On being invited to curate an exhibition at Eton College, Humphrey Ocean chose to draw together objects from across the College Collections and combine them with examples of his own work.
Humphrey Ocean grew up in Sussex. He attended art colleges in Tunbridge Wells and Brighton, before studying under musician and artist Ian Dury at Canterbury College of Art. For three years, he played bass with Dury in the pub rock band Kilburn and the High Roads. It was while the band were supporting The Who on tour in 1973 that Ocean first fully realised his ambition for painting.
Major projects and solo exhibitions are too numerous to list in full. In 1982 Ocean won the National Portrait Gallery’s annual Portrait Prize for his group composition Lord Volvo and his Estate. This led to further commissions from the gallery, including portraits of Sir Paul McCartney (1983) and the poet Philip Larkin (1984). He was elected a Royal Academician in 2004. A major monograph of his work was published by the Royal Academy in 2019 and he served as Professor of Perspective at the Academy from 2012 to 2020.
Ocean’s body of work is diverse and includes paintings of urban landscapes; series of studies of chairs and birds; paintings and sculptures of ocean liners. He has always returned to portraiture, producing both meticulously observed portraits in oil and more spontaneous gouache studies of his recent A handbook of modern life series. The spontaneity of Ocean’s work goes hand in hand with the precision and exactitude of his methods.
About the art he loves, and certainly about the work he has drawn together for the exhibition, he is unambiguous:
To me, the right colour landing in the right place. What are the chances?
With this exhibition, Ocean brings his thoughtful inventiveness and wealth of visual experience to shine new light on some of the curiosities and treasures of the Eton College Collections.
Fresh as Paint
For this exhibition, Ocean has selected exhibits from across the College Collections, from; Antiquities, the Archive, College Library, Fine & Decorative Art and the Natural History Museum. The exhibition is divided into five areas, each with a narrative title that challenges us to consider the objects from new perspectives. Unexpected combinations encourage us to reflect and consider connections, for example, a small pottery head of a goddess is displayed alongside an Elizabethan Communion cup; a mummified kitten and Wilfred Thesiger’s photograph of a tomb tower in Iraq.
The objects displayed in the section – Circumstance – being us and staying alive is illustrated below.
Richard Wentworth (born 1947), Red Eight, 1987, lithograph (FDA-E.3066-2018) © Reproduced by kind permission of the artist
Late Medieval (bronze?) spoon (ECM.3048-2017)
Pottery bowl, possibly from Tell ’Atchana, the ancient city of Alalakh, Turkey (ECM.3212-2017)
Mummified hand of a man aged 40-50, coated in black resin and wrapped in linen. Greek period (ECM.2073-2010)
Figure Fragment (ECM. 3258-2017)
Head from a goddess image, pottery (ECM.3271-2017)
Roman Fork (ECM.3014-2017)
Black steatite eikosyhedron, each triangular face marked with a Greek letter. (A to Y). Roman Egypt (ECM.552-2010)
Roger Coleman, The Developing Process (Newcastle upon Tyne: Durham University, King’s College, 1959). With essays and illustrations by Victor Pasmore, Richard Hamilton, Terry Frost, Alan Davie and Hubert Dalwood. Kindly loaned by Chris Gibbons.
Elizabethan Communion Cup and Paten, silver gilt, London, 1569-70, makers mark IP (ECS-S.93-2014)
Brain Coral Meandra cerebriformis (NHM.54-2016)
The catalogue for the exhibition held at Eton in 2022 may be viewed or downloaded below.