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93-498: Towner Eastbourne (formerly Towner Art Gallery) is an art gallery located in Eastbourne , East Sussex , on the south coast of England. In 2019, German artist Lothar Götz was chosen from a call out to design a mural for the building's exterior. Götz transformed the exterior walls of the gallery with his large-scale, colourful geometric artwork, Dance Diagonal . Towner is celebrating its centenary year in 2023, and will be hosting

186-456: A general practitioner serving the town's wealthier patients, was arrested for the murder of an elderly widow . Rumours had been circulating since 1935 regarding the frequency of his being named in patients' wills (132 times between 1946 and 1956 ) and the gifts he was given (including two Rolls-Royces ). Figures of up to 400 murders were reported in British and foreign newspapers, but, after

279-538: A Modern World between 14 June and 4 September 2011. In the 2011 BBC series, British Masters , Bomberg was singled out as being one of the greatest painters of the 20th Century. He was one of the six artists included in Dulwich Picture Gallery 's 2013 summer exhibition, "Nash, Nevinson, Spencer, Gertler, Carrington, Bomberg: A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908-1922". David Bowie purchased work by Bomberg and kept it in his private collection , part of which

372-438: A coin minted during the reign of Æthelberht II of East Anglia (died 794), in a field near the town. It is believed that the minting of these coins may have led to Æthelberht's beheading by Offa of Mercia , as it had been struck as a sign of independence. Describing the coin, expert Christopher Webb, said, "This new discovery is an important and unexpected addition to the numismatic history of eighth century England." Following

465-610: A controversial trial at the Old Bailey , which gripped the nation for 17 days in March 1957, Adams was found not guilty . He was struck off for four years but resumed his practice in Eastbourne in 1961. According to Scotland Yard 's archives, he is thought to have killed up to 163 patients in the Eastbourne area. After the war, development continued, including the growth of Old Town up the hillside (Green Street Farm Estate) and

558-517: A dissertation by Richard Russell extolled the medicinal benefits of the seaside. His views were of considerable benefit to the south coast and, in due course, Eastbourne became known as "the Empress of Watering Places". Eastbourne's earliest claim as a seaside resort came about following a summer holiday visit by four of King George III 's children in 1780 (Princes Edward and Octavius and Princesses Elizabeth and Sophia ). In 1793, following

651-476: A fire broke out in the basement of the Claremont Hotel . The nearby Pier Hotel was also evacuated. Eastbourne Local History Society was founded in 1970. It is a charitable, not-for-profit organisation in whose objective is the pursuit and encouragement of an active interest in the study of the history of Eastbourne and its immediate environs and the dissemination of the outcome of such studies. As

744-566: A gap of several years during which Eastbourne had no local art gallery or museum, Towner reopened in a purpose-built gallery building adjacent to the Congress Theatre . Funders of the new gallery included the Heritage Lottery Fund and Eastbourne Borough Council . Designed by Rick Mather Architects and built mainly from concrete , at a cost of £8.6m, the new gallery building was planned to be more easily accessible to

837-426: A key feature of Eastbourne. As a seaside resort, Eastbourne derives a large and increasing income from tourism, with revenue from traditional seaside attractions augmented by conferences, public events and cultural sightseeing. The other main industries in Eastbourne include trade and retail, healthcare, education, construction, manufacturing, professional scientific and the technical sector. Eastbourne's population

930-686: A landing stage and stream at Burne. The original name came from the 'Burne' or stream which ran through today's Old Town area of Eastbourne. All that can be seen of the Burne, or Bourne, is the small pond in Motcombe Gardens. The bubbling source is guarded by a statue of Neptune . Motcombe Gardens are overlooked by St. Mary's Church, a Norman church which allegedly lies on the site of a Saxon 'moot', or meeting place. This gives Motcombe its name. In 2014, local metal-detectorist Darrin Simpson found

1023-819: A major retrospective of Bomberg's work curated by Richard Cork was held at the Tate Gallery , London, in 1988. In 2006, Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal , Cumbria , mounted the first major exhibition of Bomberg's paintings for nearly twenty years: David Bomberg: Spirit in the Mass (17 July – 28 October 2006). Prior to that, the exhibition David Bomberg en Ronda at the Museo Joaquin Peinado in Ronda in Andalusia (1–30 October 2004) showed work by Bomberg in

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1116-545: A more expressionist technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe. From 1945 to 1953, he worked as a teacher at Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University ) in London, where his pupils included Frank Auerbach , Leon Kossoff , Philip Holmes, Cliff Holden , Edna Mann , Dorothy Mead , Gustav Metzger , Dennis Creffield , Cecil Bailey, and Miles Richmond . David Bomberg House , one of

1209-478: A place in the National Portrait Gallery in London. In A Palestine Affair , a 2003 novel by Jonathan Wilson, the character "Mike Bloomberg" is loosely based on Bomberg's life, as acknowledged by the author: "Richard Cork's 'David Bomberg' [was] ... of inestimable value to me in constructing this fiction". Glyn Hughes's novel, Roth (Simon & Schuster, London, 1992) – its leading a character

1302-556: A population of less than 4,000 in 1851 to nearly 35,000 by 1891. In 1883, it was incorporated as a municipal borough ; a purpose-built town hall was opened in 1886. This period of growth and elegant development continued for several decades. During the First World War , Summerdown Camp, a convalescent facility, opened in 1915 near the South Downs to treat soldiers who were injured during trench warfare or seriously ill. It

1395-577: A public gallery and local museum, following Towner's bequest. A noted historic building in Eastbourne, the Manor House is dwarfed in age by its neighbours; being opposite the Lamb Inn, dating back to 1180AD and St Mary's Church, from the same period. Despite having been owned by the town as a public facility for most of the 20th century, the Manor House and gardens were sold in 2005/6 by the local authority, Eastbourne Borough Council . In 2009, after

1488-465: A resourceful and practical woman about ten years older than him who had worked with Kosslov's Ballet Company. Their mutual interest in experimental dance and the Russian ballet may have helped bring them together. Alice helped Bomberg in the early part of his career both with financial support and in influencing his appearance and character. 1914 saw the highpoint of his early career – a solo exhibition at

1581-403: A series of "Bomb Store" paintings (1942) expressing Bomberg's expanded first-hand sense of the destructive powers of modern technology in warfare. These "Bomb Store" paintings convey a premonitory sense of the massive explosion that destroyed the underground store two years later, killing around 70 people, and bear comparison with Piranesi 's Carceri etchings. Bomberg's superb draughtsmanship

1674-539: A series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I ; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer , because of

1767-535: A storm of protest led by the newly formed Eastbourne and District Preservation Committee, which later became Eastbourne Civic Society, and was renamed the Eastbourne Society in 1999. Local conservationists also failed to prevent the construction of the glass-plated TGWU conference and holiday centre (the building now operating as The View Hotel), but were successful in purchasing Polegate Windmill , thus saving it from demolition and redevelopment. Most of

1860-524: A survey of coastal defences in the southeast, approval was given for the positioning of infantry and artillery to defend the bay between Beachy Head and Hastings from attack by the French. Fourteen Martello Towers were constructed along the western shore of Pevensey Bay , continuing as far as Tower 73, the Wish Tower at Eastbourne. Several of these towers survive: the Wish Tower is an important feature of

1953-478: A survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta atrocity which led to the British conquest of Bengal . Richard Trevithick , the inventor of the steam locomotive, is reported to have spent some time here. Eastbourne remained an area of small rural settlements until the 19th century. Four villages or hamlets occupied the site of the modern town: Bourne (or, to distinguish it from others of the same name, East Bourne)

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2046-476: A town named Burlington, was abandoned, but on 14 May 1849 the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway arrived to scenes of great jubilation. With the arrival of the railway, the town's growth accelerated. Cavendish, now the 7th Duke of Devonshire , recruited Henry Currey in 1859 to lay out a plan for what was essentially an entire new town – a resort built "for gentlemen by gentlemen". The town grew rapidly from

2139-702: A trip to Paris with the proceeds of the sale of several pictures in 1914 which led to them marrying in 1916 after Bomberg had enlisted in the Royal Engineers in November 1915. Despite the success of his Chenil Gallery exhibition Bomberg continued to be dogged by financial problems. In 1915, he enlisted in the Royal Engineers , transferring in 1916 to the King's Royal Rifle Corps and in March of that year, shortly after marrying his first wife, being sent to

