"I think a great many people would agree with me that music, art, wine, food and great company create some of the greatest moments in life." - Sir Peter Michael
Winsor Birch is delighted to be exhibiting art and sculpture for sale at The Vineyard Hotel, Stockcross, Newbury, Berkshire. Alongside our most recent exhibition, The Vineyard Hotel displays an incredibly family collection of art and sculpture and no Vineyard visit would be complete without a glimpse of the exquisite art and sculpture that adorns the hotel's halls and suites for the benefit of both visitors and guests.
The eclectic collection may appear to be a disparate assortment of works from the Michael family's collection at first glance, but on closer inspection, these images share an instant and overwhelming feeling of atmosphere, an overarching air of tranquilly and light, and occasionally of nostalgia. The art on view provides a wide range of influences, ranging from the radical artists of fin de siècle impressionism to the post-impressionist era. Above all, the collection evokes the mood of a pioneering period in art, an era of experimentation when the atmosphere was conducive to creativity.
The impressionists had broken away from the scholastic rigours and expectations of the formal Salon de Paris as the twentieth century began, paving the way for an exhilarating new freedom of expression. Their work was distinguished by the use of brilliant, often expressively intense colours, as well as an emphasis on form, which often involved deviations of shape and structure to signify a new kind of harmony. This revolutionary attitude gave birth to a slew of movements, including neo-impressionist pointillism, Les Nabis' abstract style, the fauvists' strong colour palette, and cubist abstractions. A fabled cultural liberation wind blew through Europe, enticing artists, authors, and poets. They were notorious and decadent, leading an anti-establishment movement that eventually became a recognised part of the cultural elite.
The Vineyard Hotel's collection includes works by three prominent French impressionist masters, Degas, Pissarro, and Sisley, as well as two English School masters, Clausen and Steer. All of these artists left an indelible mark on the British art world, thanks in part to their associations with both the artist Alphonse Legros and the French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Other artists in the collection address this turn-of-the-century theme with atmospheric canvases in impressionist and post-impressionist styles, culminating in modernism with Henry Moore's working model for his iconic 1960s sculpture, Locking Piece.
Many of the paintings in the Michael family collection at The Vineyard Hotel symbolise man at one with the landscape and nature. Indeed, the title of Henri Martin's Bucolique, which is presently on display in the restaurant, might be given to many of the paintings, which have a sense of nostalgia, of a bygone era, alongside an awareness of the timelessness of nature and a beautiful ideal of rural life.
The Vineyard, Stockcross, Newbury, Berkshire, RG20 8JU
