Alan Sorrell: The Man Who Created Roman Britain

By Julia Sorrell and Mark Sorrell

Alan Sorrell’s archaeological reconstruction drawings and paintings remain some of the best, most accurate and most accomplished paintings of their genre that continue to inform our understanding and appreciation of historic buildings and monuments in Eutope, the Near East and throughout the UK. His famously stormy and smoky townscapes, especially those of Roman Britain, were based on meticulous attention to detail borne of detailed research in collaboration with archaeologists such as Mortimer Wheeler, Sir Cyril Fox and sire Barry Cunliffe, who excavated and recorded his subjects of interest. Many of his reconstructions were commissioned to accompany visitor information and guidebooks at historic sites and monuments where they continue to be displayed. But archaeological subjects were not his only interest. His output was prodigious: he painted murals, portraits, imaginative and romantic scenes and was an accomplished war artist, serving in the RAF in World War II. In this effectionate but objective account, Sorrell’s children, both also artists, present a brief pictorial biography followed by more detailed decriptions of the genesis, research and production of illustrations that demonstrate the artist’s integrity and vision, based largely on family archives and illustrated throughout with Sorrell’s own works. So influential were Sorrell’s images of Roman towns such as London, Colchester, Wroxeter, St Albans and Bath, buildings such as the Heathrow temple and the forts of Hadrian’s Wall, that he became known as the man who invented Roman Britain.

Alan Sorrell was a celebrated and accomplished artist, most reknowned for his meticulously researched archaeological reconstructions, especially of the towns and buildings of Roman Britain, many of which are still on display at historic sites throughout Britain. Written by his children, each accomplished artists in their own right, this is the first book to chart his life as an artist and, in particular, to examine the detailed research that led to the creation of individual paintings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jun 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781785707414

Julia Sorrell

Julia Sorrell RI, RBA is an artist living and working in Norfolk with her husband Ian Sanders. She was awarded in 2015 an ACE Foundation TravelArt Award to produce exhibitions of paintings and sculpture based on the landscape and archaeology of Orkney. Apart from being an artist, Julia has written articles and given talks about Alan & Elizabeth Sorrell and herself, but this is her first book.

Book preview

Part One

ALAN SORRELL: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Julia Sorrell

To my husband, Dr Ian Sanders, thanking you for all your tireless help and support to both Mark and myself to make this book possible. With love, Julia

Chapter 1

Introduction

BEFORE BEGINNING, it is necessary for me to make it clear to the reader that I am not an archaeologist, I am not an academic, I am not a writer, but I am an artist, and I am Alan Sorrell’s daughter. As a little girl, on one of our many trips to Roman sites up and down the country, I remember asking my father: Why do they have all your pictures at these places? Mischievously, he replied: You must remember I created Roman Britain. And, of course, I believed him.

The archaeological world realised their good fortune:

in being able to attract the services of a man like Alan Sorrell though service is perhaps too stark a word for the loving care which he lavished on each and every one of his brilliant reconstructions. To those of us whose interests were kindled and nurtured by the remarkable wave of popular archaeology in the 1950s the name of Alan Sorrell was as well known as those of Glyn Daniel and Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

So wrote Professor Barry Cunliffe in his foreword to Reconstructing the Past. He concluded:

Alan Sorrell’s drawings have been an inspiration to amateur enthusiasts and professional archaeologists alike. Their accuracy, their timeless quality and the fact that they are works of art in their own right will ensure that they continue to inspire for generations to come. (in Sorrell 1981, 8)

Whether they be museum directors, archaeologists, teachers, or mere enthusiasts they all affectionately reminisce: Of course I remember Sorrell’s work. My father was scrupulous about replying to every young enthusiast who wrote to him, and would have been particularly moved by the archaeologist Tim Copeland who recently wrote:

Alan Sorrell’s work has been crucial to my career as an archaeologist … I must have been about eight years old when I walked on my own the six miles to Caerleon one summer’s day to see the remains. I never made it as I was picked up by the police as a ‘missing child’… At sometime around ten years old I entered a drawing competition in my local children’s library and copied the barracks reconstruction. I won and my prize was to be taken to the Roman town of Caerwent which I had chosen because I had a guide book with three of Alan’s reconstructions: the town, the forum and temple, and shop. I eventually got my father to take me to Caerleon on the bus. I think he was a bit embarrassed about his son wanting to be an archaeologist when we lived in the tough area of Newport Docks (Copeland, pers. comm. 2014)

