More of that extraordinary find...

Four more examples of the set of large pastel drawings of British Calendar Customs made by Dave and uncovered by Ella last week. I went to see them - they really are huge, most measuring close to two metres on the longest side. How would we frame them - being unfixed pastel they really are quite delicate?

According to McGee

The next exhibition of Dave Pearson's work, which I've mentioned in several posts as happening in April is, in fact, due to open at 'According to McGee' on Saturday 15th March. 

I happened across this fact as I was searching my diary for something unrelated. In shock, I immediately rang Greg McGee and arranged to travel over to York and visit the gallery. This I duly did on Saturday, meeting Greg and his wife, Ails. 

The gallery is in a fine position facing Clifford's Tower, and is an intimate i.e. small, space; just two galleries but friendly and welcoming. The theme of the exhibition will be 'Dave Pearson, the Colourist', and I've spent the rest of the weekend considering how to do this in the two galleries available. 

One thing I feel sure about is to include a selection of pieces from the 1960s, when Dave was working, in his usual totally focused and all-consuming way, on work inspired by Vincent Van Gogh. I was very close to him at this time and I feel it was Vincent's example that drew him into a new relationship with colour. The early pieces, that Dave said were influenced by Pop Art, and often used colour in a schematic way, slowly gave way to a richer and more complex palette inspired by Van Gogh's own paintings from nature.

A discovery!

I visited Ella at Dave Pearson's studio yesterday to see how things were going with the cataloguing of Dave's work, and also to meet Chris Pearson, Dave's son - and one of the Trustees. 

Ella showed me the progress she was making  and we took a look round the upstairs rooms where she is focussing her work. She has now reached 5400 items in the catalogue and is close to completing the first room - with perhaps another 1000 paintings and drawings still to be catalogued on the first floor alone. Chris, by the way, mentioned that he had several thousand works on paper in his house, in addition to the those in the studio. 

I pointed out to Ella a pile of works on paper that had been unopened since Dave died. These were rolled up in about 10 large rolls. This afternoon Ella opened one of these rolls - and found a series of really beautiful images of Calendar Customs pastel drawings. Excited, she immediately sent me 11 small photographs of her discovery. Four of them are illustrated here, to show their quality. 

New Year stirrings

A New Year and things are beginning to stir. First we've agreed with the Bridgeman Art Library (see the previous blog entry) to register Dave's work with them so that there's easy access to anyone wishing to use his images, and also that we've joined the Artists Collecting Society which means a small percentage of any resale of Dave's work would go to the Trust.

So Margaret Mytton and I spent half a day photographing 50 or more of Dave's smaller paintings, pastels and etchings for the Art Library. They require very high quality images as these will be for reproduction purposes. Margaret now has to go through the 1000 shots she took and select the best and then make any final colour balance adjustments they might need before they join a selection of the Byzantium images at the Bridgeman. Once these are transferred over anyone searching for Dave Pearson on the Bridgeman site will be able to pay a small fee for use of the image. 

Margaret is also poised to complete her new Revelations website on-line. You can visit it and see its nearly complete form here.

The Bridgeman Art Library

More exciting activity to report on! Yesterday Margaret Mytton and I travelled to London to meet with Leonora Gummer of the Artists' Collecting Society (ACS) and Lucy Innes Williams of the Bridgeman Studio to discuss Dave's work being licensed by the Bridgeman Art Library. The original suggestions for the meeting came from our old friends Edward Lucie-Smith and Sergei Reviakin. 

The two organisations are separate but closely linked. The ACS is a not-for-profit organisation that deals with collecting artists re-sale rights for works resold over 1000 euros. This means a small percentage of the resale price of an artwork goes back to the artist, or their estate, if it is resold. This is an EU law, only available to artists in the UK since 2006. 

The Bridgeman Art Library is a commercial picture library that specialises is images of art and holds over a million images from collections throughout the world. It has offices in New York, Berlin and Paris, as well as London. It licenses the reproduction of artwork, and splits the income equally with the artists, or their estates.

So, for example,  Bridgeman holds the copyright for the work of Lucien Freud, Augustus John, John Nash, Sir Frank Brangwyn, Arthur Rackham, Carel Weight and Eric Gill. They also hold copyrights for the collections of the Ashmolean, Fitzwilliam, the Royal Collections and Manchester Museums and Galleries as well as the British Library. So this is clearly a good place for Dave Pearson's work to be made available.

We had a number of questions for Lucy - would it affect our ability to use the images locally without cost? No. Would people be able to download images and avoid payment? No, every image is water-marked until a fee has been paid. What use could the images be put to? Lucy showed us examples of artists' images used on book-covers, magazines, advertising; she assured us that the DPT could have a final say on usage, when and how it is used, and she reassured us that it is a condition of use that all images are credited. 

We went away feeling very positive about ACS and the Bridgeman the Art Library. The atmosphere in their offices was very friendly and open, as were the people we met. It seems like another opportunity to get Dave's work seen and more widely known. Over the next few days I'll be looking at the small print, and almost certainly signing the forms that will bring Dave's work to a new platform.

Things gear up..

Just as the autumn weather arrives and reminds us that we'll need to start hunkering down for the winter, the Dave Pearson Trust has suddenly sprung to life having had a relatively quiet summer.

After the visit to the studio last week by friends from Belgium, and wrapping up their purchases to protect them on the journey home, I've been sending images to Greg McGee from According to McGee in York as he has started promoting his 2014 programme of exhibitions, which includes 'Dave Pearson - Colourist'. Ironically the first images he asks for need to be in black and white, for an advertisement in the art magazine 'Jackdaw', which still prints only in black. 

Margaret Mytton and I (Trustees) have also arranged to meet Lucy Innes Williams and Leonora Gummer from the Bridgeman Art Library to look at possibilities of copyrighting some of Dave Pearson's paintings, and discuss the Artist's Resale Right. If we're lucky we may also tie this in with meeting our old friend Edward Lucie-Smith and Sergei Reviakin, who is looking at the possibility of showing Dave's work during Art 14, at Olympia.

Finally, to report that the new displays of Dave Pearson's work in the cafeteria room at Rawtenstall's the Whitaker museum and gallery, have proved very popular with visitors. Last night I met Jackie and Julian (whose See Gallery has now been superseded by their curating roles at the Whitaker) and they told me how positive the comments have been - both about the new cafeteria itself and Dave's work that enhances it. 

Visitors

I had friends visiting today from Belgium, Caroline and Rob; they have in the past bought one or two pieces of work by Dave and were keen to revisit the studio in Haslingden. Seeing it through their eyes made me realise how well organised it has become over the past year...

Our friends brought along a couple of their own friends from Den Haag, and I spent a pleasant couple of hours telling them the story of Dave Pearson and, of course, looking at his work. By the end the Trust had sold another 5 pieces of work. We then drove down the road to the Whitaker to celebrate with coffee, soup and cake in the splendid new cafe area in the museum surrounded, appropriately, by some wonderful examples of Dave's work...  

...particularly admired by everyone was the large oil-painting 'The Boat' (above).