User:PJNorton/sandbox

Peter John Norton (1913-1995)
Peter John Norton combined a lifetime as a successful artist and teacher of art and art history, with a distinguished Royal Navy career, which spanned World War II. To quote a fellow officer, “In the Royal Navy, especially before the Second World War, the phrase ‘has outside interests’ often sounded the death knell to any hope of promotion, but Norton proved an exception to this rule.” [1]

Early and naval career
In 1930, as a teenager, he served as a deckhand on a North Sea sailing trawler, and the following year on a three-masted topsail schooner, the Englishman, still trading along the English coast.[2] He joined the Navy as a cadet in 1931, was a midshipman in the battleship HMS Rodney and also served in the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth.

As a young naval officer, Norton was one of a “band of four”, of whom two wrote and two painted, whose “outside interests” naturally drew them together.[3] One of their number, Gordon Onslow-Ford, having served in the Abyssinia crisis in Egypt, left the Navy in 1937 to become the youngest member of the pre-World War II, Paris-based Surrealist group. [4]  This left writer, Warren Tute, and poet, William (“Bill”) Rose[5], by chance based in Portland, where Norton was appointed Navigator of a Minesweeping Flotilla, to form what they called  the Triumvirate. Dr Marie Stopes, approached by Norton and Rose, agreed to rent them her Old High Lighthouse on Portland Bill. “There was no electricity, no telephone and the water had to be pumped from an ancient well. But life there had all the adventurousness of a prolonged picnic.” [6] Margot Fonteyn, whose portrait Norton painted, was one of many close friends who joined the three Navy Lieutenants’ house parties at the Lighthouse, which continued until shortly before war broke out.

Norton served as Navigating officer in the Mediterranean fleet. During the battle of Crete, his ship, HMS Fiji, after several hours of bombing was finally crippled, rolled over and sank. Norton and the Captain were the last to leave the ship. The destroyers HMS Kandahar and HMS Kingston dropped boats and rafts whilst also under air attack, returning after dark to pick up more than 500 of Fiji's crew. Norton was awarded the DSC for his part in this action. He was next appointed navigating officer of the cruiser HMS Birmingham and he was mentioned in despatches after she took part in operations against the Vichy French on Madagascar in September 1942. In 1944 he was posted to HMS Nile, the naval base at Alexandria, on the staff as Flag Officer, Levant, a stable posting that enabled him to arrange for his future wife, ballet dancer, Olive Deacon, to travel by sea from South Africa to Alexandria, where they were married.

Promoted Captain in 1955, the next posting was Naval Attaché to the Middle East, based initially in Cairo, until the Suez Crisis.

After three years as Naval Attaché in Beirut, he turned down the offer of the post of Chief of Staff in Washington, which could have led to flag rank, and instead voluntarily retired to concentrate on painting and teaching art and the history of art.

Influences and painting
Norton was born into a family of gifted water-colourists and painters, as well as renowned climbers.

His paternal great-grandfather, Sir Alfred Wills, was the third President of the Alpine Club, and undertook the lengthy task of building a large chalet, Le nid d’aigles,[7] to his wife’s design, in the French Alps above the village of Sixt.[8] His uncle, Edward (“Teddy”) Norton, led the 1924 Everest Expedition in which Mallory and Irvine died, and held the record for the highest ascent of Everest without oxygen for over 50 years.

The Wills/Norton families and friends used the chalet as a base point for climbing until it was sold in 1958. Norton continued to visit Sixt for annual camping and climbing breaks near the chalet after the strenuous Cubertou summer season (see below), until the 1980s.

But above all before and throughout his service career, Norton cultivated his talent as a painter. In leave periods as a junior officer he attended Glasgow School of Art and in 1939 had contacts with the Surrealist Movement in Paris, and artists including André Breton and Victor Brauner.

