Wonderful stained-glass windows at a church in the countryside of Kent

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IT IS NOT EVERY day that when one walks into a remote English country church, you are confronted by set of stained-glass windows that were designed by a famous Jewish early Modernist artist. At Tudely, near Tonbridge in Kent, the church’s stained-glass windows were designed by none other than the famous artist, Marc Chagall (1887-1985). I have visited the church several times, and each time I am even more amazed than on previous visits.

You might be wondering why windows designed by an artist as famous as Chagall are in a small, isolated parish church. To discover the reason for their presence, you should get a copy of my book “An Alphabetical Tour of England”, and read about the tragic event that led to the creation of these fascinating windows. The boo is available from Amazon sites such as:https://www.amazon.co.uk/ALPHABETICAL-TOUR-ENGLAND-Adam-Yamey/dp/B0FVV6JLZ7/

Epstein, Gill, and Moore on Broadway

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THE ARCHITECT CHARLES HOLDEN (1875-1960) designed many stations for the London Underground, mainly on its Piccadilly Line. Each of these incorporates features of Art Deco and Modernism. Holden designed a new headquarters building for the forerunner of London Underground, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London. Now known as 55 Broadway, it was built between 1927 and 1929. The Underground company occupied it from 1933 until 1984, when it became the headquarters of London Regional Transport, and then its successor Transport For London. After 2020, it has served other purposes. The ground floor is occupied by both a shopping arcade and the entrance hall to St James Park Underground Station.

55 Broadway is a tall, cruciform building surmounted by a clock tower. One of the reasons for this shape was to ensure that all of the offices within the cruciform tower, the bulk of the edifice, were close to the external walls, and therefore had access to plenty of daylight. Apart from looking impressive, the building is not highly decorative, and not as attractive as some of its architect’s designs for Underground stations.  Having said this, it is not entirely devoid of decorative features.

What makes 55 Broadway of special interest is the set of sculptures attached to its exterior. Near to ground level, there are two large figurative works by the artist Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), one called “Day” and the other “Night”. When they were unveiled, prudish members of the public objected to them, as is revealed in an article on Wikipedia:

“The modernism and graphic nakedness of these sculptures created public outrage on their unveiling. Newspapers started a campaign to have the statues removed and one company director, Lord Colwyn, offered to pay the cost. Frank Pick, the managing director of the UERL at the time, took overall responsibility and offered his resignation over the scandal. In the end, Epstein agreed to remove 1.5 inches (38 mm) from the penis of the smaller figure on Day and ultimately the furore died down.”

Much higher up the building, between the fifth and sixth floors, there are bas-relief sculptures depicting the four winds. Two are by Eric Gill (1882-1940), one is by Samuel Rabinovitch (Samuel Rabin: 1903-1991), and another by Henry Moore (1898-1986). And within the Underground station, I noticed four mosaic panels. Called “Angels of History”, they were created by London-based Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, and installed in 2024.

What was once an important headquarters building is still a place where fascinating works of art can be seen, as well as being an example of Modernist architecture in London. Soon after 55 Broadway was completed, Holden designed the University of London’s Senate House. Like 55 Broadway, it impresses the viewer, but lacks the visual appeal of Holden’s Underground stations.

A church beside a canal in London’s Paddington

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THE GRAND JUNCTION café is a peasant little place in a modern building a few feet away from the footpath that runs alongside the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, not far from Little Venice. This refreshment place is attached to a much older building, the church of St Mary Magdalene Paddington. It is a gem of Victorian gothic architecture. This is what I wrote about it in my book “Beyond Marylebone and Mayfair: Exploring West London”:

“[the church] … was designed by George Edmund Street (1824-1881), and completed in 1878. It was built in what was then an area with poor quality housing, where often several hard-up families used to live crowded together under a single roof. The parish in which it is located began life as an offshoot of All Saints in Margaret Street (near Oxford Circus). Like All Saints, St Mary Magdalene’s was established as an Anglo-Catholic church. Its website (grandjunction.org.uk) revealed that Anglo-Catholicism:

‘… emphasises the Catholic heritage and identity of the Church of England. In the mid-nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism was very controversial and provoked riots. Anglo-Catholic churches were often built in very poor areas, and their clergy believed that their services, full of light, colour, music and ritual, were likely to appeal to the poor.’

