Galleries - April 2014

art converted space in the old dairy plant by the station, it has been firmly shifting towards fine art. John Davies always has an interesting mix of contemporary and earlier British painting. This month, with an exhibition by Harry Fidler, recording the agricultural scene in late Victorian and Edwardian England, the latter is very much in evidence. With its lively brushwork and sparkling high-pitched colour, Fidler’s work shows him to be an acute and loving observer and one also very well aware of the new developments in British art at that date as the artists around the New English Art Club, Sickert et al, absorbed some of the important lessons of French Impressionism. On since March this show has, understandably enough, proved to be a real hit with a good half of it sold as we go to press. Meanwhile, in the rest of the space, John is mounting a stock sale which, with artists like David Press, David Prentice and Fred Schley on his books, should always prove a lively affair. Again, as you are there take a look too at Celia Lendis’ s two contemporary spaces in the town and on its outskirts. Just a few miles west of here, meanwhile, at the beautiful contiued on page 57 month, is celebrating the achievements of Ashbee’s Essex House Press. Founded in 1898 when Ashbee was still based in the East End, it came with him in 1902 and became one of the best known of the private presses which flourished at this time, producing some 90 or so stunning books. Court Barn acquired Ashbee’s personal collection in 2009, their current exhibition ‘Essex House Press types: C.R. Ashbee and his circle’ being the second major show drawn from it, on this occasion focusing on his interests and friendships in particular –John Ruskin and William Morris, Ashbee’s key inspirations. Perhaps the most visually interesting book in the show though is The Masque of the Edwards of England (1902), produced in 1902 to coincide with the coronation of Edward VII and illustrated by Edith Harwood. Before you leave for Moreton-in- Marsh walk down the magical High Street and take a look at the town’s other good, more contemporary, art space –the Campden Gallery , showing Kurt Jackson’s Scilly Isles work in April. A decade or so ago, Moreton- in-Marsh’s chief focus was on the antique trade. Since then, thanks to John Davies moving from Stow-on-the-Wold to a huge While the Cotswolds in fact comprise a pretty large geographical area, stretching from Bath, the start of the wonderful Cotswold Way, in the far South West to Oxford in the East and Worcestershire in the North, ask most people what they think is its real heartland and I suspect they’d probably come up with the area around Chipping Campden and Moreton-in-Marsh, roughly in the middle; so let’s start this survey of some of its many galleries in these two delightful small towns just 7-8 miles or so apart. For all their proximity though, they have very different atmospheres –Moreton- in-Marsh, a busy cross-roads town with direct rail links to London always seems hustling and bustling while Chipping Campden, on the way to nowhere really, remains a charming, more retiring sort of place nowadays, a virtual living museum of Cotswold architecture from Medieval times onwards. That of course was its original attraction to the Arts & Crafts guru C.R. Ashbee who made the town the H.Q. of his Guild of Handicraft in 1902. His presence is still very much felt in the town today, most particularly through the efforts of the Court Barn Gallery (run by local enthusiasts the Guild of Handicraft Trust) which, this 22 GALLERIES APRIL 2014 J ohn Maltby,‘Boat People’, ceramic at Stour Gallery, see details map 12 around the COTSWOLDS & BATH