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Jonathan Black, Senior Research Fellow in the History of Art and a member of the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre at Kingston University London has published widely on British Modernism. David Falkner is Director of the Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University and curator of a broad programme of contemporary art and design projects, including the Stanley Picker Fellowship commissions. Fiona Fisher is a design historian and a member of the Modern Interiors Research Centre at Kingston University. Her research on the Picker House architect, Kenneth Wood, was supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Early Career Fellowship in 2011 and 2012.
Fran Lloyd, Professor of Art History and the Director of the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre at Kingston University, has published widely on contemporary visual culture and sculpture studies. Rebecca Preston, a specialist in urban landscape and domestic space in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, is an Associate Researcher in the Modern Interiors Research Centre at Kingston University and an Honorary Research Associate in the History Department at Royal Holloway, University of London. Penny Sparke is a Professor of Design History and the Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre at Kingston University, London. She has published widely, and broadcast, on the subject of the modern interior.
The Picker House and CollectionA Late 1960s Home for Art and Design
Philip Wilson Publishers Salem RoadLondon
www.philip-wilson.co.uk
The Picker House is a remarkable late 1960s modernist home specifi cally designed to accommodate a superb collection of modern and contemporary painting and sculpture. Situated on the outskirts of London, in Kingston upon Thames, it is a rare surviving example of a spacious and progressive late modern house and garden that remains largely unaltered. Designed by the British modernist architect Kenneth Wood in 1965, it still retains its period interior décor, contemporary furnishings acquired through Terence Conran’s two design fi rms, Conran Design Group and Conran Contracts, and the distinctive art collection of its owner – including works by Chagall, Frink, Hepworth, Lowry, Rodin and many more – which was an integral part of its conception. Based on previously unpublished material and photographs, this heavily illustrated publication brings together leading researchers in their respective fi elds who chart the history of the house and its collections.
Picker was a New York born cosmetic manufacturer who settled in London in 1936. He made his wealth in the 1960s through Gala Cosmetics, launching the new make-up brands Miners, Outdoor Girl and Mary Quant. This book offers a complete investigation into the architecture and design of the Picker House, its interior furnishings and décor, its Japanese inspired landscaped garden and Picker’s signifi cant modern and contemporary art collection of paintings, drawings and prints and sculpture. It concludes with a glimpse of the ongoing life of the collection and of Picker’s Fellowship legacy through the recent work of artist Elizabeth Price and designer Ab Rogers, amongst others.
The Picker House and CollectionA Late 1960s Home for Art and Design
The Picker H
ouse and Collection
A Late 1960s H
ome for A
rt and Design
Front Cover: The Picker House living area, 2012
© Ezzidin Alwan
Back Cover: The Picker House at night, 2009
© Mike Upstone
© the authors 2013
Published by Philip Wilson Publishers
an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road
London W2 4BU
www.philip-wilson.co.uk
ISBN 978-1-78130-005-3
Distributed in the United States and Canada
exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior
permission of the publishers.
Design by Anne Sørensen and Design Execution
Printed and bound in Italy by Trento
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Contents
71 Chapter 3 The Picker Garden Rebecca Preston
103 Chapter 4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing Collection Jonathan Black
133 Chapter 5 The Picker House Sculpture Collection Fran Lloyd
171 Chapter 6 The Picker House: Contemporary Perspectives David Falkner
189 Stanley Picker Fellowships: Art and Design
190 Notes
203 Sources and Bibliography
207 Index
vi List of Illustrations
xii Contributors
xiv Acknowledgements
xv Foreword
xvi Preface
1 Introduction ‘ An Entrepreneurial Wizard’:
A Biographical Sketch of Stanley Picker Jonathan Black
13 Chapter 1 The Picker House: A British House with an International Outlook Fiona Fisher
47 Chapter 2 The Picker House Interior Penny Sparke
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xii
Contributors
Dr Jonathan Black was educated at the
Universities of London and Cambridge. He
was awarded his PhD in 2003 by University
College London for his thesis exploring
masculinity and the image of the ordinary
British soldier, or ‘Tommy’, in the First
World War art of C.R.W. Nevinson, Eric
Kennington and Charles Sargeant Jagger
c.1915–25. His publications include: Form,
Feeling and Calculation: The Complete
Paintings and Drawings of Edward Wadsworth
(Philip Wilson Publishers: London, 2006);
Subtlety and Strength: The Drawings of Dora
Gordine (with Fran Lloyd, 2009); The Face of
Courage: Eric Kennington, Portraiture and the
Second World War (Philip Wilson Publishers:
London, 2011) and The Spirit of Faith: The
Sculpture of John Bunting (2012). Jonathan
recently curated the exhibition The Face of
Courage: Eric Kennington and the Second
World War at the Art Gallery, Royal Air Force
Museum, Hendon, London (June 2011–May
2012) and is currently working on a book
about leading twentieth-century Anglo-
Welsh sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones (1913–
1996), to be published to coincide with
the 100th Anniversary of the sculptor’s
birth. Since 2008 he has been a Senior
Research Fellow in History of Art at
Kingston University.