Like All Saints Margaret Street, the interior of St Mary Magdalene’s is a masterpiece of Victorian gothic extravaganza, a glorious riot of colour. The nave has a magnificent painted ceiling which includes faces of various saints. This was painted by Daniel Bell, a Victorian artist. Sculptures of saints carved by Thomas Earp (1823-1893) look down on the nave. The floor of the vast nave is decoratively tiled. Street did not believe in fixed pews such as are found in many other Victorian churches and were rented out to parishioners to raise money. He believed in ‘free seating’, especially in a church like St Mary Magdelene’s that was built to serve the poor. The apse is unusual in that it is polygonal, reminiscent of apses that the widely travelled Street had seen in mediaeval French and Flemish churches.

An unusual feature of this out of the ordinary church is that although the nave is flanked by a south and a north aisle, the latter is barely wide enough to accommodate one person, whereas the south one is almost as wide as the nave. The reason for the narrow north aisle was related to building regulations in force when the church was being constructed.”

We entered the church recently (in October 2025), after not having seen its interior since one quiet day in about 2021 during a respite in the covid19 lockdown regulations, and it looked as glorious as I remembered it. The church is still used for religious services and often as a centre for many local community events. Both the church and the café attached to it are well-worth visiting.

PS my book about west London is available from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/BEYOND-MARYLEBONE-MAYFAIR-EXPLORING-LONDON/dp/B0B7CR679W/

A Nigerian who created artworks for a British daily newspaper

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SEVEN CARVED WOODEN figures stand in a line at an exhibition in London’s Tate Modern gallery. Each of them is depicted holding something that looks like an book or a pair of wings. Their faces are all different, as are their expressions and heights. They were carved by the Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu (1917-1994), and form part of a superb exhibition, “Nigerian Modernism”, which is showing until 10 May 2026.

Ben Enwonwu was born in Nigeria. His father was a traditional sculptor. Ben studied art first at Government College in Ibadan (Nigeria), and then at Government College Umuahia. At both places, he studied art under Kenneth Murray (1902-1972). In 1944, Ben was awarded a scholarship that allowed him to study both at The Slade School of Art in London and at The Ruskin School in Oxford. Also he undertook postgraduate studies in West African anthropology at the University of London. Thereafter, he taught art in Nigeria, where he created many of his sculptures and paintings. Since completing his education, Enwonwu has received international acclaim for his work.

In 1960, Ben proposed making a sculpture to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Nigeria in 1956. It was to be placed in the Nigerian House of Representatives in preparation for Nigeria’s independence in 1960. At the Tate’s exhibition, there is a photograph of Enwonwu working on this sculpture in the studio of his friend, the sculptor William Reid Dick (1878-1961), who was Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland to Queen Elizabeth. At around this time, Ben received another commission in England.

The British newspaper, the Daily Mirror, commissioned Ben to create 7 sculptures for their headquarters. Carved in ebony, these are the works mentioned above. The diversity of their forms and expressions is supposed to represent the variety of people reading thepaper. According to a label in the exhibition, Enwonwu said:

“I tried … to represent the wings of the Daily Mirror, flying news all over the world.”

The statues were placed in the headquarters public courtyard in Holborn. Currently, they are in the Tate Modern, but after having been lost for several years, they were sold at public auction. They are now owned by Access Holdings PLC, a Nigerian company.

In addition to what I have already described, there are many more works by Enwonwu in the exhibition, both paintings and sculptures. Each one of them is wonderful. His works show the influence of European Modernism, but at the same time they reflect the artist’s African background and his involvement in the traditional art of his homeland. He was sympathetic to the Négritude movement, an anti-colonial cultural and political movement founded by African and Caribbean students in Paris in the 1930s, but was also affected by twentieth century artistic movements in Europe and the USA. It was fascinating to see how the modern art trends of the mid-twentieth century were successfully integrated with the artist’s desire to portray the life and traditions of Africa.

