Cecil Jospé; Artist and photographer
Hyfler/Rosner
Cecil Jospé
Artist and photographer
27 May 2004
Cecil Weiner, photographer and artist: born 15 August
1928; married Roger Jospé (two sons, one daughter); died
London 17 May 2004.
The artist Cecil Jospé became a photographer in middle age.
Her children having grown up, she saw it as a solution to
the problem of what to do with the next part of her life.
After considerable professional success - which included two
one-woman exhibitions at the Photographers' Gallery in Great
Newport Street, London, in 1983 and 1985 - she began to turn
away from the camera and took lessons in watercolour
painting instead. Once again she enjoyed success, and she
was elected to both the New English Art Club (2003) and the
Royal Watercolour Society (2000).
Born Cecil Weiner in New Jersey in 1928, she was named Cecil
after an aunt who was a judge in Oakland, California. It was
thought that the ambiguity of the name would offer her an
advantage in life. In 1951 she gained a BA in Art History
and the Theory and Practice of Drawing and Painting from
Radcliffe College (Harvard University). In the early 1950s
she lived in New York. This was the time of the great
Abstract Expressionists but although their influence could
sometimes be found in Cecil Jospé's work, she remained a
representational painter.
With her Belgian husband, Roger Jospé, she moved to London,
where she was to live for 30 years until her death. Marriage
and children prevented her from working as a creative artist
but in 1979 she began to study for a degree course in
Professional Photography at the Polytechnic of Central
London. Study also provided a lifeline to the world outside.
Yet when at last she was liberated from her role as a
full-time housewife, it was domesticity which provided her
with inspiration for her pictures: the most mundane objects
could also be objets d'art. What man would photograph an
ironing board or a stack of shirts? And, even if he did,
would he photograph them with such irony? These household
objects - arranged with an instinctive eye for order - told
the story of her life.
Gradually she stopped working as a serious photographer and
returned to earlier interest in drawing and painting. From
1985 to 1997 she attended classes at the Slade and the Royal
College of Art. Even after she had received the accolade of
election to professional art bodies, Jospé had no qualms
about still attending painting courses when she thought they
might help her in her work. If this signified modesty, it
also showed an intellectual curiosity. If she regretted not
having received a full technical training in her years at
Radcliffe College, she had learnt
the crucial "economy of means" - never to do too much, never
to overelaborate. To find elegant solutions, as a
mathematician might say, to the problems of a representation
truthful to the light, colour and spatial relationships of
the subject.
Stylish and articulate, Jospé also served for many years as
Secretary to the Analytical Psychology Club of London, for
whom she designed a club logo and letterhead. Many eminent
Jungians were entertained by the Jospés in their house and
garden - and it was typical of Cecil's fastidiousness that
she would devise marbled paper covers for works on Jungian
psychology when she found their original covers unsightly.
Jospé had her first operation for cancer in 1992 but she
endured its recurrence as well as the side-effects of the
treatment with great courage and openness. She continued to
paint as long as she was able, and her final pictures,
exhibited at the New English Art Club and the Royal
Watercolour Society, were nearly all sold. They were studies
of peonies, their purple buds and the white flowers fully
opened against a dark background.
Simon Fenwick