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. 1. Caerleon Legionary Fortress (1939). Gouache, pen & ink, chalks & watercolour, 43 × 55.5 cm

(COLLECTION OF AMGUEDDFA CYMRU – NATIONAL MUSEUM WALES)

Anyway, he continues apparently when we got to the amphitheatre I was hugely upset that it was not like Alan’s famous reconstruction, but a ruin.

Alan Sorrell’s work inspired many people and yet few know about him as an artist and even fewer about his life. So I want to take the reader on a journey through this extraordinary man’s life. Those who know Alan Sorrell’s archaeological reconstruction drawings from visiting sites, television, museums or books will be surprised that this was only part of his artistic career. He painted murals; he travelled – recording pending changes; he painted imaginative, romantic pictures; he painted portraits, and so on. His output was prodigious. As for his personality, let us read what my mother wrote in 1945:

When I remember that you told me how you had been on the verge of suicide once – it seems quite incredible – and quite unlike you – because you are so alive – your work, your letters, the way you walk and talk, your expressions, the way you love me – everything about you vibrates with life – so that the thought of you of all people thinking about death seems fantastic. I have never met anyone quite so brimming over with life. (Sorrell & Tanner 1944–7, undated, ?Sunday 1945)

However, when I was only 19, my father unexpectedly died, and we became rudderless without this stable anchor. I had just returned home from College for the 1974 Christmas holidays, and one morning my parents went shopping. They were involved in a car accident, both being injured. After a few days we collected my mother from hospital, but my father had to have his right arm, his writing arm, pinned. Mr Frank Todman, a patron, amateur artist, local solicitor and friend visited my father in hospital and told the surgeon to make a good job of the mend as Alan Sorrell’s contribution to art is enormous. On 21 December Alan rang my mother, Elizabeth, who due to her internal injuries including broken ribs, had to ask my father to stop cracking so many jokes. My father’s last words, unwittingly, were take good care of Strüdel (our dog). I mention this as Alan had always jokingly considered what his last words would be – having seen so many death-bed scenes in westerns! As we were due to collect Alan that afternoon, we all sat down for a celebratory lunch with my aunt and uncle. The phone went again: I think you had better come to the hospital. My uncle drove us down – no-one spoke. When we got there we were told that Alan had had a massive heart attack on getting out of bed and had died. I remember the doctor turning to me and saying: he was no spring chicken. Not having heard the phrase before, I was angry that my father was being compared to a chicken. My mother decided to see Alan for the last time; I did not – I regret this now, but I was young. She said I have never seen him look so calm. My mother was to live another 17 years, but never recovered from this loss.

In trying to convey an impression of Alan Sorrell, I shall let him speak as often as I can as he left many unpublished manuscripts, enhanced by my mother’s anecdotes she told whilst we sewed together on many a long evening. Maybe, like my mother, it may meander in its telling, as I link all the threads together, showing how circumstances influenced his direction to being an artist and his involvement with archaeology, as well as answering frequently asked questions such as: Why DID he paint so many stormy skies? At times, the text could be interpreted as self-indulgent. From my experience, most artists are shy, and working in isolation can lead to periods of self-doubt, neurosis and anxiety. My father, unlike many artists, had the honesty to express these sentiments as well as concerns about being ignored or considered out of fashion. Alan wanted to be valued as an artist, but at times felt threatened, as in the case of photography, whereby the general public may question whether there is still a need for an artist to visually record a scene. I elaborate on all of this in the chapters that follow and hope it will be entertaining – a good read and not too biased!

