Forthcoming

Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)

Mural IV for the canteen of John D. Francis Ltd, Fazakerley, Liverpool, 1947

SKU: 9603
Oil on paper laid on board
6 x 9 ft. (183 x 274.3 cm)
Part of set of 4

Size:
Height – 183cm
Width – 274.3cm

DESCRIPTION

Provenance:
removed from the canteen of John D Francis Ltd, circa 1990
Presentation:
framed

Literature:
Alan Powers, Murals and Public Paintings: Community Service’, in Sacha Llewellyn and Richard Sorrell (ed), The Life and Works of an English Neo-Romantic Artist, Bristol: Sansom & Co. 2013 p.121
After Sorrell’ made an  auspicious start as a muralist – winning scholarships to both the Royal College of Art (1924-27) and The British School at Rome (1927-29).  He painted over twenty major mural cycles during his career less than half of which have survived.   The recently rediscovery Fazakerley murals, comprising four paintings each are reproduced here for the first time in color.


In 1947, Sorrell was commissioned to paint four 6ft by 9ft panels for the canteen of John D. Francis Ltd in Fazakerley, Liverpool, a project completed in 1949, and also designed colour schemes for the factory.  Distant landscapes with buildings, mountains, rocky coastlines, a cathedral and a fairy-tale castle set the character for each of the panels. The foregrounds are crowded with associational objects, while the top of each panel is framed with a festooned red curtain like the opening of a theatre proscenium, with a ledge at the base on which trompe l’oeil objects are displayed. There is a touch of Rex Whistler about these works, although the painting style is heavier and more like Shell advertisements from the 1950s that gathered slightly selfconscious groupings of foreground objects to illustrate a theme. In their original setting, these paintings would have recalled the wartime murals by various artists for those state-sponsored lunch rooms offering a square meal for three shillings called British Restaurants. While many works of this kind have been lost, Sorrell’s canvases were salvaged by a member of staff when the factory closed, although they have never since been exhibited.
(Extract taken from Alan Powers, Murals and Public Paintings: Community Service’, in Sacha Llewellyn and Richard Sorrell (ed), The Life and Works of an English Neo-Romantic Artist, Bristol: Sansom & Co. 2013 p.121)
Richard Sorrell, has pointed out that the Fazakerley mural was probably inspired by Pinturiccio’s The Return of Ulysses in the National Gallery with which Sorrell’s scheme has much in common with in terms of iconography.

It appears that Sorrells mural cycle had a strong influence on the paintings of his second wife, Elizabeth Tanner, in whose compositions Staffordshire figures and dolls and shells frequently appear on windowsills. Sorrell and Tanner married in 1947.

We are grateful to Mike Goldmark, Alan Powers and Richard Sorrell for assistance.

Disclaimer:
Liss Llewellyn are continually seeking to improve the quality of the information on their website. We actively undertake to post new and more accurate information on our stable of artists. We openly acknowledge the use of information from other sites including Wikipedia, artbiogs.co.uk and Tate.org and other public domains. We are grateful for the use of this information and we openly invite any comments on how to improve the accuracy of what we have posted.

THE ARTIST

Alan Sorrell
Alan
Sorrell
1904 - 1974

Alan Sorrell (1904-1974) attended the Royal College of Art in the mid-1920s during
a period which saw the emergence of talents such as Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, John Piper, Henry Moore and Barnett Freedman. Although Sorrell’s work has been less well documented his talent was comparable to that of artists more usually associated with the RCA’s formidable reputation during the interwar years.

What were Sorrell’s achievements and how should he be remembered by posterity? During his life Sorrell produced a vast cycle of murals (nearly 20 over a 30-year period). When exhibited for the first time in a generation at the British Murals show organized by Liss Fine Art at The Fine Art Society (London), William Packer described Sorrell’s recently rediscovered Festival of Britain mural as ‘utterly enchanting’ and ‘quite the star of the entire show’, (The Times 2.3.2013 p 91).

Another aspect of Sorrell’s oeuvre which deserves greater recognition are the paintings he produced during WW2. Like many artists of the period, such as Sir Thomas Monnington, Sorrell’s direct experience as an airman resulted in a new perspective ‘ broad horizons and tilted aerial views which were to become the hallmark of his post-war reconstruction drawings. Never an Official War Artist he was able to choose his subjects with relative freedom which resulted in an engaging record of daily life in wartime Britain.

Sorrell’s work as a pre-war artist is relatively little known. Trained at Southend before starting to work as a commercial artist Sorrell subsequently took up a scholarship at the RCA (1924) ‘ an association later strengthened by his period as a teacher there (1931-48). In between he spent two years at the British School at Rome on a Scholarship.

Almost no work survives from Sorrell’s period as an RCA student other than the preparatory drawings with which he competed for his 1928 Rome Scholarship. The RCA archives for this period are much depleted (probably having been destroyed in the war), as a result of which it is hard to gain a fuller picture of this formative period of his life. An equally small body of work has survived from his two years in Rome though his early self-portrait (November 1928) ‘ a masterly fusion of nagging self-doubt and youthful self confidence ‘ hints at the emerging power of his talent. Sorrell recorded his time at the British School at Rome in an unpublished typescript titled Barbarians in Rome in which he paints a vivid picture of life at the school during the years 1928-30.

