THE Spring 2008 renowned artists. Exhibitions in the Long Gallery and subsequently the Angelus Gallery have been of national Friends and international interest as well as being supportive of of local artists and establishments. The offices of Southern Arts and also museums, particularly Southampton were co-opted for travelling exhibitions, educational programmes and occasional workshops. The exhibitions were advertised extensively to ensure benefit for a local and greater community. These developments have been continued and flourish through the Kenneth Clark Society and the relationship with the Roche Court Educational Trust in East Winterslow In 2006 Art School won an award from the Good Schools Guide for being the best boys Independent Art Department and the History of Art Department received awards from the same body in 2004 and 2006. Travel Scholarship is awarded every year from a fund created by his What the ‘philistines’ would have thought former pupils. of all this is unknown, but the Founder would surely applaud the direction and The conversion of the College’s development of “a pupil’s personal 1870s romantic neo-medieval awareness of the implicit spiritual sanatorium in 1985 proved to be and moral relationships between the a monumental and signal event creative and the higher cultural purpose for the educational ethos of the of Art”. When School. Now it possessed an Art commissioned the foremost craftsmen School with facilities allowing for of his time to create the magnificent a wide range of contemporary and school buildings, he acknowledged the traditional approaches through its artists – mason, carpenter, glazier – by extensive facilities, including computer having their portraits incorporated into suite, printmaking facilities, spacious the East window of the Chapel. painting, ceramic and sculpture studios. Art was now being provided for in the timetable up to O Level and both the Headmaster, John Thorn, who had a passion for the arts and a vision for an art school, and the Warden, Lord Aldington, had a critical influence on these developments. A tradition for excellence steadily grew and standards rose year by year. A natural progression was for History of Art to be incorporated into the timetable and now many boys study both this and Art. Regular lectures were instituted with eminent speakers from major universities, galleries and museums and with

Contact details The Friends Office, directly above Cornflowers, is at: 17 College Street, Winchester, SO23 9LX Telephone: (01962) 621217 Facsimile: (01962) 621218 E-mail: [email protected] Design by Bernard Fallon Associates. Website: www.winchestercollege.org he Winchester Art department had a slow, was Alexander Macdonald who was schoolboys was therefore deliberately very slow beginning as art was considered an considered a safe enough choice in the starved and young masters who desired individual activity, executed largely for the artist’s eyes of those who associated Art in the favour of their elders had to be own satisfaction and its disciplines were not the 1890’s with the diabolical forms of as philistine as they could manage. easily extended to any other educational activity. Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. He Yet here was an influential member of was engaged at a salary of £50, to be the Staff whose virility could not be T Having said this, there supplemented from the fees of individual doubted, joyously waving the aesthetic were Drawing Masters pupils who would pay two guineas a year. banner and proving that to be virtuous in the 19th century, However, a naturally slothful disposition, it is not necessary to be a barbarian. chief among them overwhelming shyness and a comfortable Rendall’s presentations continued until being Richard Baigent private income, left his retirement in who held the post for him disinclined to 1924 and regular fifty years and took a recruit pupils. It was art lectures have few private art pupils. up to the enthusiasts been a feature of His best testimonial is to seek him out for Winchester’s cultural the fine set of prints themselves. One who life ever since. executed in 1838 The Art Room above Chantry (now Wiccamica Room) did so was the young depicting the Old Rendall, headmaster who Commoner buildings since 1911, with its simple vaulting and ample windows on all four found him dozing before they were confessed to the sides. In 1924 it was fitted out with magnificent oak tables at his house in demolished. Governing Body and replicas of mediaeval reading desks. These furnishings Kingsgate Street. His upon Macdonald’s had to be constructed in situ as the narrow spiral staircase From 1878 pupils had dwindled retirement in 1922: made it dauntingly inaccessible. It had the look of a accommodation was to about three and “His successor will place where even to drop a pencil-shaving would seem an in rented rooms in he seldom found have little to offence. It would have served nicely for a dedicated monk Museum Gallery with some of the original Wolvesey Palace; the energy to settling down to a few months quiet work on a manuscript, plaster casts (1949) there was even an but could never have been the instrument for getting more attempt to buy the boys interested in art. Gleadowe remained on the building in 1891, which, if successful, might staff until his death in 1944 by which have prevented the return of the time his pupil numbers had Bishops of Winchester to live visit the drawing unteach: he will dwindled to the “disgracefully there in 1927. Art was not housed school. He must find hardly half a small”. permanently until 1897 when the have been dozen pupils to It was left to Gleadowe’s Quingentenary Museum was built, dismayed by the teach at all”. In successors, Erik Sthyr and and studio facilities were incorporated appearance of the same year, particularly Grahame Drew, to into it. The Headmaster’s personal an eager pupil. Kenneth Clark’s broaden the appeal of art, with the generosity equipped the larger gallery Instruction last, his report help of a more favourable wind from with casts and portfolios of photographs consisted of suggested that the housemasters. The Drew for studying the history of architecture, an endless he should sculpture and painting. routine “keep art as a of pencil studies The first Art Master with full teaching hobby, and retain a sense of and never a glimpse of a tube status proportion” — which, to the delight and of paint. Kenneth Clark persisted and edification of millions, is exactly what he did. won the School Drawing Prize for four years virtually unopposed. Macdonald was succeeded by an Old Wykehamist, Gleadowe, a graduate of the Slade School but a Civil Fortunately, inspiration was at hand. In 1898 Monty Servant by temperament, not a schoolmaster. His taste, Rendall commenced his illustrated art lectures. These draughtsmanship and sense of design were exquisite, lectures were based on three hundred and twenty large and he has left his mark in many corners of the College photographic reproductions, which he had accumulated buildings. The windows in College Hall, the west window from time spent in Italy, in the Louvre and in the British in Chantry, the wrought iron gates in Meads, Frazer Tent, Museum. This enterprise was pioneering work, a bold and the bridge over Logie, the Mallory memorial in Cloisters: all successful proclamation of the value of art in education these show different facets of his skill. His error was that of at the very time when this was most needed. In the public taking too refined a view of school art and the creation of schools of the nineties the arts were either unknown or a new drawing school on the top floor of Chantry. This is an suspect; if music was namby-pamby, painting was worse exquisite room, perhaps the most beautiful in the College, – half-way already to immorality. The aesthetic sense of