During the war, he also corresponded with Edith Sitwell, whose annotated anthology of poetry[9] was his constant companion[10]. Much later he was to write: “On an occasion when with a crippled convoy we were approaching a vastly superior Italian fleet between us and Malta, and there was nothing to do but wait, I stilled my aching anxieties by reading from these pages. Afterwards I wrote to Edith Sitwell & thanked her for the comfort and wisdom I had gained. We started a correspondence & she used to send me books.” [11]

In 1942 he was introduced to Paul Maze, a French painter who also lived in Sussex and was termed by one biographer “perhaps the last of the Post Impressionists” [12]. Maze encouraged him to use pastels which were to become Norton’s overwhelmingly favourite medium. In Norton’s own words. Maze was to become “the most influential friendship of my life” [13]. Conversely, in 1956 Maze wrote to Norton, then Naval Attaché in Cairo: “My dear Peter but for a few, of whom you were one I feel now very much as though my friendship was a very lonely one – I detach myself more and more with what goes on [in the London art market] and all I can do is my best without any competitive or challenging spirit – it is the only way to inward peace.” [14]

In 1958, to mark Clementine and Winston Churchill's Golden Wedding anniversary, their family arranged for an avenue of 29 varieties of gold roses to be planted at their home, Chartwell. Their gift on the day itself was a vellum-bound Golden Rose Book of watercolour paintings by invited artists, of whom Norton was one.[15]

On leaving the Navy, Norton had joined the staff of Guildford School of Art, rising to become head of the Liberal Studies department. He was invited in 1964 to represent the United Kingdom at the European Association of Teachers’ Congress in Vienna on European perspectives on Music and Art teaching hosted by the European Centre for Culture and the Council of Europe.

He taught at Guildford until 1968, the year when students organised sit-ins and demonstrations to demand more say in the running of the School and its teaching. Alongside fellow teachers, Norton defied the local education authority, “proud to join his students using his considerable gravitas and stabilising influence to win the moral argument for them” [16]. Along with 39 colleagues he was banned from the School premises and eventually dismissed. The “Guildford minus Forty” exhibition (see “Exhibitions” below) included participating guests John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and was supported by numerous distinguished artists (Sir Hugh Casson, Dame Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, to name but a few.) [17]

Cubertou Arts Centre
For Norton this dismissal proved yet another major turning point. In 1963 he and his wife Olive had bought an abandoned farmhouse in the Lot (South West France) that they converted into the Cubertou Arts Centre that was to run successfully for over 30 years.[18]

Cubertou Arts Centre attracted hundreds of amateur and professional artists. The latter included Bloomsbury group artist Eardley Knollys[19] (1902-1991) who already enjoyed a considerable reputation when he first attended Cubertou in 1981, returning in 1983. Norton’s knowledge and experience as an artist and teacher, together with his wife, Olive’s, social skills honed as a naval diplomat’s wife, encouraged guests from many different backgrounds, age groups and nationalities to enjoy and learn from each other’s company. Many returned annually, including from the USA, Cubertou “old hands” as Norton termed them.[20]  One student described his teaching thus: ”he just put a brush in our hand and then led us on in an astonishing way, nurturing us with incredible sensitivity”.[21] Norton actively encouraged “Cubertou” artists to exhibit with him in France, in London and elsewhere in the UK. One of these was Rob Woolner (1946-) who took part in numerous such exhibitions from 1976 onwards.[22]

Another regular visitor, John (“Jock”) Cobham (1889-1987) testified to a broader dimension of “Cubertou as run by Peter and Olive Norton”, describing it as a community “which may fairly be called [an expression] of Christian humanism […] by using the warmth and vitality of the common life.” [23]

Aside from one book for children (The Special Train), Norton’s publications reflect his abiding love of the sea. His Figureheads inspired a poem of the same name by Benet Weatherhead, dedicated “for Peter Norton”.[24]

As an artist, Norton’s works expressed the landscapes and subjects that moved him: France and the Lot river, his travels, the South Downs of southeast England, the creeks of the Solent, his garden, his wife Olive. “Cubertou, his ability to teach, his paintings and books and his time in the Royal Navy all [went] to make him a splendidly versatile man”. [25]

Selected exhibitions
·       Exhibited at Wildenstein, Leicester and Piccadilly galleries, London.

·        “Guildford minus forty”  Royal Institute Galleries, 195 Piccadilly, London, 1968-1969.

·        Federation of British Artists, London, “Artists from Cubertou", Mall Galleries, London, 1979.

·        Annual exhibitions at Cubertou Art Centre, Lot, South West France, from 1982.

·        One man shows in Cape Town, Cairo, Beirut and Dubai.

·        “Artists from Cubertou” group shows in England, 1976, 1978, 1980 and onwards.

