JOHN PIPER was one of the most diverse and best-loved of English Modern artists. In retrospect, he can be regarded in many ways as a bundle of contradictions, being simultaneously an old-fashioned romantic and an antiquarian with a penchant for the Ballets Russes and avant-garde French painting. The fact that he was able to meld his diverse tastes and interests into a single, albeit multi-faceted, aesthetic is a lasting tribute to his energy and vision and places him as one of the great British polymaths of the 20th century.
As a direct result of his eldest brother being killed in the second battle of Ypres in 1915, Piper was obliged, despite his wish to go to art school, to fill his brother’s place and join the family law firm. This was a career for which he was singularly unsuited and his failure to pass the Law Society’s examination created an impasse that was only resolved by his father’s death in March 1927. Once released from the office, he applied to the Royal College of Art, but was diverted to Richmond School of Art for a year to improve his life-drawing skills, before he could be admitted.
Having finally achieved entry to the Royal College, he only remained for four terms, as his insistence on marrying Eileen Holding, a fellow student from Richmond, was in contravention of its rules. Thus, in his late twenties and without formal qualifications, he launched on his professional career, supplementing his income with journalism, a practice he kept up throughout his life.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 08, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
