Johnny Stuart; art expert, rock star friend
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 21/07/2003)
Telegraph
Johnny Stuart, who has died aged 63, had no equal outside Russia as an
expert on Russian art.
The thriving market in Russian art today is largely his creation. He founded
the Russian department at Sotheby's in 1976 and over the next 20 years built
it up into a dominant position that was reflected in Sotheby's
record-breaking Russian sale of 1995.
No aspect of his field left him indifferent. Aside from his principal
interest in icons, he was equally fascinated with Russian painting of the
18th, 19th and 20th centuries, as well as with porcelain and objets d'art.
His book Ikons, published by Faber & Faber in 1975, remains the most
accessible general work on the subject. Stuart later undertook a far more
ambitious and in-depth project, and shortly before his recent illness, after
20 years of study, he had completed the manuscript for Icons: The Triumph of
Orthodoxy, a huge, comprehensive volume which is soon to be published by
Alexandria Press.
Yet to describe Stuart as an art historian in the modern, professional sense
did not begin to describe him. He belonged firmly in the great 18th-century
British tradition of gentlemen eccentrics, polymaths and connoisseurs. He
blended high scholarship with a plethora of interests in history, genealogy,
interior design, pop culture and the Rocker scene of the 1960s.
For work at Sotheby's he habitually wore motorcycle leathers, and he cut a
dash turning up for valuations on one of his classic bikes. His book Rockers
(1987), about the English bike scene of the 1960s and 1970s, became an
international bestseller and for a time was reputedly the most shop-lifted
book in London bookshops; it continues to do brisk trade in Japan.
John Spencer Innes Stuart was born in Aberdeen on May 20 1940 and grew up in
Angus, where his father farmed after the Second World War. Johnny loved
drawing, and at Eton, encouraged and influenced by Wilfrid Blunt, his art
master, he sought to learn about the Italian Renaissance, Persian painting,
and Chinese art.
While still at school he would go up to London to rummage in the salerooms,
where among other things he acquired a pair of Chinese ceremonial brass
fans, described in the catalogue as having been looted by a British officer
during the sack of the summer palace in Peking.
Around this time, Stuart also began to show a keen interest in Roman
Catholicism. His parents, alarmed at this development, asked his
housemaster, G A D Tait, to do what he could to distract him, and so it was
that he was given a book about the Russian Imperial Family.
From there developed the great passion of Johnny Stuart's life. He immersed
himself in Russia's history, culture and art, and became firm friends with
the Russian émigrés Count and Countess Kleinmichel, who stood as his
godparents when, while still at Eton, he converted to Orthodoxy.
Stuart went on to develop these interests at St John's, Cambridge, where he
read Slavonic Studies under Professor Andreyev, a follower of the leading
early Byzantinist, N P Kondakov. In his holidays he moved in Russian émigré
circles, and avidly sought to learn about the closing days of the Russian
empire.
After Cambridge, Stuart based himself in Notting Hill. His homes, first in
Kensington Park Gardens and then in Colville Mews - a former industrial
warehouse converted into a Russian neo-classical palazetto - became meeting
places for people of vastly different backgrounds and interests.
In 1963 he was engaged by Peter Wilson as a porter in the porcelain
department of Sotheby's, quickly moving to be an assistant in the Russian
section of the Works of Art department. The great collector of Russian Art,
George Kostaki, remarked to Wilson that his porter seemed to know far more
than the expert in charge.
Stuart's restless and curious nature soon led him to leave Sotheby's to go
into partnership with Marina Bowater at the Bowater Gallery, then a meeting
place of the Russian diaspora in London. But he found running a gallery too
limiting, and in the late 1960s he went to Russia to study under Adolf
Ovchinnikov at the Grabar Centre for Icon Research and Restoration in
Moscow.
Helped by his great friend Camilla Gray, who was married to Sergei
Prokofiev's son, the painter Oleg, Stuart made lifelong friends among the
Russian artistic and scholarly intelligentsia. It was to be the first of
many visits, and it is fair to say that Russia became his second home.
The process was repeated a few years later, in the early 1970s, this time in
Greece. Through another great friend and distant relative, Elmina Rangabe,
he spent a year there immersing himself in its Byzantine heritage and the
roots of Christian art.
When he returned to Sotheby's in 1976, he managed to persuade his superiors
of the need for a separate Russian department, which he then headed for the
next two decades, while also doing the research for his second book on
icons. His understanding of icons included a formal appreciation of them as
art and a knowledge of the theology behind them. More important, it stemmed
from his Orthodox faith and his complete communion with the world that gave
them birth. He always insisted that the aesthetics of religious art could
only be appreciated by understanding the spiritual tradition that produced
it.
Ever ready to discuss Patristic theology and the finer points of the
Christological disputes of the 4th century, he was, though, equally keen to
share his enthusiasm for classic British motorcycles.
His passion for large and powerful motorcycles dated back to his schooldays.
Not a day went by when he did not ride his bike and over the years he was
the proud owner of several classic machines, ranging from a 1935
Thunderbird, via Nortons and Tritons to the latest model Triumph.
Meanwhile, his understanding of youth culture, his enjoyment of the glamour
of the music scene, and his knowledge of street style and fashion made him a
guru for actors and pop stars. Among those he influenced and befriended were
members of the Rolling Stones, Oliver Tobias, Zandra Rhodes, George Michael,
Spandau Ballet, Gary Numan, Steve Strange, Duran-Duran, Billy Idol, Brian
Setzer of the Stray Cats, Paul Simonon of the Clash, Huggi, and Kylie
Minogue.
The makers of films and pop videos came to him for advice on matters of
style, and when the V & A held an exhibition on British Street Style, they
called on him for help in styling the show and to lend motorcycles, original
bikers' clothing, accessories and memorabilia from the 1950s and 1960s.
Stuart left Sotheby's shortly after the Russian sale of December 1995 and
formed an art consultancy with his former colleague Ivan Samarine, advising
collectors and dealers throughout the world. Entrusted with their treasures,
Stuart's home became an ever-changing showcase of Russian art.
In recent years he fulfilled a long-held ambition - the culmination of years
of absorbing the minutiae of Russian style - by renovating a large derelict
apartment in the heart of St Petersburg on the Fontanka river, in the house
where Turgenev once lived, and turning it into a splendid early 19th-century
Russian palatial residence. Featured in Russian Vogue, along with
photographs of his home in London, it led to other commissions in Moscow.
Johnny Stuart was handsome, charming, self-deprecating, and an excellent
host. His hospitality combined with his wide-ranging interests gave his
soirees the character of a salon.
A great raconteur, he was forever regaling his friends with wonderfully
funny stories, and could spend hours discussing the finer points of style,
interior design and architecture. Byzantium, Russian neo-classicism, the
Ottoman world and Fifties Britain were his favourite styles - a synthesis
reflected in his own homes.
Fascinated by languages and their sounds, he spoke fluent Italian, French
and Russian. Even in languages such as Greek and Spanish, his knowledge of
which was far more limited, his talent for mimicry often confused natives
into thinking him one of their own. Gifted with a great ear, he could render
exactly the accent or vocal mannerisms of his interlocutors, always to their
great merriment.
He had the rare ability to communicate across generations and social
classes. A bachelor, he was was a highly popular uncle and godfather. He
died on July 12.