Artist’s life from Cumbria to Italy, and back again

Jean Sturgis: A Sense of Place : Paintings, Prints and Drawings

An artist with Cumbrian roots and a love of Italy will be featured at a new exhibition opening in Grasmere next month.

The Heaton Cooper Studio will host a display of paintings, drawings and etchings by Jean Sturgis who died at Kentmere two years ago.

This exhibition brings together work from across the span of her career, revealing an artist of great sensitivity with a distinct and expressive vision.

Born Jean Nicoll, in 1931 just outside Kendal, she was the daughter of J.S. Nicoll, a Director of K shoes, who encouraged her early enthusiasm for art.

Among his friends were the artists Robin Wallace and William Wilson, and Jean, as a girl, was able work with them, since her father invited them to the family home at Staveley to lead painting courses for local children.

She studied art first at Goldsmiths College, London and then at the Slade School of Art. “It was a stimulating and challenging time,” says her artist son Daniel Sturgis. “Among her painting tutors were William Coldstream (the founder of the Euston Road Group), Patrick George, Maurice Field and L.S. Lowry. She learnt etching and print-making from the brilliant print-maker John Buckland-Wright. The emphasis of the teaching was always towards careful observation and working directly from the motif.”

In 1953, Jean was awarded a prestigious travelling scholarship that allowed her to work at the British School at Rome. Her 18 months in Italy –first in Rome, then in the little hill-top town of Anticoli Corrado – instilled in her a life-long love of the country, its art and its people.

Returning to England she settled in London, exhibiting in various shows in Edinburgh and London, including the Leicester Galleries, one the most prominent forums for post-war British painting. She also taught at Queen’s Gate School, and in mental hospitals.

In 1958 she married the architect Tim Sturgis and together they had five children. “Her dedication to family life altered the trajectory of her artistic career, but she continued to paint, and to engage with the arts in other ways,” says Daniel.

Jean Sturgis was the Chief Examiner for O Level Art for the Oxford & Cambridge Examination Board, and taught art at the Westminster Under School. She also contributed acclaimed plant-drawings and watercolours to several gardening books, for authors including Rosemary Verey, Penelope Hobhouse and Esme Clarke. She contributed water-colour garden plans for books on Levens Hall, and Hatfield House, as well as for Hugh Cavendish’s A Time to Plant – Life and Gardening at Holker.

 

She returned to exhibiting in the 1990s, with a series of one-person shows in London – first at the Clarendon Gallery, and then at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery. In 2009 she was selected by Mary Burkett as one of five-artists in group exhibition at the Red Barn Gallery, in Melkinthorpe.

Settling in Kentmere where she developed a beautiful garden, Jean Sturgis continued both to paint and to etch. Her later works retain all their sense of engagement and particularity. She said: “Landscape; buildings in their setting, whether urban or rural; trees and flowers in their surroundings: these have always been the stimuli for my work.”

The Grasmere exhibition, created by son Daniel with the artist Julian Cooper, will open at the Heaton Cooper archive gallery on April 14, and will run until the end of June. Director of the studio, Becky Heaton Cooper, said: “This will be a fascinating insight to the life and work of a very talented artist whose work deserves wider recognition.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The art of mountaineering, and mountains in art

A new exhibition in the Lake District aims to explore the aesthetic appeal of rock climbing and mountain environments.

Prominent Lines is a collection of work by climber and artist Tessa Lyons, highlighting the beauty of rocks and crags. It will open at the mecca of climbing art in Grasmere, the Heaton Cooper studio, on January 25.

Sheffield-based Tessa, 27, works in charcoal and chalk, creating pictures which are inspired by Japanese calligraphy and Zen painting. Tessa is a climber and an artist intrigued by the visual appeal of geology. From large-scale charcoal drawings of mountains, averaging two metres wide, to delicate depictions of individual rock climbs in ink, Tessa’s work looks to capture the essence of the places that she is drawn to.