David Falkner trained in Fine Art at
Chelsea School of Art (1988–91). After
working as a practising artist and curator
throughout Europe, David developed a
career curating interdisciplinary practice
within public-sector venues, initially at Bury
St Edmunds Art Gallery, Suffolk, and later at
the Pump House Gallery, London. Director
of the Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston
University since 2004, he is responsible for
commissioning and producing a broad
programme of contemporary visual art and
design including developing Stanley Picker
Fellowship projects with designers Daniel
Eatock, El Ultimo Grito, Shelley Fox, Sara
Fanelli, and Ab Rogers, and artists Mark
Beasley, Matthew Darbyshire, Elizabeth
Price, Juneau Projects and Martin Westwood.
Under his directorship the Stanley Picker
Gallery became an Arts Council England
National Portfolio Organisation, and
instigated Muybridge in Kingston, a major
collaborative research partnership between
Kingston University and the Royal Borough
of Kingston upon Thames investigating
Kingston Museum’s unique collection of
material by Victorian photographer and
moving-image pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.
Dr Fiona Fisher is a postdoctoral researcher
in the Faculty of Art, Design and
Architecture at Kingston University, where
she is a member of the Modern Interiors
Research Centre. She holds a BA in Art,
Architecture and Design History and her
PhD on the design and modernisation of
London’s late-nineteenth-century public
houses was awarded by Kingston University
in 2008. She is co-editor, with colleagues
Trevor Keeble, Brenda Martin and Patricia
Lara-Betancourt, of an anthology of writings
on the modern interior, Performance, Fashion
and the Modern Interior: From the Victorians
to Today (2011). Her current research into
the British modernist architect Kenneth
Wood was supported by an AHRC Early
Career Fellowship in 2011 and 2012.
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xiii
Professor Fran Lloyd is Professor of
Art History and the Director of the Visual
and Material Culture Research Centre
at Kingston University, London. She has
published widely on contemporary visual
culture and sculpture studies. Her recent
publications include Ernst Eisenmayer: Art
Beyond Exile (Austrian Cultural Forum:
London, 2012); ‘Forging Artistic Careers
in Exile: Ernst Eisenmayer and Kurt
Weiler in 1940s Britain’ in B. Dogramaci
and K. Wimmer eds., Netzwerke des Exils,
Künstlerische Verflechtungen Austauschund
Patronage nach 1933 (Mann Verlag: Berlin,
2011); Public Sculpture of Outer South and
West London (Public Sculpture of Britain,
Volume 13) co-authors D. Thackara and
H. Potkin (Liverpool University Press,
2011); ‘Ernst Eisenmayer: A Modern Babel’,
in Forced Journeys, Artists in Exile, Ben Uri,
The London Jewish Museum of Art, 2009,
and Subtlety and Strength, The Drawings of
Dora Gordine, co-author Jonathan Black
(Philip Wilson Publishers: London, 2009).
A DAAD and Japan Foundation Research
Fellow, in 2012 she curated Ernst Eisenmayer:
Art Beyond Exile and Contemporary Japanese
Art: An Art of Intervention. She is currently
researching émigré artists in post-war Britain
and is co-leading a research project on the
Kingston School of Art, London.
