On 10 July 1833, young Mr Peter Black inserted the following advertisement in the Brighton Guardian.
Peter Black – French Honorary Consul
John Martin R.B.A. and the French Connection
Hidden away in a beautiful Edwardian house near the Ditchling Road, Brighton, is the very English studio of John Martin.
John’s studio in Brighton.
John had a very English art training, initially at Hornsey College of Arts. He fell in love with the South of France after his first ever trip abroad 1979 when students from his college, Exeter Art School, along with students from the Rotterdam Academy, went on an EU sponsored joint trip to Provence.
The group spent the whole of May in and around Aix-en-Provence, taking in the route Cezanne. John took the opportunity to paint the Mont Saint-Victoire and pine trees “with a great debt to Cezanne!”
And then he met Isabelle (Bella). Isabelle Vanderaert had grown up in La Rochelle on the west coast of France. The couple married in Brighton and have settled in the city.
John says of this painting of Bella at Roquebrun :
“This is from our time in Languedoc. It was made over a period of a few consecutive late afternoons. I chose the place very carefully to frame the setting sun beyond layers of the landscape. The main tree formed the focal point to the bridge beyond. Bella posed, reading in the shadows. The light in the Midi is very warm and bright in the Summer , so late afternoon, early evening is the time when the light settles into a wonderful warm glow.
“I hope I captured some of the magic of this wonderful place. Bella lost in her dreams and the distant hills beyond.” Painting is for me an accumulation of moments and the changes over a session of 4 hours or so begin to reveal so much. Responding to this in paint is the challenge. Knowing when to stop is even harder!”
But in fact, you may rarely find John in his Brighton studio. He and Bella spend their holidays at La Rochelle in the winter and on the nearby Île de Ré in the summer.
Café de la Paix, La Rochelle
“This little painting (above) was made from my sketch book, drawings and colour notes, which I made over a beer or two in situ. It was Christmas time and as the night falls there is a certain glow of the yellow lights, which makes the blue of the outside bluer! The interior of the café is particularly ornate and the frosted windows makes a wonderful backdrop to the figures. Objects are back lit and lit from the artificial light. Reflections in the glass lead us outside and reflections on the tables and floor plane, lead us in.”
Summer finds John painting en plein air.
John says of this little painting Chemin de la plage, Île de Ré: “The subject is lit full on, so that the sun was behind me. This is why I am under a parasol to shade my painting. I started by establishing the sky against the sea. The tide changes, so I knew I had to get this done and the incidental passing of a sailing boat was a gift! Gradually I responded to the light and how the notes of the white rocks made keys through the composition. The form of the dune and the serpentine fence became the subject but I see now that it is a painting about memories, wistful in nature!”
Le Chemin de Beau Soleil, Les Portes-en-Ré
“This painting (above) was made entirely on location at Les Portes-en Ré. At between 3pm and 4pm the shadow on the floor and onto the wall were exactly right. Everything about this painting had to be dictated by my first impression. I made a very fast study a day before starting this larger canvas. I tried to keep this idea in my mind. The shadow of the building and of the plants, describing the floor plane and how the shadow changes as it moves onto the vertical wall. The subtle changes in the whites, darks on light and the abstract qualities of the blue doors, contrasting with the organic foliage. A simple village corner was anything but simple!”
John nearly always finds a way to hide his face from the photographer – usually Bella!
John’s wonderful sensitivity is clear in this evocative painting (below) of a small town square in Agen. Lovers of France will recognise a typical mid-morning on a summer’s day in France, in this case, in the south-west. The children playing in the sun and the parent sitting quietly in the shade is an almost iconic view of French family life.
August heat – Agen
But let John explain his approach to the composition: “This painting started life as a smaller study What attracted me was the volume of the sky against the structure of the house. This soon became a real challenge to sort out the architecture and the street lamps seen against this. A moment when the light was seen through and behind the lamps really appealed to me. The larger version took a number of sessions and the brilliance of the light on the floor, bouncing up, was problematic. I tried to find little accents of colour to lead me through the space. The figures created focal points and broke the horizontal shadows.
So next time you are in the Ditchling Road area, think of John painting in his studio.
– but of course, John might well not be painting there. He will be in France capturing light and shade in his own entrancing way.
If you wish to see more work, or enquire paintings for sale please contact John on 07905 927078 or email john_d_martin@btinternet.com
All images © John Martin R.B.A.