One of her most viewed recent works is on display at the remote Black Sail youth hostel, a picture of Pillar Rock which was commissioned by the YHA in 2014.  The piece is on permanent exhibition in the tiny sitting –cum-dining room for walkers, runners and climbers taking refuge to enjoy.

Tessa studied illustration at the University of Brighton where she was won the Highly Commended Award by Nagoya University of Arts for her charcoal and chalk drawing Summit of Haystacks, The Lake District. Since graduating she has had gone on to exhibit nationwide in both group and solo exhibitions as well as being shortlisted for numerous awards including the Association of Illustrators New Talent Award, and BITE, the UK’s leading printmaking competition.

Her work is a regular feature in the British Mountaineering Council’s national publication Summit magazine. In 2014 Tessa was invited by Kendal Mountain Festival to commemorate 100 years of the classic rock climb Central Buttress on Scafell in the Lake District.

“Climbers often talk about certain climbs, or lines, as being ‘beautiful’,” says Tessa. “At the crag a prominent line will draw your eye, striking inspiration, leaving you with a burning desire to do the climb. With these drawings I’m looking to capture the essence of those compelling lines with a strong simplicity inspired by Japanese calligraphy and Zen painting, the textural qualities found in printmaking and observational drawings of the rock formations.”

Tessa says that  in climbing you can reach a state of heightened awareness when you become centred in that moment:  “You’re aware of subtleties in the formation of the rock under your skin, your body is engaged in the flow of movement and your mind is right there, present with you. I have found a certain correlation between the mental concentration and calmness I sometimes experience during climbing with this condensed and bold way of drawing. This fascinates me and I feel it’s a fitting way to try and express the nature of climbing and the inspiration that it brings.”

Director of the Heaton Cooper Studio, Becky Heaton Cooper said: “We are thrilled to be showing these striking and memorable works by a very talented young artist. The exhibition will fit very naturally into our permanent collection of landscape art.”

Gallery at the Heaton Cooper Studio

Prominent Lines will run from January 25 until March 6.

Cumbrians determined to beat Blue Monday with January cheer

A gallery in the Lake District is put on show just bright and sunny paintings on the most depressing day of the year.

The Heaton Cooper Studio in Grasmere plans to mark “Blue Monday” with an exhibition of sunshine and colour on the third Monday this month (18^th).

The show will include a rarely-seen painting of Les Calanques in Provence by William Heaton Cooper, the grandfather of the gallery’s director Becky Heaton Cooper who is arranging the event to raise money for MIND, the mental health charity.

“It is the gloomiest time of the year and if there’s anything we can do to brighten people’s lives for a day, then it has to be worthwhile,” said Becky. “We have many works of art that we can’t put on display so it’s a very good excuse to choose some of the brightest featuring the most sunshine.”

Blue Monday was initially identified according to a formula devised by happiness and motivation expert, Cliff Arnall, then a lecturer at Cardiff University. His “equation”, taking into account distance from Christmas, debts and the weather, is now being used by mental health charities to highlight the need to change our routines and give our psychological well-being some attention.

It’s said to be the peak day for couples consulting divorce lawyers; when the post-Christmas blues set in; when people have spent up at Christmas but not yet been paid in January; when it’s still dark in spite of the shortest day having passed.

But an annual campaign to “beat Blue Monday” was established by Andy Green, a leading expert in brand storytelling, creativity and PR strategy. An author and  Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures & Commerce and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Andy has previously marked Blue Monday by filling his office with sand, decorating it with sun umbrellas and asking staff to come to work in Hawaiian shorts.

One year he arranged for a Brazilian drummer, Claudio Kron, to teach a group of university students the rudiments of making rhythm in just an hour.  Kron said: “I believe if your heart beats you can play the drums. In Brazil the carnival has proved time and time again to be the greatest event for making people happy. It was the perfect way to help brighten up the most depressing day of the year.”

The Heaton Cooper initiative has been hailed by Andy Green who said: “This wonderful exhibition shows that you can transform the symbolically most depressing day of the year into a celebration of life, and all that there is to enjoy.”