Dr Rebecca Preston’s research interests
are urban landscape and domestic space in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain
with a particular focus on gardens. Her MA
in the History of Design (Royal College of
Art, 1994) and PhD in Historical Geography
(Royal Holloway, University of London,
1999) and related publications examined
the role of suburban gardens in the making
of social, national and imperial identities
from 1815 to 1940. Other publications
include ‘“Hope you will be able to recognize
us”: the representation of women and
gardens in early-twentieth-century British
domestic “real photo” postcards’, Women’s
History Review 18/5, (November 2009),
and a collection of essays edited with Jane
Hamlett and Lesley Hoskins, Residential
Institutions in Britain, 1725–1950: Inmates
& Environments (Pickering & Chatto, 2013).
In 2010–12 she was a research fellow on
the ESRC-funded project ‘At Home in the
Institution? Asylum, School and Lodging-
House Interiors in South-East England,
1845–1914’, in the History Department at
Royal Holloway. Prior to this, she was a
research fellow at the Centre for Suburban
Studies, Kingston University (2005–9). She
is an Honorary Research Associate in the
History Department, Royal Holloway and an
Associate Researcher in the Modern Interiors
Research Centre, Kingston University.
Professor Penny Sparke is a Pro-Vice
Chancellor, a Professor of Design History
and the Director of the Modern Interiors
Research Centre at Kingston University,
London. She studied at the University
of Sussex from 1967 to 1971 and completed
a PhD at Brighton Polytechnic in 1975.
She taught at Brighton Polytechnic and the
Royal College of Art (1982–99) and, between
1999 and 2004 she was Dean of the Faculty
of Art, Design & Music at Kingston
University. Her publications include
An Introduction to Design and Culture
(1986 and 2004); As Long as It’s Pink (1995);
and The Modern Interior (2008).
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4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection
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Jonathan Black
4
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4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection Previous page: Landscape (1967) by Sidney Nolan hanging in the Library at Picker House, 1970s. Courtesy of The Stanley Picker Trust.
Picker’s early collecting coincided with a
boom for contemporary art galleries opening
in London during the late 1950s and early
1960s. It is evident that he preferred to collect
from those dealers who emerged during that
very period, such as the Waddington
Galleries, the Piccadilly Galleries, the Crane
Kalman Gallery and the Whibley Gallery,
which represented artists who invariably
produced ‘well-made’ paintings with a tradi-
tional subject identifiably rendered: portraits,
figure studies, still lifes, landscapes plus a
smaller number of works on rather whimsi-
cally symbolic themes.1 He came to be
friendly and on first-name terms with leading
gallery owners and trend-setters such as
Victor Waddington, John Whibley, Andras
Kalman, Gustav Delbanco, Lillian Browse,
Godfrey Pilkington (at the Piccadilly
Gallery), Peyton Skipwith at the long-
established Fine Art Society and Gillian Jason
(then working for the firm of Campbell
and Franks).
It is noticeable that although Picker collected
some gentle examples of decorative abstrac-
tion by Terry Frost (1915–2003) in the early
1960s – such as Black,White, Red (Fig. 4.1)2 –
he displayed little interest in either the then
highly fashionable Abstract Expressionists of
the 1950s or the Pop Art which emerged early
during the following decade. What appealed
to him the most in the mid-1960s were
grittier examples of British inter-war,
Neo-Romantic Art such as L.S. Lowry
(1887–1976) (Fig. 4.2), John Minton (1917–
1957) and Jack Simcock (1929–2012)
(Fig. 4.3).3 The following decade he focussed
more on works from the later careers of
Neo-Romantics such as Graham Sutherland
Fig. 4.1. Terry Frost: Black, White, Red, 1961, oil on canvas, 91 x 152 cm (House)
Fig. 4.3. Jack Simcock: Corner Mow Cop No. 7, 1966, oil on canvas, 30 x 23 cm (House)
Fig. 4.2. L.S. Lowry: Old Steps and Church, 1965, oil on canvas, 45 x 61 cm (Gallery)
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(1903–1980) (Fig. 4.4), Ruskin Spear
(1911–1990) and Carel Weight (1908–1997)
as well as artists exploring various forms
of unsparing, pared down realism developed
during the 1950s – an approach dubbed
‘the Kitchen Sink manner’ by critic
David Sylvester in December 1954 – such
as John Bratby (1928–1992), Edward
Middleditch (1923–1987) and, later,
Anthony Amies (1945–2000) (Fig. 4.5).4
Picker also liked work from Europe that
veered in a direction of refined, restrained
Fauvist, or Cubist, abstraction by artists who
often came from a diaspora Eastern
European Russo-Polish-Jewish background
such as Marc Chagall (1887–1985), Jankel
Adler (1895–1949), Henri Hayden (1883–
1970) or Pierre Laverenne (b. 1928). He
tended to buy this sort of work for its frankly
gentle and decorative aspect for offices and
staff spaces in his Gala Factory. Some paint-
ings revealed an interest in the exotic, foreign
climes such as Israel – which is understand-
able given he was Jewish – Africa and
Australia, as well as a more unexpected pen-
chant for the symbolist or mystically Celtic.