2232-853: A woman who lived around 245   AD were discovered in the vicinity of Beachy Head on the Eastbourne Downland Estate . The remains were found in 2014 to be of a 30-year-old woman who grew up in East Sussex , but had genetic heritage from sub-Saharan Africa, giving her black skin and an African skeletal structure. Her ancestors came from below the Saharan region, at a time when the Roman Empire extended only as far as North Africa. These remains have now been DNA tested and found to originate from Cyprus , not sub-Saharan Africa. An Anglo-Saxon charter, around 963 AD, describes

2325-596: Is Seaford to Beachy Head . This site, of biological and geological interest, covers the coastline between Eastbourne and Seaford, plus the Seven Sisters country park and the Cuckmere valley. Several nature trails lead across the Downs to areas such as the nearby villages of East Dean and Birling Gap , and landmarks like the Seven Sisters, Belle Tout Lighthouse and Beachy Head. Eastbourne's greater area comprises

2418-476: Is also a local government district with borough status . Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head , the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the larger Eastbourne Downland Estate . The seafront consists largely of Victorian hotels, a pier , theatre , contemporary art gallery and a Napoleonic era fort and military museum . Although Eastbourne is a relatively new town, there

2511-456: Is commemorated by a plaque on chalet number 2 at Holywell. The Second World War saw a change in fortunes. Initially, children were evacuated to Eastbourne on the assumption that they would be safe from German bombs, but soon they had to be evacuated again because after the fall of France in June 1940 it was anticipated that the town would lie in an invasion zone. Part of Operation Sea Lion ,

2604-564: Is currently owned by the Duke of Devonshire and was extensively remodelled in the early Georgian era when it was renamed Compton Place . It is one of the two Grade I listed buildings in the town. Eastbourne has Cornish connections , most notably visible in the Cornish high cross in the churchyard of St Mary's Church which was brought from an unspecified location in Cornwall. In 1752,

2697-478: Is evidence of human occupation in the area from the Stone Age . The town grew as a fashionable tourist resort largely thanks to prominent landowner William Cavendish , later to become the Duke of Devonshire . Cavendish appointed architect Henry Currey to design a street plan for the town, but not before sending him to Europe to draw inspiration. The resulting mix of architecture is typically Victorian and remains

2790-519: Is growing; between 2001 and 2011, it increased from 89,800 to 99,412. The 2011 census shows that the average age of residents has decreased as the town has attracted students, families and those commuting to London and Brighton. In the 2021 census, the population of Eastbourne was 101,689. Flint mines and Stone Age artefacts have been found in the surrounding countryside of the Eastbourne Downs . A Bronze Age site of national importance

2883-430: Is now Holywell Road via the lane between the present Helen Gardens and Bede's School , which leads to the chalk pinnacle formerly known locally as 'Gibraltar' or the 'Sugar Loaf'. The ground around the pinnacle was the site of lime kilns also worked by the fishermen. The fishing hamlet at Holywell was taken over by the local water board in 1896 to exploit the springs in the cliffs. The water board's successors still own

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2976-509: Is now known as Old Town, and this surrounded the bourne (stream) which rises in the present Motcombe Park; Meads, where the Downs meet the coast; South Bourne (near the town hall); and the fishing settlement known simply as Sea Houses, which was situated to the east of the present pier. By the mid-19th century most of the area had fallen into the hands of two landowners: John Davies Gilbert (the Davies-Gilbert family still own much of

3069-521: Is the work of Sarah Rose, who built her collection over thirty years. The London South Bank University Borough Road Gallery will hold two exhibitions a year drawn from the Sarah Rose collection. The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University held an exhibition entitled The Vorticists : Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18 from 30 September 2010 through 2 January 2011. Tate Britain held an exhibition entitled The Vorticists: Manifesto for

3162-553: The Chenil Gallery in Chelsea which attracted positive reviews from Roger Fry and T. E. Hulme and attracted favourable attention from experimental artists nationally and internationally. The exhibition featured several of Bomberg's early masterpieces, most notably The Mud Bath (1914), which was hung on an outside wall surrounded by Union Flags – causing "the horses drawing the 29 bus... to shy at it as they came round

3255-574: The Communist Party . During World War II , he painted Evening in the City of London (1944), showing the blitzed city viewed rising up to a triumphant, surviving St Paul's Cathedral on the horizon, since described as the "most moving of all paintings of wartime Britain" ( Martin Harrison ); a series of flower paintings saturated with turbulent feeling; and his single commission as a war artist,

