Peter Berrisford

Of six letters from Peter Berrisford to Ruth Borchard, five are dated between January 1959 and February 1960, sent from Northampton. Much of the correspondence deals with the artist's request that Ruth lend his self-portrait (which she had just bought) to an exhibition of 'Four Northampton Painters' at the South London Art Gallery.

Signed 'Berrisford' but undated, this self-portrait was painted around 1956, when the artist, born in Northampton in 1932, was twenty-four years old. Looking dapper in a collegiate kind of way – with his red-orange bow-tie, v-necked pullover and shirt in different shades of green, neatly coiffured, wavy blonde hair and prominent glasses – the artist looks the epitome of the mid-50s smart young man, a veritable aesthete-intellectual. His keen, wide-eyed expression captures to the quick the very instant of self-reckoning in the mirror. It also conveys something of an artist's almost desperate grasping after verisimilitude. Writing to the author in 2001, Peter Berrisford asked why, in this picture, 'did I elongate myself?' the answer perhaps could be that, by making his seated posture appear as tall, erect and intent-looking as possible, he was able to accentuate – literally to heighten – a sense of the artist's rapt, dignified absorption in the subject – and the task – at hand.

The painting is highly calibrated assertion of a young artist's identity and aspirations – each plane in the multi-faceted surface reflects some aspect of his chosen profession: the palette in the foreground, the canvas to the left, the stacked canvases apparently reflected in the mirror, what he described as the 'enigma behind the right shoulder, part of a poster with a Japanese print on it.' The palette – what he called 'the yellow greens with the blue greens next to the lemon yellow poster and red bow tie' – is subtle yet vibrant, infused with gently optimistic feeling.

What are we to make of the mysterious figure in the oval mirror, a shadowed spectre with undefined features but seeming to resemble the artist? Writing in 2001, Berrisford, asked, 'And what is behind the head? After all these years I am not too sure! It may well be me in an oval mirror. But if so, this creates a spatial enigma. Was I perhaps thinking a bit of that Velazquez... Or do I vaguely recall a Gauguin wherein there is a brooding second presence? Or maybe I just wanted to make the picture more interesting.'

Berrisford has also noted that 'the only other self-portrait I have done also harks back to those years which I enjoyed only very occasionally. The painting (now vanished) showed an anguished face and was the result of an imposed competition subject, “Murder in the Cathedral”. The misery of army life achieved expression! [he had just spent two years doing National Service.]' In contrast, self-portrait that Ruth bought does not palpably exhibit misery or anguish, yet the broodingly severe figure so curiously reflected in the oval mirror (with no sign of eyes, glasses or bow-tie) does seem to hint at a darker, hidden aspect.

Here are the artist's written thoughts (also from 2001) on 'the matter of true identity':

          'In the case of a sef-portrait I doubt that the artist can discover anything  

          of his inner self. He is too busy with technical matters, composition, 

          texture, colour. These are the only things whose true identity he can 

          perhaps discover.

          Knowing ourselves is a very subjective matter. It therefore follows than 

          particular expression of character or emotion is of a fleeting and non-

          timeless nature. See how Piero della Francesca, for example, avoids 

          such a thing in his paintings which deal in eternal truths.'

Ruth most likely first encountered Berrisford's work in Jack Beddington's book Young Artists of Promise (The Studio Publications, London, 1957), in which two of his works are illustrated in black-and-white. One is an animated scene of the orchestra, dancers and seated young lovers at a Jazz Ball in Annan, the other depicts an enigmatic, contemplative woman behind the Bar at the Crown and Mitre. Both pictures related to his National Service years.

Peter Berrisford studied at Northampton and Chelsea Schools of Art and Bournemouth College of Art, gaining a travelling scholaership in 1952. At Chelsea, 'Ceri Richards and Prunella Clough were fine teachers. Most important for me was an inspirational lecture about Cézanne by Julian Trevelyan.' Since 1952, Italian landscape and Italian art, on which in later years he lectured as an art historian, have inspired much of his work. Mooring Posts and Gondolas, Venice, Italy (1952; Collection: Northampton Museums and Art Gallery) has something of the complex intricacy of detail and patterning of Prunella Clough's 1951 painting, Lowestoft Harbour (Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre) but Berrisford's work has none of the taut, muscular compactness of his teacher's picture; his is much more musically fluid in its nevertheless finely observed details.

