Writers of Influence is open to the public for free until 27th March 2011; it is housed in the Special Exhibitions room on the second floor of Sunderland Museum. This is an excellent collection of mainly paintings and photographs of significant writers - from William Shakespeare to Dizzee Rascal. Poets (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) are juxtaposed with children's writers (A.A. Milne); pop lyricists (Jarvis Cocker) with genre novelists (John Le Carre).
Most of the works are originals courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery in London. The literal centrepiece of the exhibition is John Taylor's Shakespeare (c.1610, pictured above), the 'Chandos' portrait said to be the only one of the bard definitely drawn from life. It is great to see this in the flesh: the watchful, worldly looking Will replete with earring and modest attire. This painting is placed right in the middle of the room and is flanked by a plaster cast of John Keats' face (taken from a life-mask) to the right and an angular James Joyce to the left, fashioned from wood:
There are the household names - a selection of Catherine Cookson memorabilia accompanying her photograph (with the caption providing a salutary reminder that a third of all books borrowed from public libraries were hers, at some point in the 1980s), an odd 3D JK Rowling and a drawing of Arthur Conan Doyle, wittily depicting the author, head in clouds and chained by his ankles to an intensely etched impresson of that English legend and eccentric, Sherlock Holmes. Add to these a beaming Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Roald Dahl and a tiny, early photograph of Lewis Carroll.
There are personal favourites and inspirations; such as a lovely Patrick Lichfield photograph of Kate Bush, one of this country's greatest artists in the field of popular music:
Then there is Philip Pullman, so eloquent in his recent lecture attacking the coalition's planned library closures - http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/philip-pullman/this-is-big-society-you-see-it-must-be-big-to-contain-so-many-volunteers - photographed on the threshold of his secluded writing shed. Northern nature poet (and strong environmentalist) Ted Hughes is accompanied by his excellent quotation on Shakespeare; Thomas Hardy looks especially rueful, looking down over his considerable moustache in William Strang's 1893 portrait. There are two writers I am currently reading: Charles Dickens (in a substantially framed 1855 painting by Ary Scheffer) and George Orwell, photographed in his modest tie-jumper-overcoat apparel, by Felix H. Man c.1947. I am reading Orwell's Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters (Penguin, 1970) at the moment, and had just been reading his ambivalent essay on Rudyard Kipling only to be faced with both of them in this exhibition! The Kipling painting is fascinating, showing a commanding, moustachioed Rudyard sat in an ornate study, flanked by musty volumes, a dormant pipe and a nautical painting on the wall. He looks as much like an imperialist administrator as a writer, clerkly glasses perched on his nose...
Further founding fathers of English literature on display as well as Shakespeare include a decidedly portly Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1400) and a young, idealistic looking John Milton (c.1629), captured in paint many years prior to the publication of his visionary religious fantasy, Paradise Lost. In terms of the early novelists, sadly no Defoe, Swift, Sterne or Brontes, but a curious little silhouette in a notebook that is assumed to be Jane Austen.
There are key 20th century figures other than Joyce: T.S. Eliot in an appopriately cubist portrait, a Feliks Topolski impression of the visionary socialist science fiction writer H.G. Wells and a formidably sceptical, bespectacled Aldous Huxley - captured in a 1934 photograph by Man Ray. There is a grandfatherly, slightly condescending looking George Bernard Shaw, appearing in a bromide print of 1943 - with the panel containing some of his rather less than complimentary thoughts on Shakespeare. There is a Bloomsbury-school painting of Virginia Woolf; cannot say I particularly like that style of art, having seen plenty at the Tate Britain last year (I much prefer Stanley Spencer, Walter Sickert and Paul Nash).
The images are imaginatively arranged - many of them in relation to Shakespeare, with the accompanying panels containing the various writers' thoughts on him. Ted Hughes, for example, has this evocative estimation of the bard's power: "In spite of its Elizabethan ruff, Shakespeare's language is somehow nearer to the vital life of English, still, than anything written down since."
Overall, this is a fascinating exhibition; I only spent around thirty minutes in it today, but could easily have spent longer perusing and probably will be back. Much recommended, if you happen to be in the centre of Sunderland with a little time on your hands. The nearest public transport is Sunderland Central station, a mere two minute walk away.
