For-The-Sake-Of-The-Thing-Itself.Pdf

I Introduction ...... 5

Works ...... 13

Alfred Wallis, Trawler and a Sail Boat ...... 14

Anonymous, Verwood Jug ...... 16

Bernard Leach, Owl ...... 18

Shoji Hamada, Albarello Vase ...... 20

Neolithic Period Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head ...... 22

Neolithic Period Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head ...... 24

Neolithic Period Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head ...... 26

Bronze Age Earthenware Bowl with Lug Handles ...... 28

Bronze Age Earthenware Spouted Vessel with Two Loop Handles ...... 30

Bronze Age Earthenware Jug with Strap Handle ...... 32

Barbara Hepworth, Project ...... 34

Anonymous, Seto Mingei ‘Horse Eye’ Dish with Painted Spirals ...... 36

Richard Long, Untitled ...... 38

Bernard Leach, Moulded Slipware Dish with Japanese Mingei Willow Tree Design ...... 40

Eliot Hodgkin, Objets Trouvés ...... 42

Shoji Hamada, Stoneware Dish with Broken Stem Motifs ...... 44

Frank Auerbach, To The Studios ...... 46

Frank Auerbach, To The Studios ...... 48

Kogei Magazine No. 53 ...... 50

Graham Sutherland, Wading Birds ...... 52

Text ...... 59 Introduction ‘Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself’

– Wallace Stevens

This exhibition and accompanying catalogue are the culmination of innumerable conversations that we have had in the three years since we started Hunter / Whitfield.

As visitors to our spaces in Marylebone and Clerkenwell will know, we are interested not only in contemporary art, but by artworks and artefacts from the past. It has been a great pleasure to see how both the artists and collectors with whom we’ve had the good fortune to work are also joyfully open-minded and pluralistic in their interests.

With that in mind, we have brought together a group of artworks and objects that reflect some of our own tastes and interests outside our contemporary programme. The exhibition, which comprises mainly 20th century British artworks and ancient artefacts, is not strictly thematic, but rather driven by our own aesthetic impulses and fascination with the material. It is our hope that the viewer can take time to relish each object, painting and drawing in their own right, rather than seeing them merely as devices to illustrate a grander curatorial narrative.

There are, however, links that can be drawn between the works which go beyond the merely visual or the historical kinship of the modern British pictures. The perceptive viewer will see that a Cornish thread runs through this show, starting with Alfred Wallis and Barbara Hepworth and Shoji Hamada (indeed, even the clay that Richard Long used in Untitled is sourced in St Austell, Cornwall). Many of the works and objects gathered here also share an affinity with the earth, the ground; be it in tonality or origin, they allude to the cyclical nature of both life and art.

In his book, A Potter’s World, Bernard Leach writes of meeting Japanese craftsmen from whom he ‘learnt to expect beauty as a part of normal life and as a necessity.’ … ‘things should be done for the sake of the thing itself.’ It is with this ethos that we have brought together the objects and artworks in this exhibition.

Ben Hunter & Orlando Whitfield, 2017

Works Alfred Wallis (British, 1855–1942) Trawler and a Sail Boat Oil and pencil on card 25.5 x 30.5 cm

14 Anonymous Verwood Jug, Early 19th C. Stoneware 30.5 x 24 x 23 cm

16 Bernard Leach (British, 1887–1979) Owl, 1950s Pencil on Japanese rice paper 12 x 12 cm

18 Shoji Hamada (Japanese, 1894–1978) Albarello Vase, 1960s Stoneware with broken stem motif brushed over white ‘hakeme’ glaze 22 x 16 x 16 cm

20 Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head, Neolithic Period Flint 29 x 9 x 3.75 cm

22 Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head, Neolithic Period Flint 24 x 7 x 3.25 cm

24 Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head, Neolithic Period Flint 32.5 x 7.5 x 3.25 cm