The exhibition is free but visitors will have the chance to donate to MIND, the mental health charity and to pick up leaflets about dealing with SAD – seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression that recurs in the winter months.

MIND South Lakeland chief officer Jonathan Ingram said: “We are delighted that the studio is doing this to raise awareness of the work of South Lakeland Mind. Good mental health is so important, and our local provision for those people who need support can only continue if other people keep supporting our work.

“’The past few weeks have been harrowing for many people, with the floods bringing headline news to our own doors. The impact of this will last for a long time to come, and it looks like being a much harder January than usual for many people.”

William Heaton Cooper said of Les Calanques: “The brilliant light of Provence was a revelation to me. I was intoxicated with the light and colour tones, and painted all hours, even at night on the quay, with a more highly-pitched range of colours than I had ever used for landscape”. It is a noticeably different style and subject for the famous Lakes artist. Painted at just 22 years of age, and shortly after he had left the R.A. Schools, it is almost a homage to Paul Cezanne, one of his favourite painters, looking at the shapes and tones of the hills surrounding the sunlit harbour.

Meanwhile, a Kendal businessman is also aiming to raise funds for the mental health charity MIND on Blue Monday this month.

Neil Corrigan has offered £100 to the South Lakes branch of the charity if he can get 100 people to read his news blog about fighting depression with cheerful blues music – especially after the recent floods.

“At this time of the year you might know someone struggling with depression. And you will know businesses who are struggling to see the light and move forward,” said Neil who is owner and managing director of Creative Lakes, the marketing and branding specialists based in Kendal.

Blue Monday is now being used by mental health charities to highlight the need to change our routines and give our psychological well-being some attention. Working with MIND, Neil wants to show that blue is actually far from being a sad colour, and he has a list of “blues” songs that are uplifting. “What’s the one thing that will make you feel instantly happier at this time of the year? A bit of blue in the sky. We long for summer when both the sky and the sea are blue.  And the lakes. Why else did we choose blue for our Creative Lakes brand colour.

“Heard some unexpected good news? It came “out of the blue”, as do exciting new ideas. When we want to get away from it all we head to the wide blue yonder. Our top performing companies are described as “blue chip”. And think how we all get excited when there’s a Blue moon to give extra light in the night sky.”

South Lakeland Mind provide information and signposting on a wide range of mental health issues – including depression and SAD – along with a range of support to help people understand and cope with problems.  Jonathan Ingram said: “We are delighted that Creative Lakes are doing this to raise awareness of our work.”

You can read Neil’s uplifting message, see his list of cheering blues songs, and help raise money for MIND here: Bright words for Blue Monday 

 

The hills of Lakeland, and the people on them

A new exhibition of photographs is set to show how fashion today is influenced by the outdoors culture.

What we wear reflects our personalities, the situations we are in and the activities we are taking part in, says photographer Henry Iddon. And to prove the point, he took to the hills of the English Lake District to create a remarkable portrait of fashion beyond the high street.

Hill People will open in Grasmere at the Heaton Cooper Studio as the preview event for the prestigious Kendal Mountain Festival, which draws huge crowds of adventurers and film-makers from around the world.

It’s the culmination of a project which took Iddon out onto the hills to look, unusually, at the people out there, rather than the landscape. The intention was to study what the clothes they wear may say about them as individuals, while investigating those who take part in ‘outdoor’ sports, and extend their individual experiences and relationships with a mountain environment.

“Those people involved in outdoor sports will recognise equipment, clothing types and the brands worn by others in the outdoors and come to conclusions about the people wearing particular items,” says Iddon.

“The existence of outdoor culture allows its members to recognise one another and to convey messages. A person may have a walking stick emblazoned with badges of previously visited areas stating I am well travelled. They may use an old rucksack to state I have been in the game for years. They may wear an expensive jacket designed for Himalayan mountaineering: ‘I have achieved extraordinary things’, ‘I aspire to achieve’ or, more likely, ‘I am buying into the idea of extreme achievement’.”

