Should The Herbert Tyson Smith Sculpture Yard Come Back To The Bluecoat School Lane Liverpool?

I went to a event at the Bluecoat as part of the national Heritage Open Days that happens annually in September.

It was a conversation with Brian Biggs and James McLaughlin who had worked with the great man, starting as an apprentice.

Sun 14 Sep

2 - 3pm Herbert Tyson Smith
The Bluecoat’s Artistic Director, Bryan Biggs, in conversation with James McLaughlin, who was apprenticed to Tyson Smith, the eminent Liverpool sculptor who had a studio at the Bluecoat and was involved in establishing the building an arts centre. (The talk takes place in what was his original studio, entrance in College Lane)

http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/2304

James is deaf and dumb and his son Matt did a great job of putting his thoughts into words.

At one point he was explaining about how Herbert and Jeffrey, his brother would argue all the time and often come to blows. There is passion in that there sculpture.

I did not know he had a brother and hope I have got the interpretation correct, because it is as if he did not exist, Herbert taking all the plaudits for the work.
Possibly on purpose if they were that much at loggerheads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Tyson_Smith

It seems easier to ask the reader to look down Wikipedia than me listing Tyson Smiths sterling work.

I let the small group who attended have their questions and then I first needed to make a comment and then a question to all.

I had fought a battle trying to get a separate listing within the Bluecoat general heritage listing and was not successful.
Herbert Tyson Smiths Sculpture Studio was left in a wonderful state of preservation.
Lots of his original work was on display moulds and tools etc. Any other city would have seen its potential. I accused the directors of the Bluecoat of being foolish I letting it go.

“We did not have the resourses” Brian Biggs said

“You had 14 million quid” I said

“Yes but that was for capital resourses”

“So you knock it down and get a shop in selling cheap Indonesian and Chinese rubbish instead”

He went on with a load of excuses leaving me in no doubt the reason why we lost another piece of Liverpool heritage that could have helped to promote our city to the millions of tourists who come here.
The people voted with their feet and the bargain bin shop is now closed and the place is empty.........a perfect opportunity. I said, which seemed to go down well, with all but Brian.

The page isn't long enough to list the excuses he gave even quoting to me the difficulties in getting some historical context back.
He started talking about the Edward Chambre Hardman archive, and the difficulties in getting that up and running.

This was a mistake as I told him in no uncertain terms that when I got involved in that quest I heard all the same negative stuff from a bunch of washed up trustees that had been there far too long.
They wanted to send the archive to Bradford!!!!!!

In the end we, campaigners created such a fuss that the trustees had to bow to public opinion and the national Trust stepped in.
I am so proud of the role I played as the Chairman of "The Friends of Chambre Hardman."
This sort of commitment may be required again.

It got me annoyed, what an opportunity missed.
You at the Bluecoat spend far too much time trying to make money on weddings.
I had proclaimed, there is a lot who agree.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/i-had-owner-of-business-in-bluecoat-in.html

The Bluecoat, the grand old lady of Liverpool seen the blitz, being rebuilt, used to be a wonderful artistic creative hub with a cafe and now has become a cafe with a exhibition room. I have not seen a decent expo for years there, now. What has happened to the place.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/james-mcneill-whistler-and-peacock-room.html

So they destroy the intact studio and then probably farm a grant off the arts council, or some of the public body to hold a talk, about Herbert Tyson Smith, remembering him in the place that Mr Biggs and co destroyed.
You couldn't make it up.

I apologised to both James and Matt for my strong views on what was to be a pleasant Sunday afternoon in conversation and many of the people there, some of whom rescued works from the Bluecoat directors act of vandalism in 2008, when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture.
All including James and Matt said it would be a wonderful idea.
Well all, but poor old scorned, Brian Biggs who sat there with a face like a singed cat.

 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/herbert-tyson-smith-bronze-piece-of-week.html

Some fresh blood needs to be brought in before they do anymore damage.

Bring back Herbert Tyson Smith to the Bluecoat.

Antiques Roadshow-What An Amazing Experience Filming In Lutyens Crypt.

I had been invited on to the show to talk about the etched glass door panels by Hector Whistler that were originally fitted in the doors in the foyer of The Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street.

They were filming in Lutyens Crypt of the Catholic Cathedral.

Watch A Video Here

Fiona Bruce as usual, had a crowd around her, as she was filmed talking about the most amazing door to a tomb, the circular revolving door that is made of stone, the idea is everything, symbolic of the stone said to have closed the Tomb of Christ.
Lutyens took the idea and made it work.

The panels looked great up there on the stage where I recall playing clarinet on Terry Riley's “In C” with ApaT orchestra in almost the same place.