Witness his pronounced enthusiasm in the
early 1970s for the decorous surrealism of
Arlie Panting (1914–1989) (Fig. 4.6).
There were distinct phases to his collecting:
in the early to mid-1960s he collected works
to be displayed at his flat in Bathurst Mews,
near Hyde Park and at the expanding Gala
Factory, Hook Rise, Surbiton. During the late
1960s he quickly amassed a number of
impressive works to be displayed inside his
striking new Modernist home off Kingston
Hill, which was in the process of being built
Fig. 4.4. Graham Sutherland: Poised Rock Form, 1973, oil on canvas, 100 x 96 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.5. Anthony Amies: Rain Soaked Field – Suffolk, 1978, oil on canvas, 76 x 78 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.6. Arlie Panting: Wirral Hill Pond, oil on canvas, 91 x 101 cm (House)
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Fig. X. Xxxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxx xxxx x x x xx x xxxxxxx xxx x xxx x x xxxxxx xxxx x x xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx
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4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection
office at the Gala Factory. These included
the first of four major examples of the fiercely
expressive and richly textured work of
Jack B. Yeats: The Old Coaching House (1944)
(£3,000) (Fig. 4.14).14
During the late 1960s Picker bought his first
oil by Lowry, the Manchester-born father of
the ‘Kitchen Sink manner’, from the Piccadilly
Gallery Lancashire Street Scene (1949)
(Fig. 4.16) for £500. He was encouraged to
do so by the patrician owner of the Gallery,
Godfrey Pilkington (1918–2007) who was an
early enthusiast for Lowry as well as the work
of traditionalist British contemporaries while
deeply hostile to Abstract Expressionism and
Pop Art.15
Lancashire Street Scene (also known as Street
Scene with Railway Bridge) was exhibited
inside Picker’s office until his retirement in
1976. It was then moved to Picker House.
Lowry may have fascinated Picker because he
was another outsider – not at all from a con-
ventional art school background, who had
Fig. 4.13. Milton Avery: Bedraggled Pigeon, 1961, oil on canvas, 50 x 66 cm (House)
Fig. 4.11. Stanley Picker’s Office at the Gala Factory, Surbiton c.1974 including John Milton, Children Playing Games, 1945, oil on canvas, 43 x 40 cm and Henry Hayden, Nature Morte, 1959, oil on canvas, 50 x 68 cm.Photograph by John Dobson.