The result is a fascinating new perspective on outdoor activity – and a collection of stunning and unusual images.

The Hill People represent a substantial species. The latest Active People Survey (APS) results from Sport England suggests that around 211,000 people go climbing or hill walking at least once a month and 84,000 take part at least once a week. Twice as many people go walking on holiday compared to those visiting an amusement park, historic house or museum.  The total £20bn outdoor economy represents 1.65% of the UK’s GDP.

Iddon highlights how modern outdoor clothing has now been absorbed into everyday fashion.  Fabrics such as Gore-tex, once used only for outdoor sports wear, can now be seen in articles of clothing worn on the high street, and fleece garments, first popular in the mid 1980s, are now to be found in most fashion retailers.

“Adventure sports, including mountaineering and climbing, are now a lifestyle used by brands to market products to all parts of society,” says Iddon.

“This is a society that is increasingly aware of its environmental responsibilities, and a desire to engage with upland, remote and wild places is a way of escaping the pressures of urban living. Nature sports are not the only way to develop our understanding of the natural world but they give us a way of relating to it through play and seeing ourselves in partnership with features of it.”

Iddon adds that outdoor sports are not the only way to develop our understanding of the natural world, “but they give us a way of relating to it through play and by seeing ourselves in partnership with it. This exhibition looks to consider: Who are hill people?”

His definition refers to “those people who are to be found in an upland environment throughout the year and in a range of climatic conditions. They partake in a variety of outdoor hill or mountain-based pastimes including fell walking, fell running, rock climbing or even paragliding.

“These sports or pastimes could be described as alternative sports: they are not mainstream activities such as association football, rugby football, cricket etc. Underneath an umbrella term such as alternative sports fall subsections, including ʻextreme sportsʼ and ʻnature sportsʼ. Both these subsections function in such a way as to allow participants to develop relationships between themselves and the natural world.”

Director of the Heaton Cooper Studio, Becky Heaton Cooper said: “This is a fascinating exhibition which fits naturally into our permanent collection of landscape art. We are delighted to be associated with the Kendal Mountain Festival which last year launched our very successful Lines of Ascent exhibition. Henry Iddon is one of the most iconic photographers of our time and we are thrilled to be hosting Hill People.”

Henry Iddon has been a full time professional photographer for nearly 20 years and has been participating in outdoor sports since being a young child: he started skiing at the age of five. He has represented Great Britain at Speed Skiing, has been involved with mountaineering exploits in Europe, North America and Asia, and cycled across a range of disciplines at an elite level.

His action sports, documentary, and portrait photography has been commissioned  by a variety of commercial, non-profit and news organisations as well as UK Central Government departments. Clients include W.H Gore, Lowe Alpine, Patagonia, Snokart, Science in Sport, PGL, Acorn Adventure, Cycling Plus, Outdoor Fitness, 220 Triathlon, UK Department of Education, BBC World News, and BBC Sport.

Iddon’s work concerns finding new ways of using photography to investigate the upland and wilderness environment. He received an individual Arts Council England Grant award in 2006 and has been nominated for the National Media Museum Bursary Award (UK), shortlisted for the And/or Book Awards and long listed for the 2014 Aesthetica Art Prize. Images from Spots of Time, Hill People and A Place to Go have been exhibited in galleries in the UK, Italy, Nepal and Brazil.

Iddon is currently Artist in Residence at the Forton Lancaster South Services on the M6 motorway which celebrates its 50th birthday and is well known for its iconic Pennine Tower. Spending his time speaking to staff and travellers to find out about their journeys and destinations, he will create a series of photographic portraits of both the people and the location.

Hill People opens at the Heaton Cooper Studio on Thursday November 19.

The marriage of art and fine food

A leading Cumbrian chef is joining forces with a top art gallery for a special opening party in Grasmere.