It was an early start and all the usual celeb antique appraisers were there.

Seasoned veteran and AR legend Eric Knowles came over to say Hello saying he couldn't do the filming of them because we know each other.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mj2y

20^th century specialist Will Farmer was assigned the task of talking about them, jokingly I said to him stopping me may be a job once I get going.

As it happened it went along extremely professionally and I think it will come over really well.

I could have sold them ages ago but I have been waiting for the right buyer who will show them off

Yes I know, how the Philharmonic let them go is a mystery to me too.

It was such a pleasure to be part of such a amazing team of people right down to the volunteers who helped people arrive and made the day a pleasant experience. 

It was wonderful all the experts were down to earth and helpful.

I had no greasy palms or nerves, it was a great opportunity to talk about Liverpool's great history.

Being part of something that inspired me to become an antique dealer is fantastic and helping to promote a piece of heritage.

I hung around as long as I could absorbing the atmosphere from the set.

This is a programme that I have watched since a child the very beginnings of my journey must have been started as long ago by the amazing descriptions from Arthur Negus.

Read More Here

I hope they were happy with my appearance as it was a honour to have been allowed to be part of it.

 I loved it.  I hope I can do it again.

Update:28th February 2019......I joined The Antiques Roadshow Team very shortly after and am looking forward to a new season filming. Please click the link below for more information about the team and the show.
I am proud to be a BBC Antiques Roadshow specialist.

Dead Mans Penny-Edward Carter Preston.

Edward Carter Preston-The Unsung Craftsman

Mention the name.........and most people will have no knowledge of a man whose sculpture was commissioned on such a monumental scale. He entered a competition with 800 other submissions for which he received £250. The chosen design for the Death Penny, is called Pyramus

Maybe its because most of Carter Preston's work was for memorials and testaments to others, that his work has never been fully investigated.

Or it could be that his memento-mori's were of such heart rendering, that the public conception of death, and the glorious nature of conflict at the time, meant that they did not want to know the names of the people who recollected the memories of those glorious dead. There were so many grieving memories at a time when people wished to forget the horror of the carnage of World war I.

The perceived idea of art was to think of the classics as work passed down from an other age. To us.

Preferring to think that it was the work of an ancient age. Of Greek hero's, or Roman myths brought up to modern times. Death is all the same. But perhaps the classical style was why he, and many other unsung, hard working sculptors were so successful. People needed dignity, they had lost a lot.

That he gave, through his work, the dignity of death, to people, in treacherous times, and reinvented it on behalf of the top brass, the heavy establishment, those that cloaked the war, in glory, and gave reasons with which to justify the mass slaughter of a nations sons.

A justification.

The conflict that gave way to killing on a scale of mass production , that also gave us mass produced weapons of destruction, of a whole generations soul.

We wanted to mythologise the way those brave hero's went to the deaths.

Many without a wish to understand more than the basic of human instincts of self defence and proud nationhood, that would later be lost in a muddy field in a distant land.

What other cause can create the image of an old General saying “Your Country needs You”.

And they believed him. Maybe it would not happen today. The masses wouldn't let them get there. History would of course, in hindsight immortalise all those who who would not give way, and fight to the tyranny. That would defend their minds image of freedom.

These were the creation of the scarred generation that went on to create the horrors of World War II. But during the first World War they sang songs of freedom and home while being led to their deaths, on both sides, by the hands of Queen Victoria's privileged, but deadly offspring.

Who clung on to childish playground games, now played out with deadly consequences, for their subjects, that they sent over the top.

Gone were the lead soldiers, replaced by real flesh and blood, that tore.

Those in power counted a war in terms of how many more of the other side that you killed rather than the endgames. Those deadly games of starvation, and in the killing of civilians, many of who had had the fateful postman's knock themselves.

Just as many would die of broken hearts.

Could civilisation invent such a hatred for each other with a pretence of glory without even looking at the reasoning of why so much was wrong.

Or that the very Monarchs whose honour that they were upholding were the very cause of the disaster in the first place. They were the laughing assassins of war.

The faces that led the march. These tin pot dictators who had no concept of peasant life.

Just before the conflict began. The Tsar was seen to have gone out to a ball, the very night that hundreds of his subjects had been trampled in a stampede for images of him and the Tsarina....Did he really care about them?

So should they fight for him. For a time at least, they would. Before the Revolution.

Queen Victoria who gave birth to most of the ignorant spoilt fools, who were married off to congeal the Empires prowess. This small group of in-breeds spawned the generation of monarchs who sent us all of to war.

It really is a long way to Tipperary and most of them never would come back.

