New acquisitions unite important murals by two of the most significant artists of the 20th-century

WADDESDON.- The Rothschild Foundation has acquired both The Englishman’s Home by John Piper (1951) and The English Pub by Edward Bawden (1949 -1951) and plans to display the works by two of the most important artists and designers of the 20th-century at Waddesdon Manor.

The Englishman’s Home

John Piper’s (1903-1992) monumental mural The Englishman’s Home is the largest surviving mural from the Festival of Britain 1951, covering almost 5m x 16m.

The Englishman’s Home consists of 42 plywood panels, painted with house paint - many have a complex surface with multiple finishes combining impasto with scumbled glazes and incised lines.

The mural was installed on the river side of the Homes and Gardens Pavilion in a prominent place on a main route through the Festival of Britain site on the South Bank in London. The composition is an imagined street scene including a highly personal and impressionistic selection of buildings, both grand and domestic, mainly 18th-century and only some of which are identifiable. Those that are include Regency Square in Brighton, a Victorian villa in St Martin’s Avenue, Epsom (which belonged to Piper’s mother), East Barsham Manor in Norfolk, the dome of Castle Howard and Owlpen Manor in Gloucestershire. Combined, The Englishman’s Home creates a remarkable visual survey of some of the different social layers of 1950’s Britain.

The Festival of Britain was a key moment for patronage of large-scale murals. A number by a range of British artists were commissioned, either to decorate buildings, or for inclusion in an exhibition of murals called 60 Paintings for 51. The Englishman’s Home was easily the largest and most epic in subject. A work on this scale might have been expected to be made with a team of assistants, but Piper painted the mural with almost no help in his garden of his home at Fawley Bottom, Oxfordshire, through the harsh winter of 1950-51.

At the end of the Festival, The Englishman’s Home was given to the town of Harlow, and in the 1960s was installed in the Assembly Hall at Harlow Technical College, overseen by Piper. It remained there until 1992.

It’s hoped that The Englishman’s Home will be an inaugural loan to the new Museum of London Poultry Market building once it has opened.

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The English Pub

This set of conjoined panels forming a screen was commissioned in 1949 by Sir Colin Anderson, director of the Orient Line shipping company for the First-Class Saloon on the steamship Oronsay.

Edward Bawden (1903-1989) also made a companion piece - called English Garden Delights - of very similar dimensions, for the same space in Oronsay’s sister ship, the Orcades. This screen was already at Waddesdon and belongs to a Rothschild family collection, so the acquisition of The English Pub unites two of the most significant works by Bawden in the same place.

The two panels are the high point of Bawden’s activities as a painter of murals on a large scale, and a vivid demonstration of his skill, wit and visual inventiveness. The two panels painted for the Orient Line are the only survivors of this extraordinary period of Bawden’s creativity.

Alongside the panels, Bawden also designed the menu covers, ceramic tableware and curtains for the Saloons on both ships; the celebration of English life was important in the context of the liners, which sailed between the UK and Australia. Both vessels continued in service until they were decommissioned and scrapped in 1975, at which point the panels were removed and sold.

Both The English Pub and English Garden Delights can now be seen on display side by side for the first time in the Stables Restaurant at Waddesdon Manor.

Plans are also underway to display the two Bawden panels with sections of the Piper mural in a special exhibition at Waddesdon Manor in 2024.

Pippa Shirley, Director of Waddesdon, said; “It’s so exciting to be uniting these murals at Waddesdon, partly because of their impressive scale, but also because, although made for very different purposes, both embody an expression of Englishness which is at once nostalgic and evocative. Piper’s work for the Festival of Britain reflects its statement of national hope, regeneration and creativity after the trauma of the Second World War. The panels made by Bawden for the great liners of the Orient Line have all the romance of that age of international travel, yet share the same sentiment. It’s fascinating to compare the approaches of two such inventive and important artists.”

Sharon Ament, Director, Museum of London, said: “We’re thrilled to have been offered a loan of The Englishman’s Home by John Piper. The increased size of our new site in West Smithfield will not only allow us to display the monumental work, but will also allow museum visitors to appreciate the full scale and beauty of the mural.
“Originally displayed on London’s South Bank for the Festival of Britain in 1951, the generosity of the Rothschild Foundation means that we can welcome this important piece of the Capital’s history back to the city where it was first displayed. It’s especially fitting that we’ll be able to display Piper’s work in the poultry market building, which echoes the modernist design and forward-thinking use of concrete epitomised by the Festival of Britain.”