Kevin Tickle, formerly of Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume, and Rogan and Company in Cartmel, is preparing the canapes for the opening of an exhibition at the Heaton Cooper Studio on July 1.

The exhibition, A Vital Spirit, celebrates the life and work of the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell, who was married to the landscape painter William Heaton Cooper.

Kevin is now working in Grasmere at the newly-restored Forest Side Hotel which is due to open later this summer.

He said: “It is great to be working alongside the Heaton Cooper gallery, it is important to build and maintain relationships within the local community and support each other.”

Ophelia Gordon Bell  (1915 – 1975) had a fascinating life and extraordinary talent, as the new exhibition highlights.

Born in London and brought up among the artists of St John’s Wood in London, Gordon Bell was equally at home in the Lake District where her maternal grandfather was vicar of Urswick near Ulverston.

Trained in London, she exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, and the Royal Scottish Academy.

Her work can be found throughout Britain, from a carving of St Bede at a Carlisle church to the giant stone figures, Thought and Action, outside the Risley HQ of the former Atomic Energy Authority in Cheshire.

Perhaps her most celebrated work is the bronze head of mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary. She also created many pieces portraying the characters of the Lakeland fells – shepherds and farmers and houndtrailers.

It was during a visit to the Lakes that she met William Heaton Cooper. They married and made their home in Grasmere and had four children. One of her sons, the painter Julian Cooper, is curating the new exhibition. He says: “She was truly a vital spirit. Everyone who met Ophelia was struck by her. Even if they did not know of her artistic skill, they were witnesses to her great vitality and kindness.

“She was a most remarkable woman, bringing together the two enormously contrasting worlds of London and the Lakes, and bringing immense vitality to everything she created.”

The Forest Side Hotel is now owned by Andrew Wildsmith,  who also owns Hipping Hall near Kirkby Lonsdale, and The Ryebeck in Bowness. He plans to create a luxury romantic hotel on the Grasmere site. Food will be a major part of the offering at the Forest Side and Kevin aims to produce a 12 course tasting menu, with an emphasis on natural flavours.

Mallow flowers collected by Kevin for the canapes

A Vital Spirit who brought vitality to sculpture: Ophelia Gordon Bell exhibition

A stunning exhibition highlighting the work of one of the most accomplished sculptors of the 20^thcentury continues this autumn in Grasmere  in the Lake District.

Ophelia Gordon Bell  (1915 – 1975) is known as the wife of landscape painter William Heaton Cooper. But this show, A Vital Spirit, aims to bring attention to her own life and extraordinary talent.

Born in London and brought up among the artists of St John’s Wood in London, Gordon Bell was equally at home in the Lake District where her maternal grandfather was vicar of Urswick near Ulverston.

Trained in London, she exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, and the Royal Scottish Academy.

Her work can be found throughout Britain, from a carving of St Bede at a Carlisle church to the giant stone figures, Thought and Action, outside the Risley HQ of the former Atomic Energy Authority in Lancashire.

Perhaps her most celebrated work is the bronze head of mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary. She also created many pieces portraying the characters of the Lakeland fells – shepherds and farmers and houndtrailers.

It was during a visit to the Lakes that met William Heaton Cooper.  They married and made their home in Grasmere and had four children. One of her sons, the painter Julian Cooper, is curating the new exhibition. He says: “She was truly a vital spirit. Everyone who met Ophelia was struck by her. Even if they did not know of her artistic skill, they were witnesses to her great vitality and kindness.

“She was a most remarkable woman, bringing together the two enormously contrasting worlds of London and the Lakes, and bringing immense vitality to everything she created.”

The exhibition will feature examples of her work as a student, as well as her industrial and religious commissions, and portrait heads.