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Fig. 4.14. Jack Butler Yeats: The Old Coaching House, 1944, oil on canvas, 51 x 68 cm (Gallery)
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Fig. 4.15. John Minton: North Country Industrial Town, 1945, oil on canvas, 53 x 76 cm (Gallery)
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a company’s workplace was a wise move from
a positive public relations point of view.21
In the early 1970s eight Simcock landscapes
were moved to Picker House: Corner Mow Cop
No. 7 (1966) (Fig. 4.3.), bought for £100; A
Spring Landscape (1966), oil on canvas, 30 x 23
cm, for £60; Cottage and Shrubs (1967), oil on
canvas, 30 x 23 cm, for £70; Wet Roofs (1967),
oil on canvas, 30 x 23 cm, for £70; Cottage
Gables (1967), oil on canvas, 30 x 23 cm, for
£70; the decidedly bleak and even intimidating
Head (1963) (Fig. 4.19), Shed and Tree II
(1967), oil on canvas, 45 x 71 cm, for £100;
Cottages No. 4 (1966), oil on canvas, 30 x 23
cm, for £60 (£1,500) and Cottages: Biddulph
Moor (1966) (Fig. 4.20), purchased for £60.22
Leonard Rosoman later recalled, in 1983, that
when he first visited Picker House in 1977
he had noticed a whole imposing line of
Simcocks in the library (Fig. 4.21).23 Picker,
it would seem, was always attracted by a ‘well-
made’ painting based securely on traditional
pictorial values. Simcock was an admirer of
the Camden Town Group and Sickert and of
the Fauves (especially Derain) but more spar-
ing in application of paint than the former
and lower key in colour tones than the
latter.24 Picker was fascinated by Simcock’s
almost obsessive preoccupation with the
bleaker corners of the English countryside:
wind-swept, rain-sodden – in Derbyshire,
Staffordshire, south Cheshire and Cumbria.
They present a vision of the rural far removed
Fig. 4.20. Jack Simcock: Cottages, Biddulph Moor, 1966, 30 x 23 cm (House)
Fig. 4.19. Jack Simcock: Head, 1963, oil on canvas, 30 x 45 cm (House)
Fig. 4.21. The library at the Picker House with line of works by Jack Simcock on display in 2012. © Ezzidin Alwan
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4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection
indeed from the sleek, well-ordered and
highly productive countryside of Surrey,
the country in which Picker would make
his permanent home.
The Simcocks he collected could also almost
be read as English equivalents to equally
mournful depictions of Siberian steppes by
late nineteenth-century Russian landscape
artists such as Isaac Levitan (1860–1900)
and Mikhail Nesterov (1862–1942).
Other work bought in the late 1960s and on
display inside the Gala Factory by 1971
included the late decorative Cubism of
Marcel Mouly (1918–2008), Jazz Band (1955)
(Fig. 4.22), for £250 and Tree Trunk by one of
the first artists to have the label ‘kitchen sink’
applied to his name: John Bratby for £100.25
Picker collected other artists from the
Piccadilly Gallery in the late 1960s, notably
the German-Jewish émigré to England Fred
Uhlman (1901–1985): New York Skyline
(1962) (Fig. 4.23); Welsh Landscape (1967);
The Yellow Jug and Church in Corfu, (1966)
(£40–105). Uhlman, who arrived in London
in September 1938, had championed Kurt
Schwitters while himself painting in a more
mainstream, subdued, Expressionist manner.
It is perhaps significant that Uhlman’s haunt-
ingly sombre vision of New York was quickly
displayed inside Picker House on purchase
and was hanging in Picker’s bedroom at the
time of his death. New York had been Picker’s
home-town growing up – somewhere he still
continued to visit regularly after he moved to
live in London in 1935. Uhlman hardly offers
a standard image of an impressively dynamic
New York with glamorous skyscrapers and
Fig. 4.22. Marcel Mouly: Jazz Band, 1955, oil on canvas, 94 x 53 cm (House)
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apartment blocks – rather his city is more
glowering, almost sinister, as night falls
over Manhattan.
Meanwhile, in the late 1960s, Picker displayed
keen interest in figurative painting, in the
spring of 1969, for example, he bought Peter
Unsworth’s Kneeling Figure (1963), oil on
canvas, 30 x 91 cm for £250 and Portrait
(£150) from the Piccadilly Gallery – while the
Whibley Gallery, a relatively new contact, also
supplied him in April 1969 with the languidly
evocative Man on the Yellow Beach (Fig. 4.24)
by the émigré artist Alfred Rozelaar Green
(b. 1917), who shuttled between London
and Paris, which he bought for £195 (£4,800
today).26 This work was hanging over Picker’s
bed at the time of his death in 1982.27
As his new home was completed in 1968,
Picker’s purchases of work he intended to
exhibit there accelerated. These included
paintings by leading up-and-coming artists
working in a broadly traditional manner
Fig. 4.23. Fred Uhlman: New York Skyline, 1962, 84 x 53 cm (House)
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such as a portrait of the handsome
Christopher Gibbs (1968–69), oil on canvas,
101 x 152 cm, valued at £250 and a land-
scape depicting Mount Fuji (1968–69),
watercolour, 99 x 63 cm, valued at £350 by
Patrick Procktor (1936–2003) – purchased
from the Redfern Gallery.28 This was
balanced by judicious purchases of fine
examples by much more established artists
such as: Ivon Hitchins, Aada and Arindal,
The Answer (1968) (Fig. 4.25), oil on canvas,
86 x 139 cm, for £2,000. This was a particu-
lar favourite of his and for several years
hung in his bedroom – before it was moved
to the new purpose built Gallery in 1977.
