Skip to main content

Arthur Melville’s Grave Restored

When Arthur Melville died in 1904, the Forfarshire born artist left behind a life as rich in incident and colour as that in his paintings, several of which are held as part of the Fleming-Wyfold collection. The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh highlighted Melville’s importance as an artist in 2015 and 2016 with the tellingly named exhibition, Arthur Melville: Adventures in Colour.

 

In death too, it seems, Melville’s legacy continues, as a plan to restore his desecrated grave in rural Surrey in South East England runs on apace. This follows the discovery of a broken headstone for Melville’s grave by Jon Leech of the Brookwood Cemetery Society, the voluntary body who, with full support from the surviving members of Melville’s family, are seeking support from collectors of his work to help them restore the grave to its former glory. 

 

Melville’s grave isn’t in Brookwood Cemetery itself, but, as explained by BCS founding member John M. Clarke in his book, London’s Necropolis – A Guide to Brookwood Cemetery, is situated on a piece of purple heather covered land sold in 1979 by the then owners of the cemetery, Woking Council. While other graves ‘on the heath’ were exhumed and reinterred within the cemetery, for some reason Melville’s grave was left behind. While the causes of the damage to the gravestone aren’t known, up until now, Melville’s grave has been pretty much hidden since the 1970s. As Clarke wrote, this left it ‘in splendid isolation’.

 

At time of writing, stonemasons have repaired the headstone, which has been reinstated alongside the grave. With a re-dedication ceremony mooted for Spring 2023, as Leech puts it, the headstone “again sits in ‘perfect isolation’ in the heathland outside of the main cemetery amongst the purple heather. We are soon to prepare the signage to explain the grave to the many dog owners and casual walkers who will now discover it for the first time, and thus learn about Arthur Melville and his art.”

 

Donations to the Brookwood Cemetery Society can be made at  www.tbcs.org.uk 

 

Scottish Art News, December 2022


ends

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more