Through The Eyes of a Collector
The exhibition offers a rare glimpse into the private collection of an avid art enthusiast, showcasing a diverse array of artworks that span various periods, styles, and mediums. This unique display is a testament to the collector's keen eye for beauty, historical significance, and artistic innovation. The central theme of the exhibition revolves around the personal journey and evolving tastes of the collector. Each piece selected for this showcase tells a part of a much larger narrative, reflecting different facets of the history of art but also the collector's own experiences and passion. Visitors are invited to explore how personal preferences and cultural contexts have influenced the curation of the collection over time.
The artists
Alex Dalli (b. 1958) is a Maltese artist who explores the visual language of abstraction and minimal expressions. He commenced his artistic studies under George Fenech, and continued training at the School of Art (1974-1980) under Esprit Barthet and Harry Alden. He studied art history and appreciation under Fr Marius Zerafa. Dalli has exhibited his works in numerous solo and collective exhibitions in Malta, Gozo, and Amsterdam. His works may be found in public and private collections.
Emmanuel Levy (1900–1986) was a British painter, draughtsman, collagist and teacher, born in Manchester, with which his career was closely associated, and where he first showed, in 1924. He studied art in Manchester, London and Paris. He went on to teach in Manchester and at Stockport College of Art during the 1950s and 1960s. He also worked for a while as an art critic at the Manchester Evening News. It was at the Manchester School of Art that he met L. S. Lowry, being tutored under Adolphe Valette whom he later succeeded as art master at Manchester University department of architecture. Levy is a much underrated artist. Two of his works hang at the National Portrait Gallery in London and a portrait of Lowry hangs at the Salford art gallery. Numerous key galleries and museums such as Ben Uri Gallery & Museum have featured Emmanuel Levy's work in the past.
Joël Circhanski–Deleuze (b. 1956) is of Slavic origin but born in Langon in Gironde, France. He graduated from the School of Interior Design & Architecture in Bordeaux, France and then he moved to Florida, USA, in 1990, and from 1995, he participated in several major exhibitions between New York and Florida, such as the Hall of Frame – DGP Art Palm Beach, Kenneth Raymond Gallery, Boca Raton, and Alexi-Chelsea Gallery, New York. In September 2000, he returned to France and lived in Aquitaine, in the south-west part of France. He exhibits individually in numerous Galleries and Plastic Art Salon, among them. He now lives and works in Malta.
Mary de Piro (b.1946) is an internationally renowned artist, who has exhibited in Europe and America. Mary trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and at the School of Art in Valletta. Her first exhibition was held in Wisconsin in 1967. Her most recent exhibition was a Retrospective Exhibition, sponsored by Bank of Valletta and held at their corporate headquarters in 2016. Mary de Piro is renowned for her landscape paintings, especially those which evoke the Mediterranean light of the Maltese countryside. Her work can be found in private collections and public institutions including Bank of Valletta, HSBC plc and MUZA.
Peter Quinn is an artist who seeks subject matter both in the everyday of his own locality and in more far-flung locations. He is well known for brightly coloured watercolours of interesting buildings, boats and street scenes. Peter graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1986, he now lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where he divides his time between painting and teaching Art History. Peter has a doctorate from the University of Sunderland, has written on the art of the North East of England and is the current Chair of the Bewick Society. Elected an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 2007 he became a full member in 2011. Elected member of the The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW) in 2023. His paintings have won awards including the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Award at the Royal Glasgow Institute 149th Annual Show in 2010. Peter first exhibited in Malta in 1997 and exhibited there as recently as May 2016. In print his work features in Nicholas de Piro’s The International Dictionary of Artists who Painted Malta, (2002). Featured artist in US magazine “Watercolor Artist” June 2014: Drawn to Paint by Ken Gofton pp.40-47. In November 2019 ‘Quinn in Malta’ was published by the late Peter Apap Bologna.
Raymond Pitrè M.O.M. (b.1940) is a visual artist from Malta, who experiments with painting, drawing, sculpture and writing. His work, including his portraiture, is manifest to a visual methodology that is informed by the landscapes and vocabularies of human experience. Entwined with events and processes in the world, his practice is also grounded in autobiographical memory and shifting personal geographies. In a body of work that conveys intensity and action, trauma, death, traces and the ardently personal are recurring subject matters. These are revisited and rearticulated frequently through a wide variety of media. Raymond Pitrè’s work has been exhibited internationally in London, Berlin, Florence, Copenhagen, Brussels, Palermo, Algiers, New York and Kyoto. He represented Malta at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and his work is housed in national collections and other institutions. He was made a Member of the National Order of Merit of the Republic of Malta in 2000 for services to art. Raymond Pitrè continues to live and work in Malta.
Sybella Stiles (1912-2003) was a painter and wood engraver who was born in Kent in 1912 and died in Ripe in 2003. She studied at the Byam Shaw and then travelled widely in Spain, France and Sicily, having her first one man show in 1935 in Bond Street. She exhibited in many Galleries across the world including the Royal Academy, Royal Institute (Glasgow), and the Dickinson Gallery (New York). Her work can now be found at the Royal Commonwealth Gallery in Bristol (portrait of President Nyrere of Tanzania) and the Imperial War Museum.