Then there were new enthusiasms such as
the London-based Polish-Jewish émigré
Zdzislaw Ruszkowski (1907–1991): Nude in
the Studio (1967) (Fig. 4.26), for £375 –
Picker would later arrange to meet this artist
who recalled his appealing ‘curiosity and
enthusiasm’;29 two bleakly atmospheric
evocations of the outback by the Australian
master Sir Sidney Nolan (1917–1992),
Landscape (1968) (see chapter opener), oil on
canvas, 122 x 122 cm, for £2,000 and
Landscape (1967), oil on canvas, 50 x 76 cm,
for £800;30 and the major American modern-
ist Alexander Calder (1898–1978), friend of
Joan Miro and Duchamp: Alphabet et Curtout
O (c.1972) (Fig. 4.27), lithograph (18/90),
for £150 and La Matraque Rouge (c.1972),
lithograph (62/90), 55 x 76 cm, for £150.31
Fittingly, shortly thereafter Picker bought
Miro’s delicate etching and aquatint
La Prophete Encircle (1963) (Fig. 4.28), for
£300 to be displayed at Picker House along-
side one of the Calder prints; it intrigued him
to see how the two works ‘resonated’ between
Fig. 4.25. Ivon Hitchins: Aada and Arindel, The Answer, 1968, 86 x 139 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.24. Alfred Rozelaar Green: Man on the Yellow Beach, 1968, 91 x 63 cm (House)
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each other.32 In the autumn of 1971 Picker
began collecting the quasi-mystical imagery
of the American-born Surrealist Arlie
Panting from the John Whibley Gallery to
hang at Picker House, such as: The Lair
(1969), oil on canvas, 91 x 76 cm, for £220;
Man on Horse, £125 and Vacillation (1970),
£125.33 Three years later, in June 1974, he
bought two more Pantings from the Whibley
Gallery: Weaving Time (1970) (Fig. 4.29), for
£220 and Wirral Hill Pond (1973) (Fig. 4.7),
for £325.34
There was evidently something about
Panting’s attitude towards art which greatly
appealed to Picker. He carefully preserved
among his papers the following statement
the artist made in 1974:
The starting point of a picture is an idea.
There is a conflict between the original
idea which is the right one, the one in the
painter’s mind, and the variable world of
the subject, the motif which prompted the
first inspiration. I paint alone in my
studio, therefore all the scenes are imagi-
nary, based on observation of the past and
later checked with some of the objects and
places used.35
Panting described one of his paintings which
had caught Picker’s eye in 1974 in the follow-
ing terms:
Wirral (Weary-all) Hill Pond (1973) …
Wirral is one of the three hills on the Isle
Fig. 4.27. Alexander Calder: Alphabet et Curtout O, 1972, 55 x 76 cm (House)
Fig. 4.26. Zdzislaw Ruszkowski: Nude in the Studio, 1967, 101 x 101 cm (House)
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of Glastonbury.36 The Celts called it the
Hill of the bog-myrtle meadow and their
word ‘glas’ meant blue or mirror. The two
figures by the pond represent humanity
and its integral relationship with Nature
and its environment. John Cowper Powys,
whose books suggested this [and
Blodeuwedd in Folly Wood, 1973],
believed that all things retained a con-
sciousness of things past which influence
the present, therefore man must not lose
contact with Nature or continue with his
desire to destroy it.37
Alongside these almost ‘hippyish’ New Age
Pantings, very much in accord with a late
1960s vogue for Celtic mysticism and
Arthurian legend,38 Picker was also buying
examples of landscapes offering a more
conventional vision, depicted in dense post-
Fauvist colour, such as Waves Advancing on
Barrier Rock by the Anglo-Dutch painter
Albert Houthuesen (1903–1979), (1971),
acrylic, 71 x 91 cm, for £900, from the pres-
tigious Mercury Gallery in Cork Street in
October 1971.39 He was equally attracted
Fig. 4.28. Joan Miro: Le Prophete Encercle, 1965, aquatint, 58 x 63 cm (House)
Fig. 4.29. Arlie Panting: Weaving Time, 1970, oil on canvas, 61 x 76 cm (House)
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of Art: The Burning Ship (1976) (Fig. 4.38),
oil (for £450).61
On acquisition Picker wrote to the artist
that he was ‘very much looking forward’ to
seeing the work in his new gallery and he
was conscious of filling a gap in his collec-
tion which had been ‘troubling’ him.62
From the same exhibition at the Royal
Academy Picker also purchased a monu-
mentally compelling portrait of a craggily
ageing, yet benevolent, LS Lowry (Fig.