Chapter 2

Early life and education

ALAN ERNEST SORRELL was born 11 February 1904 in Tooting, London to Edith and Ernest. Even from the moment of conception, Alan’s life was traumatic, he always believing this accounted for his nervous disposition. His parents had been told not to have any more children after the birth of Doris, 7 years Alan’s senior. With that birth, Ernest had had to choose between his wife and child – the presumed priority then being the potential heir. Ernest chose Edith, who may have had pre-eclampsia with her pregnancies. Fortunately both mother and daughter survived. Not surprisingly, Edith was very stressed throughout her second pregnancy. Alan was born with a supposed weak heart and was a difficult feeder. He would often say Oh Cow & Gate, you know I was their first baby – my life was saved by them, adding: Oh let’s have Cow & Gate and help promote them. Such would be his parting words to my mother leaving for Hadleigh, Essex, to get free backing boards from Mr Buttery, the chemist, for Alan’s completed reconstruction drawings. Mr and Mrs Buttery kept all the cardboard adverts for my mother after they had finished displaying them in their window. Once home, my father would look at them and laugh considering which would entertain the archaeologists more, the smiling baby or maybe the lovely ladies’ legs – ah yes the one showing the recovery from varicose veins using this amazing new cream. You can imagine, then, my amusement on seeing a group of academics at the Society of Antiquaries examining the reverse of one of my father’s drawings and pondering the significance of the Cow & Gate baby or the lovely legs! Interestingly, in 1904 Dr Killick, medical officer of health for Leicester, had asked the West Surrey Central Dairy Company Limited to supply powdered milk to help feed children of poor families. In 1908, the resultant high-protein Cow & Gate Pure English Dried Milk was first marketed on a large scale.

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. 2. Edith, Ernest and Doris Sorrell (c. 1899)

(SORRELL FAMILY COLLECTION)

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. 3. Alan Sorrell, aged about 2, with his father, mother, sister and aunt on a pleasure steamer off Southend

(SORRELL FAMILY COLLECTION)

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. 4. Doris and Alan in a bath chair (c. 1909)

(SORRELL FAMILY COLLECTION)

Ernest, himself a frustrated amateur artist, had been obliged to enter the family jewellery business. The Sorrells, of Huguenot descent, had lived and worked for generations as craftsmen in and around Pennington Street, London, after fleeing France and supposedly entering Britain in a basket of apples! As my brother Richard asked: Which variety? Without knowing this family history, Alan found that a Richard and Elizabeth Sorrell had owned Hyde Hall, near Great Waltham, Essex, in the 17th century. Alan romanticised that they were his ancestors: I feel I belong to that part of England, as indeed I do because my people have lived thereabouts since 13 hundred and something which is a long time (Sorrell & Tanner 1944–7, postmarked 19 June 1945). We went and just sat in the car looking at it and Alan even dreamed of living there.

Less salubriously our immediate Sorrell branch came from Bow, then moving to Tooting. On Alan’s maternal side, Edith’s family were Irish, her maiden name being Doody, and had moved from Galway, southern Ireland to Shifnal in Shropshire for work. Her father was a civil engineer, working in the mines, and produced a well drawn chart of the rock strata for the mine.

Edith and Ernest decided to relocate his business and young family to near Southend in Essex. They were a comfortable, lower middle-class family who appreciated the opportunity to leave London.

Alan was a timid and, supposedly, delicate child. Years later, in August 1940 at Sunnyside, Shifnal, Alan wrote a short story The Shadow (also referred to as The Gun) – obviously auto-biographical:

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. 5. Alan’s earliest drawing (date unknown)

(SORRELL FAMILY COLLECTION)

"After that night he would have his bedroom door open, and as he came to know fear better and screamed so pitifully at its (the gun) onset, he was given a night light. His mother didn’t call him a naughty boy now but she would come and stroke his hot forehead until at last he fell asleep. After a time a doctor came and they played with a funny thing called a stethoscope and (he) heard him say ‘heart’ to his father. After that he had to stay in bed for weeks and weeks although he felt quite well."