A small detail in a large painting by an artist from Flanders

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DURING A VISIT to the Frieze Masters art fair in London’s Regents Park in October 2025, we looked at a collection of Flemish paintings being exhibited by the De Jonckheere Gallery. One of these was “Allegory of Sight: A Collector’s Cabinet with Venus and Cupid”. It was painted in Antwerp between 1601 and 1678 by “Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Younger”. It is an example of several paintings with this title. According to Wikipedia, these artworks:

“… showcases varied objects associated with sight, the arts, and navigation. The painting was heavily influenced by The Five Senses, a series of allegorical paintings done by the younger Brueghel’s father, Jan Brueghel the Elder.”

Indeed, the picture we saw at Frieze is chockfull of objects: paintings, sculptures (many of them portrait busts), navigational & astronomical instruments, documents, animals, a mirror, and many other things. The painting is a depiction of a Kunstkammer, which is (https://galleryintell.com/artex/allegory-of-sight-by-jan-brueghel-the-elder-and-peter-paul-rubens/):

“…translated as “rooms of art” and are meant to offer a glimpse into the depth and variety of these collections accumulated by the Dutch aristocracy.”

The painting at Frieze contains a gold chandelier that hangs from the ceiling. It is a decorative example, which includes an object that has interested me greatly since I was a teenager. At the top of the chandelier there is a double-headed eagle (‘DHE’). This is a bird with two heads, each on its own neck. In the painting, each of the heads is surmounted by a crown topped with a small cross. My interest in the DHE began when my fascination with Albania, whose flag contains a DHE, began in the mid-1960s. Chandeliers with  DHEs appear in several other paintings by members of the Brueghel family (and their studios) in which the subject matter described above was depicted. I asked one of the gallery assistants about the DHE on the chandelier, and she had no idea about it. I was hoping that she would confirm my suspicion that the two-headed bird in the painting was related to the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs, both of whose emblems included the DHE.

On returning home, I investigated further, and found a book (available online), “Rubens & Brueghel, A Working Friendship” by Anne T. Woollett and Ariane van Suchtelen. It deals mainly with paintings by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), the father of Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678). In relation to the painting of “Sight” by Brueghel the Elder, it noted:

“It has often been assumed that this costly series of paintings was commissioned by Archdukes Albert and Isabella. Rubens had, after all, held the post of court painter since his return from Italy in 1 6 0 8, and Brueghel regularly worked for the court at Brussels. The couple’s palaces serve as background scenery in three of the five depictions, and Sight contains a double portrait of the regents and an equestrian portrait of Albert, as well as a brass chandelier crowned with the Habsburgs’ double-headed eagle.”

This being the case and because Brueghel’s son (and his workshop) would have been influenced by his father’s art, it is perhaps unsurprising to see the DHE on the chandelier in the painting we viewed at Frieze.

How much would you spend to own a giant gogotte?

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THE MOST FASCINATING exhibit I saw at the Frieze Masters art fair in London’s Regents Park, was unlike most of the other exhibits, not man-made. The item was about four feet high and slightly less wide. At first sight, it looks like a piece of modern sculpture, and one side of it resembles a vorticist version of the famous Michelin Man. But it is neither modern, nor made by human hands. It is between 300000 and 50000 years old, a fine example of a gogotte.

Made of silica, gogottes are (see https://www.robertsimon.com/gogotte-first-journey):

“… natural creations formed out of sands deposited in Northern France during the Oligocene Period, approximately 30 million years ago. Much later, in a process that has only recently become understood, groundwater rich in silica flowed through the sands, creating swirling organic shapes and cementing the sand into the fluid forms that we see today. This geological process took place during two cold periods of the Quaternary—one approximately 300,000 years ago, the other more recent, during the last glaciation, between 30 and 50,000 years ago.”

Apart from being interesting looking geological specimens, they have attracted the attention of artists. Some of them collected gogottes, and they and others have been influenced by their forms. These artists included: Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Barbara Hepworth, the Surrealists, and others. In addition, the curious gogottes have attracted the interest of collectors since as early as during the Song Dynasty (960–1279).

Gogottes are quite easily available. Their price depends on size. The specimen on display at Frieze is large. I asked one of the gallery assistants working on the stand where it was displayed for how much it was being sold. Sadly, she did not know.