26 Bronze Age Earthenware Bowl with Lug Handles 20.5 x 27.5 x 27.5 cm

28 Bronze Age Earthenware Spouted Vessel with Two Loop Handles 17.5 x 14 x 16 cm

30 Bronze Age Earthenware Jug with Strap Handle 21.5 x 13 x 13 cm

32 Barbara Hepworth (1903–75) Project, 1945 Oil and pencil on board 19 x 26.7 cm

34 Anonymous Seto Mingei ‘Horse Eye’ Dish with Painted Spirals, 19th C. Glazed stoneware 27.5 x 27.5 x 6 cm

36 Richard Long (British, b. 1945) Untitled, 1988 China clay on paper mounted to masonite 190 x 160 cm

38 Bernard Leach (British, 1887–1979) Moulded Slipware Dish with Japanese Mingei Willow Tree Design, 1930s Glazed stoneware 33 x 25.5 x 5 cm

40 Eliot Hodgkin (British, 1905–1987) Objets Trouvés, 1961 Tempera on board 12 x 23 cm

42 Shoji Hamada (Japanese, 1894–1978) Stoneware Dish with Broken Stem Motifs, 1960s Glazed stoneware with tenmoku glaze 27 x 27 x 4.5 cm

44 Frank Auerbach (British, b. 1931) To the Studios, 1982 Crayon, felt tip pen and Tipp-Ex on paper 29.5 x 18.5 cm

46 Frank Auerbach (British, b. 1931) To the Studios, 1982 Crayon, felt tip pen and Tipp-Ex on paper 29.5 x 19.5 cm

48 Kogei Magazine No. 53, May 1935 Paperback book with hand-dyed & printed cover 22 x 25 x 1 cm

50 Graham Sutherland (British, 1903–80) Wading Birds Oil on canvas 138 x 64 cm

Text Alfred Wallis (British, 1855–1942) Anonymous Bernard Leach (British, 1887–1979) Shoji Hamada (Japanese, 1894–1978) Trawler and a Sail Boat Verwood Jug, Early 19th C. Owl, 1950s Albarello Vase, 1960s Oil and pencil on card Stoneware Pencil on Japanese rice paper Stoneware with broken stem motif brushed 25.5 x 30.5 cm 30.5 x 24 x 23 cm 12 x 12 cm over white ‘hakeme’ glaze 22 x 16 x 16 cm Waddington Galleries, London Private Collection, UK Private Collection, UK Lord & Lady Rix Frederick Carlton Ball, California, USA Thence by descent A beautiful example of an early 19th century jug Born in Japan in 1887, Bernard Leach became Private Collection, UK made at the Verwood pottery in Dorset. This is one of Britain’s foremost potters. He studied in Self-taught Cornish Alfred Wallis started painting on a classic English form developed over centuries Tokyo before returning to England in 1920 with Shoji Hamada began his career as an artist-potter found objects (this work is painted on a hard-back and identified by Bernard Leach as being in Shoji Hamada to set up a studio in St Ives. Here in Japan after studying at the Tokyo Institute of book binding) only in his seventies after a career as his mind the perfect jug. The Verwood pottery holds he constructed the first traditional Japanese Technology. He later met Bernard Leach in Tokyo, a merchant sailor. His works came to the attention an iconic status by lovers of country pottery. This is kiln, or ‘noborigama’, to be built in the West. He and the pair travelled back to England together in of artists like Christopher Wood and Benjamin a fine example of an increasingly sought after pot played a pivotal role in creating an identity for 1920 where Leach set up a pottery in St Ives. After Nicholson who had moved to St Ives in the 1930s. much admired by the early studio potters such as artist potters across the world and his work can three years in Cornwall, Hamada returned to Japan, In Wallis’s work, they perceived a fresh and unique Michael Cardew and Shoji Hamada. be found in public collections throughout the UK. where he established his own workshop and pottery approach to painting. Nicholson and Wallis embarked in Mashiko. He not only left an enduring influence on a friendship that would last until Wallis’s death This design of an owl was a motif much beloved of on the British studio potters of the 20th century, but in 1942. His style and resourceful use of materials Leach and one that he re-used and experimented also became a leading figure of the Japanese mingei was a considerable influence on Nicholson’s with throughout his career. While in Western (‘folk-art’) movement. career. Writing in New Horizon in the year after culture owls symbolize wisdom and darkness, in Wallis’s death, Nicholson said, ‘his paintings were Japan the owl is a bringer of good fortune and as The present albarello stoneware vase was made as never paintings but actual events’. Works by Wallis such is a popular engimono (‘lucky charm’). a demonstration piece at the University of Southern can now be found in major museums across the UK. California where his daughter was a student in the 1960s. It features Hamada’s quintessential broken This work is representative of Wallis’s stylistic traits stem motif brushed over a white ‘hakeme’ glaze. that continue to fascinate artists and collectors today: a choppy sea is simply evoked in white impasto on blue paper; two vessels battle against the fearsome marine elements; two sailors – one fishing, one standing amidships – brace themselves against the wind; and a lighthouse teeters at the right-hand edge.