And:

"thinking that (he) was interested in guns rather than frightened of them his father gave him a box of toy-soldiers. [We still have a box of toy lead soldiers which Alan, as a child, painted and then re-enacted battle scenes.] He was also given ‘a GUN. How fearfully he handled it, and what odd excuses he invented for not firing it!’ … His fear caused all his relatives to speak of him as ‘the artist.’ It seemed to be a rather good occupation for so frightened and delicate a person – he would evidently be of no use in the family warehousing and removal business." (Sorrell 1940a, 5–6)

Alan spent a lot of his childhood in a bath chair but would later admit that against his friends he was the healthiest looking with ruddy cheeks. Perhaps his mother, father and sister were over-protective. After all, when staying in the 1940s with his mother, she then being in her 80s, Alan wrote: Yesterday I was out all day and did quite a nice sketch … mother came and brought some lunch. And, on hearing Alan had shingles, Elizabeth wrote: Has your mother seen your room? I should think she would be worried if she knew that your landlady doesn’t cook for you – are you feeling fit now? (Sorrell & Tanner 1944–7, postmarked 14 Oct. 1945; undated ?Sept. 1946).

Ernest would keenly go painting at weekends taking his young son with him, and one can imagine them walking over the hills with their painting equipment, selecting such subject matters as Hadleigh Castle, which had been epitomised by John Constable. On these outings, Alan not only painted, but also would collect a piece of stone, which was carefully wrapped in cotton wool and added to his museum collection. A lasting impression was made on Alan and in 1946 he wrote to The Times about Hadleigh Castle where he pointed out that it was in danger of losing its likeness to the picture because the North Tower was crumbling (ASA). In 1910, however, these painting excursions were to end abruptly for 6-year-old Alan, with the sudden death of Ernest from pneumonia at only 49. A drop of brandy could have saved him, the doctor told Edith, who had become a strict teetotaller following her father dying of the bottle.

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. 6. Landscape by Ernest Sorrell (date unknown). Oil, 30 × 21 cm

(COLLECTION OF JULIA SORRELL)

Edith and Ernest were strict Congregationalists although their wedding certificate showed them marrying in a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. Years later, when referring to his feeling of exhaustion in Greece, Alan would write:

This was an excellent opportunity for meditation and, even, for soliloquy, but whatever tendencies I ever had to these habits, were driven out of me when I was a child; ‘meditation’ was called ‘wool gathering’, and soliloquy considered to be a sign of weakening sanity … The idea of real tea, greatly attracted me, but my artistic conscience, bolstered up as always, by a Nonconformist upbringing, urged me to make another drawing before succumbing to such a voluptuous temptation. (Sorrell c. 1962, 24, 28)

Alan retained a strong protestant work ethic, being always haunted by guilt. By the time I knew him, a sense of abstemiousness had largely disappeared. This had begun in Rome where he manfully drank a bottle of beer. (Sorrell c. 1938, 222: Barbarians in Rome is autobiographical, but written in the third person).

I was recently asked at an exhibition of Alan’s work: Well, what sort of artist was your father? Was he forever propping up the bar? I laughingly replied – that was NOT my father.

With the death of Ernest it was not just the painting excursions but life generally that was to radically change, from seeming comfort and ease to financially and emotionally painful episodes. Alan did not talk much about his childhood and early life, but we are able to form an insight from his writings and paintings. Alan developed an intolerable stammer which was to considerably affect him throughout his life. In Rome (1928–1930) he recalled that as he could not talk very well … he would retire from these discussions and soothe his jealous feelings by playing the Kreutzer Sonata on the common room gramophone. And being very lonely … he would go for long solitary walks, always at a tremendous pace. Feeling unconfident he made many mistakes and the worst was his stony refusal to interest himself in the [Italian] language. He:

reasoned that as he would never be able to say the words or the sentences there could be no point in his suffering agonising half hours with Marchi – and spending such a lot of money … That tiresome stammer was both the expression and the cause of most of the trouble and all the actions led to it for sometimes he would, with ridiculous boldness, try to say things that he knew would be particularly difficult for him to test himself and then at other times he would run away from his difficulties, and suffer agonies of humiliation as the result. He couldn’t under these circumstances behave like a rational being. (Sorrell c. 1938, 247)

Alan was never able to do public speaking or even confidently ask for his bus fare. I remember many incidents where the word simply did not materialise. Fortunately Elizabeth was supportive and on reading Barbarians in Rome (Sorrell c. 1938) she wrote:

I can’t think why you make yourself appear so timid though – or why you should be so self-conscious about the stammer – are you really self-conscious about it? If it does worry you, we’ll cure it, but personally I think it’s attractive …. (Sorrell & Tanner 1944–7, undated, ?Sunday, 1945)

When, as a baby, my brother Richard was ill, my mother and father had been asked to open a local exhibition. Out of courtesy my mother was invited to speak first, followed by my father. Worrying about Richard compounded the situation, and all he could stutter was: Now you can see why I paint. Generally people were patient, but sometimes, as at a Royal Watercolour Society meeting where Alan was struggling to express a point of view, he was shouted at by another artist hurry up and get on with it. So much for artistic sensitivity! My mother was furious, my father humiliated.

