SPOTLIGHT / Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery

'Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery' from 26 June, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Photo: Wright & Wright architects

Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery and our interview guest for the June BuonFresco newsletter, provided such detailed and valuable answers to our ‘All The Small Things’ questions, that we wanted to share the expanded and full version with everyone here on the Journal.

If you aren’t subscribed to BuonFresco already, there is a sign up page in the navigation menu above. Early each month we interview a brilliant guest from the art or interiors worlds, share notes from the studio, and feature our favourite exhibitions, books, art and buys. Lots of inspirational and creative things.

We hope you all enjoy reading Simon’s responses as much as we have. And if you are in search of a day out in Sussex, you can visit the ‘Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery’ exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, from 26th June - an excellent opportunity to find a little magic in the miniscule.

Part of the upcoming ‘Masterpieces in Miniature': The 2021 Model House Gallery’ exhibition. Fiona Rae, Abstract 01, 2020, Oil and acrylic on linen, 130 x 115 mm, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Donated by the Artist, 2020) © Fiona Rae

1. Collecting art - big or small? 

Great art comes in all sizes, but over the past year everyone has been confined to their homes due to Covid, inevitably there has been an increased focus on domestically-scaled artworks. I was inspired by a couple of model art galleries that we have at Pallant House Gallery that are filled with original miniature artworks to commission a new model. The first model from 1934 has abstract, figurative and Surrealist works by artists including Paul Nash, Vanessa Bell, Ivon Hitchens and Duncan Grant. The second from 2000 has works by Frank Auerbach, Sir Peter Blake, Sir Howard Hodgkin and Sir Antony Gormley: nothing more than a few centres across. Last year, I asked over 30 leading contemporary artists to create a miniature work - from John Akomfrah, to Damien Hirst, Maggi Hambling, Rachel Whiteread, and Gillian Wearing. The results have been an extraordinary collective response to an extraordinary year, and the architects Wright and Wright have designed a model art gallery inspired by the fusion of historic and modern architecture at Pallant House Gallery. We’re hoping this will be a project that can inspire children and young people and tour to venues around the country. So, at the moment, I would definitely say small! 

Part of the upcoming ‘Masterpieces in Miniature': The 2021 Model House Gallery’ exhibition. Pablo Bronstein, Rococo Clock, 2020, Hand coloured drawing on paper, 170 x 155mm, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Donated by the Artist, 2020) © Pablo Bronstein

Ex Libris, bookplates from Simon Martin’s collection. Clockwise from top left: William Nicholson for William Heinemann; Stephen Gooden for John Raymond Danson; John Craxton for Stephen and Natasha Spender; Keith Vaughan for Mervyn Jones Evans, John Nash for Lionel Bradley, Eric Gill for Mary Gill, E. McKnight Kauffer for Jeanette Rutherston, Keith Vaughan for John Lehmann, Gladys Calthrop for Nöel Coward, and E. McKnight Kauffer for Ifan Kyrle Fletcher. Photo: Simon Martin

2. Something small you collect? 

Over the past decade I have been collecting Ex Libris, bookplates that are pasted into the front of books to express ownership. I am particularly interested in bookplates designed by Modern British artists and have examples by artists including Eric Gill, Paul Nash, Keith Vaughan and Rex Whistler. Not only are they a relatively affordable way of collecting original prints by these artists, they also provide an opportunity to learn about all the lives of the interesting people who commissioned them from authors, to suffragettes, architects and politicians – each one reflects something of their personality. I enjoy researching them and sharing what I discover on Instagram. And, most importantly, they don’t take up too much space. 

David Garrick’s bookplate, engraved by John Wood in the 18th century. Photo: Simon Martin

3. Top 3 things in your curiosity cabinet? 

I have a Cabinet of Curiosities in my flat which keeps all the weird and wonderful objects acquired on travels and from antique shops in one place: from shells, to tribal masks, fossils and reliquaries. My top 3 things would be a group of exquisite miniature ceramic thrown vessels by the Japanese potter Uta Segawa, a Hopi doll, and a carved sandalwood statue of Mahatma Gandhi that I bought when I was living in a Gandhian community in India many years ago.

Simon Martin’s Cabinet of Curiosities at home. Photo: Simon Martin

Inside Simon’s Martin’s Cabinet of Curiosities at home. Photo: Simon Martin

4. Favourite famous small work of art? 

One of my all-time favourite works of art is a 17th century miniature painted on vellum by Isaac Oliver: a portrait of Sir Edward Herbert, 1st Lord Herbert of Cherbury that resides at Powys Castle in Wales. It shows the bearded poet dressed in Jacobean finery with striped pantaloons and a lace ruff, reclining next to a stream in an attitude of studied melancholy. For me, it was the star of the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition of ‘Elizabethan Treasures’ and it is one of the first in a whole genre of depictions of ‘poets in the landscape’ which were a huge influence on Neo-Romantic artists in the 20th century such as John Craxton, John Minton and Keith Vaughan. So a miniature work with a long legacy.  

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron of Cherbury by Isaac Oliver

5. Something small that makes you happy? 

Lately I have derived a lot of pleasure from thinking about and looking at Eric Ravilious’ little wood-engraved illustrations for Gilbert White’s 18th century book The Natural History of Selborne: a series of letters recording the natural life in his Hampshire village. I have been writing a book about all the artists who illustrated his book, having curated an exhibition last year to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of the ‘first naturalist’. Most of the engravings are just a few centremetres across, but Ravilious manages to condense into them an extraordinary number of the birds and animals that White wrote about - even his tortoise Timothy.  

6. A detail you noticed in a painting you hadn’t seen before? Or a favourite detail in a work of art? 

A favourite detail in a work of art: can I choose St Jerome in his Study by Antonello da Messina in the National Gallery? It’s not so much for one detail, but many, everywhere you look. There are frames within frames, and things on every surface: exotic birds, vases, books, and miniature plants, with St Jerome perfectly framed on his raised, compact structure in the middle of a grand Gothic interior – with his lion padding along in the background, so small as to be incidental to the whole narrative of the work.

‘St Jerome in his Study’ by Antonello da Messina, in the National Gallery.

7. A little victory?! 

Some years ago, I found a tiny sea painting by Maggi Hambling at a flea-market in Brighton. I recognised it instantly and couldn’t believe my luck when the stall-holder asked £2 for it. Maggi was outraged – not at me – but that it should have ended up in a house clearance, but at least it was ‘saved.’ Maggi has contributed a miniature painting to the 2021 Model Art Gallery and told me that she likes to move between an enormous sea painting and a tiny one.

Sea painting by Maggi Hambling. Photo: Simon Martin

8. An encouraging or inspiring quote, mantra or wise words? 

 “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

- Aesop