3348-529: The East End of London where he was to spend the rest of his childhood. After studying art at City and Guilds , Bomberg returned to Birmingham to train as a lithographer but quit to study under Walter Sickert at Westminster School of Art from 1908 to 1910. Sickert's emphasis on the study of form and the representation of the "gross material facts" of urban life were an important early influence on Bomberg, alongside Roger Fry 's 1910 exhibition Manet and

3441-658: The Local Government Act 1972 , with East Sussex County Council once more providing county-level services to the town. David Bomberg David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 - 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys . Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks , and which included Mark Gertler , Stanley Spencer , C.R.W. Nevinson , and Dora Carrington . Bomberg painted

3534-632: The Norman conquest , the Hundred of what is now Eastbourne, was held by Robert, Count of Mortain , William the Conqueror's half brother. The Domesday Book lists 28 ploughlands, a church, a watermill, fisheries and salt pans. The Book referred to the area as 'Borne'. 'East' was added to 'Borne' in the 13th century, renaming the town. A charter for a weekly market was granted to Bartholomew de Badlesmere in 1315–16; this increased his status as Lord of

3627-585: The Turner Prize . The gallery hosts one of the most significant public art collections in the South of England and draws over 100,000 visitors a year. It was described by ITV News as "the region's biggest art gallery", in 2017. It was established with a bequest in 1920, from John Chisholm Towner who had served as a local alderman . It was first homed in Manor Gardens, adjacent to Gildredge Park in

3720-616: The Western Front . World War I was to bring a profound change to Bomberg's outlook. His experiences of its mechanized slaughter and the death of his brother in the trenches – as well as those of his friend Isaac Rosenberg and his supporter T. E. Hulme – permanently destroyed his faith in the aesthetics of the machine age. This can be seen most clearly in his commission for the Canadian War Memorials Fund , Sappers at Work (1918–1919): his first version of

3813-611: The 1950s and 1960s. In 1962, the Rector of Berwick Church gave over 35 studies and sketches for the Berwick Church murals. As a result of the first curator's ‘Pictures of Sussex’ policy the Towner Collection gradually increased. Pictures were acquired of subjects relating to Sussex. This scheme was later extended to allow inclusion of pictures executed by Sussex artists regardless of subject matter. A key element of

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3906-863: The English landscape school of Turner , Constable , Girtin and John Sell Cotman . From there followed Bomberg's great period of painting and drawing in landscape, in Spain at Toledo (1928), Ronda (1934–35 and 1954–57) and Asturias (1935), in Cyprus (1948) and intermittently in Britain, perhaps most powerfully in Cornwall. A six-month stay at Odessa in the Soviet Union in the second half of 1933, following Hitler's seizure of power in Germany, led Bomberg on his return to London to immediate resignation from

3999-533: The European Alps, during the middle Tertiary period. The chalk can be clearly seen along the eroded coastline to the west of the town, in the area known as Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters , where continuous erosion keeps the cliff edge vertical and white. The chalk contains many fossils such as ammonites and nautilus . The town area is built on geologically recent alluvial drift, the result of

4092-543: The Gallery to a newly-created independent charitable trust. David Dimbleby was appointed the Chair of Trustees. The Council retained ownership of the Gallery's building and its collection of artworks. Despite no longer directly operating the Gallery, Eastbourne Borough Council remained a major annual funder, alongside Arts Council England . In 2017, cuts in the local authority's funding of 50% were proposed. This threatens

4185-550: The German invasion plan, envisaged landings at Eastbourne. Many people sought safety away from the coast and shut up their houses. Restrictions on visitors forced the closure of most hotels, and private boarding schools moved away. Many of these empty buildings were later taken over by the services. The Royal Navy set up an underwater weapons school, and the Royal Air Force operated radar stations at Beachy Head and on

4278-580: The Manor and benefited local industry. During the Middle Ages the town was visited by King Henry I and in 1324 by Edward II . Evidence of Eastbourne's medieval past can be seen in the 12th-century Church of St Mary, and the manor house called Bourne Place. In the mid-16th century Bourne Place was home to the Burton family, who acquired much of the land on which the present town stands. This manor house

4371-489: The Old Town area of Eastbourne. Opening there in 1923, it closed when the building was sold in 2005. In 2009, it re-opened in a purpose-built facility adjacent to the Congress Theatre , near Eastbourne's seafront. The venue will host the 2023 Turner Prize . The Towner Gallery was established as a project in 1920 following the death that year of Alderman John Chisholm Towner, who left 22 paintings, £6,000 and instructions for