She said of art: “The Word made flesh” must be at all times be happening or there will be no vitality to carry a people over the self-destructive forces within and without

A Vital Spirit: the work of Ophelia Gordon Bell runs at Grasmere’s Heaton Cooper Studio until late autumn

015394 35280

 

Notes 

• During the Second World War Ophelia drove ambulances for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
• Ophelia and her mother made their home with an aunt and uncle, Dr Caleb Saleeby and his wife, Muriel,  in St John’s Wood, after Winifred and her husband divorced. Ophelia was educated at home with a governess, and was taken on chauffeur-driven grand tours of Europe. But she was equally at home on the Lakeland fells.
• Ophelia was the daughter of Winifred Gordon Bell, a renowned animal painter.
• One of her early works – which remains one of her most famous – was The Dalesman, made in her London studio from her memories of a man coming down the Lakeland fells to a farm. It was entered for the prestigious Prix de Rome.
•  Ophelia’s full name was Joan Ophelia Gordon Bell.  One member of her mother’s branch of the family is always christened ‘Ophelia’ and ‘Gordon’ as appropriate, to keep the names alive. According to the family story, the original Ophelia Gordon was the only child and daughter of the 5th Duke of Gordon, who died in 1836, and she was cut off from inheriting the title when she eloped with an Englishman called Captain Sinclair in the late 18th or early 19th century. (Scottish inheritance could go to the female line.)
•  The Heaton Cooper Studio in Grasmere was opened by William Heaton Cooper in 1938.   It is a hugely popular tourist attraction, with more than 90,000 visitors last year. It features work by the Heaton Cooper family and guest artists, with the Lakeland landscape at the heart of the gallery’s displays.
•  The Heaton Cooper family tree is a pictorial essay on the development of art in the Lake District and beyond. There are 10 artists represented, including the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell, (herself the daughter of the animal painter Winifred Gordon Bell) and Julian Cooper, the internationally renowned painter whose recent work has been concerned with finding a relevant contemporary language for painting mountains and rock all over the world. The most well known works are by Alfred and William, each distinctively capturing the magnificence and beauty of rock and fell, stream and lake.
•  Julian Cooper, the son of William Heaton Cooper and the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell, is an internationally known painter, represented by Art Space Gallery, London. He is a member of the Alpine Club, and has climbed throughout Britain and the Alps.

A Vital Spirit: the life and work of Ophelia Gordon Bell

A major exhibition highlighting the work of an accomplished sculptor of the 20^th century opens in Grasmere  later this month.

Ophelia Gordon Bell  (1915 – 1975) is known as the wife of landscape painter William Heaton Cooper. But the new show, A Vital Spirit, aims to bring attention to her own life and extraordinary talent.

Born in London and brought up among the artists of St John’s Wood in London, Gordon Bell was equally at home in the Lake District where her maternal grandfather was vicar of Urswick near Ulverston.

Trained in London, she exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, and the Royal Scottish Academy.

Her work can be found throughout Britain, from a carving of St Bede at a Carlisle church to the giant stone figures, Thought and Action, outside the Risley HQ of the former Atomic Energy Authority in Lancashire.

Perhaps her most celebrated work is the bronze head of mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary. She also created many pieces portraying the characters of the Lakeland fells – shepherds and farmers and houndtrailers.

It was during a visit to the Lakes that met William Heaton Cooper.  They married and made their home in Grasmere and had four children. One of her sons, the painter Julian Cooper, is curating the new exhibition. He says: “She was truly a vital spirit. Everyone who met Ophelia was struck by her. Even if they did not know of her artistic skill, they were witnesses to her great vitality and kindness.

“She was a most remarkable woman, bringing together the two enormously contrasting worlds of London and the Lakes, and bringing immense vitality to everything she created.”

The exhibition will feature examples of her work as a student, as well as her industrial and religious commissions, and portrait heads.

