Recently, we retrieved a load of my grandmother’s (Sheila Jessop’s) work from the spare room of a friend of hers, who had been very kindly looking after for the last few years. (Ten years, in fact…) This included a couple of sculptures, a couple of portfolios (one containing works by her husband and fellow-artist Richard Jackman), a few paintings on canvas or board, piles of folders and some large rolls of paper.
This morning, my mother and I took these up to a conveniently empty life-room for photographing. The room has beautiful big windows and soft-box lights handy; but the weather was changeable and our tripod wobbly. Nevertheless, we got some good photos of these paintings and drawings, which can hardly have been looked at in decades.
This moustachioed model…
…reappears in this distinctive pose, worked out first in charcoal…
…then in gouache…
…then filled out into a more developed painting.
This model is first worked out roughly, and in colours much more striking than the camera captures…
…then more finely.
There are a few one-offs: a life-class…
…a hound, possibly hellish…
…and a ferryman.
This figure — distinguishable by his blunt nose, short ponytail and strong, simplified hand grasping oar or tiller — appears often in Jessop’s work from the late 1980s onwards (including in a painting almost destroyed by fire, which I will post about shortly). This drawing seems to be preparatory for this series of sculptures (casts in cement) commissioned in 1990 by North Kesteven District Council for the village of Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
Photo: Richard Croft, Geograph
There are also many preparatory drawings for some bas-reliefs commissioned by Cardiff Central Library in 1986–87 — but let us save those for a future post on that work.
We will be photographing a lot more soonish.
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