His ingeniously dramatic 1959 painting Priests and Pigeons (Collection: Northampton Museums and Art Gallery) depicts a striking trio of black-cloaked, black-hatted priests and a white-veiled nun ascending sun-illumined tall stone steps (no doubt towards a church entrance, of a church or cathedral); at the base is an immense flurry of pale (and some dark) pigeons around a black-silhouetted figure under a black umbrella, selling what may be cheap clerical texts, more likely bags of breadcrumbs to passersby. This starkly abstracted picture captures with flair something of the eery traditional grandeur and vitality of daily life in Catholic Italy.

In his 1960s' Italian landscapes showing hillside terraces and farmhouses prismatically abstracted, underlying structure is rendered plain and austere beyond any surface attractions. Looking Down on a Venetian Campo was acquired in 1966 by Paintings in Hospitals. The Venetian campo is an open, asymmetrically shaped paved space, surrounded by architecture, a kind of immensely intricate social meeting and market place at the heart of a particular urban district. The artist's aerial view of the rust-red and ochre roofs of buildings, and areas of plain paving in a subtle array of pale tones, is highly abstracted; as such, it bears more than a passing resemblance to multi-faceted paintings by Nicolas de Staël (1914-55) and Keith Vaughan (q.v.). The dynamic quality of such a now neglected painting by Berrisford merits our renewed attention. 

Among many one-man exhibitions was one at the Wildenstein Gallery, London in 1958; the following year he exhibited at the same gallery in a show of Some contemporary British painters, who included Bridget Riley, Allan Gwynne-Jones, John Capnall, and Clifford Hall (q.v.). 

Malta became the subject of many paintings, which were regularly exhibited 

over the years at a gallery on the island.. A 1999 exhibition, 'Views of Venice, Florence and Malta' at the Hahn Gallery in London, included two watercolour views of the ancient town of Medina in Malta. In the first, the pale stone walls appear almost cubist in the intense light; in the second, set at sunset, the empurpled town and surrounding countryside are described in miniature under a dominating orange, blue and mauve sky. Strong, subtle colour and an assiduous awareness of innate structure have always been Berrisford's hallmarks. 

A long essay by Berrisford, 'Art Education - A Mindless Activity No Longer' (published in the journal, Studies in Design Education Craft &Technology in 1973) articulates his thoughtful and practically-based ruminations on the need for a radical rethinking of art education for young schoolchildren. He writes: 'I need hardly say that I am not arguing for formal lessons in art history or appreciation. Indeed, it is partly because so many present day art teachers have suffered in their own education dull, lifeless art theory lecturing, (seemingly irrelevant to 'doing' or even living) that the present situation has arisen.'

One of his solutions for engaging with children's imaginations is to display, as far as possible, original works of art in school foyers and corridors. For example, 'A painting of a monstrous tree form similar to those created by Graham Sutherland could be exhibited along with stimulating photographs of relevant natural forms; postcards or reproductions of art in a similar vein, (though not necessarily the same medium), and actual pieces of twisted or gnarled wood, together with the bones of animals.' He encourages the matching of audio and visual presentation, such as the 'music of Gabrieli' along with 'Slides of interior architecture and mosaics, San Marco, Venice'; and 'Warlike music, eg, Holst...  Schoenberg... [and] Vaughan Williams 5th Symphony' along with 'Examples of relatively straight-forward war art, past and present. Introduce Picasso's 'Guernica', 'Weeping Woman', and similar work. Also, perhaps, posters like 'Women of Britain want war', 'Kitchener needs You'.' 

One of his conclusions reads: 'It is almost impossible to start art appreciation too soon, so long as it is done in a sensible way. While it is true that art teaching with very young children is a matter of providing a well organised environment within which a sympathetic teacher can encourage children to joyfully experiment in the media of art and, at the same time, come to terms with life and living, surely some informed contact with art past and present can be included. Display is the best way.' 

Many of Berrisford's then seemingly daring suggestions regarding art appreciation for the young have now become routinely part of the way art is taught in many British schools. His deeply felt way of thinking was in tune with, and may have partly inspired, some progressive art educational ideas at the time.