A Vital Spirit: the work of Ophelia Gordon Bell opens at Grasmere’s Heaton Cooper Studio on May 18

 

Notes 

• During the Second World War she drove ambulances for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
• Ophelia and her mother made their home with an aunt and uncle, Dr Caleb Saleeby and his wife, Muriel,  in St John’s Wood, after Winifred and her husband divorced. Ophelia was educated at home with a governess, and was taken on chauffeur-driven grand tours of Europe. But she was equally at home on the Lakeland fells.
• Ophelia was the daughter of Winifred Gordon Bell, a renowned animal painter.
• One of her early works – which remains one of her most famous – was The Dalesman, made in her London studio from her memories of a man coming down the Lakeland fells to a farm. It was entered for the prestigious Prix de Rome.
•  Ophelia’s full name was Joan Ophelia Gordon Bell.  One member of her mother’s branch of the family is always christened ‘Ophelia’ and ‘Gordon’ as appropriate, to keep the names alive. According to the family story, the original Ophelia Gordon was the only child and daughter of the 5th Duke of Gordon, who died in 1836, and she was cut off from inheriting the title when she eloped with an Englishman called Captain Sinclair in the late 18th or early 19th century. (Scottish inheritance could go to the female line.)
•  The Heaton Cooper Studio in Grasmere was opened by William Heaton Cooper in 1938.   It is a hugely popular tourist attraction, with more than 90,000 visitors last year. It features work by the Heaton Cooper family and guest artists, with the Lakeland landscape at the heart of the gallery’s displays.
•  The Heaton Cooper family tree is a pictorial essay on the development of art in the Lake District and beyond. There are 10 artists represented, including the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell, (herself the daughter of the animal painter Winifred Gordon Bell) and Julian Cooper, the internationally renowned painter whose recent work has been concerned with finding a relevant contemporary language for painting mountains and rock all over the world. The most well known works are by Alfred and William, each distinctively capturing the magnificence and beauty of rock and fell, stream and lake.
•  Julian Cooper, the son of William Heaton Cooper and the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell, is an internationally known painter, represented by Art Space Gallery, London. He is a member of the Alpine Club, and has climbed throughout Britain and the Alps.

The Vital Spirit of Grasmere: The life and work of Ophelia Gordon Bell

A major exhibition highlighting the work of an accomplished sculptor of the 20^th century opens in Grasmere  next month.

Ophelia Gordon Bell  (1915 – 1975) is known as the wife of landscape painter William Heaton Cooper. But the new show, A Vital Spirit, aims to bring attention to her own life and extraordinary talent.

Born in London and brought up among the artists of St John’s Wood in London, Gordon Bell was equally at home in the Lake District where her maternal grandfather was vicar of Urswick near Ulverston.

Trained in London, she exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, and the Royal Scottish Academy.

Her work can be found throughout Britain, from a carving of St Bede at a Carlisle church to the giant stone figures, Thought and Action, outside the Risley HQ of the former Atomic Energy Authority in Lancashire.

Perhaps her most celebrated work is the bronze head of mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary. She also created many pieces portraying the characters of the Lakeland fells – shepherds and farmers and houndtrailers.

It was during a visit to the Lakes that met William Heaton Cooper.  They married and made their home in Grasmere and had four children. One of her sons, the painter Julian Cooper, is curating the new exhibition. He says: “She was truly a vital spirit. Everyone who met Ophelia was struck by her. Even if they did not know of her artistic skill, they were witnesses to her great vitality and kindness.

“She was a most remarkable woman, bringing together the two enormously contrasting worlds of London and the Lakes, and bringing immense vitality to everything she created.”

The exhibition will feature examples of her work as a student, as well as her industrial and religious commissions, and portrait heads.

 

 

A Vital Spirit: the work of Ophelia Gordon Bell opens at Grasmere’s Heaton Cooper Studio on May 18

Final chance to see the art of the crags

 

Easter will provide a final chance for visitors to see an acclaimed exhibition of mountaineering art in Grasmere.

The show, at the Heaton Cooper studio, is based around William Heaton Cooper’s exquisite drawings of Lakeland crags used in the definitive climbing guides to the area.

