LONDON.- “He may have led a reprehensible private life, (in truth, there is no ‘may’ about it, he most certainly did!) but as a sculptor, wood engraver, illustrator and typographer, he stands very high in the recent history of the creative arts in Britain.”
These are the words of the legendary publisher Felix Dennis, who died in June 2014, reflecting on his extensive collection of works by the hugely influential British artist and designer Eric Gill.
As a type designer, Gill’s work has been immortalised in his now ubiquitous “Gill Sans” typeface. First launched in 1928, installed on hundreds of millions of computers world-wide, it has been used for the logo for the BBC since the mid-1990s (and also as the font for this press release). As a sculptor, he created some of the UKs most prestigious public commissions, including Prospero and Ariel for the BBC’s Broadcasting House and the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral.
The Felix Dennis Collection, comprising 99 lots, is the largest collection of works by Gill to remain in private hands. Spanning important works of sculpture, to engravings, illustrated books, paintings and wood carvings, the collection surveys the full scope of his prodigious and varied output. The collection will be offered on 9 December, as part of the English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustrations Sale, with individual estimates ranging from £200 to £25,000.
Felix Dennis, one of three editors jailed on obscenity charges following the 1971 Oz magazine trial, became a hugely successful magazine and book publisher. He was well known for his unrestrained hedonistic lifestyle, claiming to have spent £100-150m on women and drugs during his lifetime. In later life, after overcoming an addiction to crack cocaine, Dennis concentrated on writing poetry and establishing a native forest near his home in Warwickshire. Following his death, he left instructions that the majority of his £500m fortune should be used to ensure the upkeep of this forest.
Dennis’s passion for art ran from the Ancient to the Contemporary, but it is his incomparable collection of works by Eric Gill that perhaps best encapsulates his personality and unalloyed love of life. Dennis’s love of the printed word, the natural world and a progressive (often controversial) attitude to living is reflected in Gill’s ground-breaking and varied output.
Highlights:
Kneeling Figure ‘Mea Maxima Culpa’, boxwood. executed circa 1920s, est. £15,000-25,000 and Brighton Plaque, 1924. Gill was commissioned to design a plaque to mark the homes of distinguished former Brighton residents. This small carving, featuring Gills own initials and dates, is a maquette for the top section of the plaque, the final version of which can be seen today in and around the streets of Brighton, at sites such as the former home of the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley.
Five wood-engravings for Canticum Canticorum, est £2,000-3,000, Crucifixion, pen and ink and watercolour, 1905-7, est. £3,000-5,000 and four wood-engravings from The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, est. £3,000-5,000.