60 Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head, Bronze Age Earthenware Bowl with Lug Handles, Barbara Hepworth (British, 1903–75) Anonymous Neolithic Period 20.5 x 27.5 x 27.5 cm Project, 1945 Seto Mingei ‘Horse Eye’ Dish with Painted Spirals, Flint Oil and pencil on board 19th C. 29 x 9 x 3.75 cm Bronze Age Earthenware Spouted Vessel with 19 x 26.7 cm Glazed stoneware Two Loop Handles 27.5 x 27.5 x 6 cm Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head, 17.5 x 14 x 16 cm Lefevre Gallery, London Neolithic Period E. C. Gregory, London Private Collection, UK Flint Rihani Family Museum, Irbid, Jordan Agnews & Sons Ltd, London 24 x 7 x 3.25 cm Private Collection, UK Private Collection, UK A classic mingei (‘folk-art’) design from the early 19th century, these serving dishes were popular in Scandinavian Thin Butted Polished Axe Head, Bronze Age Earthenware Jug with Strap Handle ‘[My drawings] are not just a way of amusing myself Japanese inns and eating places, and were later Neolithic Period 21.5 x 13 x 13 cm nor are they experimental probings – they are my admired and collected by Bernard Leach & Shoji Flint sculptures born in the disguise of two dimensions.’ Hamada. The spiral ‘horse eye’ design is painted with 32 x 7.5 x 3.25 cm Mannion Collection, Lincolnshire, UK an iron underglaze. Private Collection, UK – Barbara Hepworth John Hewett, UK Lord McAlpine, UK These early Bronze Age vessels originate from the Drawing was a vital part of Hepworth’s practice, and Private Collection, UK Levant and would have been used to store food and a scarcity of the materials she would customarily drink. The vessels would then have been buried in use in her sculpture during the Second World War The dawn of the Neolithic period, or ‘New Stone tombs along with their owners and have remained resulted in fecund period for her two-dimensional Age’, is marked by development of polished flint remarkably intact over the millennia. works. The drawings and paintings she produced in axes such as these. This important technological that period have come to be recognized as both vital evolution gave rise to significant agricultural and The transition from the Proto-Urban period to to her development as a sculptor, and as important domestic developments that would change the the early Bronze Age at the start of the third artworks in their own right. They are explorations course of history. Humans were now able to fell large millennium BC saw huge socio-economic changes of form and movement that informed her sculptural areas of woodland, creating fields for agriculture across the Levant. Village based economies gave practice. Hepworth wrote later in her career, ‘I do and more permanent settlements. In turn, these way to larger settlements as productive agriculture spend whole periods of time entirely in drawing (or changes facilitated the gradual shift from nomadic led to increased trade across the region. By 2800 painting, as I use colour) when I search for forms populations, towards more settled groups and BC, the process of urbanism was well underway, and rhythms and curvatures for my own satisfaction. eventually the dawn of civilisation. and as populations increased, so did the need for These drawings I call “drawings for sculpture” … Out new types of administration, bureaucracy and even of the drawings springs a general influence.’ The importance of the polished axe in these public building. developments can not be overstated and, as such, The present work is a fine example of Hepworth’s these objects were highly regarded by our neolithic Although these vessels would have been part of the painting practice: scumbled white oil paint is applied forbearers. Indeed, many such tools, carefully every day lives of humans living at this time, their evenly across the expanse of board on top of which executed and polished, were likely never meant for pleasingly simple design and delicate ornamentation is drawn a geometric web of pencil lines, gracefully practical use but used purely for ritualistic or even make them appear as readily decorative as utilitarian, intertwined. The colour scheme seems reminiscent of decorative purposes. an effect that is today accentuated by the beautifully the sea (Hepworth lived in St Ives with her husband, earthy patination caused by years underground. Ben Nicholson) with the thin white layer revealing a dark blue-green underneath and a triangle of kelp- coloured paint breaks up the composition. To the right of the picture a crescent takes up half the picture-plane so that the viewer is perhaps reminded of moonlight on a nighttime sea.