4.39) by Weight’s close friend, Ruskin
Spear, who also had ties to the pre-war
Euston Road School of revived realism
which Picker found so appealing.63 The
portrait, for him, would complement those
works by Lowry he already owned. Indeed,
from the outset, he planned to exhibit it in
the Gallery alongside one of his Lowrys –
possibly Street Scene with Railway Bridge.64
He wrote to Spear that he was: ‘very
delighted to be able to acquire your paint-
ing of Lowry as I have several of his paint-
ings and they are going into a new Gallery
[which] is being built. I was looking for-
ward to hanging your painting of the artist
next to his work which I think will
be interesting.’65
During the late spring of 1976 Picker
proceeded to buy a whole series of distin-
guished works from the Royal Academy’s
Summer Exhibition by other members
of the Weight-Spear circle such as Guy
the Gorilla by John Bratby (for £400)
(Fig. 4.40).66 On this occasion Picker went
out of his way to try to find out from the
artist more information concerning the
back-story of the painting he had just
bought. After a little prodding Bratby
replied early in June 1976: ‘I painted a
number of paintings of Guy the Gorilla as
a result of an introduction to the Zoo by a
close friend of mine, Professor William Jolly
who is an accomplished and prolific author.
The activity of painting Guy received a con-
siderable amount of publicity in the press
which you may or may not have seen …
The painting you are purchasing was the
first one and would not have been entered in
to this year’s Royal Academy if it had not
been for repeated persuasions of the Sunday
Times writer, a Mr Michael Moynihan.’67
Fig. 4.37. Sir Matthew Smith: Still Life: Bowel of Flowers and Peaches, 1932, 45 x 54 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.36. Leonard Rosoman: Figures on a Steep Street, 1977, oil on canvas, 76 x 101 cm (Gallery)
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Fig. 4.38. Carel Weight: The Burning Ship, 1976, oil on canvas, 101 x 127 cm (Gallery)
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Also from the Summer Exhibition he
purchased the sensitive and spare
landscape Potato Harvest, Cumberland III
by Sheila Fell (1931–1979) (for £540)
(Fig. 4.41) – who had come to Picker’s
attention as one of Lowry’s most gifted
protégés during the late 1960s68 – Field
– Suffolk by Anthony Amies (for £187);
a virtuoso example of traditional
draughtsmanship by Patrick Symons
(1925–1993) Practising Cellist, charcoal
on paper (for £450)69 and an evocative
‘urban landscape’ Autumn Elm Park
Gardens (Fig. 4.42) by Frederick Gore
(1913–2009), then Professor of Painting at
St. Martin’s School of Art (for £375).
