One blogger says the ancient market now sits alongside the Tesco supermarket. Similarly, in Mudge’s mural the olde English village square nudges up against a contemporary Gisborne city setting in the background: Gisborne’s art deco clock tower and one of the 1969 Endeavour models atop a mast.
A scally leans against a wall in the sun while the golden-haired girl who passes by twiddles her hair as she looks up at a Maori gent in bare feet, knee breeches, tail coat and facial moko standing in front of the pub doorway. The gent holds a cane in his right hand and stands erect with his top-knotted head slightly tilted back.
Two enigmatic characters appear in the painting.
One is the figure who stands next to the Maori squire. Garbed in a hooded mantle the same off-white colour as his beard, the man could be a beggar or he could be Father Time.
In a stroke of Mudgie genius, the artist has created a kind of reverse trompe l’oeil. In the original work, the ancient’s left hand rested on a three-dimensional walking stick: the overflow pipe that came out of the council building wall and ended in a gully trap beneath the mural.
The walking stick still features in the reproduction but it has been painted in.
The yellow theatre poster on the right hand side of the work was originally painted on a tin box attached to the council building but has also been painted into the reproduction.
Another detail that straddles the real and the illusory in the original work are the windows. Bon vivants can be seen enjoying a tankard or two behind the pub window to the right. The curtain echoes the real life curtain in the real life window in the centre of the work.
John Dwight has since passed away, as did his predecessor John Kibble while he was in Whitby for the 1999 world town crier championships.
The second enigmatic feature in the work is in the way Kibble is presented. He is portrayed at the right of the painting as a hurdy-gurdy player. At his feet is Kipper, a Jack Russell terrier. Kibble had already left the world by the time Mudge painted the mural. Mudge often made historical art references in his murals and here a device used by artists from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci in depictions of the Annunciation comes into play.
In the Annunciation story, the angel Gabriel descends to the earthly world to announce to the Virgin Mary that she will be the mother of Jesus.
Renaissance artists often represented the meeting of the messenger from the divine realm in a worldly setting by creating a sense of separation between the two.
In Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation (c. 1472–1475), Gabriel appears to the left of the work. Behind him is a row of dark trees. But separating him from Mary on the picture plane is a gap that opens on to a distant vista of hazy mountains. (See page 24)
In Fra Angelico’s c.1450, and Antonello da Messina’s 1474 Annunciation, the artists simply popped a big pillar in between the two figures.
A drainpipe and some brickwork in Mudge’s 20th century masterpiece does the job in the mural. The late John Kibble is a key figure in the work but he is slightly separated from the main action, and a slightly smaller form. He looks over his shoulder as he seems to move out of the scene.
It is a subtle, poignant, masterful, touch.
Both Gisborne town criers hailed from St Albans in England and both men were involved in theatre. They were also involved with the refurbishment of the mounted Endeavour models that have all but gone the way of Mudge’s original mural.