French Cinema : 1914 to 1928
In the first weeks of the Great War, the Bioscope journal noted:
“There are very few signs of the terrible struggle in which the country is engaged to be noted at Brighton. The panic of the first week, of course, had a very bad effect, but things soon resumed their normal course. The picture theatres are doing a brisk business, and the patriotic and war films which are the order of the day are proving a great draw.” The Bioscope,10 September 1914
It was indeed the case that in Brighton and Hove, residents (and many visitors) continued to amuse themselves as well as busying themselves with their contributions to war work and fund raising.
An Illegal Immigrant – 1814
The Napoleonic Wars had cost the lives of many tens of thousands of British soldiers between 1803 and 1814. Even before the Battle of Waterloo, prisoners from both sides of the war were being repatriated. Writing about the boats bringing these suffering men across the channel, the Journal de Paris published the following snippet on 10 May 1814:
Il en est arrivé six le 4 de ce mois à Cherbourg, avec 284 prisonniers de guerre. Le six, une gabarre française est partie du même port pour l’Angleterre, avec 400 prisonniers anglais.
[Six such boats carrying 284 prisoners arrived in Cherbourg on the 4th of this month. On the 6th, a French river barge left the same port for England, with 400 English prisoners.]
Honoré Migot: pasteur et consul honoraire
The French honorary consul’s main function is to aid French nationals on his (or her) patch of British soil. Over the years, French nationals have had their political differences: Bonapartists v. royalists; royalists v. imperialists; imperialists v. republicans and republicans v. communards. However, once any French citizen is on British soil, s/he is under the protection of the apolitical French consul in their area.
In 1940, The Brighton consul was an exception to the ‘apolitical’ rule.
Read more: Honoré Migot: pasteur et consul honoraireHonoré Migot Honorary Consul for Brighton 1937-1947
Following the armistice of 22 June 1940 and the occupation of large parts of France by the Nazi forces, the French, yet again, became a divided nation. The government decamped to Vichy and became a puppet of the Nazi regime. General de Gaulle decamped to London and vowed to fight on – with or without the British. Most of the consular staff in London were attached to the Vichy (collaborationist) regime. Many of them hurried back home to France.
De Gaulle was not universally supported or popular when he first arrived in England. The French community in Britain was fractured. There was still much support for the Vichy regime from, for example, some of the thousands of French troops who had been evacuated from Dunkirk to Britain in May 1940.
Honoré Migot had arrived in England in 1914 to take up to the post of Pastor of l’Église Réformée Française in Monmouth Street Bayswater. He and his French wife moved to Brighton in 1921 to take up a very similar post in the little French Church in Queensbury Mews.
After the death of his first wife, Rosalie Dulca Migot, in 1931, he married London born Gladys Embery who appears to have been his secretary for quite some time. The couple moved into a modest flat at 3 Prestonville Road, Brighton in about 1935, soon after their marriage.
At the outbreak of WW2, Rev. Migot was 76. Old enough, perhaps, to feel that he could defy the restrictions of his consular duties. Rather than remain neutral, he came out quite strongly in favour of a continued fight against Nazism and against the ultra-right in France. As pastor, the Rev Migot clearly had a well-defined moral stance. According to Nicholas Atkin in his book “The Forgotten French: Exiles in the British Isles, 1940-1944”, Migot was:
“… born in Saint-Sauvant in 1873 and a resident in Brighton since 1916 [sic], who coupled his consular duties with acting as minister in the local French Protestant Church. For many years he had held Germanophobe views and regularly insulted Germans in the street. At the time of Dunkirk he had visited men in hospital and advised them not to return to France. Although he had not resigned his office, he had admitted this was only because he could not afford to lose his income, and readily broadcast his admiration for de Gaulle.”
Dr Atkin bases his statement on a report made by the Brighton CID (Criminal Investigation Department of the police) on Rev Migot in October 1940. Provincial honorary vice-consuls were not paid a salary. Pasteur Migot must therefore have been concerned about his stipend from the Church.
Pasteur Migot’s income depended on la collecte [the collection ‘plate’ passed round at services], donations from benefactors and sales of work. As early as 1933, the Church was in straightened financial circumstances:
Le Conseil constate qu’il y a £27.10.0 en banque et il remet au Pasteur un chèque de £27 en exprimant le désir que la situation financière conséquent de décès successifs puisse s’améliorer, afin d’arriver à remettre au Pasteur ce qui lui est dû.
[The Trustees note that there is £27 10s 0d in the bank and that they are giving the Pastor a cheque for £27. They express their hope that the financial situation, brought about by several recent deaths, will improve, thus allowing them to give the Paster what is owing to him.] What was owing to the Pastor was £200 a year. He rarely received it.
