In the footsteps of Piper

Discovering the artist John Piper in a corner of the Waveney Valley

Sketching trips over the last few days have been brief, but I have continued to “stomp purposely”, as my friend described me walking across the paths of the Ling, trying to familiarise myself with every inch. I am not a person with a natural inner compass, or an ability to remember where I am, so what most people would grasp very quickly after a few walks, takes me repeated efforts to gain a sense of the terrain. My grandmother was the same and said she hardly knew where she was just a few feet from her front door, so I am good company.

Drawing has just been limited to a few minutes outdoors, as the wind has been cruel, and so instead I have been following the trail of a favourite artist, John Piper. Quite by accident I discovered that he had visited this tiny corner of the Norfolk / Suffolk border to record the wondrous churches that punctuate the skyline and this sent me down a delightful rabbit hole.

John Piper ( 1903 - 1992) had spent his youth travelling on his bicycle making sketches and notes on the English countryside, and the prodigious knowledge he gained during these jaunts, led him in 1939 to be the ideal collaborator of John Betjeman on the Shell Guides. These beautiful, quirky books to the counties of Britain were intended for the growing number of private motorists for whom touring the country was a new adventure.

John Piper Photograph by Elsbeth Juda (1911-2014) Copyright the V &A

The pair became firm friends, and travelled the country together having jolly, giggling larks, seeking to shine a light on the overlooked and what Betjeman called “church crawling”. They shared a love of gravestone carvings, Norman fonts and the simplicity of Non-Confromist Welsh chapels, all of which they were determined to rescue from oblivion. They were keen to feature not just the Stately Homes of England but the “pleasing decay” of the humble cottage. Piper contributed rich and atmospheric black and white photographs, apparently achieved by doubling the exposure reading and using a red filter ( a tip given by the artist Paul Nash), which intensified the dark skies and which later became a hallmark of his paintings. George V1 is said to have commented of Piper’s paintings of Windsor, “You always seem to have very bad luck with your weather, Mr Piper”!

Windsor Castle c.1941-44 Pencil, pen and ink, watercolour and bodycolour Copyright The Royal Collections Trust

The crusade to record and capture such architectural treasures developed an increased and emotional urgency during World War 2. Piper became an Official War Artist and recorded the bombing of Coventry, and the loss of its Cathedral, in vivid and poignant images. He was determined to record what he could in the wake of Hitler’s Baedeker raids which aimed to destroy the riches of English cities.

In the years following the war, Piper collaborated with Benjamin Britten, designing the sets and costumes for Britten’s operas. His frequent visits to The Red House in Aldeburgh gave him the opportunity to explore the countryside of Suffolk and Norfolk, and several paintings of church towers were made during this period as well as countless photographs taken.

It was through these photographs that I discovered his visit to my corner of Norfolk. I suspect that such forays were also connected to John Betjeman, who had a great fondness for this area too and rescued the cottages of Fair Green, but that is a story for another day. This vast archive of photographs is held in the Tate, but the two below were of particular interest.

The first is St Mary the Virgin, the beautiful church of Wortham. I was thrilled that Piper had visited this dearly loved place and I had great fun trying to replicate his steps by standing in the exact spot where he had taken his photographs.

Copyright of The Piper Estate from The Tate Images

My photograph of St Mary’s - it seems the spruce is no longer there!

This flint round tower is late Norman and at 8.8m in diameter is the largest round tower in England. In the churchyard many of the cottagers of Wortham Ling are buried, including the Rev Richard Cobbold, Rector for 52 years, who recorded their lives with such affection, and of whom I write more of here.

St Andrews Church, South Lopham

Copyright of The Piper Estate from The Tate Images

A cherry tree now obscures where Piper stood

Just a couple of miles along from Wortham is the Church of St Andrews. This magnicent edifice rises up in the landscape and is the most complete Norman tower in East Anglia. It is easy to see why Piper loved it. With golden ochre washes, flushed with pink, Piper accentuates in ink the rhythms of the blind archading. He captures the spirit of the place by focusing not solely on the architectural detail, but its soft weatherworn textures. He loved towers that were “incised and pitted by the weather; lichen stars or spreads it with yellow and gold; the mouldings of windows and arcades have become encrustations of curling ribs”.¹

South Lopham Church, 1976 Copyright of The Piper Estate from The Tate Images

But how does Piper achieve these translucent and atmospheric effects? He was highly experimental in his approach using a variety of mediums: ink, watercolour, gouache, soft and oil pastel and wax resist to achieve luscious washes and rich textures. There seems very little written about how such results were achieved and so I decided to make explorations in my sketchbook, choosing two favourite Piper images from the 1940’s.

Copying the work of artists that speak to us is a valuable way to learn how they developed their language. It is like listening to the sounds our parents make, we take their vocabulary and create our own mode of speaking.

This is one of Piper’s theatrical designs, The Earth, scene 8, and he heightens the tree’s trunk by using Indian ink with pools of watercolour on each side. I used Liquitex black acrylic ink, as an alternative, over candle wax, which seemed to give the most effective resist. As you can see above, I tried crayon and beeswax too. I used Schmincke blue, though I think Cobalt would have been stronger, to create the “night” side, and Cadmium Yellow Deep for the “day”. To strengthen the lines of the bark, I scored into the wax, added further ink, and then used coloured Neocolor oil pastel to deepen the hue.

But it is extremely tricky. You can’t see the wax as you lay it down and, of course, it can’t be removed! You only see it once you have added colour by which time it is too late if you have placed it wrongly. Piper used this technique with great accuracy and clearly I need more practice!

I tried again with his study of the Tombstones at Holy Trinity Churchyard, Hinton-in-the-Hedges, Northants, 1939. Here I loved how the stones emerge from the gloom, with the glimpse of trees behind. He appears to suggest the carvings of the graves with dip pen and ink drawing and creates volume and highlights by adding white chalk. I used Yellow Ochre and Raw Umber watercolour with Indian ink and a white soft pastel.

I greatly enjoyed making both drawings and will certainly experiment further. You can emulate his techniques by isolating an area of his larger landscapes to gain a sense of how he used different media.

And there is a fascinating edition of the South Bank Show on Piper (1983) which opens with him painting Covehithe church in Suffolk. It is a joy to watch him jump over the church wall, with minimal drawing kit, and to peer over his shoulder to see how he sketches with such fluency. I would love to identify the chunky black crayon he uses in his initial marks! Piper always painted from direct observation, making multiple sketches in watercolour and mixed media and then used these to create oil paintings back in his studio. The watercolours were paintings in their own right too, not simply preparatory sketches, and it is these works that I admire most.

From his photograph, Piper appears rather austere and formidable, but in this film you gain a sense of his sense of fun and modesty. He never takes himself too seriously, but it is his comments about Betjeman that I found most endearing and he clearly greatly valued their friendship. Paul Nash became cross with them for always laughing, and for not being serious enough about their work, to which Piper said, “ If I were asked, you can either laugh, or be a painter. I would have chosen the first”. I wonder how many painters would make such a choice? I found it a rather rare and touching remark.

Something to read

I thought I would choose the Fenland novels of Sybil Marshall to accompany this. The first is “A Nest of Magpies” and I have been holding back from reading the last of the sequence as I cannot bear them to end. These rich and humane books about Fran and William, explore the changes in countrylife around the 1970’s and were written when Marshall was eighty, following an extraordinary career as an educationalist. My something to listen to is her edition of Desert Island Discs and it is a treat to hear such a jolly and inspiring woman.

Thank you again for your company, and for supporting my work, it means a great deal. I look forward to meeting you again in a couple of weeks.

1. The Architectural Review, 1940.