NEWS
EWBANK AUCTIONEERS TO SELL THE THETIS BLACKER COLLECTION
Guildford Cathedral and The Temenos Academy to share proceeds
from £150,000 sale of contents of studio and home of visionary
Surrey artist.
Visionary Thetis Blacker dedicated her life to her church and
to her art. During her funeral in Guildford Cathedral in 2006,
a shaft of sunlight spilled across the altar illuminating one
of her banners placed there for the service. It featured her favourite
subject: the phoenix rising in glory from the ashes.
Now, on instructions from the Dean of Guildford Cathedral and
the Temenos Academy, a charity dedicated to "Education in
the Light of the Spirit", the contents of Thetis Blacker’s
studio in Shamley Green, Surrey, and her London flat are to be
sold and the proceeds split between them. More than 750 lots will
be offered by Surrey fine art auctioneers Ewbank on Monday June
30. The sale is expected to raise around £150,000.
The auctioneers have waived their usual vendor’s commission
for the sale to enable the two charities to obtain the maximum
bene?t from Thetis Blacker’s generous bequest.
The phoenix banner was among the artist’s most celebrated
works, part of a commission from the Queen, along with the altar
frontal in St George's Chapel, Windsor in 1997, where a major
exhibition of her work was held in 2000. Other commissions were
from cathedrals across the UK and in America.
“She left her studio full of her work which is now all
included in this sale,” said auctioneer Chris Ewbank. “There
are early watercolours by her dating from the 1940s and 1950s;
later colourful batiks, “mythographs” on the theme
of the Magic Flute done for Glyndebourne in 2005, sketches, drawings
and prints and importantly, the preparatory drawings for many
of her cathedral banners.
“Thetis Blacker’s art was much influenced by her
travels and her love of the art of William Blake. She was also
influenced by some of her contemporaries, notably Cecil Collins.
The sale offers buyers a unique opportunity to purchase the work
of an artist with an international reputation in her field who
sold relatively little during her lifetime.”
Thetis Blacker was born in 1927 in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey,
daughter of the psychiatrist, Carlos Paton Blacker. She had a
Peruvian grandmother and her grandfather, Carlos Blacker, was
a close friend of Oscar Wilde. She was educated at Prior’s
Field in Godalming, and St Catherine’s School, Bramley,
whose art department she supported to the end.
She started life as an opera singer but abandoned her place as
a key figure in the Glyndebourne chorus in 1954 to concentrate
on the visual arts, although 20 years later she returned to Glyndebourne
to sing Mother Goose in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.
An exhibition of “Mythographs” – imaginary portraits
printed on silk – at Glyndebourne in 2005 on the theme of
The Magic Flute, was one of her last achievements, while Glyndebourne
has one of her last and finest batik paintings, “Primordium
Opera”. The sale contains many of her mythographs and the
templates from which they were made.
The visual arts were Thetis’s true destiny. She studied
at Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts
In 1970, as a Winston Churchill Fellow, she visited India, Iran,
Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia where she
worked at the Batik Research Institute of Yogyakarta. This and
visits to Peru and Bali formed her style – visionary, symbolic,
mythical, archetypal - working in the uncommon dyed fabric batik,
she became one of its most eminent practitioners.
Her book, A Pilgrimage of Dreams was published in 1973. She was
a close friend of the poet Kathleen Raine and became a fellow
of the Temenos Academy, whose President, the Prince of Wales,
became a confidant and friend. He attended her memorial service
at Windsor.
In addition to her commission from the Queen, her most famous
works, the banners of Creation and Recreation, were made for Winchester
Cathedral in 1979, transforming its interior into the foothills
of the Himalayas. Major works were also commissioned by the Dean
and Chapter of Durham Cathedral for St Cuthbert’s tomb;
a series on the Apocalypse for the Community of St Andrew; St
Albans Abbey; Grey College, Durham and for other cathedrals: Canterbury,
Chichester, Aberdeen, New York and Washington. Locally, there
are phoenix banners in Christ Church, Shamley Green and St Peter’s
Church, Morden.
In a foreword to the auction catalogue, the Dean of Guildford
Cathedral, the Very Rev. Victor Stock writes: “Her house
in Oreby in Denmark was the place for the practice of Tai Chi’
Chu’an on the long shore of the calmest of seas; the house,
as at Pasturewood Cottage in Surrey, decorated with the full range
of her favourite colour, orange. Her clothes, always dramatic,
partook of the same palette. Her cooking, like everything she
touched, reached a fine art. When she was hostess, all danced
around her candle. In 2002 Durham University gave her an Honorary
DLitt, spelling parity with her brilliant brother and sister.
“In 1956, turning from music to painting, she had, and
recorded, a prophetic vision of herself, appointed to stand against
the tall buttress of a cathedral while her trumpet called a procession
of people and animals from near and far to their true home. Reincarnated
in the beautiful furniture, porcelain, ceramic, statuary and textiles
of her London flat and her Shamley Green studio, and that unforgettable
moment at her great funeral in Guildford Cathedral when, during
the sermon, and speaking of the place of the phoenix in Thetis
Blacker’s spiritual life, a shaft of sunshine illuminated
her own banner of the phoenix rising in glory, placed for the
service on the High Altar.”
