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Charles Mahoney:
Muse - study for Campion Hall, circa 1940
Mounted (ref: 3938)

Wash, pen ink, 14 3/4 x 9 in. (37.3 x 22.7 cm.)

Tags: Charles Mahoney ink murals women

Provenance: The Artist's Studio

Mahoney was commissioned to produce a mural scheme for the Lady Chapel at Campion Hall in 1941. The scheme was to be made up primarily of three large panels: the Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds, the Coronation of the Virgin, and Our Lady of Mercy. In detail and composition the paintings owe much to early Italian example. The most notable case is Our Lady of Mercy (Autumn), clearly inspired by Piero della Francesca's altarpiece at Borgo San Sepolcro.

Electing to paint directly onto canvas fixed to the walls and by daylight hours only, the project inevitably became drawn out – Mahoney could only work in situ during the Easter and summer vacations when he was not teaching. The project continued into the following decade and coincided with a serious decline in the artist’s physical health. In spite of these problems, Sir John Rothenstein, who chose to reproduce one of the murals as a plate in British Art since 1900 (1962, pl.60), was moved to describe the scheme as “second ….. only to that by Stanley Spencer at Burghclere”. A full account of the circumstances of the commission and some of the problems involved can be found in Sir John Rothenstein’s Tribute to Mahoney in the catalogue of the Memorial Exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum in 1975.

The Muses were a favourite theme of the artist’s. First used at Morley College, Mahoney appears to have returned to a similar theme in the late 1950s when he was asked to submit, once again, designs for Morley College which was rebuilt after its destruction in the Second World War. They represented the spiritual and creative values that the artist strove to express both in his life and work.

By the time Mahoney embarked on this last large scale work he must have known that, with his physical health failing, he was unlikely to complete it. The studies however bear testament to the remarkable clarity of vision which never surrendered to physical decline. His drawings, especially for the right hand side, are amongst the most perfect expressions of the artist working in harmony with nature. A youthful artist works undisturbed in a Garden of Eden, tended by Muses.