A rare opportunity to buy sought-after paintings of the late Dorset artist Chris Jonzen – younger brother of the internationally-celebrated painter Basil Jonzen and his famous sculptor wife Karin – will be held at an exhibition of his remaining works on July 20th at the Palmer’s Brewery, Bridport.
The Chris Jonzen Exhibition at the Palmer’s wine store will comprise 22 works which have been especially released from private collection by the late painter’s Dorset-bred family.
Mr Jonzen’s family has decided to sell the paintings “because we wanted people from the county which gave Chris so much joy to have the chance to own something by one of its great characters.”
In keeping with Chris Jonzen’s lifetime and passionate support for the local lifeboat service, all monies raised at the exhibition will be donated to the RNLI.
Chris Jonzen’s peaceful landscapes and sea studies are prized in the Dorset art world which he first joined in 1969 when he opened the legendary Sea Cow bistro on Weymouth’s harbourside, pioneering in the county the trendy Kings Road-style of Bohemian dining and indulging his love of boating.
The restaurant became famous through the county, popular with local fishermen, yachtsmen and celebrities including pop bands performing at the Weymouth Pavilion.
“It was a fantastic place to grow up in the Sevenies,” said his Woodroffe-schooled daughter Jeannie, “We were situated right on the harbour with slow-moving trains occasionally passing on their way to the Channel Island ferries, the local and visiting yachts moored within metres and great characters among the staff, many of whom had been extras in the great Dorset movie Far From The Madding Crowd.”
Despite his great success as a popular restaurateur and a colourful bon viveur, Chris Jonzen’s longing had been to be a full-time artist like his renowned brother Basil, whose work hangs in The National Collection, was a thwarted dream until he moved to Weymouth.
For despite showing a talent for art from an early age, his creativity was frustrated by plans mapped out for him by his strict and Swedish-born businessman father, a highly-successful London importer of Swedish glassware who sent Chris away to boarding school in Sherborne with the instruction to study classics and science.
“It was not encouraging for a boy who was so creative and desperately-keen on so many forms of art”, said Jeannie.
Although his father was ironically a well-known patron of the arts, Chris was pressed into the family glassware business to learn it from the shop floor up, rising to chairman but continually longing to be an artist instead.
It was not until the Jonzen import business was crushed by Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s notorious 1967 devaluation of the pound that ‘the other artist Jonzen’ was freed up at the age of almost 40.
Moving to Weymouth with his wife Daphne in 1968 gave him the chance to begin explore painting, including the gentle studies of countryside and seascapes for which his work is now collected.
“Chris’s artistry was all over the Sea Cow restaurant, from the décor to the logo, the look of the menu and his determination to learn the skill of perfectly filleting fish,” said Jeannie.
“A highlight of the restaurant’s year was its regular float in the Weymouth Carnival, Daph sewed a large Sea Cow logo on the front and the crowds loved whatever fun theme Chris had dreamed up.”
After ten years establishing the Sea Cow as one of Weymouth’s favourite haunts, Chris and Daphne moved to Abbotsbury, converting their home West Barn, and launching a new venture, the well-known Frome Valley Kitchens in Dorchester, which thrived until and beyond his retirement.
It was then, at the age of 65, that Chris Jonzen finally became the Dorset painter who is prized today for his peaceful studies, prolifically painting at home in Abbotsbury from the perceptive sketches that he made with the Dorchester Art Group on location in Dorset, the Pennines, France and Sweden.
“For all of his life our father only ever really wanted to paint. Dorset finally gave him that opportunity late in his life and that chance gave him a new youth. He loved Dorset and that’s why we’re holding this little retrospective exhibition and sale in Bridport, to do proud the artist who never gave up,” said Jeannie.
The Chris Jonzen Exhibition & Sale will be held at the Palmer’s Brewery wine showroom, Bridport, on July 20th from 7.0-9.0 pm.
http://www.palmerswinestore.com/