Until the present, little of Thetis’s work has appeared
on the market. Some of her watercolours and prints were sold during
her lifetime at the Lewis Elton Gallery in Guildford, and at West
End art dealers Henry Dyson, but little else.
Naturally, batik pictures and the designs for them dominate the
sale. Among the most impressive is a nine foot high banner depicting
an Indian sacred figure in vivid orange and purples with a serpent
and the head of a bull at her feet. Others include a five feet
high banner depicting the animals shown at the bottom of the batik
banner of St. Oswald, commissioned by Durham Cathedral and “The
Sirens” and “The Sphinx” both of which were
exhibited at the Li Yuan-Chia Museum in 1977.
The phoenix was an important subject in her work and appears
in many of her paintings – and her collection of objects
– in the sale. Once when asked her age, she replied: “I
am a phoenix, as old as the universe and as young as the rising
sun. I am mortal and immortal. I flow with the rhythm of life,
the music of the spheres, and I fly through all worlds within
the universe. Ever dying, ever reborn.”
Other work is based on Peruvian and Indonesian imagery, while
her humour is displayed in her paintings of birds, particularly
owls, and cats, which were her favourite. Indeed, the sale includes
a self-portrait of the artist as a cat.
Her own view of her work and life is best be illustrated by a
quote from one of her books: “I know my paintings are inadequate,
for visions are so much greater than anything that can be painted
by a human artist. My vocation is to strive to bring glimpses
of the world of imagination into being and to share them.”
The mystical paintings of Cecil Collins (1908-1989) were clearly
an influence on Thetis. He was her tutor at the Central School
of Arts and Crafts and her collection includes a number of his
works. Among the things she treasured was an autograph letter
from Collins which reads: "She is a talented artist who has
shown a strong degree of concentration and imagination, she has
a real understanding and enthusiasm for art in addition to her
technical knowledge...an exceptionally gifted person". There
is also a similar typewritten signed letter from Steven Sykes,
her tutor at the Chelsea School of Art.
A scene in Paradise, a pen and gouache on brown paper signed
by Collins and dated 1937 is estimated at £6,000-10,000.
The sale also includes some valuable jewellery, notably a late
Victorian butterfly brooch with rubies for eyes and body and wings
set with diamonds. It is estimated at £5,000-6,000. A 19th
century five stone diamond ring and a 10 carat sapphire and diamond
ring are each estimated at £3,000-5,000.
The artist’s studio and home were both crammed with an
eclectic and diverse collection of Greek, Egyptian and Roman antiquities,
notably an
Egyptian hollow bronze figure of a seated cat, which dates from
the late period-Ptolemaic Period (664-30 BC) (estimate £2,500-4,000).
Peruvian pottery (AD 200-600) and 15th and 16th century carved
European religious statues was collected by Thetis on her travels,
while other pieces are thought to have come through her grandfather’s
estate.
A 14th or 15th century Italian carved wood pieta – Madonna
cradling Christ after the crucifixion – with the is estimated
at £2,000-3,000, while an early 16th century carved and
painted half length figure of Mary Magdalene is estimated at £1,500-2,000.
Sitting alongside these and 16th century continental carved oak
panels (each estimate £500-1,000) are such whimsies as a
ministerial red leather dispatch box inscribed in gold leaf: “The
Rt. Hon. Sir Samuel Hoare BT, CGSI, GBE, CMG, Secretary of State
for India” (estimate £250-400); a pair of Samson porcelain
parrots (£100-150) and an Inuit long wooden fishing spear
(£150-250). In a further contrast, an abstract bronze sculpture
of thunder bolts by Maggi Hambling, (b,1945) signed in ink MH
'93, is estimated at £2,000-3,000.
The library comprises more than 100 lots in two distinct parts.
The first is the remains of Thetis’s family library, passed
down through her grandfather, many inscribed by Carlos Blacker.
There are antiquarian and bound books, including the two-volume
Johannes Jonstanus, Historiae Naturalis, published in 1650 (£500-800)
and Edward Topsell’s The Historie of Serpents, published
in 1608 (£600-1,000). The second part comprises Thetis Blacker’s
personal library including many art books.
Furniture from the two properties is a mix of continental and
English. Among the most valuable is a late 18th century North
Italian bow-fronted walnut fall-front bureau, which is estimated
at £2,000-3,000. A late 18th or early 19th century Spanish
provincial walnut centre table with iron stretchers is estimated
at £1,500-2,000, while a 19th century nine-foot pine kitchen
table with plank top and two drawers was used as a worktop for
the artist’s batik printing. It is estimated at £300-500.
The sale on June 30 follows immediately after the Ewbank annual
summer auction, which is on Thursday and Friday, June 26-27. Viewing
for both sales is from 10am to 4pm on Monday June 23 and Tuesday
June 24 and from 10am to 8pm on Wednesday June 25. There will
be further viewing of the Thetis Blacker Collection only on Saturday
June 28 from 10am to 4pm.
For further information, please contact Chris Ewbank on 01483
223101 or antiques@ewbank.co.uk.
High resolution images are freely available for download from
www.chris-proudlove.co.uk/Ewbank/Thetis.
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