Paul Nash recorded the slaughter, with his, at times pretty emotionless depictions of bomb craters. And planes, that for me don't really show the true horrors of war.

I was at a local auction when a lithograph by Paul Nash of Hill 60 crater 11, made £23,000, for me it lacked the attachment, it just looks like a hole.

 It also lacked attachment for the pathetic Runcorn Auction Centre who valued it at £300. 

Nash was there, but it is shame, that his stylised depictions get all the credits, with retrospective exhibitions and epilogues, from the likes of Alastair Cook of the BBC, the next in the long line of peddlers of myths, they are the new establishment. The BBC.

So what we get from the establishment is an upgraded story from a new commentator who is too scared to go against the grain of the, said establishment, to say that the likes of Paul Nash is someone who couldn't really look, for fear because he was too scared himself.

That he did not record the true horrors, is true, because it is un-recordable.

I once found a Death Penny in a house that I was renovating when I was quite young. I did not know what it was then. But I kept it for a while until a military dealer spelt out the meaning to me. I recall admiring its detail but felt humbled, by its presence.

It was only worth about £30 at the time, there were a lot of them around.

It was not for a general or a Colonel, although there was no mention of rank, on the bronze plaques as there was no distinction to be made of the sacrifice of individuals.

They are frequently traded.

A few years later when I had learnt more about the facts that led to the deaths of so many across Europe. The same war would even bring in Americans, Canadians and Australians, it really was a World War.

And so what of the man whose initials E.Cr.P were cast into the bronze roundels that where sent to the next of kin.

The Death Penny is 5inches (120mm) across cast in bronze by the memorial factory of Acton road London. With its brave lion walking with Britannia holding a trident in the centre, as a depiction of the strong and noble British spirit. In her other hand she has a oak wreath just above the tablet that would bear the deceased name. Two dolphins swim around Britannia, symbolising Britain's sea power, and at the bottom a second lion is tearing apart the German eagle. The reverse is blank.

He didn't show the donkey symbolising those that drove the brave soldiers to death, for it would not have been right to pour scorn on all those that never returned from the fight for King and Country.

He just give it to them straight. As they would have wished, as they deserved .

He would have been proud to have been commissioned.

And he should be rewarded for it. For without the approach of dignified sculptors such as Edward Carter Preston, who knew their trade and did it well, we would not have been able to remember the many. And as bronze lasts it is now possible to look back into the individual stories behind the lives of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. The lives of the Lords and the labourer were to both be remembered equally.

They made that sacrifice hoping it would give us our freedom.

What price a Dead Mans Penny............Immortality.

Edward Carter-Preston was related to Herbert Tyson Smith.http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/herbert-tyson-smith-bronze-piece-of-week.html

I was one of the last people to see the culmination of the collection of her fathers work by Julia Carter Preston at her house in Canning Street here in Liverpool. The whole of hers and her fathers work and their memories too, went off to Hope University, to probably be lost for now.

We need an exhibition of his work a retrospective he was a very clever, and dignified man who does not get enough recognition, in my opinion.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/julia-carter-sgraffito-presto-plate.html

What Price? Art

A businessman recently sat in my shop asking, well, in roundabout way, why money does not seem to motivate me, maybe in the way it does him.

“There seems more to life to me, than money” I said “Art is important to me and the monetary value can become clouded or even secondary sometimes”

He pressed a bit further, his real reason though, was to find out how I tick, he had ideas about making money from me, by supplying funds, that we could share. This line of conversation was not insulting, far from it, it gave me the opportunity to explore my own thoughts and maybe understand his.

“By surrounding yourself with interests that mean something to you, there is a part of you that gets fulfilment and enlightenment, that slightly diminishes the need for cash” I said this knowing that money is very important and all things have a price. I also know that other things can not be bought.

“I deal in art and that allows me to enact other things, the job gives me a freedom, to explore, my music and study and in the studious times I also try to understand architecture. I am an artist and a potter from time to time, more keeping my hand in than creating, building up skills that may be of spherical use to me in the future” He did not look impressed, maybe he was not understanding, I thought, or does not care what I am saying because as I no longer understand his motivation to swerve people into his domain, so he may profit from their endeavours. He will not understand mine.

“Here is some of my artwork,” I said reaching over for some life drawings I had recently completed. I do these in about 10 minutes, I consider them a good staring point and show a level of understanding to go on I may use this one, of which I am proud as an oil study”

He looked at them without any observation and said quite flippantly, “Do you sell them Wayne”

“No not really”

“So how much would you sell that one for”, pushing further “How much is it worth?” He asked directly.

