - hope it goes with a swing!
I live in Devizes and the local museum has I think several of his works. I have always loved these images of the town, they convey so much more of its quality than conventional touristy renderings.
Glad to hear Piper's not forgotten in Devizes, Ian.
John Piper is certainly not forgotten in Devizes! At the Museum, we have several works in the collection, and also a stained glass window and cartoon by him, based on our collections and the Wiltshire landscape - see http://www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk/galleries/index.php?Action=4&obID=95&prevID=96&oprevID=17
I love the stained glass, presumably made in collaboration with Patrick Reyntiens. It really does encapsulate Wiltshire in one strong image.
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