The Arts
The Macready/ Dickens Screen
SHERBORNE TIMES, AUGUST 2024
Jeremy Barker, Friends of Sherborne House
It is remarkable how many cultural treasures there are in Sherborne. Apart from the multitude of fifteenth-century triptych by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden; second, the procession of Queen Elizabeth I in Sherborne Castle, a picture that appears in all the art books of that period; and third, the mural of The Bishop and the Boot in Sherborne Museum, originally from ‚Tudor Rose‘ in Long Street.
The others are all associated with Sherborne House. Of these, foremost is Sir James Thornhill’s painted stairwell depicting the story of the Calydonian Hunt. But there is also his painting, The Folke Resurrection, which belongs to Folke Parochial Church Council and the now famous Charles Dickens/William Charles Macready Screen, which is the main subject of this article.
The screen first came to the notice of the Friends of Sherborne House when Sir Nevil Macready, a direct descendant of the famous Victorian Shakespearean actor, offered it as a gift to the Friends of Sherborne House. It was a very generous gesture and one willingly accepted.
According to family tradition, it was pieced together in Sherborne House by Dickens and Macready. It is a giant collage consisting of four hinged panels, each 6’ 3‘ by 3’. The panels are covered with 500 and more art pictures cut out and arranged with great care from publications of whatever kind in the 1850s on both sides of each panel. It is a fascinating insight – a time capsule of artistic taste in that period.
The screen remained in the family‘s possession; wherever the family went, the screen went, including a period in Paris. However, when it returned home to Sherborne, it was in poor condition. It had suffered greatly at the hands of playful children, scratching dogs and those puffing at cigars and cigarettes. Repairs/ restorations had tended to make things rather worse.
Once the House was closed for restoration, the ever-active Friends undertook the cleaning, repair and restoration of this precious historical artefact. An appeal was launched, which received a generous response from the people of Sherborne, and £22,000 was quickly raised.
It was fortunate that Rebecca Donan, an expert on paper restoration, was working in the Dorset record office at the time. She was elated to have the opportunity to bring the screen back to life and the transformation she achieved is remarkable.
The next task was identifying the pictures, which was undertaken by Professor Catherine Waters and her researcher, Rosa Coles, at Kent University with financial assistance from the Friends. The images are of all manner of subjects, portraits of eminent people, scenes from Shakespeare, landscapes, architecture etc. They sought to discover the authorship, subject material and provenance of each picture and were successful in the overwhelming majority of them. These were then made publicly available on a website created at the University and available here: research.kent.acuk/macready
Word on the screen spread quickly and the call came for its display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh in the recent exhibition Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage.
The screen was beautifully presented and lit and its powerful presence stole the show. We can look forward to the day when the screen, the Folke Resurrection, and Thornhill’s Painted Stairwell draw and thrill the crowds in Sherborne House.
One last word. Why did Macready undertake this massive task?
Partly, it was the fashion to create such collages at the time but one suspects that Macready also considered it an educational aid for his children. So it can be now as well for the schoolchildren of Sherborne in the hands of inspiring teachers.
