Robert Gillmor, internationally acclaimed wildlife artist, author and ornithologist, with students at Leighton Park School. Photo: Photo courtesy of Leighton Park School
Eye - 30 March 2012
From master classes to Olympics hopes
Old Leightonian gives master class
A world-renowned wildlife artist has returned to his old Quaker school to relive memories and pass on some craft skills.
Robert Gillmor spent the day with students at Leighton Park School – who learned the techniques for producing linocuts and mono-prints. The artist is a former student and teacher at the Reading school.
Robert commented, ‘It was wonderful to see such young talented artists and that the school continues to encourage so much more than just the academic work.’
His lifelong passion for birds was ignited as a pupil at Leighton Park School, as a member of the student bird-watching group.
The ‘Robert Gillmor: Retrospective’ exhibition is currently running at the Museum of Reading until 29 April.
Going, going… sold
Two fascinating pieces of Quaker history recently came up for auction at Gorringes Fine Art, Antiques and Collectables auction in the East Sussex town of Lewes.
One was a portrait of the anti-slavery activist Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and the other an important seventeenth-century sammelband of Quaker tracts (1668-1679). The sammelband fetched a very impressive £8,000.
Aaron Dean, of Gorringes, said that the sammelband came from descendents of the Springett family: ‘The present vendor’s maternal grandmother’s family were Springetts, an important Sussex family, and were the family into which William Penn married. His first wife was Gulielma Maria Springett.’
The sammelband, entitled The Sandy Foundation Shaken, was sold to a trade buyer from London. ‘It was a charming piece’, Aaron said. ‘What was most interesting was that it had clearly been bound at the time, in the late seventeenth century, and was a beautiful example of binding from the period’.
The other lot on offer was a large oil portrait of the anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson. He was closely associated with Quakers and was a founding member of the Society for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Clarkson, who never became a Friend, was so impressed with them that he wrote an important history of the Religious Society of Friends in the early nineteenth century. The portrait, with an estimate of £7000 to £10,000, was not sold.
Quaker Olympic hopefuls
A wonderful performance by Quaker swimmers has boosted hopes that representatives from the Religious Society of Friends will be participating in the London Olympics. A synchronised swimming team, made up of members of staff of the Friend, was victorious in the trial at the new Olympic swimming pool in Stratford.
‘Synchronised swimming is all about grace under pressure. We use pinpoint precision and immense stamina to deliver sublime and sensual routines in the pool,’ said senior sub-editor Trish Carn. ‘We just do not get the credit we deserve. It is incredible when you consider that some of us train in the pool while also setting out the letters pages.’
The Quaker testimony to simplicity, and a degree of modesty, meant that the Friend team dressed in heavy, mid-Victorian, organic cotton suits. ‘I am glad the judges took this into account,’ said editor Ian Kirk-Smith.
Reporter Symon Hill added: ‘It was a good decision to go to Glenthorne and not to train on the moon’. There was no atmosphere there at all’.
The final decision on the British selection will be made on 1 April.
Comments
Please login to add a comment