·        One man shows in East & West Sussex & Hampshire, including Pallant House, Chichester.

·        “Peter Norton – painting and the man” : retrospective exhibition of 79 paintings, Bedales Gallery, Hampshire, 1999.

·        “Related through Pastel” : exhibition of work by Paul Maze, Peter Norton and Paul Masset, Midhurst Gallery, Sussex, 2000.

·        “Paul Maze, Peter Norton and Paul Masset – three generations of artists with a shared influence and affection for France, Sussex and the sea”:  Midhurst Gallery, Sussex, 2018 - 2019.

Publications
The Special Train, Folding Books Ltd., London, 1954

The End Of The Voyage: An account of the last sailing craft of the British Coasts, Percival Marshall & C° Ltd., London, 1959

Figureheads, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 1972

State barges, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 1972

Ships' Figureheads, Crown Publishers, Newton Abbot, 1976 [1] Captain Markes R.S. LVO Royal Navy and Marcus, Robin of The Officers’ Pensions Society Ltd., London, Daily Telegraph Obituaries, 24th March 1995.

[2] Norton, Peter, The End of the Voyage: An account of the Last Sailing Craft of the British Coasts, Percival Marshall & C° Ltd., London, 1959, page 18.

[3] As described by Warren Tute, in his Introduction in Rose, William, Spring Deferred, published by E.M.E. Rose, London 1945.

[4] https://www.onslowford.com accessed 4 November 2021.

[5] Rose was the only one of the original “band of four” who did not survive the war. H.M.S. Cossack, on which he served as First Lieutenant, was blown up in October 1941. Dr Marie Stopes mourned his loss in a poem entitled Instead of Tears. See footnote 3.

[6] Warren Tute, Introduction in Rose, William, Spring Deferred, published by E.M.E. Rose, London 1945.

[7] Wills, Alfred, “The Eagle’s Nest” in the valley of Sixt; A summer home among the Alps: together with some excursions among the great glaciers, Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, London, 1860.

[8] Now Sixt-Fer-A-Cheval after the biggest cirque of mountains in the Alps which dominates the village. See https://www.haut-giffre.co.uk/explore-and-discover/our-region/sixt-fer-a-cheval/

[9] Edith Sitwell’s Anthology, Victor Gollancz, London, 1940.

[10] Letter dated Christmas Day, 1969, to his son John. Norton family papers.

[11] See footnote 10.

[12] Singer, Anne, Paul Maze, the lost impressionist, Aurum Press, London, UK, 1983.

[13] Fraser, Sarah, Peter Norton – Painting and the man,  Compass Print, Aberdeen, 1999.

[14] Letter dated 21st February 1956. Norton Family papers.

[15] The Golden Rose Book remains on display at Chartwell. Norton’s “Tawny Rose” is on page 25. Henry Weeds, Collections and House Officer, Chartwell, e-mail, 2nd June 2021. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell

[16] Eeles, Richard, Painter on the high seas,  The Guardian, Obituaries, 20th March 1995

[17] Poster “Guildford minus forty – An exhibition of work by victimized staff from Guildford School Art” Royal Institute Galleries, 195 Piccadilly, London W1, UK, 30th December 1968; available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/119688205@N06/20737065475/in/photostream/

[18] http://cubertou.com/home/about-cubertou/cubertou-history/ accessed 24th June 2021.

[19] See https://wsimag.com/art/7604-eardley-knollys on a retrospective exhibition in London, 2014. Accessed 3 November 2021.

[20] Handwritten notes in Norton’s Cubertou ledgers, Norton family papers.

[21] Rear Admiral Guy F Liardet, CB CBE, The Times, Obituaries, 22nd March 22 1995.

[22] http://robwoolner.com/rob_woolner/Exhibitions.html lists group “Cubertou artists” exhibitions in 1976 (Compton, Sussex), 1979 (FBA, London), 1982 & 1983 (Cubertou, France) and in 1976, 1978 and 1980 in various UK locations.

[23] Cobham, John Oldcastle, Archdeacon of Durham 1953 to 1969, Christmas message 1983, Norton family papers.

[24] Weatherhead, Benet, The Imprisoned Heart, Gryphon Press, London, 1979, page 20.

[25] Bilibin, Gwen, Artists of Harting and surrounding villages, Harting Society Publication, Harting, Hampshire, 1985.