4464-596: The Post-Impressionists , where he first saw the work of Paul Cézanne . Bomberg's artistic studies had involved considerable financial hardship but in 1911, with the help of John Singer Sargent and the Jewish Education Aid Society , he was able to attain a place at the Slade School of Art . At the Slade School of Fine Art Bomberg was one of the remarkable generation of artists described by their drawing master Henry Tonks as

4557-494: The School's second and last "crisis of brilliance" and which included Stanley Spencer , Paul Nash , Ben Nicholson , Mark Gertler and Isaac Rosenberg . (The "first crisis of brilliance" had occurred in the 1890s, with Augustus John , William Orpen and others.) Bomberg and Rosenberg, from similar backgrounds, had met some years earlier and became close friends as a result of their mutual interests. The emphasis in teaching at

4650-788: The Slade in the Summer of 1913, Bomberg formed a series of loose affiliations with several groups involved with the contemporary English avant-garde, embarking on a brief and acrimonious association with the Bloomsbury Group 's Omega Workshops before exhibiting with the Camden Town Group in December 1913. His enthusiasm for the dynamism and aesthetics of the machine age gave him a natural affinity with Wyndham Lewis 's emerging vorticist movement, and five of his works featured in

4743-595: The Slade was on technique and draughtsmanship, to which Bomberg was well suited – winning the Tonks Prize for his drawing of fellow student Rosenberg in 1911. His own style was rapidly moving away from these traditional methods, however, particularly under the influence of the March 1912 London exhibition of Italian Futurists that exposed him to the dynamic abstraction of Francis Picabia and Gino Severini , and Fry's second Post Impressionist exhibition in October of

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4836-560: The UK record for the highest recorded amount of sunshine in a month, 383.9 hours in July 1911. Temperature extremes recorded at Eastbourne since 1960 range from 31.6 °C (88.9 °F) during July 1976, down to −9.7 °C (14.5 °F) In January 1987. Eastbourne's coastal location also means it tends to be milder than most areas, particularly during night. A whole six months of the year have never fallen below 0 °C (32 °F), and in July

4929-418: The area known as the Crumbles, a shingle bank on the coast to the east of the town centre. This area, now known as Sovereign Harbour , containing a marina, shops and several thousand houses, along with luxury flats, was formerly home to many rare plants. There has been continued growth in other parts of the town, and the central marshland has become farmland and nature reserves. In 2009, the new Towner Gallery

5022-439: The audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time. Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing

5115-421: The borough, which is an unparished area . Eastbourne was an ancient parish . It was governed by its vestry , in the same way as most rural areas, until 1859 when the parish was made a local government district , governed by a local board. Eastbourne become a municipal borough in 1883, governed by a body formally called the "mayor, aldermen and burgesses of the borough of Eastbourne", but informally known as

5208-406: The city and environment which he had celebrated in paintings and drawings in 1934-35 and 1954–57. Work from one of the best collections in private hands was shown on the fiftieth anniversary of his death in the exhibition In celebration of David Bomberg 1890-1957 at Daniel Katz Gallery, Old Bond Street, London (30 May – 13 July 2007). London South Bank University, the site of Bomberg's teaching at

5301-463: The collection is the work of Eric Ravilious , who studied and taught at Eastbourne School of Art. In 1982, the family of the artist deposited on loan an important body of his work. The Towner holds the broadest collection of paintings, illustrations and commercial designs in the world, by this important modern British artist of the early 20th century. Throughout 2023 Towner Eastbourne is partnering with iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) for

5394-416: The corner of King's Road." "I look upon Nature while I live in a steel city" he explained in the exhibition catalogue "I APPEAL to a Sense of Form ... My object is the construction of Pure Form. I reject everything in painting that is not Pure Form." With the help of Augustus John , Bomberg sold two paintings from this exhibition to the influential American collector John Quinn . Alice and David enjoyed

5487-445: The corporation or town council. One of the new council's first projects was to build Eastbourne Town Hall , which was designed by W. Tadman Foulkes, and built between 1884 and 1886 under supervision of Henry Currey , the Duke of Devonshire's architect. In 1911 Eastbourne was elevated to be a county borough , making it independent from East Sussex County Council . Eastbourne became a non-metropolitan district on 1 April 1974 under

