Memories From Staff
Gillian Whaite
Art and the St Gabriel’s Collection
Catherine Houthuesen (1905–83) was in charge of the Art Department at St Gabriel’s from 1939 to 1967, and her contribution to the quality of education offered at the College was invaluable. Her sensitive awareness of other people brought out their best qualities; former students and colleagues treasure memories of her, and the way her friendship enriched their lives.
While the training course for teachers was still of only two years’ duration St Gabriel’s was able to offer a third-year course for students studying Art with Catherine Houthuesen. She enabled students to develop their own particular gifts, and the resulting work was outstanding, personal, and of genuine artistic quality.
Thanks to Catherine’s persistence when the bomb-damaged College was being rebuilt, the
architect was persuaded to install a glass roof over the studio, which thus became a wonderfully
light place in which generations of students could work.
In it Catherine used to arrange still-life
groups, of fruit, old china, leaves and flowers, shells, musical instruments and coloured and
patterned cloths, lovely to look at, and so tempting to paint. She would always arrange the
setting round the model when students were painting portraits. Other sources of inspiration
for pictures were her descriptions of things she had seen and would herself have liked to paint.
Catherine used to arrange the flowers in the College entrance hall, as well as the displays
of students’ paintings along the main corridors.
When Miss Atkinson was appointed Principal she wished to enhance the College surroundings, and Albert Houthuesen was invited to find works of art, which in due course became the St Gabriel’s College Collection.
A large, sunless room at the back of the building, overlooking dark roofs, was transformed into the Collection Room, with the walls painted a sunny terracotta on which the drawings, some framed in gold, were hung. The first purchase was the sombre and majestic sugar-aquatint of Christ, by Georges Roualt, which was reproduced as frontispiece to the Catalogue of the St Gabriel’s College Collection printed in 1964. Albert found a pencil drawing by Turner, the paper torn, and when it had been cleaned and laid down by the restoration department at the Victoria and Albert Museum Miss Atkinson herself recognised the landscape, a view of Whitehaven on the Cumbrian coast. Another discovery was a delicate pencil drawing of three horses’ heads, by J. F. Herring, and soon afterwards a student visiting the Tate Gallery saw the oil painting, The Frugal Meal, for which this drawing was the study.
The sum of money available for acquisitions was small, but Albert Houthuesen, by his choice of drawings and original prints, put together a collection of real and lasting interest spanning four centuries. From a woodcut (The Ecstasy of Mary Magdalene) by Albrecht Durer to drawings by contemporaries (young in 1956) such as Josef Herman, Alan Reynolds and Ann Said, works by English, French, Dutch, Flemish, German, Czech, Spanish, Italian, Indian, and Japanese artists were added.
As the collection expanded, a second large room at the front of the building became available in which to display it. This was called the Exhibition Room, and in consultation with Catherine Houthuesen students designed and block-printed individual lengths of cotton to form decorative curtains for the big windows. Two eighteenth-century figures, beautifully carved in wood finished in English gilt, reclined on the end wall; they were probably muses, from the pediment of an organ. Facing them on the other end wall there was an oil painting, Collier lighting his pipe, by Albert Houthuesen, which Miss Atkinson had purchased at the special request of the College Council: this would have been in appreciation of the great knowledge, enthusiasm and time which he had devoted to finding work for the St Gabriel’s College Collection, to which he and Catherine had also given treasures of their own.
When the original funds were exhausted there were sixty-one items in the collection, listed in the catalogue produced in 1964 through the generosity of Miss Atkinson. Twenty-four items were added in later years, as gifts or when funds were available.
Catherine Houthuesen retired from St Gabriel’s College in 1967, and devoted all her time to caring for Albert, whom she had married in 1931. After years of serious illness Albert died in 1979, and Catherine prepared the Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Albert Houthuesen (1903–79) which was held at the South London Art Gallery from 27 March to 16 April 1981. Only then did Catherine return to her own painting, and the first One-Woman Exhibition of her work was held, under her maiden name of Catherine Dean, at the Mercury Gallery, London, in 1982.
Catherine died in January 1983. In letters at the time friends wrote:
“Catherine collected friends. To know her was to love her, and once having met her, nobody could forget her. She and Albert by their kindness, generosity, and interest made No. 5 (Love Walk, their home) a place of pilgrimage. When I think of the thousands of feet that have trodden Love Walk and turned in at their gate: they all left refreshed in mind and body.”
“Darling Catherine! I loved her so much and she had such a hard life. I’ll never forget her, she was a most wonderful friend to me.”
“Catherine ... a wonderful person that I feel I was privileged to know.”
“That day was a celebration of Catherine as a person, as the wife and helper of a great artist, and as an artist herself with her own unique talent. I feel so grateful to have had those two wonderful people as friends – what a privilege, no one will ever fill their place in my life nor yours, I know.”
In 1984 a Memorial Exhibition of Catherine Dean’s work was held at the Mercury Gallery, and the following notes are taken from the exhibition catalogue.
“Two years ago in January 1982 the Mercury Gallery had the great pleasure of hanging the first One-Woman Exhibition by Catherine Dean. At the time we introduced her as the widow of the painter Albert Houthuesen who after fifty years of true dedication to him and his work had finally been able to return to her own painting.
That exhibition was a tremendous success for Catherine and established her as an artist in her own right. Unhappily Catherine died in January 1983 and now a year later we are mounting a Memorial Exhibition.
As all who knew Catherine Dean will be aware, she was a very remarkable woman; she taught for most of her working life at St Gabriel’s Teacher Training College and her influence on and friendship with generations of students will long be remembered.”
Catherine Dean
- 1905
- Born in Liverpool
- 1912–20
- Because of delicate health attended small private school
- 1921
- Obtained scholarship to Liverpool School of Art
- 1926
- Awarded travelling scholarship
Awarded scholarship to Royal College of Art - 1927
- Met fellow student Albert Houthuesen
- 1928
- Awarded Diploma in ARCA
- 1929
- One year postgraduate painting at RCA
Began to teach art at Withington School for Girls, Manchester - 1931–7
- Part-time lecturer at LCC training college and classes for teachers at Blackheath and Camberwell Schools of Art
- 1931
- Married Albert Houthuesen
- 1936
- Painting Sheep’s Skull and Ferns acquired by Tate Gallery
- 1939
- Became Art Lecturer at St Gabriel’s College, Camberwell
- 1940
- College evacuated and the war spent first in Coventry area and later in or near Doncaster
- 1945
- Return to London with no home and became Warden of students’ hostel at Elephant and Castle, and Senior Lecturer at St Gabriel’s College
- 1950
- Lived with friends near Oxted
- 1952
- Found and later bought first real home in Camberwell
- 1956
- Made Principal Lecturer in Art at St Gabriel’s
- 1967
- Retired from St Gabriel’s College
- 1970
- Albert Houthuesen’s last major illness began after years of increasingly poor health
- 1979
- Albert Houthuesen’s death
- 1982
- First One-Woman Show at the Mercury Gallery
- 1983
- Catherine Houthuesen died on 24 January
- 1984
- Catherine Dean Memorial Exhibition held at the Mercury Gallery London.