Returning from Rome in 1930, Sorrell produced some very fine works: Artist in the Campagna (c. 1931), Appian Way (1932), Rocky Formation at Thingvellir (1934), The Long Journey (1936), A Land Fit for Heros (1936). Sorrell’s vision was born out of the Romantic British tradition exemplified by Blake, Palmer and their 20th-century disciples.

Sorrell is principally remembered today as an illustrator of articles on archaeology for
The Illustrated London News and books ranging from Roman Britain to The Holy Bible,
(more than 15 books over a period of 40 years, the last Reconstructing the Past appearing posthumously in 1981) and for reconstruction drawings for the Ministry of Works ‘ later English Heritage. Through these projects Sorrell played a unique role at a crucial moment in the development of archaeology as a discipline helping it develop from non-specialist to rigorous professional activity. The pioneering archaeologists he worked with read like a roll call of honour: Cyril and Ailen Fox, Dr Kathleen Kenyon, Professor Brian Emery, Mortimer Wheeler, Leonard Woolley, V. E. Nash-Williams, Ian Richmond, James Mellaart, Shepherd Frere and Philip Rahtz. For this and subsequent generations of archaeologists Sorrell’s work holds a special fascination. Out of context some of these drawings can appear dated, but the majority are infused with the qualities of Sorrell’s most evocative work ‘ composed from a dynamic panoramic viewpoint full of imaginative details. This area of specialization, where Sorrell was successful in avoiding the predictable or formulaic, was not a cul de sac into which he withdrew from the artistic mainstream. Sorrell was acutely aware of contemporary issues and the same rigorous approach also inspired his remarkable series of drawings recording the construction of Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station (from October 1957 to 1965). A photograph of Sorrell recording the Nuclear Reactor No 4 makes a poignant pair to the photograph of the same period which shows him sketching at Stonehenge.

Sorrell continued to develop his vision consistently over a highly productive half century. His journey was not always easy. Struggling at times financially he also suffered rejection and disappointment ‘ the War Artists Committee turned down his application to become an Official War Artist; he was dismissed from his teaching post at the RCA by Robin Darwin (1948) and failed in his subsequent application to become head of Winchester Art School. And as late as 1964, when he was put forward for election to the RA by John Ward, his candidature was rejected. He was a man of principle: when serving in the RAF he staged a ‘one man mutiny’, refusing to work on terrain models of cities he considered to be of ‘irreplaceable artistic importance’. He was an active environmentalist campaigning in Essex in the mid-1950s to protect local fields, woodlands and hedgerows from urban development.

Sorrell made numerous journeys to distant lands, painting in Iceland (1934), Greece and
Turkey (1954), Egypt and the Sudan (1962) where he travelled with a specially made canvas bag designed to stop his materials melting in the sun. A latter-day Holman Hunt, and with some of Holman Hunt’s heroism (!), he faithfully recorded scenes in situ including a remarkable series of over sixty drawings of the villages around Nubia threatened by the building of the High Dam at Aswan (1962). In other pictures his journeys were imagined, dramatic fantasies of falling towers, or trains rushing over viaducts.

As an epitaph for ‘England’s Early Sculptors’ John Piper used a thirteenth century chronicle by Peter Langtoft: ‘the wander wit of Wiltshire’ went to Rome to study the antiquities, but when the antiquaries learnt that he had never seen Stonehenge they sent him back to find inspiration in his own country. This story has a certain resonance with Sorrell’s own artistic journey and ultimately his success in forging a vision which responded to both legacies.

MORE PICTURES BY ARTIST

Forthcoming
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Mural IV for the canteen of John D. Francis Ltd, Fazakerley, Liverpool, 1947
Forthcoming
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Mural III for the canteen of John D. Francis Ltd, Fazakerley, Liverpool, 1947
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for a portrait of Sir Cyril Fox, 1946
£1,875
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Early Self-portrait, circa 1925
£1,200
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Self Portrait in Graduation Gown, circa 1927
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
The Evening Signal, 1940
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for A Land Fit for Heroes, 1936
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for The Nelson Bar, HMS Campania, 1951
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Mural I for the canteen of John D. Francis Ltd, Fazakerley, Liverpool, 1947
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for Marching Gun Range and Rifle Range, RAF Station
£1,950
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for Watch Office, RAF Station, circa 1944
£2,900
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study of Angels for St Peter’s Church, Bexhill-on-Sea, 1951
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for People Seeking After Wisdom, c 1928
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Reconstruction of Harlech Castle, 1970
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for An Aerial View of a Wartime Airfield, circa 1942
£2,950
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Sketch for An Aerial View of a Wartime Airfield, circa 1944
£1,200
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Processing the Catch, Wharf Scene, Iceland, c.1935
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Part 3, Illustration for The Broken Gates, circa 1950
£650
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
May Morning, Putney Embankment, July 6th, 1939
£1,950
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Sketch for examination competition, People Seeking After Wisdom, March 1,1928
£2,500
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for The Long Journey, 1936
Sold
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Study for People Seeking After Wisdom, 1928
Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974)
Self-portrait, Nov 1928
£17,500