The Picker House and Collection: A Late 1960s Home for Art and Design

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 Based on previously unpublished material and photographs, this heavily illustrated publication brings together leading researchers in their respective fi elds who chart the history of the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


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.


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).


102

4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection

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4 The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing CollectionThe Picker House and Collection The Picker House Painting, Print and Drawing Collection

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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107

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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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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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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125


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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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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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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The Picker House and Collection: A Late 1960s Home for Art and Design

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