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CH in Art

Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:57 pm
by rockfreak
Checking out the website for the "Impressionists in London" exhibition which has just opened at Tate Britain, I note that it includes a painting by James Tissot called "London Visitors" which depicts some important looking members of the bourgeoisie plus a couple of Housey boys. Do CH pupils crop up in any other works of art, I wonder?
I'm currently undergoing surgery for a superficial skin cancer on the cheek which, if it doesn't work out, may result in a facial nerve being affected and causing one side of my face to drop. If JR has another turn and suffers another droop of the old fizog, will we both resemble paintings by Francis Bacon?

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 6:11 am
by Foureyes
CH in art?
Yes. Check with the Museum.
David :shock:

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 9:22 am
by JohnAL
Someone who deserves a lot of attention in this thread is Benedict Rubbra, an OB and excellent portraitist. Several well known CH personalities have sat for him.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 11:14 am
by Mid A 15
rockfreak wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:57 pm Checking out the website for the "Impressionists in London" exhibition which has just opened at Tate Britain, I note that it includes a painting by James Tissot called "London Visitors" which depicts some important looking members of the bourgeoisie plus a couple of Housey boys. Do CH pupils crop up in any other works of art, I wonder?
I'm currently undergoing surgery for a superficial skin cancer on the cheek which, if it doesn't work out, may result in a facial nerve being affected and causing one side of my face to drop. If JR has another turn and suffers another droop of the old fizog, will we both resemble paintings by Francis Bacon?
Sorry to read of your health problem David. I hope all goes well with the surgery.

In answer to your question there is a painting of the composer Constant Lambert here:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=const ... tZb7VEyECM:

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 1:11 pm
by J.R.
rockfreak wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:57 pm Checking out the website for the "Impressionists in London" exhibition which has just opened at Tate Britain, I note that it includes a painting by James Tissot called "London Visitors" which depicts some important looking members of the bourgeoisie plus a couple of Housey boys. Do CH pupils crop up in any other works of art, I wonder?
I'm currently undergoing surgery for a superficial skin cancer on the cheek which, if it doesn't work out, may result in a facial nerve being affected and causing one side of my face to drop. If JR has another turn and suffers another droop of the old fizog, will we both resemble paintings by Francis Bacon?
Thanks for the thought, Freaky but I don't intend another stroke.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 9:09 pm
by rockfreak
I was at CH at the same time as Ben Rubbra and Conrad Clark and often wondered what they went on to do. The pictures of Lambert on the link are interesting, and I note his son Kit there in tandem with Chris Stamp. I met the pair of them while working on the music press in the sixties. They managed the Who and their Track label produced The Who, Hendrix and Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Constant Lambert's "Music Ho" book is a respected critique of 20th century classical music, although I seem to remember that he is considered to have rather underestimated Stravinsky. Interestingly, writing early in the century, he makes much of the real authentic delta blues while denigrating the sweet, imitative dance band music of popular stars like Paul Whiteman. There can't have been many middle-class white musicologists around at the time who had knowledge of the early blues music, radio programming in the UK being what it was.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 4:13 pm
by michael scuffil
Re the painting by Tissot, it's quite well known, but I can't imagine anything less Impressionist. But I'm told this goes for much of the exhibition.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 7:03 pm
by postwarblue
Ackermann's 'Microcosm of London' 1808, has a plate showing CH on St Matthew's Day with the Verrio running all along the rhs and the bag-wigged, black-gowned staff beneath it, the haut ton on the lhs and two Grecians orating with the Head, Trollope, behind them and hoi polloi (?parents) in the far distance. For this series the buildings were drawn by Pugin and populated by Rowlandson. My King Penguin reprint of 1943 has rather poor colour reproduction but then there was a war on.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2017 8:22 pm
by keibat
I actually have a painting by Conrad Clark, which I bought off him as a Christmas present for my mum, and have now inherited. 'Fish ghosts': two spiky fishes with their skeletons showing, swimming in opposite directions, on a generous backing of swirling blue paint. – This brings back good memories of hanging out at the Art School with Nell Todd. – There's an artist called Conrad Clark in Australia, UK-origin, son of the composer Elisabeth Lutyens – is this the same guy? It seems plausible. I have no recollection of his background, but if so, there's an interesting twist in him having been at CH alongside Benedict Rubbra, son of the composer Edmund Rubbra. That I *did* know, and I like some of Rubbra père's choral music. Tried to buy a recording of his Mass in honorem Sancti Dominici a couple of years ago and ended up with a totally appalling quality item, the only one I could track down. Agree about the high quality of Ben Rubbra's portrait work, tho I've only seen it online.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 11:26 am
by michael scuffil
Conrad Clark was a near contemporary of mine in ThB (two years older), and we were quite good friends for a while. He was certainly, by CH standards, very eccentric. He had a copy of Lord of the Rings almost immediately it was first published (you have to remember that in its early days, this was very much a cult book, and not widely known). He was a communist, and also an atheist, and made both facts well-known. On one occasion, some pious person found his copy of the Bible lying around the dayroom, in which CC had inscribed quotations from various well-known unbelievers plus a few blasphemous comments of his own. Said pious person took the Bible along to John Page the housemaster, who was probably equally shocked, but wise enough to do nothing.

I had not heard that he was the son of Elizabeth Lutyens (and hence grandson of the great Sir Edwin). She was the second wife of the conductor Edward Clark (whose first wife was extremely disreputable, a sidekick of Lord Haw-Haw in Germany during the war, but that was long after their divorce). It surprises me a little that Elizabeth and Edward would have been 'in need of assistance' in the CH sense, but I suppose in the postwar years many people were. In any case, this CC was born in 1941, as was the above CC, and the picture of him on his website could well be the same person.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 7:46 pm
by rockfreak
Michael, I can think of one housemaster of my acquaintance who wouldn't have been so relaxed about sacrilegious comments in the Bible. How times have moved on in half a century. When we were at CH religion and the royal family were pretty much off limits. I do wonder how much those radio phone-ins (Nicky Campbell's Radio-5 Breakfast Show for instance) have facilitated vox pop. It seems like another world now. Paradoxically, we have more freedom of speech now but it seems harder to change things in favour of the people and away from powerful vested interests.

Re: CH in Art

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 9:15 pm
by rockfreak
I was in Col B with Tony Ray-Jones who has already had retrospective exhibitions but is about to be featured in another showing titled "The Great British Seaside" in which the works of he and other social documentary photographers illustrate the British working class at play from 1963 onwards. This one is at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich from 23 March. Watch out for lots of fat pimply white flesh and knotted handkerchiefs over heads. Tony (or Harry as he was known to his friends at CH) hated CH and died tragically young. Britain was on the cusp of change at this point. The sixties were rumbling. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. Well in London anyway. Took a bit longer to filter out elsewhere. The knotted handkerchiefs were stubbornly worn for some years - and were later satirised by Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols.