Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain: Walter Hussey and the Arts

by Peter Webster

Overview

This book is the first full-length treatment of Walter Hussey's work as a patron between 1943 and 1978, first for the Anglican parish church of St Matthew in Northampton, and then at Chichester Cathedral. He was responsible for the most significant sequence of works of art commissioned for the British churches in the twentieth century. They included music by Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein and William Walton, visual art by Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Marc Chagall, and poetry by W. H. Auden. Placing Hussey in theological context and in a period of rapid cultural change, it explores the making and reception of the commissions, and the longer-term influence of his work, still felt today.

As well as contributing to the religious and cultural history of Britain, and of Anglo-Catholicism and the cathedrals in particular, the book will be of interest to all those concerned with the relationship between theology and the arts, and to historians of music and the visual arts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137369093
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	11/09/2017
Series:	Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000
Edition description:	1st ed. 2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Peter Webster is an independent scholar and consultant, and owner of Webster Research and Consulting. He has published widely on the history of the Church of England in the twentieth century. His study of Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury, was published in 2015.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The formation of a patron.- Chapter 3. The 1943 Jubilee festival at Northampton.- Chapter 4. Music, art and poetry: 1944-55.- Chapter 5: The religious arts on a rising tide: people, media, networks.- Chapter 6: new visual art for Chichester.- Chapter 7: Chichester music.- Chapter 8: Cathedral, city and diocese.- Chapter 9: Legacy.