Tonio Mallia (b. 1955) is a dedicated exponent of the watercolour medium and started as a painter of landscapes. In recent years, he has developed his technique to use other water-based media such as inks, acrylics, and gouache painted on different types of hand made and rice papers. His preferred subject matter is figure and portrait painting, however, he also takes great satisfaction in painting landscapes outdoors which complements his love for nature. He has displayed his works extensively both in solo and collective exhibitions.
Edwin Alfred Read (1918-2002) was an English artist in oils, watercolours and acrylic. He studied art at Wimbledon School of Art under Gerald Cooper, 1938-39 but his studies were interrupted by World War I. Read served in the Navy seeing action in Malta and Italy. After demobilisation, he worked as a stone mason in charge of renovating ancient buildings that included castles and abbeys. This gave him the opportunity to study the surrounding landscapes and pursue his love of painting the countryside. He lived in and taught evening classes at Laugharne and exhibited in Valletta, Naples, Wimbledon, Camberwell Green, Monmouth, Ross, Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Bangor, Hereford, and also at Laugharne. He exhibited in the 1940s in Valletta and Naples. He held one-man shows Wimbledon, Cardiff and Swansea.
G. Castaldi (fl 1920s-1930s); otherwise unknown Maltese female artist. A group of her paintings were found in the Melitensia Art Gallery from the collection which had belonged to Noemi Castaldi. Her details have been passed on by word of mouth. She was apparently a student of Edward Caruana Dingli, and this is evident in her work, where she captures the light in a similar manner to her master. She painted mainly in oils.
John Morgan Hewinson (1913-2003) was a painter, born in Monmouthshire, who studied at Newport College of Art and won a scholarship to the RCA where he stayed until 1937.
Lucille Cranwell (b. 1945) is a watercolourist from New Zealand who lives and works in London. Cranwell studied fine art at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and immediately began a career as an art teacher. After her first solo exhibition in 1980, she spent the next few years in the UK and Italy honing her skills, developing a keen sense for classical technique. The baroque style left an impression on her. She also spent three months in Florence. She held an exhibition in Valletta in 2013. Her paintings also hang in Cafe Cordina, Valletta.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona (b. 1956) is an eminent Maltese artist and illustrator. Perhaps best known for his watercolor depictions of Maltese interiors and landscapes, Kenneth Zammit Tabona provides a multifaceted look at Malta, his home that have been described as nostalgic poems in colour. His fuoridentros, a term coined by the late lamented Professor Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, are timeless narratives of still life within a space cluttered with Louis XV chairs, chinoiserie, Maltese silver and the ubiquitous chessboard tiles. The denizen of these paintings is more often than not the artist’s beloved black and white tomcat Felic. The theme of the landscape often features as one of the most abiding concerns within the artist’s oeuvre. Landscapes feature out of the windows of the fuoridentros and on the walls of these beautiful rooms with their billowing curtains; dominating a particular social scene or interior, often framed through a compositional device. Zammit Tabona has over the last thirty years produced a body of work that translates the balmy atmosphere of a Mediterranean summer evening or a storm at sea within his unique pictorial language. Swirls of color expertly rendered through the aqueous watercolor medium fluidly and effortlessly evoke the Mediterranean coastline, with its sublime light and tranquil atmosphere. Perhaps inspired by his visits to Morocco and India, but in the tradition of the German school of watercolour, the artist uses strong colours within his paintings; more often than not rendered weightless and texturally three dimensional; these earthy reds and opalescent blues create a jewel-like effect of glowing warmth that enhances the sense of classical vitality and joie de vivre in which the artist evidently revels. Zammit Tabona’s paintings have long been part of important art collections and remain ever popular and despite their innate sophistication and sometimes idiosyncratic style.
Tristram James Ellis (1844–1922) was an English artist known for his paintings of the Middle East and Mediterranean. He was born at Great Malvern, the son of the mathematician and philologist Alexander John Ellis. At school he excelled at mathematics and initially he studied Applied Sciences, at King's College, London. He won all the scholarships offered by the college and was awarded the Associateship of King's College after only two years' study, in recognition of his exceptional achievements. He went on to work for the railway engineer Sir John Fowler and became a partner in a firm of engineers. After several years, however, Ellis decided that his calling lay in art and he left the engineering profession to devote his time to painting. He became a student of Léon Bonnat in Paris, exhibited at the Royal Academy, and embarked on a period of travel. In 1878 he visited Cyprus, and the following year he boarded a steamship for Alexandria. His ambitious journey took him from the Syrian coast, overland to Diyarbakır in southeast Turkey and then by raft down the Tigris to Mosul and Baghdad in Iraq. From Baghdad, he travelled overland to Palmyra and Damascus in Syria and then to Beirut, Lebanon. After his return, he showed about ninety sketches from his travels, which sold immediately. Ellis also wrote a two-volume illustrated account of his trip, ‘On a Raft, and Through the Desert’, which was published in 1881. Further trips included visiting Egypt in the spring of 1882, and several years later, travelling to the eastern Mediterranean, where he had three sketches selected by George I of Greece at Athens. Later, he made three visits to the Arctic, including to Spitzbergen, and also returned to the Mediterranean. Ellis was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers in 1887, and he exhibited frequently in London from 1868 to 1893. His works can be found in the V&A, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery, London.
Francis Xavier Vassallo LL.D. (1920-2000) was a Maltese painter in oils and watercolourist who produced landscape and historical scenes, especially of events relating to the Knights of Malta. He was a pupil of Robert Caruana Dingli. He is best known for his caricatures, especially those of contemporary personalities at the Law Courts and his paintings of World War II.
