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Jeffrey Sherwin: Collector, Medic, PoliticianSilvano LevyJeffrey Sherwin led three lives. To the locals of the Leeds inner-city area of Harehills, which has been described as ‘one of the worst places to live in Britain’, he was the friendly GP at number 282, Harehills Lane. He had qualified in 1961 and started his medical career by joining the practice of his father, Maurice Sherwin. Not long after establishing himself as a doctor, Jeffrey began a parallel second career, in local politics. In 1963 he stood as a Liberal, contesting the Wortley ward. This first attempt to become a Councillor was unsuccessful. Undeterred and changing tactics some eight years later, he switched to the Conservatives and, this time, won a Local Council seat at his first attempt, representing the Talbot ward. One of his official roles was that of shadow chairman of Leeds Leisure Services. Jeffrey held his seat until the ward boundaries were all changed in 1980. He then contested Barwick and Kippax, but lost to Labour. In recognition of his services, the city later awarded him the lifetime title of Honorary Alderman.Jeffrey’s role on the Council enabled him to pursue his third life; that of a devotee and champion of the arts and it is thanks to him and his unrelenting negotiating skills that today The Henry Moore Sculpture Gallery exists on The Headrow, as an extension of Leeds Art Gallery. When he had been newly-elected as a Councillor and first became the Conservative Party’s spokesman on leisure services, he put forward the idea of establishing a unique and prestigious gallery in Leeds. At the time, Labour was in control of the City Council and, despite his strenuous efforts, he could not persuade his opposite number to agree. He was similarly rebuffed by his own party chiefs when the Conservatives gained control in 1976. Not giving up, he continued to press for support until the proposal was eventually accepted. His next step was to persuade Henry Moore himself that his foundation, The Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire, should endow the gallery. Moore had a rather reserved personality and so Jeffrey put together a small group of convivial councillors who entertained Moore for lunch in one of the Lord Mayor’s private rooms. This went down well with Moore and it was not long before the Henry Moore Foundation provided a crucial £100,000 grant, which set the ball rolling. On 10th April 1980 Moore went to Leeds to lay the foundation stone and the Sculpture Gallery was eventually opened by Her Majesty the Queen in 1982.Jeffrey’s third life was his own private passion for collecting art. This was to become an obsession and led to a home that at one time was crammed with over 300 pictures and sculptures. Started in 1986 after seeing an exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first surrealist exhibition in Britain. He and his wife, Ruth, agreed it would be interesting ‘to have one or two examples in our own home’. Having just sold a health centre the Sherwins had built, they visited the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street, London. Their eye was caught by an intaglio print, The Chess Players, by Merlyn Evans. It was priced at today’s equivalent of £3,000. ‘We'd never spent £1,000 on a picture before and we stood on the pavement outside the gallery and, for the first time for many years, my fingertips perspired with fear and concern.’ The couple took the plunge and bought their first ever picture. Little by little, their home filled with others. Not that Jeffrey felt straightjacketed by the strictly ‘academic’ demarcations of surrealism that the 1986 show had laid down. On the contrary, paintings and sculpture by Bernard Meadows, Reg Butler, Terry Frost, Geoffrey Clarke, Gertrude Hermes, Eduardo Paolozzi, Kenneth Armitage, Peter Blake, John Piper, John Cecil Stephenson, William Roberts, Roger Hilton, Pauline Boty, Roy Lichtenstein and Mary Martin seamlessly share wall and floor space with works by Joan Miró, André Masson, Roland Penrose, René Magritte, Kurt Schwitters, Henry Moore, Man Ray and Max Ernst. Inasmuch, Jeffrey sought to expand the way we understand surrealism. He was once challenged about including Damien Hurst in his notion of surrealism. His riposte was difficult to challenge; ‘A cow and calf cut in two in formaldehyde, isn’t that surrealism?’ In his 2014 book British Surrealism Opened Up and its accompanying exhibition Jeffrey persuasively makes this very point.The Sherwin collection has achieved such status, both nationally and internationally, that for decades every major exhibition of surrealism has drawn from it. Loans have gone to the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as to galleries in France, Spain and Germany. Even now, a year after Jeffrey’s death, loan requests are still being submitted.Note: The author is grateful for the assistance given by The Henry Moore Foundation.The image caption: Her Majesty the Queen, Henry Moore & Jeffrey Sherwin (far right) at the opening of the Henry Moore Sculpture Gallery, Leeds on 26th November 1982. Photo: Henry Moore Archive, courtesy of The Henry Moore Foundation.The Dr. Jeffrey Sherwin Collection - A Personal RecollectionJeffrey Sherwin’s art collection was one of the most interesting in private hands in Britain. It was passionately assembled, and if I describe him as an aggressive collector that is not meant to be read as a criticism. What it does mean is that, when he wanted a work by a particular artist, he would pursue it with a single mindedness; not uncommon in many impassioned art collectors.Whenever he arrived at my studio to acquire some of my works for his collection, there was no question of arguing with him. And it was his fanatical enthusiasm for the neglected field of British Surrealism that won the day. His manner may have been brusque, but his heart was always in the right place. And he always trusted his judgement, regardless of official valuations. For example, when he saw a painting by my granddaughter, Tilly Morris, he insisted on buying it, not because she was my granddaughter, he stressed, but because it was a really good piece. He insisted on being photographed holding the work, so that I could show her who had bought her painting. His habit of acquiring work directly from artists' studios annoyed some of the London dealers, but Jeffrey would lose no sleep over that. He was a fiery force of nature where art was concerned and the result is that, over the years, he has accumulated an amazing array of modern works. Although he always spoke of his collection as being one of British Surrealism, his enthusiasm sometimes ran away with him and he collected a number of non-surrealists as well. When he wrote about his collection he always included the words BRITISH SURREALISM in the title, but he cheerfully included all these non-surrealists. When an erudite colleague warned him against this, he bluntly ignored the advice. He was sometimes scornful of academics who study the history of Surrealism, saying that they are turning something wild into a tame university course. There was no point in endlessly analysing modern art, he said, one’s response should be a gut reaction. You see a piece, it moves you, and you have to acquire it. That was Jeffrey the arch-collector and we should be grateful to him for the manner in which he navigated his way through the art world to create his memorable collection. He wanted the whole collection to go to a museum, but museums simply don't have the space available for such a large assembly of works. So, following his death, his estate has decided to split his collection into two parts - surrealist and non-surrealist - and to offer the former for long-term public display and dispose of the latter. Hence this present auction of his non-surrealist works. Dr. Desmond Morris

John Cecil Stephenson (1889-1965)

Abstraction, 1934

Details

John Cecil Stephenson (1889-1965)
Abstraction, 1934
signed twice and inscribed and dated 'JC STEPHENSON/1934/CECIL STEPHENSON/6 MALL STUDIOS/HAMPSTEAD NW3' (on the reverse)
oil, gouache, pencil and collage on canvas over panel
9 x 18 1/8 in. (23 x 46 cm.)
Executed in 1934.

Provenance

John Bruckland.
His sale; Christie's, London, 26 March 1993, lot 1, where purchased by Dr Jeffrey Sherwin.

Literature

Leeds, City Art Gallery, British Surrealism in Context: A Collectors Eye, July - November 2009, exhibition not numbered.
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, British Surrealism Unlocked: Works from the Sherwin Collection, April – June 2014, exhibition not numbered.

Exhibited

S. Levy and T. Pirsig-Marshall (ed.), exhibition catalogue, British Surrealism in Context: A Collectors Eye, Leeds, City Art Gallery, 2009, p. 213, illustrated.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Will Porter

wporter@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2688

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