When, in late 1944, a sale of work raised £100 9s 2d, the Trustees of the Church minuted:
… (ce montant) paraît une grande somme, mais il ne faut pas oublier que faute de ressources le Pasteur n’a pu recevoir sur son stipend [sic] que la somme de £134 19s 6d sur £200. Il a fait remarquer qu’au 15 juin la chèque était seulement de £10 pour ce trimestre alors que son loyer était de £18 pour la même période.
[… (this amount) appears to be a large sum of money, but it must not be forgotten that the Pastor has received only £134.19.6. of his £200 stipend as resources are so limited. He pointed out that on 15 June, his cheque was for only £10.00 for the quarter whereas his rent was £18 for the same period.]
By the middle of the war, in 1942, the Trustees were noting that travel restrictions meant fewer derrières on pews and to make matters worse, blackout restrictions meant that the 6.15pm service had to be brought forward to 3.15pm, thus preventing many working men and women from attending. The organist must be paid and repairs were needed to the outside of the church. Bad winters meant extra heating costs. To make matters worse, several older and more affluent members had died.
Although the Trust needed new members and although the ladies seemed very capable of becoming Trustees, Le Pasteur fait remarquer qu’elles devraient avoir fait preuves de leur intérêt pour la prospérité de l’Église. Minute of 28 December 1944.
[The Pastor commented that they (the ladies) would have to have shown their commitment to the financial wellbeing of the Church.]
Mrs Gladys Migot (left) with her niece, Frances Appleman, in Brighton. With thanks to Stella Hammond, great-niece of Mrs Migot for permission to publish this photograph (via Ancestry)
Mrs Gladys Migot had already shown her mettle: whereas the vast majority of middle-class women were listed in the 1939 Register as carrying out “unpaid domestic duties”, Mrs Migot was listed as “Secretary At the French Consular Agency (Unpaid)”. Later she was a driving force behind several sales of work, and in 1944 did, indeed, become a Trustee of the Church.
Rev Migot died in 1947. Gladys, 35 years her husband’s junior, lived on in the flat at 3 Prestonville Road until the early 1960s.
The published Church accounts of 1949-50 show just how indispensable Gladys Migot had become to the Church.
Of the £322 pounds spent by the Church, over £100 had been raised thanks to Mrs Migot’s having organised and run Sales of Work. In addition to that her “Bun-Pennies” (presumably sale of buns at the Church) and her Penny-a-Week Fund raised a further £7 1s 4d. Later that year the Church paid tribute to this hard-working woman:
“The year 1950 finds the Brighton Church still without an appointed Leader. We cannot thank Mrs. Migot enough for the sympathetic and practical interest that she continues to show in the work so long directed by her husband, the late Pastor H. Migot. Her activities were not confined to the organisation of the Annual Gift Day and the Sale of Work. Week by week Mrs. Migot has ensured the attendance of Pastors and Laymen who have maintained the Services … and very kindly ministered to them in her own home.”
Gladys Migot died in Hove in 1984.
Noël à Brighton 1915
The Great War is dragging on. As the festive season approaches, Brighton is doing her best to show her support for Britain’s French Allies. On 16 December 1915, the Brighton and Hove and South Sussex Graphic certainly gave France pride of place.
In the newspaper, a journalist simply called Aigrette pens a splendid article about Madame Adolphe and her French ladies’ tailors in Preston Street. At this emporium “the reducing pencil has been hard at work and lovely bargains are on sale”. Aigrette is mightily impressed by one outfit: “a triumph of fashionable elegance.”
Alas, to our, fortunately, greater sensitivity to these matters in the 21st century, the cloth is shockingly described as “tête de nègre velour cloth of beautiful supple quality.” It is unlikely that in 2023 any fabric would be compared to a black person’s hair, however supple it may be.
East Street à la française 1845 to 1870 – Part I
Who were these women? And were they French?
Mr White and the Jeu de Paume
What is le jeu de paume, or “real” tennis? And what has it got to do with the Brighton? Hove-based Richard White, explains.
“On 23 June 2022, I was playing a game of jeu du paume [real tennis] in the semi-finals of the World Masters (over 75s) Real Tennis Championship. The venue was the magnificent court in the Château de Fontainebleau.
Richard White at the Château de Fontainebleau in June 2022 (c) R. White
L’assassin de Kemp Street
Gordon Hotels
Anyone who knows the Metropole Hotel in Brighton will recognise the building below: the central turret rising out of a pyramid roof, the cast iron balconies, the mansard roofs on the side pavilions and the dormer windows. And if the image were in colour, we would also recognise the warm red of the brickwork.
Image courtesy of the « Fonds ancien et local de Dieppe » (Dieppe Archive)
French Brighton 