5580-435: The end of the conflict it was designated by the Home Office to have been 'the most raided town in the South East region'. The situation was especially bad between May 1942 and June 1943 with hit–and–run raids from fighter–bombers based in northern France. Ultimately, 187 civilian people died in the borough through enemy action. In the summer of 1956, the town came to national and worldwide attention when John Bodkin Adams ,

5673-421: The establishment of an art gallery. This bequest was made for the benefit of the people of Eastbourne; the undertaking was entrusted to a local group of supporters and the local council. For 72 years, the Gallery was located within a Manor House on the High Street in the Old Town area. The Manor House, located within its own Manor Gardens, dated to the 18th century, but was taken over in the 1920s for public use as

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5766-418: The expansion took place on the northern and eastern margins of the town, gradually swallowing surrounding villages. However, the richer western part was constrained by the Downs and has remained largely unchanged. In 1981, a large section of the town centre was replaced by the indoor shops of the Arndale Centre . In the 1990s, both growth and controversy accelerated rapidly as a new plan was launched to develop

5859-429: The former Borough Polytechnic, received a gift of more than 150 paintings and drawings by Bomberg and his students in the Borough Group – principally Dorothy Mead, Cliff Holden, Miles Richmond , and Dennis Creffield — the David Bomberg Legacy. The gallery, formally launched on 14 June 2012, to display the artworks donated to the university by Sarah Rose has been made possible by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The collection

5952-434: The founding exhibition of the London Group in 1914. Still, Bomberg was staunchly independent and despite Lewis' attempts he never officially joined Vorticism. In July 1914 he refused involvement with the Vorticist literary magazine BLAST and in June of the following year his work featured only in the "Invited to show" section of the vorticist exhibition at London's Dore Gallery. In 1914 he met his first wife Alice Mayes

6045-428: The gallery was established it has received donations of work by significant artists including: Walter Sickert , Pablo Picasso , Henry Moore , Victor Pasmore , Alfred Wallis , Frances Hodgkins , Phelan Gibb and David Bomberg . By 1962 the Observer said it was "the most go-ahead municipal gallery of its size in the country". This was mainly because of the purchase of a group of works by modern abstract artists of

6138-400: The gallery with closure to some or all of its services and the greater use of admission charges for access to public art. From 2021 to 2022 the Gallery significantly remodelled its ground floor and cinema to "improve the visitor experience, build visitor engagement and increase Towner’s financial sustainability." Design was led by architects Manalo & White. The Towner Collection is one of

6231-407: The housing estates of Hampden Park , Willingdon Trees and Langney . During the latter half of the 20th century, there were controversies over the demolition of Pococks, a 15th-century manor house on what is now the Rodmill Housing Estate, and the granting of planning permission for a 19-storey block at the western end of the seafront. The latter project (South Cliff Tower) was realised in 1965 despite

6324-558: The human form, combining the geometrical abstraction of cubism with the energy of the Futurists , established his reputation as a forceful member of the avant-garde and the most audacious of his contemporaries; bringing him to the attention of Wyndham Lewis (who visited him in 1912) and Filippo Marinetti . In 1913, the year in which he was expelled from the Slade because of the radicalism of his approach, he travelled to France with Jacob Epstein , where among others he met Amedeo Modigliani , André Derain and Pablo Picasso . Expelled from

6417-438: The land in Eastbourne and East Dean ) and William Cavendish , Earl of Burlington. The Gilbert family's holdings date to the late 17th and early 18th centuries when barrister Nicholas Gilbert married an Eversfield and Gildredge heiress. (The Gildredges owned much of Eastbourne by 1554. The Gilberts eventually made the Gildredge Manor House their own. Today the Gildredge name lives on in the eponymous park.) An early plan, for

6510-434: The major landowner, the Cavendish family has had strong connections with Eastbourne since the 18th century. The current president of the society is William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington . Containing over 1,500 articles about the history of Eastbourne, the Society's indexed journal, The Eastbourne Local Historian , is the major historical resource for the town and has been published quarterly since its inception in 1970. Over

6603-467: The marshes near Pevensey . Thousands of Canadian soldiers were billeted in and around Eastbourne from July 1941 to the run-up to D-Day . Units of the very secretive and highly effective No. 3 (Jewish) Troop of the No. 10 Commando , composed of native German speaking Austrian and German Jewish refugees, trained in Eastbourne. The town suffered badly during the war, with many Victorian and Edwardian buildings damaged or destroyed by air raids. Indeed, by

