‘Ye
say ful sooth,’ quod she, ‘that is no nay;
I
see coming a goodly company.’
Chaucer
From
22 February to 22 March 2014 The Horse Hospital in London, situated a hoof
beat from Russell Square tube, showed a number of paintings by the medium Ethel
Le Rossignol. Possessing mediumistic
abilities, she created forty-four paintings between 1920 and 1933 which
depicted her interpretation of the world of Spirit. Twenty-one of these painting belong to the College
of Psychic Studies (CPS) and were loaned for the exhibition, which was mounted
in association with Mark Pilkington’s Strange
Attractor.
The
exhibition was called A Goodly Company:
Ethel Le Rossignol, and the accompanying leaflet was subtitled ‘A series of
psychic drawings given through her hand as an assurance of survival after
death.’ The words were taken from her
book the full, very full, title of which is A
Goodly Company: A Series of Psychic Drawings Given through the Hand of Ethel Le
Rossignol as an Assurance of Survival After Death this Sequence of Designs is
Shown to Open the Eyes of All Men to the Glorious World of Spiritual Power
Which Lies About Them. A Goodly Company was published in 1933
by The Chiswick Press, and a copy was on display at the exhibition. (1)
Le
Rossignol does not seem to have had much of a profile while she was alive;
details of her life are sketchy, and those here are lifted from the exhibition
leaflet. She was born in Argentina in
1873, her father hailing from the Channel Islands (Rossignol is French for
‘nightingale’) but her family had moved to Kensington by 1891. She studied art and married Arthur Beresford
Riley in 1930, somewhat late in life. A
number of of her artworks and copies of her book were donated to the CPS in
1968, with the request that the paintings be displayed in the College’s
premises. She died in 1970,
aged 96.
Her
pictures were designed to represent a ‘story’ of spiritual evolution, as
indicated in the book’s conclusion:
To those who have
followed the story of these pictures to this final page it can only be repeated
that they were given as a joyful reassurance of the spiritual spheres, showing
the archangels, the angels and the different creations – lower and higher – as
man has slowly evolved through animal to man, from man to spirit, from spirit
to angel and from angel to participator in the unveiled purpose of God.
The
pictures certainly are joyful, and while access to their meaning might be restricted
to adepts of some kind, even those among us who are unenlightened can obtain a
great deal of pleasure from these remarkable images. They are gaudy in the extreme, hypnotically
so, vibrant, exuberant, intense, eye-popping, a kind of pop art before pop art,
a celestial circus. Rainbow-coloured
shapes are prominent in them. Psychedelic
in their boldness, they are a harbinger of the New Age movement that she
predated by a third of a century. The
pictures represent a mystical admixture of spiritual traditions, with a
significant Eastern component. They are
filled with acrobatic nudes flying against a blue background, and some figures are
caught making synchronised movements, like a Busby Berkeley film still. Many wear weird headdresses, have distorted
and multiple body parts. While some of
the paintings are square or rectangular, a good proportion are circular, which
adds to the strangeness as they seem to have no beginning and no end, no
anchoring point for the eye.
Perhaps
that is part of the point Le Rossignol is making. The difficulty with the ineffable is that by
definition even the attempt to depict it is bound to fall short as the artist
tries to evoke that which cannot be translated into terms we can comprehend. That is why, while strangely timeless in one
sense, in another they are very much of the period of their creation, the faces
having a lipsticked 1920s look about them.
According to Le Rossignol a spirit referred to as ‘JPF’ was the actual
artist while ‘JPF’ claimed in turn to be acting as intermediary for another
discarnate group which wished to convey spiritual truths. Le Rossignol as medium forms a continuum with
the mediumistic communications of the spirits and the medium of the painting. No wonder meanings struggle to emerge, with
multiple layers of transmission.
The
book is rather more restrained visually, with black and white reproductions of
the paintings. Le Rossignol was an
automatist and the book is partly written in the form of a diary, the first
entry dated 20 February 1920, only just over a year after the end of the Great
War. She is clearly impatient at the
beginning because a spirit reproves her by saying: ‘you are still far from
being a perfect secretary. You are like
a restive horse – always trying to start off without knowing where you are
going’, which makes the Horse Hospital as a venue even more appropriate. She got the hang of it though, and the messages,
from a friend who had passed over, came through with a high degree of fluency.
These
initially offer a standard view of a Christian-oriented Summerland, a place of
beauty, one where ‘we see our friends in their new bodies – everyone much
younger and happier.’ Living in a place
intertwined with the ‘earth sphere’, but under a ‘higher rule’, there are
opportunities to study and develop as an individual. Objects are created by thought, including
clothing, though judging by the paintings most choose not to bother. The communications are clear that there is a
limit to what can be conveyed to those still in the earth sphere, and that the
higher spheres represent a qualitative change of existence. As the scripts move into the 1930s, Eastern
influences appear, they become more opaque and symbolic, and include an
emphasis on breathing exercises in order to increase mediumistic receptivity,
talk of masters, initiation and spiritual enlightenment as humanity follows a
path of gradual evolution towards ‘the unveiled purpose of God.’
Le
Rossignol's work does not fit neatly into any artistic currents, though echoes
of Art Nouveau's sinuous lines and lively use of colour can be detected. The artist she most puts one in mind of is
the later Marc Chagall, who also painted colourful flying figures. While Chagall is clearly not a direct
influence, there are similarities stemming from their spiritual preoccupations. The publisher Leon Amiel produced a book on
Chagall in 1975, with text by Marie-Thérèse Souverbie. She concludes her brief examination of
Chagall's career by stating that he existed outside the main currents of modern
art, an artist 'for whom time and space are not important'. Most tellingly, the jacket blurb cuts even
closer to their similarity:
... he followed his own
path and, in the last analysis, he was faithful only to himself and his own
vision. The figures in his paintings
seem to be telling us that truth lies elsewhere, beyond the world of
appearances, of convictions and ordinary certitudes. That is why they are not held down by
gravity; their weightlessness lifts them above the sphere of our values.