Picker found the richness of Gore’s colour
and the high technical skill with which he
had applied his paint appealing – and also
for ‘humanising’ the obviously
unforgiving architecture partially
obscured by the trees.70
Picker was evidently much interested in
attempts by contemporary artists to revive,
or update, the pastoral tradition in landscape
painting as towards the end of 1976 he
bought Iden Green Pastoral (Fig. 4.43), oil on
canvas, from Roland, Browse & Delbanco
(for £650) by the Latvian-Jewish-American
artist Alfred Cohen (1920–2001) whose rich
colour is indebted to the Fauves and particu-
larly to Chagall, while the title of this canvas
references an area closely associated with the
Fig. 4.39. Ruskin Spear: Portrait of L.S. Lowry, 1976, oil on canvas, 122 x 99 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.40. John Bratby: Guy The Gorilla, 1976, oil on canvas, 50 x 76 cm (Gallery)
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4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection
symbolic landscapes of Paul Nash.71 It would
appear that Picker had initially contacted the
firm in search of a landscape by Cohen on the
recommendation of German-Jewish émigré
Gustav Delbanco (1903–1997).72 The
London-based American actor-director Sam
Wanamaker was also interested in buying this
particular painting.73
The following year Picker continued to pur-
chase expansively, as before focussing on art-
ists who had first attracted critical approval
in the 1940s and 1950s ranging from a mildly
surreal and naive Self-Portrait (1976) by
Julian Trevelyan (1910–1988) for £900 which
he chanced upon one rainy afternoon in
March 1977 at the New Grafton Gallery in
Barnes74 to the sensuously Fauve-inspired oil
Bathing Girl Undressing (1976) (Fig. 4.44) by
the London-based Polish émigré Zdzislaw
Ruskowski, who had arrived in the UK
penniless in the early 1940s, which he bought
for £560 from Campbell & Franks in May
1977. In fact he had originally wanted to buy
another work by this ‘splendid artist’ from
the Gallery and Bathing Girl Undressing had
proved a fortunate and ‘lovely’ substitution.75
Picker further consoled himself with the
prospect of meeting the artist in his Chalk
Farm studio and with buying a serene yet
austere Italian Girl by the Polish-Jewish
émigré to the UK Josef Herman (1911–2000)
for £1,000 – fittingly a close friend of Jankel
Adler and Alfred Cohen.76
Later in 1977 he bought one of the finest
and most haunting landscapes in his collec-
tion: Poised Rock Form (1973) (Fig. 4.4),
inspired by the harsh terrain of West
Pembrokeshire, richly coloured, mysterious,
illusive and just a little sinister and painted by
the great Neo-Romantic painter Graham
Fig. 4.43. Alfred Cohen: Iden Green Pastoral, 1976, oil on canvas, 81 x 101 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.41. Sheila Fell: Potato Harvest, Cumberland III, 1976, oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.42. Frederick Gore: Autumn, Elm Park Gardens, 1976, oil on canvas, 76 x 101 cm (Gallery)
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Fig. 4.46. Alexander Calder: Red and Blue Nails with Yellow Cone, 1965, gouache, 54 x 75 cm (Gallery)
Fig. 4.45. Edward Middleditch: Pond in Dorset, 1977, charcoal and thinned oil on paper, 43 x 54 cm (Gallery)
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4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection
arrived in London. Picker admired the
Fauves of the early years of the twentieth
century, especially Matisse and Derain, just
as much as Fitton but neither could really
afford to buy Fauvist paintings. However,
both could look and admire the Fauves, and
Picker at least could afford to buy Fitton
Looking at Les Fauves while also assiduously
and intelligently collecting works by British
artists, such as Weight, Spear, Rosoman,
Yeats, Gore, Procktor, Amies and Bratby as
well as by émigré artists based in Britain
such as Adler, Herman and Ruszkowski who
freely admitted their reverence for the
Fauves. As it transpired, Fitton was all too
aware of his poor health when he painted
Looking at Les Fauves and, perhaps, some
intimation of mortality’s imminent cessa-
tion is evident in his face. Indeed, Fitton
would die only a few days before the new
owner of the painting in May 1982.85
After Picker’s death Rosoman wrote that he
had manifestly placed ‘an emphasis on
colour’ in his collection as well as collecting
work which had only recently been created
– if ‘ordinary people’ visited the gallery they
could gain an insight into ‘what living art-
ists are doing now’. Moreover one could not
help but leave his gallery ‘knowing that one
has seen a fascinating, very personal, exam-
ple of a collector’s choice and a fair cross-
section of British painting and sculpture’.86
Fig. 4.47. James Fitton: Looking at Les Fauves, 1981, oil on canvas, 58 x 50 cm (Gallery)
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