During the early part of my career as an architectural photographer I was lucky enough to be asked to do the photography for both the 1066: English Romanesque Art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1984 and the Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1987-88. This sparked a life-long interest in medieval art and architecture.

As part of my research before setting out to visit and photograph a new (to me) church, one of the websites I would always visit was paintedchurch.org, Medieval Wall Painting in the English Parish Church, a labour of love put together by Anne Marshall over a period of some 18 years. It featured detailed academic articles on several themes of medieval wall painting as well as articles on hundreds of individual paintings in hundreds of parish churches. I was very disappointed when it disappeared from the internet in 2018.

The Watts Gallery, Artists’ Village and Chapel lies on the edge of the village of Compton, just a couple of miles outside Guildford. The gallery is a celebration of the work of George Frederick Watts and his wife Mary. They married when he was 69 and she just 36. They moved to their house in Compton in 1891.

In 1895 Mary started teaching local people to model in clay and established a pottery business which became the Compton Potters’ Arts Guild. Between 1895 and 1904 Mary and the villagers worked on building the Watts Chapel. The chapel is a strange mix of Art Nouveau, Celtic revival and Romanesque. The exterior of the chapel is decorated with terracotta reliefs while the interior is a riot of painted stucco decoration. George Watts lived just long enough to see the chapel completed.

As part of the Cornwall Open Studio scheme Paul Jackson, an old friend of mine, asked me if I’d show some of my photographs alongside his pots. The last day of the show coincided with opening their garden to the public to raise money for the Red Cross of which Rosie (Paul’s wife) is president of the Cornish branch. The weather started out damp and grey, but by the time the garden opened the sun came out and they had over 200 visitors, raising nearly £2,000. Read more…

All Saints’ Church at Tudeley in Kent is famous worldwide for its stained glass windows by Russian artist Marc Chagall. The first of these was made in 1967 to commemorate the death of Sarah d’Avigdor-Goldsmid who drowned at the age of 21. When Chagall arrived for the installation of the east window and saw the church, he said, “It’s magnificent. I will do them all.” The last window was installed in 1985, the year of his death. Read more…

Possibly the earliest depiction of St George in England is in the wall paintings at St Botolph’s Church, Hardham in West Sussex which date from the 12th century. Unusually, these paintings don’t show St George and the Dragon, (unless it was once in the space now taken up by the later window in the east wall of the nave). Those that do exist are of St George at the Battle of Antioch, St George before Datian (Diocletian) and St George on the Wheel. Read more…

I’ve now been twice to see the Eric Ravilious exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. I love his work, particularly the watercolours of the chalk downland and chalk hill figures. But I find his depiction of the Cerne Abbas Giant extremely puzzling. The giant is painted brown, rather than gleaming chalk white. Read more…