I wrote about a water colour painting of Parlington Hall which had been found in a skip, it features in an earlier post,
http://www.parlington.info/2009/09/04/country-life-magazine/
The picture above is of the painting; for over a year I have carefully steered a path towards having the picture recovered and returned to its rightful home, Lotherton Hall, where it will be displayed for the interest of the general public.
The painting is being brought up to Aberford next weekend [24/10/2010] by Tessa Clarke, who’s late sister Jo had owned the painting. The watercolour now back with the Clarke family, [related to the Gascoigne family, via Sir Alvary’s first wife, Silvia Wilder] by way of the lady who recovered it from the skip. The watercolour measures 12 ins high by 21 ins wide (sight) and is in a fine gilt period frame, three inches deep with original glass; painted by Phillip Norman, 1911 (signed and dated). It was found in the street outside no.10, Morab Road, Penzance, a house which used to be a small private hotel but which has now been turned into flats.
I look forward to meeting Tessa and to get my first proper view of the painting, and I shall of course be armed with my camera. Check back for further information on this interesting story. Fitting perhaps that next year is the centenary of the painting, which will by then be hanging at Lotherton Hall.
Philip Norman, artist entry from Wikipedia:
He was trained as a draughtsman and painter in watercolours at the Slade School, often exhibiting at the Royal Academy. A large part of his work consisted of depicting parts of London that he knew, particularly buildings or areas which stood as a survivor of a bygone past or which were about to be demolished. Norman also recorded the history of the buildings which he painted or photographed, and works such as “London Vanished and Vanishing”, written in 1905, provide a fascinating record of bygone London. The historian Hermione Hobhouse has described Norman as one-third of the “triumvirate” of key figures whose works record the topography of London between 1890 and 1950, the others being Walter Hindes Godfrey and Percy Wells Lovell.