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#FORTNUMSXFRANK 4 EWAN VENTERS CONTENTS Welcome to Fortnum’s X Frank 5 JOAN BAKEWELL On Bellany, the man and the painter 6 ROBERT UPSTONE A new essay on John Bellany, by our curator 10 FAÇADE 12 Windows 20 LOWER GROUND 22 The Wine Bar 26 GROUND 28 Shop Floor - Till Point 32 Duke Street Staircase 34 FIRST FLOOR 36 First Floor - Till Point 37 First Floor - Toilet 38 Duke Street Staircase 40 SECOND FLOOR 42 Fragrance 43 Beauty Staircase 44 Duke Street Staircase 46 Speaking Staircase 48 THIRD FLOOR 50 Accessories & Gifts 53 3’6 Bar 58 Duke Street Staircase 60 FOURTH FLOOR 62 Duke Street Staircase Bonjour Monsieur Bowie (1988) 64 FIFTH FLOOR 66 The Boardroom 67 Fourth / Fifth Floor Mezzanine 68 Duke Street Staircase 4 FORTNUM’S X FRANK FORTNUM’S X FRANK 5 EWAN JOAN VENTERS BAKEWELL WELCOME TO FORTNUM’S X FRANK ON BELLANY, THE MAN AND THE PAINTER How time flies. This time last his death in 2013. We’re delighted that, once John Bellany’s paintings are instantly recognisable. Above all else, he simply loved painting. year, we were eagerly awaiting again, former Head of Modern British Art at They’re full of the same haunting figures. And John painted exactly what he wished. Tate, Robert Upstone, will be our curator. They use a similar palette. But what I see when He followed his own star. He painted every the very first Fortnum’s X Frank I look at John’s paintings is the sheer freedom day, or near enough, and on the days when John’s work was endlessly inspired by the exhibition. Now, in what seems with which he painted. he did not paint he was unhappy about it. lives and culture of the people working in the At his funeral, I remember his coffin entering the merest blink of an eye, we local fishing and boat building industries of I spent time with John during the making of the church - not with flowers on top, but stand on the cusp of unveiling his native Port Seton. While his contemporaries a BBC programme about his work. He was with a bunch of his dirty brushes lying there. Fortnum’s X Frank 2017. were making abstracts and Pop art, John was warm, he loved company, he was jovial, musical, That was the man he was. creating tough, raw and emotive work to passionate and opinionated; we got on famously. Last year, collector Frank Cohen - the man canvas, and engaging with the grand themes During the time John and I spent together, I got I remember on one occasion, being at a gallery whose name forms half of our exhibition’s of life and death, good and evil. the chance to see him work. What stays with exhibition - I think it was Van Dyck - and title - brought more than 80 pieces of British me today is his sheer mastery of the brush, he looked at each painting with care, before Needless to say, we are delighted to be playing Modern art from his world class collection his dazzling dexterity. declaring ‘you know, there must be some 25 host to John’s wonderful paintings - and thrilled to our Piccadilly home. Across all six floors different shades of black in this work.’ I recall to be working once again with Frank Cohen In front of a canvas, he was supremely confident. and in our storefront windows, we played thinking how incredible it was that John could and with the wonderful Bellany Estate for the I remember asking him what he did when he host to the likes of Frank Auerbach, Tracey so acutely distinguish the intricacies of this first time. made an error. Did he stop? Did he start again? Emin, Howard Hodgkin, Leon Kossoff and painting, and the subtleties of colour within it. Oh no, he said. He simply continued to work, Bridget Riley. I am absolutely certain that every person who adding paint, defying the very idea of an ‘error’, And in a way, that is a neat summation of John walks through the doors at Piccadilly during This year, we’re taking a slightly different certain that the work would progress. Bellany, the painter. approach and focusing on a single artist, this year’s exhibition will find something truly a giant of British art: the inimitable John Bellany, extraordinary, moving and beautiful in the work An umbilical cord forever linked John with his He was an artist superbly attuned to the who numbered among his many admirers the on display. childhood in Scotland; in his work, and in his subtleties of the human condition, to joy, pain, life. I returned to his hometown of Eyemouth loss, celebration, friendship – the essentials of likes of Damien Hirst and David Bowie. As a fellow Scot, an art lover, and - last but with him and he seemed to know everyone, and life – and he was determined to capture it all. not least - as CEO of Fortnum & Mason, John enjoyed a long, successful, hugely everyone him. But he didn’t like to talk about I am tremendously excited to welcome you influential career and with more than 50 his work; he did not enjoy deconstructing all to the shop, and to the show. pieces from every period of his working life - it. Perhaps that is why some painters paint; selected from Frank’s personal collection it is a better way for them to talk about things. Joan Bakewell and from the Bellany Estate - this will be the Ewan Venters I felt that very much with John. Acclaimed broadcaster, journalist and novelist first exhibition of John’s work in London since CEO Fortnum & Mason, September 2017 6 FORTNUM’S X FRANK FORTNUM’S X FRANK 7 ROBERT Universelle in Paris in a tent to bring his art to UPSTONE At Edinburgh Bellany had the people. Bellany and his friend and fellow rejected the prevailing student Sandy Moffatt were inspired by this A NEW ESSAY ON JOHN BELLANY, to hang their own pictures on the railings fashion of following American of Castle Terrace in Edinburgh during the BY OUR CURATOR prototypes, either of gestural Festival in 1963; in 1964 and 1965 they did abstract expressionism or the it again, this time outside the Royal Scottish Academy, explicitly claiming their own work advertising-derived imagery as being more relevant for ordinary people ‘ Good and evil, love and death, of Pop art and instead stayed than that shown inside. ‘It seemed wrong that true to his own language and painting should be cut off from large sections sin and redemption.’ of the public’, Moffatt later wrote, ‘we enjoyed poetry in which to embrace discussing art with all sorts of people, making the great issues of existence. new friends and above all bringing a sense of fun, coupled with seriousness, to the Edinburgh John Bellany (1942-2013) grew up in the ‘They were like portraits’, Bellany recalled, He also rejected the backward-looking tendency Festival’. In 1966 Bellany set out his commitment small, tight-knit fishing communities of Port ‘except they were of boats rather than people.’ then still prevalent in Scotland to continue the to what they had been doing with the outdoor Seton and Eyemouth on the South East coast His destiny to become an artist was set. Aged still life and landscape subjects of the Scottish exhibitions -‘The belief that we are the only of Scotland. That experience, that point of eighteen Bellany enrolled at Edinburgh College Colourists, painting that in the 1960s Bellany two painters not caught up in the fashionable reference, never left him. Both his grandfathers of Art where he was a student from 1960-65. considered fit only for the drawing room. rat-race… Our belief in the revitalising of a and his father were fishermen, and the Although not much further along the coast from Bellany devoted himself instead to figurative dead tradition to the world.’ lives of the villagers were dominated by Port Seton Bellany remembered it as like going painting, then being written off as being in its the precarious fortunes of fishing and the to another country altogether, but it was death throes. And it was a figurative painting At Edinburgh, Bellany started to look at the ever present dangers of the sea. The rituals a community in which he immediately settled that was truly heroic in its scale and ambition. artists of the Northern European tradition - and superstitions of the seafarers were and thrived. In 1965 he started his post- These were tough, gritty paintings based on the nightmarish scenes of Hieronymus Bosch ingrained, and so too was the strict Calvinist graduate studies at the Royal College of Art the characters and experiences of Bellany’s and the rough, imperfect humanity of Peter upbringing of his childhood. All these elements in London, where he lived for most of his life upbringing - fish gutters and fishermen, the Brueghel and Lucas Cranach; later he would found expression in paintings that brilliantly while at the same time returning often and toughness and resilience they epitomised and look to the Expressionist painters Otto combine the personal with the epic, containing regularly to Scotland where his heart lay. At the stark contrast of the sacred and the profane Dix, Max Beckmann, Oskar Kokoschka and archetypal, timeless themes of good and evil, the Royal College his tutors were the painters within the life of the fishing community. All this Edvard Munch, artists who depicted and love and death, sin and redemption. Carel Weight, who nurtured in his students a was a metaphor for the inevitable corporeality communicated raw emotional states.

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