John Piper

Of all the artists active in Britain during the twentieth century, John Piper was probably the most versatile. He once claimed that he had worked in every medium available to him. Owing to the richness and far-reaching nature of his achievement, it will take a long time before his multi-facetted career can be fully appreciated and his artistic and cultural contribution properly assessed. He was born in Epsom, on 13 December 1903, the third and youngest son of the solicitor, Charles Piper. Like his father, he enjoyed bicycling down country lanes and in this way visited every church in Surrey by the age of fourteen. He also developed passion for guide books and began writing and illustrating his own. His school career, at Kingswood School, then at Epsom College, was undistinguished, though at the latter he won an art prize. The death of his eldest brother at Ypres in 1915 had left his father very depressed. This fact may help explain why John Piper felt unable to oppose his father's wish that he should do as his elder brother Gordon had done and train as a solicitor. It has often been said that he worked as an articled clerk in his father's practice from 1921 until his father's death in 1926. In fact John Piper left school in 1922 and his father died in 1927. With his mother's support, John Piper gave up law and studied art, first at Richmond School or Art and then, for only a year and one term, at the Royal College of Art. Disappointed with the teaching at the Royal College, he also offended against accepted custom by getting married, while still a student, in August 1929 to Eileen Holding, a young artist. Over the next five years they divided their time between a cottage at Betchworth, bought for them by Piper's mother, and a rented flat in Hammersmith. Recognition that their marriage was not working appears to have been mutual. They separated in 1934 but remained on terms of friendship. Early in 1934 Piper had been elected to membership of the 7 & 5 Society of which he soon became secretary, working closely with Ben Nicholson who wanted to make this exhibiting group more focused and more abstract. Piper had not yet produced any abstracts, but after a trip to Paris in June 1934, where he met Jean Helion among others, owing to an introduction from Nicholson, he began making abstract reliefs inspired by the work of Cesar Domela. That same month he met Myfanwy Evans who also made a visit to Paris, in August 1934, taking with her an introduction to Helion and through him meeting several of the leading avant-garde artists. On her return to England she and John Piper began collaborating on the magazine 'Axis' which orginally set out to promote abstract art. In all they produced eight issues over the next two years. By January 1935 John Piper and Myfanwy Evans were living together at Fawley Bottom Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, on the edge of the Chilterns. Two years later they married when John Piper's divorce came through. Here Piper produced work that made him one of the most definite and distinctive abstract artists of the period. His work was exhibited in various exhibitions, including 'Abstract and Concrete' (1936), which was the first international display of abstract art in this country. But just as he was beginning to achieve recognition in this field, his interest in architecture and topography was revived by the onset of his friendship with John Betjeman and the commission to to write 'Oxon', the Shell Guide to Oxfordshire. His subsequent retreat from abstraction was regarded by some as a denial of of the Modern Movement, but the key to Piper's career lay in his subsequent merging of his commitment to the modern with his Englishness, with his reinterpretation of certain native traditions in modern terms. His interest in ruins took hold before any bombs fell in Britain. But once the Blitz began he was given the opportunity, as a war artist, to register the poetics of destruction. At Coventry, in Bath, Bristol and elsewhere, he recorded the effects of war, employing a visual language that went far beyond mere reportage. He was also at this time exploring the romantic vein in English art, writing 'British Romantic Artists' which was published in 1942. The moodiness of his art at this period, and his frequent use of black, especially in his skies, gave rise to King George VI's famous remark, while watching Piper at work on one the pictures he had been commissioned to paint of Windsor, that he had been rather unfortunate with the weather. Piper emerged from the war with a high reputation. This was to be augmented by the success of his stage designs, especially those done for Benjamin Britten's operas which began with his work in 1947 for 'The Rape of Lucretia'. A further development in his career came in 1953 when he was commissioned to execute stained-glass windows for the chapel at Oundle School. This began his working association with the stained-glass maker, Patrick Reytiens, which produced eight windows for Eton College Chapel and the great Baptistery window in the new Coventry Cathedral, among many other commissions. Another very fruitful association for Piper was that which he enjoyed with the potter Geoffrey Eastop. It unleashed a further vein through which coursed Piper's fertile inventiveness. Piper's work as artist continued to show an interest in experiment and a refusal to remain satisfied with a workable style. But even more experimental, in the long term, was his engagement with print-making in which his exploration of a variety of media and techniques made him one of the most oustanding printmakers of his day. All the time he continued to travel widely, in connection with his various artistic commissions and his continuing involvement, as editor and photographer, with the Shell Guides. His knoweldge of architecture was formidable, while his familiarity with churches was probably in his day unsurpassed. Not surprisingly, he sat on various committees in connection with the Tate and National Galleries, with architectural heritage, preservation and conservation, lent his name to good causes and repeatedly donated drawings and paintings to appeals in aid of churches. One of Piper's many strengths as an artist lay in his verve and attack. Likewise, his letters, always brief and to the point, reveal an alert intelligence and a quick sensibility. He had a passion for fireworks and worked with John Deaker, Chairman of Pains Fireworks, on a number of major public displays. As as artist, he also liked to work with pyrotechnics, with sudden bursts of illumination and detail. He understood the bones within a piece of architecture so well that he could suggest it with large and abrupt washes of colour, on top of which he would allow a sprinkling of detail to dance across the surface, a style that worked especially well in his studies of Venice. A tall, lean man, he enjoyed good food and conversation, and with his wife Myfanwy established at Fawley Bottom a way of life that impressed many. A high point in his career came in 1983 when he was honoured with an eightieth-birthday exhibition at the Tate Gallery. An operation in 1987 left him sadly altered owing to the effects of the anasethetic, and a form of senility, possibly Alzheimer's, disabled the last four years of his life. He died 28 June 1992 and is buried in the extension graveyard at Fawley.