An Epstein from New York (NYC): Jacob not Jeffrey

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THE DUVEEN GALLERIES in London’s Tate Britain provide a wonderful space to display sculptures. The rooms are wide, long, and have high ceilings. Their walls are plain and do not distract the viewer. Until 30 March 2026, these magnificent spaces contain a selection of sculptures by Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), who was born in New York City. He joined the Art Students League in New York, before moving to Paris in 1902, where he studied sculpture at the École des Beaux Arts and Académie Julian. He settled in London in 1905. Both in Paris and London, he studied non-European sculpture, and what he learned from it often influenced his work. Some of the stone carvings in the Duveen Galleries are evidence of this. Soon after arriving in London, he began receiving important commissions to produce sculptures for significant institutions in London such as the British Medical Association (now Zimbabwe House). He became naturalised as a British citizen in 1910.

The collection of sculptures in the Duveen Galleries includes several stone carvings in different styles. The Tate’s website noted:

“In the 1910s, Epstein became a key figure in the ‘direct carving’ movement in Britain. This approach emphasised a ‘truth to materials’, in which sculptors worked directly with the stone, using its natural qualities rather than making wax or clay models first. He was influenced by the techniques and imagery used in ancient Egyptian, West African and Oceanic carvings, which he collected. At the time, his portrayal of sexuality as well as the simplified forms of his monumental figure carvings drew both admiration and intense criticism, limiting his opportunities for public commissions.”

Some of the sculptures on the former British Medical Association (now Zimbabwe House) building were criticised as being too explicit for Edwardian tastes, when they were completed in 1908. Sadly, these sculptures that can still be viewed from the Strand are badly damaged by being exposed to the weather and pollution.

The stone carvings in the Duveen, which vary from figurative to almost abstract, were all new to me. The bronze busts of famous and not-so-famous people include portraits of family members, artists, writers, entertainers and other public figures. These are the works that I tend to associate with Epstein. So, seeing his stone sculptures was a new and pleasant revelation for me. Each of the sculptures on display is accompanied by an informative panel. The works are well spaced so that each one can be admired in splendid isolation. This is an exhibition worth seeing.

Today, an artist would not portray an African this way

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THE PAINTER REX WHISTLER (1905-1944) was commissioned by the Tate Gallery (now the Tate Britain) to create a mural for what was its refreshment room in 1926. Assisted by Katharine Ann West (1904–1930), it was completed by 1927. Completely surrounding the room, it illustrates a narrative, which has been summarised on the Tate’s website as follows:

“Whistler’s mural depicts an expedition in search of rare food and drink, led by the fictional Duke of Epicurania. A hunting party sets off from the steps of the gallery. It travels across rivers and seas, through pastoral landscapes and wild forests. The group shoots at leopards and deer and meets unicorns and mermaids. They pass islands topped with Italian cities, encounter shipwrecks and ruins, and visit the Great Wall of China. They return home laden with spoils, greeted by a cheering crowd.”

Usually, the former refreshment room and its mural are not open to the public. Recently, it has been opened and within it a large screen has been set-up. A short film is projected on the screen. The film has two actors, one playing the part of Rex Whistler, and the other of a fictional academic, Professor Shepherd, who discusses the mural with him. Unfortunately, because the film is being screened, the former dining room has subdued lighting, which makes it difficult to fully appreciate Whistler’s superbly painted mural.

Most of the mural is gloriously picturesque, and cannot give rise to any objections. However, if you look closely, there are two insensitive depictions of Black people that might easily cause offence to viewers today. Whether they would have upset the Tate’s visitors in the late 1920s, I do not know. The bulk of the dialogue in the film being screened in the room relates to the presence of these two frankly racist images on the mural. During the film, the fictional prof gives the artist a hard time about the way he represented the two Black people. I got the impression that the person who wrote the script wished to convey that Whistler could not see why the prof was upset by the way he had painted these figures.

The mural was painted eight years after WW1, during which Black and Asian soldiers fought and sacrificed their lives for the British who had colonised the countries from which they came. Whistler must have known about them. Only seven years before the mural was created, countless numbers of Indians were slaughtered at Jallianwala Bagh in the Punjab. Their massacre was ordered by Reginald Edward Harry Dyer. After he was reprimanded for this, and had returned to England, the public, regarding him as a hero rather than a murderer, raised over £26000 (approximately £1,485,000 today) for him. And that was after 1920. It might be a big leap, but it struck me that if the British public felt justified raising so much for such a man in the 1920s, maybe many of them would have seen nothing to complain about when seeing how Whistler portrayed people of colour in 1927.