Lines of Ascent, hailed by visiting climbers and art lovers since it opened, features the work William produced for the Fell and Rock Climbing Club guides for 50 years from 1930s onwards. The books were bibles for the climbing community, showing new routes as they developed, drawn on site and working closely with the climbers at the crag face.

Alongside these drawings, guides and journals are climbing photographs from the 1930s and 1940s from Heaton Cooper’s private album, as well as some of his paintings that reference the mid-twentieth century climbing scene, including some not seen before.

There is also an Alpine sketch-book full of vivid drawings and  sketches of the Grandes Jorasses from above the original Couvercle Hut, and crowded interiors of the old hut in the 1950s.

The Alpine theme at the exhibition is extended with Julian Cooper’s huge oil painting  Eiger Face, shown alongside images of the famous 1938 first ascent and subsequent routes up the North Face of the Eiger.

The exhibition will close at the end of April, to be followed in May by a tribute to one of the most accomplished sculptors of the 20^th century.

Ophelia Gordon Bell  (1915 – 1975) is known as the wife of landscape painter William Heaton Cooper. But the new Grasmere show, A Vital Spirit, aims to bring attention to her own life and extraordinary talent. It opens on May 18.

Climbing exhibition hits the heights

An art exhibition highlighting the development of rock climbing in the Lake District is proving to be a huge success in Grasmere.

Lines of Ascent features the work William Heaton Cooper produced for the Fell and Rock Climbing Club guides for 50 years from 1930s onwards. The books were bibles for the climbing community, showing new routes as they developed, drawn on site and working closely with the climbers at the crag face.

Since it opened in November at the Heaton Cooper Studio, the exhibition has drawn enthusiastic visitors from both the art and climbing worlds.

“We are thrilled by the response to the show,” said Becky Heaton Cooper, director and general manager of the business established by the landscape painter Alfred Heaton Cooper in 1905. His son William built the present gallery in Grasmere in 1938. For generations their paintings and books have influenced the way the landscape of the Lake District has been viewed.

“It is one of the most successful exhibitions we have ever staged, and clearly highlights the place of the Lake District as one of Britain’s cultural capitals.”

Lines of Ascent was opened by veteran climber Al Phizacklea who took on the task of illustrating the guidebooks after William Heaton Cooper. He described his own work as “technical, with none of WHC’s artistry”.

One of Britain’s pioneer female mountaineers, Gwen Moffat, now 90, hailed Heaton Cooper’s influence as a climber and guidebook illustrator. “He was a man who knew his mountains; in his illustrations the routes are lines running up pencil-shaded rock where every crack and overhang, every buttress is correct and matched neatly to the text.”

Alongside the drawings, guides and journals are climbing photographs from the 1930s and 1940s from Heaton Cooper’s private album, as well as some of his paintings that reference the mid-twentieth century climbing scene, including some not seen before.

There is also an Alpine sketch-book of drawings and  sketches of the Grandes Jorasses from above the original Couvercle Hut, and crowded interiors of the old hut in the 1950s.

But one of the most striking works in the show is the huge oil painting of the Eiger North Face by Julian Heaton Cooper, the son of William Heaton Cooper and the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell. He is an internationally known painter and a member of the Alpine Club who has climbed throughout Britain and the Alps.

Lines of Ascent runs until the end of April and admission is free.

Scafell East Buttress

• The Heaton Cooper Studio in Grasmere was opened by William Heaton Cooper in 1938.    It is a hugely popular tourist attraction, with more than 90,000 visitors last year. It features work by the Heaton Cooper family and guest artists, with the Lakeland landscape at the heart of the gallery’s displays.

 

• The Heaton Cooper family tree is a pictorial essay on the development of art in the Lake District and beyond. There are 10 artists represented, including the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell, (herself the daughter of the animal painter Winifred Gordon Bell) and Julian Cooper, the internationally renowned painter whose recent work has been concerned with finding a relevant contemporary language for painting mountains and rock all over the world. The most well known works are by Alfred and William, each distinctively capturing the magnificence and beauty of rock and fell, stream and lake.