Frances Spalding



John Egerton Christmas Piper, was born in Epsom in 1903, he was the son of a wealthy solicitor that had his own business. John Piper's brothers worked in the business and it was expected that John would work there also, but John had other ideas, he wanted to pursue a career as an artist; and this is where his personal hardships began. It seems that his father thought that John becoming an artist was a ludicrous idea and dismissed it and John was sent to work in the family business (Piper, Smith & Piper). The sad event of Charles Pipers death in 1925 freed John from his obligation to the family business; there was no one to stop him now. After getting over the years events namely that of his father's death he picked himself up and did what he should have done a long time ago and left Piper, Smith and Piper and went to sign up with the Royal College of Art in south Kensington. His talent was recognised but he was turned down because he did not have enough experience of drawing the nude. The rebuff was softened by being told to go to the Richmond School of Art, and to try again later. With the help of Richmond Art School after one year he was accepted into the Royal College. What this move did for Piper is a matter for debate in which there is a marked divergence of views. Piper thinks that he got a lot from the college, and names a number of people who were around the place at that time whom he learned things from which he is still grateful, among them Charles Mahoney, Morris Kestleman, and Tom Monnington. Kestleman in particular has his doubts about this, partly because he feels very strongly that the things that are very important to an artist are not too teachable, and partly because the school was a very dead and boring school at the time. To start with John made his money by writing Art reviews and columns for magazines, this he did not enjoy but paintings were not selling at the time. By this time John Piper had been asked to join a group of artists that called themselves "the Seven and Five" and to exhibit with them. Included in the group were Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Ivon Hitchens, Frances Hodgkins , Barbara Hepworth, and Winifred Nicholson. John Piper was now part of an elite English movement in modern painting. Around about this time World war II broke out and everything was rationed, so it must have been hard to get hold of luxury items such as canvas, oil paints, brushes, paper and also there would have been no spare money to be spent on buying art. The Government had set up a scheme for art and it was called "The war artists scheme" In this scheme artists were paid to paint, probably by the hour or by the canvas on a 9-5 basis. Murals would have been painted and perhaps the artist's work would have been used for propaganda in some cases, or to boost Morale. John Piper was involved in this scheme as was Henry Moore and nearly every artist that had not signed up. Some obviously did go to the frontline to see first hand what was going on but others recorded the events at home. John Pipers paintings were mainly of derelict buildings or buildings that he anticipated getting bombed. It was from this time that Piper found his favourite motif of devastated architecture. Colour, texture and perspective heighten the dramatic effect of his romantic topographies, which have wide appeal.
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