Christopher Hull; racing tipster turned art dealer
Hyfler/Rosner
From The Times
May 2, 2007
Christopher Hull
Freewheeling tipster who turned art dealer to pursue his
lifelong enthusiasm for 20th-century British painters
If London art dealers of the senior generation could be
divided into the hard-nosed and the eccentric, Christopher
Hull came in the second category.
Of course, he was a successful businessman before he became
an art dealer, but his business was tipping on horse races.
His subscription company, Computerform, actually had nothing
to do with computers: everything was done on hand-written
cards according to his personal assessment of form and
handicap, and posted to subscribers the day before the race.
Much of this spirit was carried into his art-dealing, not
that he believed in speculation in art. His advice to
customers was to buy only what they really liked, for the
pleasure it would afford them to have it around: that way
they could never be disappointed.
He always hoped that their interest in owning art would be
much like his, deriving from a real passion. His own
involvement was inspired by the collection of his civil
servant uncle Charles Evans, whose taste ran primarily to
British artists of the interwar years, such as Duncan Grant,
David Jones, Tristram Hillier, Winifred Nichol-son and
Frances Hodgkins.
Hull was also enthusiastic about the next generation, the
so-called Neo-Romantics of the 1940s, especially Michael
Ayrton and John Craxton.
When Hull became interested in Craxton in the 1970s, he had
disappeared from the London art scene, but Hull tracked him
down to his home in Crete - armed, he claimed, with only
cigars and malt whisky - and persuaded him to exhibit again.
They became close friends, and Hull was largely responsible
for reestablishing Craxton's reputation, placing his work in
important US collections, and failing only, much to his
frustration, to persuade the Tate to buy a painting.
Hull took on the Greek painter Renos Loizou, but to the end
his main interest as a dealer was in modern British artists.
As well as senior figures such as Norman Adams, his stable
included such younger discoveries as Michael Peckham, Sarah
Raphael, Kitty North, Tessa Newcomb, Mark Fry, David Lewis
and Claire Harrigan.
He closed his last gallery in 1998, mainly because of
increasing ill-health, but also because the little art
enclave in Motcomb Street, Belgravia, which he had helped to
set up, was at last succumbing to the encroaching tide of
boutiquerie.
The Motcomb Street gallery was Hull's third. In 1974 he was
living, with his first wife and their children, in Wimbledon
village, just off the Common, and was moved, when a
neigh-bouring teashop closed, to take the premises over and
reopen them as the Annexe Gallery, showing such artists as
Ann Winn and Pauline Vincent.
Seven years later, emboldened by his modest but genuine
success as an art dealer, he took his gallery to Fulham
Road, and two years later nearer the heart of things, to
Belgravia. Here he was the most approachable of West End
dealers, always happy to chat to anyone who wandered into
the gallery, especially if they proved sympathetic to one of
his pet artists.
Or, for that matter, to horses and racing. Clearly his
earlier business venture as a tipster arose, like his
art-dealing, from a passionate interest, while the
combination owed at lot to his eccentric family background.
He was born in London in 1927 into a large Roman Catholic
family. His father was a barrister; a maternal uncle,
Richard Rapier Stokes, was the first Catholic Cabinet
minister since the Reformation; his sister Katharine was, at
the age of 15, co-author of a successful children's book,
The Far Distant Oxus, discovered by and published under the
aegis of Arthur Ransome.
Christopher Hull was a bright lad, becoming head boy at
Downside and winning a slew of academic prizes and a history
exhibition to Magdalene College, Cambridge, which he took up
after National Service, reading law. He was a notable
university athlete, gaining a Blue for swimming and being
invited to train with the Olympic team. (During this time he
held the British record for the 50-yard front-crawl, though,
as he always ruefully pointed out, only for one week.)
Trained as a barrister, he was never called to the Bar, as,
according to his own account, drink somehow got in the way.
Instead he went to Scotland to work for Cochrane's Boilers;
then he set up the first national database for selling
secondhand cars, Computer Car, and shortly afterwards
Computerform.
Hull was married twice, to Cecilia Pollen, by whom he had
four sons and one daughter; and, after the first marriage
was dissolved, to Suzanne Byam Shaw, who survives him.
Christopher Hull, art dealer and racing tipster, was born on
December 19, 1927. He died on April 9, 2007, aged 79
ukpa...@gmail.com
Carol :-)