Art inspired by Daphne du Maurier

Last week I had the pleasure of being involved with the du Maurier Fowey Literary Festival. Fowey is a beautiful town, and for 9 days it’s filled with people, books, music, art and enthusiasm for Daphne du Maurier. A new addition this year is the Old Bank Gallery, which in addition to doing excellent coffee, also had an exhibition of works by local artists inspired by Daphne du Maurier.

Anika Manuel is a portrait artist who is exhibiting a series of 7 portraits inspired by the women of du Maurier’s novels: both Rebecca and the second Mrs de Winter; Nat from ‘The Birds’; Dona St Columb from Frenchman’s Creek; Janet from The Loving Spirit; Mary Yellan from Jamaica Inn and Rachel from My Cousin Rachel. These heroines look directly at us with a challenging stare, or look deliberately away, resisting the viewer or else not interested in anything but their own story. I love this creative response to the novels - du Maurier’s women are unique, difficult, rounded people who can be both appealing and infuriating, and Anika’s paintings show all of this complexity, in appropriate, beautiful settings.

Apparently Anika read the text of my lecture on du Maurier’s heroines during her research, which is lovely. And the other aspect of Anika’s work is that she is also inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, and this work, Abigail, was also on display and reminds me very much of Millais’s The Bridesmaid (of which Anika was aware but hadn’t consciously echoed it). I am looking forward to seeing more of her work.

The Old Bank’s vault is now a small exhibition space which currently has a series of mixed media works by Louisa Albani, focusing on Menabilly. As the exhibition information points out, ‘One hundred years on from when du Maurier first set out to find Menabilly, we are no nearer being able to physically experience the house as she did back then. It is still enigmatic and mysterious, and perhaps that is its power.’ The works - which are also reproduced with short, poetic descriptive essays in a book, House of Dreams, written by Albani with a contribution from Maggie Humm - depict du Maurier dreaming in the house, gazing, writing, thinking. There is a somnambulant quality to the works which captures the fascination readers always feel for Manderley/Menabilly.

If you are in the area, do pop in and have a coffee and look at the art on display at the Old Bank Gallery - when this exhibition is finished there will certainly be more to see!