The Centenary Celebrations begin

It's now just three months until the centenary of Mervyn Peake's birth and, from my position as provider of digital images to publishers, galleries and museums, I now intend to write the occasional blog on Sebastian's behalf to bring readers up to date.

This week sees the opening of the exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. This will be the first chance to see (in the UK) the collection of illustrations originally brought together for the major exhibition in Switzerland last year at Maison d'Ailleurs. It's an excellent way to begin the centenary celebrations. It is a fine exhibition, and it includes Treasure Island, Grimm's Household Tales, Captain Slaughterboard, Rhymes without Reason and six detailed charater studies of characters from Gormenghast.

The permanent exhibition at this beautiful Queen Anne House includes work by Henry Moore, John Piper and Graham Sutherland as well as more modern artists. For that reason, we suggested that one or two of Mervyn Peake's oil paintings were included to remind visitors that he was also a painter. The painting above, of the two clowns, is one of them.

Here is a review of the exhibition by Dominic Smith of The Argus.

Chichester is the perfect place to open the celebrations as it will also be the venue for the first Mervyn Peake International Conference. Regular readers of the blog will know that this is planned for 14th to 16th July and is being run by the Department of English and Creative Writing at Chichester University together with The Sussex Centre for Folklore Fairy Tales and Fantasy.

You can follow the dedicated blog if you'd like to read more about the conference.

There are now many other events planned for the rest of this year and details can be found here, or in the main menu.

Many new publications are being planned, including the new Illustrated Gormenghast, and they can be found here, or in the main menu.

If you'd like to know more, you might like to "follow" this blog. Click here to find out more.

Alison Eldred