The Tricycle Theatre to Raise Funds by Exhibiting & Auctioning Donated Works of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon

Written by Charles McFadden Sunday, 11 December 2011 22:08

London.- The Tricycle Theatre will present " Hercules Brabazon Brabazon " from Wednesday December 14th through Friday January 7th 2012. This exhibition consists of works by Victorian watercolourist Brabazon, donated by local philanthropist Al Weil to raise funds for the theatre. Brabazon was considered one of the most important watercolourists of his era, judged by Ruskin , a notoriously harsh critic, to be the only natural heir to Turner. His paintings are held in key national collections such as Tate, the V&A and the National Gallery of Wales . The paintings on show at the Tricycle include landscapes made during the artist's travels around the world, flower studies and sketches of his friends and contemporaries. After being shown in the Tricycle's own gallery, the exhibition will move to Pyms Gallery , where it can be seen from January 11th through February 8th.

Weil is giving around 35 paintings by the renowned Victorian watercolourist Hercules Brabazon Brabazon to the theatre, to exhibit and auction, using the proceeds to support its activities. The Tricycle was a victim of the latest round of government cuts, losing £350,000 funding per year. As a direct result, Tricycle’s Nicolas Kent, one of the UK's longest serving and most respected artistic directors, announced that he would be standing down from the theatre he has run for 27 years. “Ideally, I want Kent to stay on, but the main thing is to keep the theatre alive and kicking as vigorously as it ever has”, says Weil, now 89 years old and a keen supporter of the Tricycle. Weil was introduced to Kent and the theatre’s challenging political programme by his wife Joan Brown, the well-known casting director. He has been collecting Brabazon paintings since the 1960s and now has a core group of 35 watercolours . A culture enthusiast since frequenting New York’s jazz clubs in the 60s, Weil’s interest in the visual arts began during his career in the labour unions: he represented the employers of New York’s cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and botanic gardens. His interest in Brabazon was kick-started by discovering the work when browsing the antiques stalls at Portobello Market shortly after he arrived in London.


He bought two Brabazon paintings for £10 each on his first visit to the market and then began actively looking out for them, researching the life and work of this artist who the critic DS MacColl suggested rivalled J. M. W. Turner as a colourist and of whom Ruskin said “Brabazon is the only person since Turner at whose feet I can sit and worship and learn about colour”. Weil began to immerse himself in the British art scene, joining the Turner Society in 1975 to campaign for a better home for the Turner bequest. As the Assistant General Secretary of Public Services International (part of International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) Weil was used to battling for rights and the Turner Society ultimately claimed victory with the allocation of the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain for the Turner collection in 1980. This same tenacious spirit has seen him collect and write on Brabazon for some forty years, and now his efforts will create two exhibitions of the artist’s work, as well as a generous gift to the Tricycle, one of London’s great arts institutions.

Hercules Brabazon Brabazon was a largley self-taught Victorian artist who has produced some of the most personal, fervent and instinctive watercolours of the 19th-Century. The youngest son of an aristocratic Irish family, Brabazon travelled widely and spent much of his time capturing stunning, foreign landscapes. Brabazon favoured the use of tinted, pre-wetted paper, which allowed his vivid colours to diffuse and mingle on the page. His economical use of rapid and unedited brush strokes highlight the brevity of his process. No Brabazon is ever laboured, and his works were usually completed in under an hour. However, his paintings require careful study to appreciate the suggestiveness of his technique. His broad style is closest to early 19th-Century plein-air painters but he made remarkable advances in this field by combining minimal palettes and strongly abstracted designs, linking him as well to the more progressive English artists of the late 19th-Century. Now hailed as Turner’s rival as a colourist, Brabazon didn’t exhibit his work until the age of 71, when he shot to fame with his highly effective and innovative style.

The Tricycle Theatre has established a unique reputation for presenting plays that reflect the cultural diversity of its community, in particular by Black, Irish, Jewish, Asian and South African writers, as well as for responding to contemporary issues and events with its ground-breaking ‘tribunal plays’ and political work. As well as the award-winning theatre, the Tricycle also has a cinema and art gallery. Visit the theatre's website at ... http://www.tricycle.co.uk

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