62 Richard Long (British, b. 1945) Bernard Leach (British, 1887–1979) Eliot Hodgkin (British, 1905–87) Shoji Hamada (Japanese, 1894–1978) Untitled, 1988 Moulded Slipware Dish with Japanese Mingei Objets Trouvés, 1961 Stoneware Dish with Broken Stem Motifs, 1960s China clay on paper mounted Willow Tree Design, 1930s Tempera on board Glazed stoneware with Tenmoku glaze to masonite Glazed stoneware 12 x 23 cm 27 x 27 x 4.5 cm 190 x 160 cm 27.5 x 27.5 x 6 cm Durlacher Brothers, New York Private Collection, UK Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London John Bedding, potter, apprentice to Bernard Leach Private Collection, USA Private Collection, USA at St Ives A stoneware dish made in the 1960s by Shoji Hamada Private Collection, UK Private Collection, UK Eliot Hodgkin started working in egg tempera in the at the Mashiko Pottery, Japan. Tenmoku (‘rust’) glaze late 1930s and continued in the same medium until with two wax-resist broken stem motifs. Presented ‘My materials are elemental: stone, water, mud, days, Bernard Leach slipware moulded dish made at the failing eyesight caused him to abandon painting in the signed and stamped traditional wooden nights, rivers, sunrises. And our bodies are elemental: St Ives Pottery in the 1930s. The design taken from altogether in 1979. His idiosyncratic style was box (tomobako). we are animals, we make marks, we leave traces, we the Japanese mingei (‘folk-art’) willow tree design at odds with the avant-garde of the day but his leave footprints.’ which in Leach’s hands, evolved into this simple exquisite, jewel-like still life paintings of, variously, (For artist biography, please see item on page 61.) abstracted design. food, flowers and other ephemera, endure to this – Richard Long day and shine with a quality which is quite beyond (For artist biography, please see item on page 61.) period. In a letter to his friend, the art historian Sir One of the leading figures in the Land Art Brinsley Ford, Hodgkin wrote of his desire, ‘to show movement which emerged in the mid-late 1960s, the beauty of things that no one looks at twice … I Richard Long’s conceptually driven practice has try to show things exactly as they are, yet with some since spanned a broad range of media, existing as of their mystery and poetry, and as though seen for poetic text pieces, bookworks, colour and black the first time.’ and white photographic documents, site specific interventions in the landscape, sculptures within The current work displays both Hodgkin’s great skill galleries, commissioned wall drawings and works as a painter and the surreal, renewing closeness that on paper. Encompassing elements of various artistic he was able to achieve in his work. The painstakingly disciplines – performance, photography, sculpture rendered skull of an unidentified animal is surrounded and painting – his practice has led him to make walks by other objects – seedpods, a feather, scattered all over the world, sometimes ‘the work’ remains in vertebrae – to form a literal nature morte (still the landscape, existing only as a document, at other life). This haunting memento mori, however, is so times the material of the landscape is brought back vibrantly and exactly executed that it seems to brim to the gallery. with life. Much like his Italian contemporary, Morandi, Hodgkin’s obsessive and poetic re-examination of Untitled, 1988, is an early example of Long’s works mundane objects is both surprising and life affirming. on paper made from white china clay hand-printed directly onto black paper and, here, laid down onto slate. Long sources the china clay (kaolin) for his drawings from vast quarries in St Austell, Cornwall, and these works run parallel to other works on paper which use mud taken from the River Avon, Bristol. Long differentiates his china clay works from the mud pieces only in as much as ‘... it’s good to use white sometimes. It looks good. It gives me another option, another variation.’

