The Peter Blake Screen; An Important Victorian Decoupage Screen, Acquired by Peter Blake & Barry Daniels in 1948

Origin: English
Period: Late Victorian
Provenance: Acquired by Peter Blake and Barry Daniels, Gravesend, 1948; subsequently associated with the Daniels/DANAD archive; thence by descent.
Date: c.1900
Height: 70”
Width: 22” (each leaf) or 88” (the whole)

The late nineteenth century four-fold Victorian dressing screen, each arched panel extensively decorated to both sides with an extraordinary assemblage of cut and applied chromolithographic and monochrome printed images, the principal face being densely populated with Victorian figures, children, animals, birds, flowers and theatrical imagery against a black ground, including several particularly large and striking female and juvenile portraits, the reverse retaining an earlier and rather more archaeological arrangement of predominantly monochrome Victorian cuttings, many now absent and leaving ghost-like silhouettes where images have been removed; this seemingly simple piece of Victorian domestic découpage having an exceptional subsequent history: having been acquired in 1948 by the teenage Peter Blake and his fellow Gravesend School of Art student Barry Daniels, who became fascinated by its accumulation of found imagery and an early inspiration for British Pop Art.

The screen survives in wonderfully evocative, unrestored condition. There are numerous losses, abrasions, scratches, tears and areas of lifting to the applied paper decoration, particularly extensive to the reverse where many cut-outs have been removed over its long history. There is general surface wear and deterioration consistent with its age and use, together with wear to the black-painted framework and hinges. Importantly, this patina forms part of the object’s history: the surviving and missing images together document the screen’s evolution from Victorian domestic object to a source-book for the two young artists with contemporary accounts of the DANAD archive identifying Blake and Daniels as classmates at Gravesend at precisely this time. The screen remains freestanding and functional and we would strongly advise against restoration beyond essential conservation.

The pieces significance lies far beyond the screen itself. Blake and Daniels’ fascination with Victorian popular imagery and the possibilities of collage anticipated a visual language that would become central to post-war British Pop Art. Blake later became one of Britain’s foremost exponents of Pop, famously co-designing with Jann Haworth the cover for The Beatles’ seminal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The Sgt. Pepper relationship therefore is an early and formative inspiration for Blake’s collage practice.

Daniels meanwhile co-founded DANAD Design in 1958, whose circle included Blake, Robyn Denny, Bernard Cohen, Tom Adams and Edward Wright and deliberately transferred fine art, collage and print onto furniture and everyday objects. DANAD’s approach has subsequently been recognised as an important episode in the development of British Pop Art.  The supplied Financial Times feature goes further in discussing this very screen as an object which might be regarded as the “font of all Pop Art”, recording Blake’s recollection that the screen was one of several he collected and that he repeatedly employed collage throughout his career, most recognisably in Sgt. Pepper. This screen has subsequently formed part of the rediscovery and exhibition of the DANAD story, including exhibitions associated with Paul Smith and the William Morris Gallery; the DANAD material was also the subject of DANAD: Mavericks of Marden Hill at Hertford Museum in 2020. 

An exceptional piece of British art and design history: ostensibly a Victorian découpage dressing screen, but subsequently an important formative object in the careers of Peter Blake and Barry Daniels and in the visual culture from which British Pop Art emerged. Acquired by the two young artists while studying together at Gravesend in 1948, its crowded juxtaposition of unrelated found images strikingly anticipates the language Blake would explore throughout his career. With its remarkable provenance and documented exhibition history, this is an object whose importance lies as much in the story of what it inspired rather than what it is.

Exhibited:
DANAD / Paul Smith exhibition;
William Morris Gallery;
Hertford Museum;
The Whitworth, Manchester.
Literature: Financial Times, House & Home, Helen Barrett, “Rebels with a collage”, February 2020, illustrated and discussed.