Exactly
the same could be said of Le Rossignol.
This is not to say that she is an artist on the same level as Chagall, merely
that she deserves to be taken seriously.
The
exhibition at The Horse Hospital was the first occasion these paintings had
been displayed outside the College.
Let’s hope it is not the last. The
Horse Hospital’s strapline is ‘providing space for underground and avantgarde (sic)
media since 1993.’ How Le Rossignol’s
work fits into that mission statement is still to be decided, and it is to be
hoped that the exhibition will stimulate interest in her life and work, and
discussions of her place in the history of Spiritualist and esoteric thought. If you missed the paintings this time round,
try to seek them out at the CPS. They
possess a strange luminous beauty, even if the technique and subject matter seem
limited to the uninitiated. Whatever
one’s opinion of their contents, there is purity in the intention behind them;
if Le Rossignol was a nightingale, she sang high, and sweet, and strong.
(1)
According to the British Library catalogue, Eyre & Spottiswoode republished
A Goodly Company in 1958, but I have
not examined their copy.
Updated
17 April 2015:
Ethel
Le Rossignol’s paintings do not come onto the market often so it was
interesting to see one for sale on eBay this month, with a starting price of
$8,500 plus $240 shipping. The seller is
in Sterling, Colorado, USA, and one wonders how the painting came to be
there. It dates from September 1951 (the
date can be seen in a diamond shape near the bottom right-hand corner) and
according to the seller’s description is number five of a series of eleven made
during the period 1947-1953. The medium
is watercolour and gouache on Bristol paper board, and it measures
approximately 7 1/2" x 11 5/8", including a lower margin of about
3/8".
The
seller has helpfully included a photograph of the text on the back of the
painting:
Sep.
1951
The astral sphere above
the city has many presences who have striven for the welfare of the remainder
of their fellows. They are shown,
shedding their light upon the world. They,
as spirits emancipated from their earthly bodies, have realised the pursuit of
the Way followed by all those who seek. The man holds the flaming torch of fulfilled aspiration in the
embodiment and loving participation of Power, and the woman shows the flower
& seed of the golden fruit gathered from the conception and perception of
harmony which arrays her, and every individual aspirant who faithfully essays
to find the goal of perfect ideal love.
There
are no surprises in terms of style and it is immediately identifiable as coming
from the hand of Le Rossignol, though the seller notes that the colours have
faded, which means it does not compare well with the luminous paintings that
were on show at The Horse Hospital. What
is certainly noteworthy is the late date compared to the pictures owned by the
CPS, and research needs to be done to determine the length of her working life as a
painter.
I
don’t know how the price was arrived at, but it seems rather a lot for a small watercolour
by a fairly obscure artist, however infrequently the opportunities to buy her work arise. That this was not my opinion alone is evident
by its failure to sell when the auction closed on 15 April. Le Rossignol is becoming better known, but
she clearly has some way to go before she can command that kind of figure.
Updated
31 March 2020:
 |
| Ethel Le Rossignol's photograph at the CPS |
In
August 2019 I attended the College of Psychic Studies’ summer exhibition, Art and Spirit: Visions of Wonder and
learned a little more about Le Rossignol from a card accompanying her
photograph. Her married name was
Constance Beresford Ryley, not Riley. When
she became an art student on her return from Argentina she shared a studio with
three others, including the Arts and Crafts jewellery designer Sarah Martineau
(incidentally,
Sarah Madeleine Martineau (1872-1972) was distantly related to Harriet
Martineau, whose Letters on Mesmerism
(1845) created a stir). The caption
writer plausibly thought Sarah’s influence could be felt in Le Rossignol’s use
of gold and the intricacy of her designs.
Le Rossignol served as a nurse during the First World War and turned to
Spiritualism, as many did, because of her experiences, becoming a medium in
1920.
A
quick genealogical search threw up further information. Le Rossignol was born on 7 April 1873 at
Buenos Aires and her first appearance in the UK Census was in 1891. Her father was Alfred Le Rossignol and Ethel
was her second name. She was awarded the
British War Medal and the Victory Medal for her war service. Husband Arthur died in November 1934, so it
was a short marriage lasting only four years.
She died at Falmouth on 25 February 1970, leaving a modest estate of
£39,656, but having bequeathed some remarkable paintings to the CPS for future
generations to enjoy.
Not
enjoyed by everybody though. A Goodly Company was reviewed
unfavourably in Psychic News by ‘J.P.’
(21 June 1958, p. 4). The book was priced
at £8.10s in a print run of 500, and J.P. marvels at the luxury of the
production but ridicules the contents. He
refers to the book as ‘most certainly powerful proof of survival – of the
printer’s and bookbinder’s art’ and lacking subtlety, almost overwhelming the
reader with its sheer bulk. The pictures
are brutally dismissed as ‘grotesque’ and technically deficient, though
conceding there is a ‘(William) Blake-like quality about some of them’, but
Blake at his ‘mystical maddest.’ While
boring in style, they possess ‘a spiritual quality … that partly compensates the
lack of artistic prowess.’ On the whole,
however, the reviewer does not feel the several thousand pounds it must have
cost to produce A Goodly Company
money well spent.