“Probably about a hundred an thirty”

“What for five minutes work” he asked cheekily

“Its not the time it is the level of experience, it takes a long time to get to that stage, do do the work at such a brisk pace, so its not the five minutes work, but the culmination of skills acquired and the emotion that you put into your work that counts.”

He looked and curled his lip up at one pencil sketch, that I know to be good.

“Didnt you just proclaim proudly that you own some Lowry sketches”

“Yes, he said, I payed”.... Here I interrupt him abruptly.

“So you value a Lowry sketch in several thousands, that's very interesting indeed, as think I could knock one of them out in, about.......... three minutes.”

He didn't reply.

Sometimes an encounter with such an unenlightened individual makes you think.

Think about who are those that know the cost of everything....and the value of nothing.

James McNeill Whistler and The Peacock Room-Liverpool Biennial 2014

I trundled over to the Bluecoat in School Lane on a bright sunny afternoon, to sit in a darkened room with the sole purpose of attending the talk by Magaret MacDonald of the Department of Art History of Glasgow. Part of the Liverpool Biennial which is strangely entitled.
A Needle Walks Into A Haystack.

There is a school of thought that trying to find art in the Liverpool Biennial may be like finding a needle in a haystack, but I don't subscribe to that, do I? 

http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/blog/view/who-is-blogging/154

The talk was wonderfully illustrated by slides and I found it most informative. 

The speaker was well read and the talk was well worth attending.

I do think the link to Liverpool is very bizarre though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Abbott_McNeill_Whistler

I had been asked if I could provide some Chaise Lounge's or sofa's of the period of the expo so that people could sit down while viewing.

 They said the budget was zero so I declined, thinking why would I wish to have hundreds of people sitting on my couch, ruining it, that I would need to sell, when they at the Liverpool Biennial pay a fortune for some Johnny Foreigner to paint a Dazzle Ship in a Rasta design.

Frederick R Leyland was a Liverpool shipping magnate and the Peacock Room was erected in London?.........this link does not quite work for me.

It is as if they had an exhibition already done, and The Biennial was a bit strapped for cash so they somehow shoehorned it in.

Whistler spent a lot of time in Paris from 1858 having been thrown out of Westpoint and had various unsuccessful jobs, where he discovered the work of Valazquez. 

Whistler along with Henry Fantin Latour, it was said where on the Road to Holland, because they were followers of Rembrandt. http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/james-abbott-mcneill-whistler

He moved to Greenwich before moving more upmarket to Chelsea. 

Liverpool Library holds a “Thames Set” of 1862 depicting his studies of the river and its characters.

Some of his paintings caused a bug fuss. 

The White Girl was called a Symphonie de Blanc by Paul Mantz and was exhibited alongside Manet in 1863.

White Girl No 2 was painted in 1864 and clearly shows the lady carrying a fan by Hiroshige showing a work known as The Banks of Sumida River.

La Princesse de la pays de la Porcelaine was bought by Leyland and was exhibited in a room designed by Thomas Jekyll.

This room was altered by Whistler and Leyland hit the roof when he saw it.

Whistler was a bad gun runner as the Civil War raged in his home of America. 

He returned to painting. The morning after the revolution Valparaiso was painted 1866.

Nocturne in Blue and Gold was produced and in 1872 he seemed to have a major breakthrough in his style.

He painted a portrait of Ms Leyland and a possible sketch of Speke Hall, Liverpool, though in reverse, as an etching is printed reverso. 

The speaker did not say how long he spent in Liverpool or at all if he actually visited.

He exhibited at The Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 and his work was criticised by Ruskin. Whistler sued.

He had commissioned the White House from Architect and designer E.W Godwin and then he went bankrupt and lost it along with his copper plates which were bought back for him.

He then got a commission to Venice.

He said he thought his work must not be of any quality as it sold in numbers.

At the RBA he hung a rather unusual Valarium, there is a sketch in the exhibition, and invited Monet and Stott of Oldham.

That did not go down too well and he was thrown out.

He sold his treasured painting “The Mother” shortly after he published The Art Of Making Enemies.

The ISSPG exhibition of 1898 showed his pictures hung in a line. He died 1903.
 I then viewed the exhibition in the main gallery of the Bluecoat. I thought it mostly of mostly inferior work by Whistler, minor sketches and etchings and a nice but strange painting that looks like a Harry Clarke.

I was  totally disappointed by the half hearted, but well intentioned recreation, of  The Peacock Room.

Or one wall of it. 




That looked, when viewed in detail, as if it was constructed of MDF and sprayed with a gold aerosol can....Oh hang on, it was. 