As a little boy Alan was forced to write with his right hand, his left hand being tied behind his back. Although he did write with his right hand, he always set the table for a left-handed person, and in the car accident, he instinctively protected his dominant arm, hence his right arm was damaged. However, one advantage was that Alan would give equal importance to both the bottom right and left-hand corners of his paintings (usually a right handed artist will neglect the right hand corner and vice versa).

Alan was clumsy. In Rome he remembered how he had never played ping-pong before and was very clumsy; he found calling the points spoilt the game because some of the numbers made him stammer (Sorrell c. 1962, 39). He actually was to become quite good at ping-pong (table tennis) and every Christmas we all played and invariably Alan won! A school-friend commented on how Alan missed a lot of his schooling due to ill health. It could have been due to his health or task avoidance due to many things including his stammer and clumsiness, but he did tell a journalist that he started school at 10 years old (Mories 1939, 85). He once told me that he was unable to read till he was 10 – maybe he wanted to console me as I, too, was a late reader. He added that once he could read, he read Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels! However he was not considered grammar school material and, due to lack of finances, private schools were completely out of the question. The only option was to finish his schooling at Chalkwell Hall School – then a board school – with pupils leaving at 14. His Who’s Who entry in 1951 read privately educated; it should have been self-educated! Pre-1950s a large proportion of artists and archaeologists including John Piper, Lucian Freud, Graham Sutherland and Aileen Fox were private or public-school educated, whilst grammar schools offered an education to able students from poorer backgrounds, like Henry Moore and Sir Mortimer Wheeler. One archaeologist who did come from similar beginnings as Alan was Cyril Fox but he, like Alan, was unusual. Therefore, it is obvious how an intelligent and sensitive ex-board school pupil must have felt working and mixing in such a stratified society. Again I refer to Barbarians in Rome (Sorrell c. 1938) where a wealthy student arrived and it transpired that his preparatory school was near to where Alan had spent his childhood, and he was fearful lest this student should enquire what his school had been and then he would have had to say that his was a board-school. Then on meeting an educated German who spoke such good English, Alan felt as never before, the inadequacy of his board school education. (Sorrell c. 1938, 168)

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. 7. Art competition drawing (date unknown). A statue on a plinth was to become a recurring compositional theme, see Figs 8 & 27. Gouache, watercolour & pen & ink, 37 × 36 cm

(COLLECTION OF JULIA SORRELL © ESTATE OF ALAN SORRELL)

When Alan was 14, his sister Doris died of TB, aged 20. Edith had tried all the then recommended and supposed cures including sanatoriums around the country. Doris had been working as a secretary in London before she became ill and Alan believed her TB had been triggered by commuting daily by train, so when I went to college in London he was adamant I lived up there! Edith owned a few properties in Bow which she gradually sold to pay for Doris’s treatment, the result being that there was little money left after Doris died. How did all this affect Alan? Could his low attendance at school have also been due to Doris being ill? For Alan coping with all this emotional stress may have been another reason for staying at home. Perhaps he also craved attention. Had he not been that delicate child Doris had pushed around in a bath chair? We can just conjecture, but we do know how neurotic he became. In Rome he wrote how forgetting for once his old maidish fear of typhoid (or what the disease is that comes from eating not very pure ice cream) he bought one, and survived (Sorrell c. 1938, 222). When Elizabeth was ill, Alan wrote: Anything connected with the lungs makes me nervous (Sorrell & Tanner 1944–7, ?Feb. 1945). If I ever coughed, Alan became frantic. I did not know why until my mother explained how Alan remembered, as a boy, hearing "Doris coughing up