6696-528: The most exemplary teacher of the immediate post-war period in Britain, working part-time in a bakery school at the Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University ) in the working-class borough of Southwark. Though his students received no grant and were awarded no diploma, he attracted devoted and highly energetic pupils, with whom he exhibited on an equal basis in London, Oxford, and Cambridge in two important artists' groupings in which he

6789-973: The most significant public art collections in the South East of England. It boasts in excess of 5,000 works of art by historic, modern and contemporary artists including: Lawrence Alma-Tadema , John Gascoigne Lake, Vanessa Bell , David Bomberg , Alan Davie , Tacita Dean , Olafur Eliasson , Anya Gallaccio , Thomas Jones, Peter Liversidge , Harold Mockford , Henry Moore , Cedric Morris , William Nicholson, Julian Opie , Ian Potts , Victor Pasmore , Pablo Picasso , Eric Ravilious , Eric Slater , Wolfgang Tillmans , Alfred Wallis , Christopher Wood , Joseph Wright of Derby and Carol Wyatt . The initial collection consisted mainly of Victorian narrative painting, especially pictures of animals and children. The current collection now includes oil paintings, watercolours, works on paper, etchings, prints, sculpture, wood cuts, ceramic objects, installations and video art. Since

6882-545: The painting was dismissed as a "futurist abortion" and was replaced by a second far more representational version. The artist's book Russian Ballet , 1919, was the last work to use the pre-war vorticist idiom. Bomberg self-published this work whilst waiting for the Canadian Government's verdict on Sappers at Work ; the next few years was to see him 'experimenting with ways of making his stark pre-war style more rounded and organic'. In radical opposition to

6975-722: The prevailing currents in avant-garde art, stimulated as these were by the enthusiasm for mechanization in Constructivism in Russia following the Revolution , Bomberg went to paint and draw in Palestine between 1923 and 1927, with the assistance of the Zionist Organization. There he brought together the geometric energies of his pre-war work as an "English cubist" with the tradition of figurative observation of

7068-417: The public and to store the 4,000 works of the growing collection in a safe and climate-controlled manner. Visually, it was designed to reflect the chalk cliffs of the Eastbourne Downs . Unlike the old building, no provision was made to incorporate a local museum, though substantially more space was created for a café, shop and larger exhibitions. In 2014, Eastbourne Borough Council transferred operation of

7161-513: The same year, which displayed the works of Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse and the Fauvists alongside those of Wyndham Lewis , Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell . Bomberg's response to this became clear in paintings such as Vision of Ezekiel (1912), in which he proved "he could absorb the most experimental European ideas, fuse these with Jewish influences and come up with a robust alternative of his own." His dynamic, angular representations of

7254-466: The silting up of a bay. This changes to Weald clay around the Langney estate. A part of the South Downs, Willingdon Down is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest . This is of archaeological interest due to a Neolithic camp and burial grounds. The area is also a nationally uncommon tract of chalk grassland rich in species. Another SSSI which partially falls within the Eastbourne district

7347-492: The site, and there is a pumping station but little evidence of the hamlet itself, as by now even most of the foundations of the cottages have gone over the cliff. As with the rest of the British Isles and South Coast, Eastbourne experiences a maritime climate with warm summers and mild winters. The local climate is notable for its high sunshine levels, at least relative to much of the rest of England – Eastbourne holds

7440-513: The student halls of residences at London South Bank University, is named in his honour. He was married to landscape painter Lilian Holt . Bomberg was born in the Lee Bank area of Birmingham on 5 December 1890. He was the seventh of eleven children of a Polish Jewish immigrant leatherworker, Abraham, and his wife Rebecca. He was Orthodox but she less so and supported David's painting ambitions. In 1895, his family moved to Whitechapel in

7533-604: The temperature has never fallen below 8.3 °C (46.9 °F). All temperature figures relate to the period 1960 onwards. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is " Cfb " (Marine West Coast Climate/ Oceanic climate ). There are two tiers of local government covering Eastbourne, at district and county level: Eastbourne Borough Council , based at the Town Hall on Grove Road, and East Sussex County Council , based in Lewes . There are no civil parishes in

