.jpg)
Maggi Hambling: Sebastian Horsley XI (2021)
Oil on canvas (125 x 95 cm)
"The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our
heads was inky black.
But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It
was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood.
And the ashes blew
towards us with the salt wind from the sea."
- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
I.
I honestly can't remember what visions (if any) disturbed my sleep last night, but, earlier today, I went to an excellent group exhibition curated by Daniel Malarkey at the Alison Jacques gallery, whose title is a paraphrase (or perhaps misremembering) of the opening line to Daphne du Maurier's famous Gothic novel Rebecca (1938):
Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley ... [1]
II.
According to Malarkey, who spent over 18 months working to stage this show, it wasn't until he came to name it that he realised that he had subconsciously been curating an exhibition about the favourite novel of his adolescence [2]; a book that I came to know much later, but have also grown to love [3].
Malarkey's aim, according to the gallery's press release, is to "retell the story of Rebecca, taking the viewer on a path which explores notions of memory, darkness and transformation" [4], forming temporal connections and demonstrating the potential of narrative to facilitate all kinds of strange becomings.
In order to accomplish this, Malarkey brings together the works of over 30 artists, some of whom - such as Leonora Carrington, Maeve Gilmore, and Torpedo the Ark favourite Aleksandra Waliszewska [5] - I am familiar with; whilst others - including Jean-Marie Appriou, Leonardo Devito, Graham Little - I am now grateful to have discovered.
III.
To be honest, as much as I love Rebecca - and as interested as I am in the folk and fairy tale tradition which more obviously inspires many of the works in this exhibition [6] - I felt compelled to attend the show more for the opportunity to see (in the decomposing flesh, as it were) one of Maggi Hambling's portraits of much-loved (and much-missed) Sebastian Horsley [7]:
"Finally, the viewer is led downstairs through an arch into the 'Underworld', where Maggi Hambling's portrait of Sebastian Horsley presides over the space, introducing themes such as the conflict between morality and religion, resistance to authority, and a questioning of established traditions." [8]
Whether we are invited to imagine Horsley as the character of Maxim de Winter (crossed with Dorian Gray), I don't know - but it's a nice idea, I think, and not one that would displease Horsley who, like de Winter, was a passionate floraphile (although not, as far as I'm aware, a wife killer).
Notes
[1] Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, curated by Daniel Malarkey (24 Jan - 8 March 2025) at Alison Jacques, 22 Cork Street, London W1. For full details and to view all the artworks included in the show, click here.
[2] Like Alice Inggs, I'm tempted to question whether Malarkey's claim about Rebecca being a once favourite book that exerted a subconscious influence on his thinking when assembling this exhibition is "strictly true or a retroactive application
to works very much open to allegory", but it doesn't really matter either way.
And, as Inggs later concedes, you can certainly find more than a few "curious (and
apparently incidental) parallels between passages from the book and the
artworks [...] wherever you walk, there is Rebecca: the windows open to the sea,
the white cats, the uncanny figures, the wrought-iron gates, the
driftwood and rope, the rhododendrons, the antique wallpaper, the
almost-silhouettes, the subtly erotic scenes, the sense of expectation …"
See her (cleverly titled) review, 'Psyche For Sore Eyes', in The World of Interiors (7 Feb 2025): click here.
[3] For a two part post on published in November 2024, in which I explore my own memories of Manderley, please click here and/or here.
Interested readers can also find several other posts written on the work of Daphne du Maurier on Torpedo the Ark; simply go to labels and click on her name. Many of these posts are also reproduced on the official Daphne du Maurier website: click here.
[4] This press release, written by Bella Kesoyan, can be found on the Alison Jacques website: click here.
[5] See the post entitled 'Why I Love Aleksandra Waliszewska' (13 Oct 2023): click here.
[6] To quote from the press release once more:
"All the works in the show challenge conventional notions of fairytales as children's stories and idealised narratives. While often adopting the visual language of magical landscapes, imaginary
beings, and extraordinary human powers, the exhibition also explores
darker and complex readings of this age-old genre."
That being so, one might have just as easily called this show Last Night I Dreamed of Angela Carter and one wonders how familiar Daniel Malarkey is with The Bloody Chamber (1979), her collection of ten short stories in which, to use Carter's own phrase, she extracts the latent content from traditional tales including 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
[7] As Emily Spicer notes:
"Hambling painted Horsley several times after his death, imagining, it
would seem, his decomposing body, his likeness falling from his bones to
reveal the white skull beneath. In all of these paintings he is
disintegrating, melting or dissolving into oblivion. Hambling has said
that Horsley’s life was an elaborate rehearsal for death and we feel her
coming to terms with this, searching, unflinchingly, for an image that
reconciles this tragic irony."
See her review of The Quick and the Dead exhibition at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (20 Oct 2018 - 6 Jan 2019) on the Studio International website: click here. This show included Sebastian Horsley VIII (2011).
See also the post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'The Picture of Sebastian Horsley' (6 Sept 2019), in which I muse on Hambling's 2011 portrait of Horsley: click here.
[8] Bella Kesoyan, press release for Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, as linked to above in note 3.
This post is for Ann Willmore, who encouraged me to write it.