What was the point in that, and what was the links to Liverpool, I thought as i went out in the beautiful afternoon sun. 

All that was missing was the tea and cream scones and I could have really become an art tourist.


Read more here.
http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide_Chapters/PictAmer_Resource_Book_Chapter_11B.pdf

Liverpool's Affordable Art Fair-Costs Seven Quid To Get In.

Even Ken Dodd thinks its funny. Saturday saw the beginning of Liverpool Biennial. Which generally means the place is littered with immature and foolish excuses for works of art that have cost a fortune, that generally look like a kid has done them, and have no meaning whatsoever. http://www.biennial.com/

Take the Dazzle ship, please someone take the dazzle ship. 

What a waste of money. The city is closing nursing homes all over the place and they have let some ageing hippy called Carlos Cruz-Diez: turn the historic ship owned by Liverpool Museums, The Edmund Gardner, into a work of art (sic)......and he got paid for it.  http://www.biennial.com/collaborations/carlos-cruzdiez-dazzle-ship 

Dazzle painting was a system for camouflaging ships that was introduced in early 1917, at a time when German submarines were threatening to cut off Britain’s trade and supplies. The idea was not to “hide” the ships, but to paint them in such a way that their appearance was optically distorted, so that it was difficult for a submarine to calculate the course the ship was travelling on, and so know from what angle to attack. The “dazzle” was achieved by painting the ship in contrasting stripes and curves that broke up its shape. Characterised by garish colours and a sharp patchwork design of interlocking shapes, the spectacular ‘dazzle’ style was heavily indebted to Cubism.

But would they have used a Rasta design? That stands out like a sore thumb. Maybe not.

Liverpool museums staged what they called an affordable art fair saturday last It seemed well attended and once you got past the thousands of kids screaming in the foyer it was a pleasant enough experience.

 Though I am glad I had a free ticket or I would have felt aggrieved at the seven quid required to get in to a free museum.

Lets hope the takings go to re instating some of the damage that the current director Dr David "Fuzzy Felt" Fleming has recently done to our history.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html

Maybe they could use the room that housed the so called affordable art fair to promote some of Liverpool's past glory. 

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/herculaneum-pottery-held-by-liverpool.html

Arthur Dooley Centurion-Piece of the Week.

Arthur Dooley was commissioned  to do the sculptures in the Church of St Marys RC, in the town of Leyland.
Which at the time was famous for making buses.

 This small town was brave enough to look at taking the piety of the cruxifiction and making a contemporary statement by adopting a controversial untrained artist.

http://www.cleo.net.uk/resources/displayframe.php?src=640/consultants_resources/religiouseduc/stations/stationsSmp.html

Dooley was the man of the time, he was on This Is Your Life.

This was where he came up with the idea for the faceless Centurion.

Henry Moore was originally asked, but was too busy and it was said that he recommended that Dooley was given the job.

Dooley was in fact commissioned to sculpt the Stations of the cross in bronze.

In 1965 a BBC programme directed by Eric Davidson titled A Modern Passion was made.

They filmed Dooley talking about his work.

He describes how he came up with the concept for the faceless Centurion One of the most remarkable works of contemporary religious work in Britain.
 Davidson says. " Fourteen scenes of the journey. From the judgement seat of Pontius Pilot to the entombment at Mount Golgotha" he continues  “Here are no dull scenes" the narrator states "placed in the openings of V shaped pillars are cast and welded figures, here there are no dull personages, here the holy has invaded the secular, become one with it and it hits us in the pit of the stomach, here is a modern Everyman”

Dooley says, talking about his idea of the faceless Centurion in his own Liverpudlian directness.

“This goes on right through history, they lose their faces, on Panzer tanks, or the Roman soldiers were in armour.
This loss of the personality man becomes a unit, with a sort of a dictator, and an authority, and this obedience to authority, he is the be all and end all, and there doesn't seem any real personal thing about it. Its from the old fascist concept, this soldier business. Its completely unnatural to us and I think eventually soldiers will be done away with well we hope so”.  

Watch the YouTube video above for his full explanation about his concept. 

I particulary love the way he used his own experiences, what he saw on the streets.

 The two women on the street watching a demo and the Echo lad with a placard selling the paper proclaiming the news "Christ Dies John Pleads Peace". This is so touching and so, makes us able to relate to it with our own eyes as if it happened here, before us.

My Centurion (pictured above) is 76cm high and made of bronze with some additions and signed AD 74.

I sold a Bull by Dooley some time ago.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/arthur-dooley-bull-piece-of-week.html

I have been banging on about saving his last studio for some time now.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/arthur-dooley-remember-him-and-save-his.html