7626-408: The third and final year of Future Collect, a project that will reimagine the future of public collections to better reflect our culturally diverse society. Eastbourne Eastbourne ( / ˈ iː s t b ɔːr n / ) is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex , on the south coast of England, 19 miles (31 km) east of Brighton and 54 miles (87 km) south of London. It

7719-472: The town of Polegate , and the civil parishes and villages of Willingdon and Jevington , Stone Cross , Pevensey , Westham and Pevensey Bay village. All are part of the Wealden District. Within Eastbourne's limits are: There was a community known as Norway, Eastbourne in the triangle now bounded by Wartling Road, Seaside and Lottbridge Drove. The name being a corruption of North Way, as this

7812-478: The town's seafront and was the subject of a painting by James Sant RA, and part of Tower 68 forms the basement of a house on St. Antony's Hill. Between 1805 and 1807, a fortress known as the Eastbourne Redoubt was built as a barracks and storage depot, and armed with 10 cannons. A connection with India comes in the shape of the 18th-century Lushington monument, also at St Mary's, which commemorates

7905-531: The years, the Society has published various books and booklets about the history of Eastbourne, twelve of which are currently in print. The South Downs dominate Eastbourne and the Eastbourne Downland Estate can be seen from most of the town. These were originally chalk deposits laid down under the sea during the Late Cretaceous , and were later lifted by the same tectonic plate movements that formed

7998-662: Was discovered in Hydneye lake at Shinewater in 1995. Celtic people are believed to have settled on the Eastbourne Downland in 500   BC. There are Roman remains buried beneath the town, such as a Roman bath and section of pavement between Eastbourne Pier and the Redoubt Fortress. There is also a Roman villa near the entrance to the Pier and the present Queens Hotel. In 1953, skeletal remains of

8091-565: Was expressed also in a lifelong series of portraits, from the early period of his Botticelli-like "Head of a Poet" (1913), a pencil portrait of his friend the poet Isaac Rosenberg for which he won the Henry Tonks Prize at the Slade , to his "Last Self-Portrait" (1956), painted at Ronda, a meditation also on Rembrandt . Unable to get a teaching position after World War II in any of the most prestigious London art schools, Bomberg became

8184-498: Was later to publish them, along with images of Bomberg's work, as 'The Bomberg Papers' in his ‘ X ’ magazine (June 1960). After his early success before the First World War, he was in his lifetime the most brutally excluded artist in Britain. Having lived for years on the earnings of his second wife, fellow artist Lilian Holt and remittances from his sister Kitty, he died in absolute poverty. Thirty years after his death,

8277-402: Was opened, abutting the listed Congress Theatre built in 1963. In 2016–19 extensive remodelling work was undertaken to the prominent Arndale Centre, which takes up most of the town centre, and was originally built by Legal & General Assurance in the 1980s. This was then renamed The Beacon. The remodelling including the addition of a brand new cinema run by Cineworld. On 22 November 2019,

8370-609: Was sold at auction after Bowie's death in 2016. In 2017 the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester mounted a major exhibition of Bomberg's work curated in partnership with the Ben Uri Gallery & Museum of St John's Wood, London . In Restless , William Boyd's 2006 novel, there is a reference to a portrait by Bomberg of one of the book's major (fictional) characters. The painting is said to occupy

8463-479: Was the largest of this type in the UK during this war, treating 150,000; 80% were able to return to fight. The facility was dismantled in 1920. An exhibition about the history of the camp was held in Eastbourne for several months in 2015. In 1926, the Eastbourne Corporation Act enabled the creation of the Eastbourne Downland Estate . A royal visit by George V and Queen Mary in March 1935

8556-629: Was the leading light, the Borough Group (1946–51) and the Borough Bottega (1953–55). He developed a deeply considered philosophy of art, set out in several pieces of writing, which he summed up in the phrase, "The Spirit in the Mass". Following a collapse in Ronda , Bomberg died in London in 1957, his critical stock rising sharply thereafter. One of Bomberg's admirers, the painter Patrick Swift , unearthed and edited Bomberg's pensées, and

8649-482: Was the route to the north. The area is now a housing estate and the only evidence there was a Norway are a Norway Road and the local church whose sign reads "St Andrew's Church, Norway". The former fishing hamlet of Holywell (local pronunciation 'holly well') was situated by the cliff on a ledge some 400 yards to the southwest of the public garden known as the Holywell Retreat. It was approached from what

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