64 Frank Auerbach (British, b. 1931) Kogei magazine No. 53, May 1935 Graham Sutherland (British, 1903–80) To the Studios, 1982 Paperback book with hand-dyed & printed cover Wading Birds Crayon, felt tip pen and Tipp-Ex on paper 22 x 25 x 1 cm Oil on canvas 29.5 by 18.5 cm 138 x 64 cm Private Collection, UK Frank Auerbach (British, b. 1931) Wilfred Evill Collection, London To the Studios, 1982 A rare copy of Kogei magazine, No. 53, May 1935, Thence by descent to Honor Frost Crayon, felt tip pen and Tipp-Ex on paper Published in Japan in very small numbers by Soetsu Private Collection, UK 29.5 by 19.5 cm Yanagi, philosopher and scholar, founder of the Japanese mingei (‘folk-art’) movement and close Graham Sutherland was one of the most influential Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, London friend of Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada. Kogei and prolific British artists of the twentieth century. Exxon Mobil Corporate Collection was put together by hand and each issue was a work Having studied to become a printmaker at of art in itself. Leach said of the magazine, ‘There has Goldsmiths, the first years of his career his work German-born Frank Auerbach began working at been no other publication on its level’. displayed the clear influence of Samuel Palmer and his Camden studio in 1954. Located in an alley off F. L. Griggs, featuring eerie landscapes peppered Mornington Crescent, it was built at the turn of the The magazine was beautifully illustrated and with gnarled trees and full moons. With the collapse nineteenth century near the studio of Walter Sickert. printed on hand-made papers from the Japanese of the print market in the early 1930s, Sutherland Since 1977 Auerbach has explored the subject of this countryside. Some of the covers had lacquered turned to painting. His landscapes, which showed an alleyway extensively, making several paintings and decoration, and sometimes vegetable-dyed textiles affinity with the work of Paul Nash, further developed innumerable drawings of the motif. (Auerbach also were used. No. 53 is the most desirable issue as the surreal sensibility of his print making practice. paints and draws Primrose Hill and Mornington it is dedicated to Bernard Leach and partly printed (Sutherland was included in the 1936 International Crescent repeatedly.) Of this process of painterly in English. Surrealist Exhibition in London.) layering and repetition Auerbach has said that he tries to ‘catch hold of the world of fact and As a war artist alongside his contemporary Henry experience at some point at which it hasn’t been Moore, Sutherland’s style developed dramatically caught before, so that one remakes it in a sense and in the late 1940s, at the height of his fame, he which speaks to oneself directly.’ In this way, the was commissioned to design several tapestries by repeated drawing of this particular corner is a vital the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh. He submitted corollary to his painting practice. over fifty designs in gouache of which only two were made. The first of these was called Wading Birds, In these works the thick layers of crayon, Tipp-Ex bought by the architect, Basil Spence, who would and felt-tip is redolent of Auerbach’s oil paintings. later commission Sutherland to make the famous A wide vocabulary of marks is apparent as space tapestry for the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. It is now and form emerge from a dense lattice of lines, swirls, in the Vancouver Art Gallery. The second tapestry scribbles and patches of colour. The tension between was bought by the London-based collector Wilfred Auerbach’s treatment of the surface as a material Evill, who also owned the present oil painting that object and the image’s illusion of three-dimensional relates heavily to the design of the Wading Birds depth invigorates the entire composition. In the tapestry. This painting was exhibited, along with 1980s Auerbach increasingly employed more high highlights from the Evill Collection, at the Brighton key colours, and his description of space opened Art Gallery in 1965. out and became more literal. Auerbach’s series of drawings To the Studios – done with alacrity and At this time in his life, Sutherland was spending easy familiarity – embraces and extends these increasing amounts of time in the south of France, artistic developments. where his house was surrounded by marshes. It is likely that the cranes depicted here, along with a keen interest in Egyptian hieroglyphics, were the influence for this painting

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