Fair Preview
Stephen Mangan, ‘Gentle Breeze’, 2015, oil on canvas, 70 x 70cm Flying Colours Gallery
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n 1994, the artist Stephen Mangan walked into Flying Colours Gallery, then in Edinburgh. Rarely do artists’ chance visits to galleries result in them becoming represented by the gallery but Jane Hould- sworth, founder of Flying Colours, was “instantly hooked” by his paintings. At the time, she “felt very brave taking him on as until then we had shown safe and easily digestible landscape and still life paintings.” But over 20 years later, the relationship is going strong and last year the gallery sold one of Mangan’s paintings to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Born in Edinburgh in 1964, Mangan studied fine art in Dundee and still works in Scotland today. His eerie paintings invariably depict groups of impassive, stylised figures in settings such as a race-course, harbour, the- atre or station. “Mangan is interested in painters who showed people at leisure, especially the late Impres- sionists observing and working around Paris such as Manet, Renoir and of course Seurat” says Houldsworth. The style of the latter is particularly evident here. ‘Gentle Breeze’ has none of the summer jollity expect-
Autumn 2016
ed of a beach scene. The chilling lack of interaction be- tween the figures and tense atmosphere begs the ques- tion “What is going on?” As Houldsworth says, this is sombreness in the sunshine: “It is as if the figures have been choreographed – ‘stand there!’”
An ivory chandelier, almost certainly designed by Phillip Perron, Bavaria, c.1880, 1m high Butchoff Antiques
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his extraordinary ivory chandelier, almost cer- tainly designed by Phillip Perron (1840-1907), was made for Schloss Linderhof in Bavaria in
the late 19th century. It was commissioned by King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria (1845-1886), who was much criticised for spending a fortune on creating his ‘fairytale’ castle project. Ludwig was a dreamer, more concerned with a ro- mantic medieval notion of courtly splendour than with the realities of being a constitutional monarch. He built a fantasy world around himself, spending lav- ishly on building several opulent castles. Linderhof was originally a humble forester’s house but, between 1869 and 1885, Ludwig expanded it into an imposing schloss, a medley of styles employing the then latest technology. Perron, his court sculptor, designed many of the ornamental and architectural features. James Kaye of Butchoff Antiques, the antique furni- ture specialists who bring this chandelier to the Fair, says it’s a rare object: “The only other one we have come across during our research was almost certainly made by the same hand, Phillip Perron, also for King Ludwig’s magnificent castle, Schloss Linderhof.” The chandelier is topped by a pine cone finial, with two tiers of swept leaf carved arms, each ending in a petal form sconce, spinning out from the central col- umn. Its sense of delicate excess is pure fairytale.
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