Tom Phillips: Gerontius panels
Title: Gerontius panels
Location: Chapel of Holy Souls, Westminster Cathedral (RC)
Artist: Tom Phillips (1937-2022)
Date: 2003
This work was shortlisted for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context 2005.
These two marble panels by Tom Phillips (2003) flank the entrance to the Chapel of Holy Souls at Westminster Cathedral. They have since been joined by an accompanying mosaic depicting St John Henry Newman (2008), and an exuberant mosaic scheme for the ceiling of the adjacent St George’s Chapel (2016).
Tom Phillips wrote of the commission, ‘It was a great thrill to be asked to make a contribution to the splendid fabric of Westminster Cathedral, which I have known since I first attended High Mass there as a schoolboy fifty years ago. My work has often centred around devotional subjects but there is extra excitement in making art for a living church.
The two new panels will take their place in conjunction with a proposed mosaic portrait of Cardinal Newman in the memorial context of the Chapel of Holy Souls. The realisation of the project coincides with the hundredth anniversary of the first London performance of Sir Edward Elgar’s magical setting of Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius. This took place with Elgar himself conducting in the cathedral itself. The work tells the story of an old man's dying vision of the journey of his soul. His name, Gerontius, whose root is now more popularly known through terms like gerontology in hospital departments, occupies one of the panels. Its letters are set in and energised by the five lines of the musical stave which support him. I hope that this might become a focus for meditation for those with elderly friends or relatives about to make that same journey.’ Tom Phillips, ‘A Further Step In Cathedral Decoration’, Oremus (Magazine of Westminster Cathedral), November 2003, reproduced on the artist’s website.
‘This was the first we saw of the shortlisted works – two mosaics facing one another in a side chapel within the numinous interior of J.F. Bentley’s Westminster Cathedral. We were all extremely impressed by the two works (a third is planned for an adjacent space) and by the quality of both their conception and execution. The concept was to provide decorative works based on Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, which had its first performance in the cathedral, and one of the works spells out the word ‘Gerontius’ in free, slightly Celtic capitals. The execution is of the highest quality and the work as a whole fits well within its surroundings. We were full of admiration for the cathedral authorities in commissioning a work which is both imaginative and appropriate to its setting – contemporary in its spirit but, at the same time, entirely in harmony with its late Victorian surroundings.’ (Charles Saumarez-Smith, chair of the judging panel for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context 2005)
Tom Phillips (1937–2022), who was born and spent most of his life in South London, worked across a remarkable range of media. A librettist, composer, translator, printmaker, sculptor, illustrator, portraitist, critic and curator, Phillips studied English Literature and Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford before taking classes at Camberwell College of Arts under Frank Auerbach while teaching in Brixton. His best-known work, A Humument, was a worked copy of a Victorian novel bought cheaply and altered through painting, collage and cut-up techniques, the first version of which published in 1970 but the work as a whole remaining in progress at his death. He received many commissions for site-specific works, including lamps and mosaics (2001–06) for a street in Peckham, London, and tapestries for St Catherine’s College, Oxford (1979), as well as mosaics for Westminster Abbey and a new design for the sacramental area at All Saints, New Longton.
Further Information
Medium: Marble panel
Permanent display
See Tom Phillips’s Gerontius panels on the Ecclesiart map here.
Other artworks in churches by Tom Phillips: Word Cross (1997), St Peter and St Paul, Farningham; refurbishment of sacramental area (mural, altar cross, wall feature, colour scheme) (2003) All Saints, New Longton, Preston; Armed Forces memorial (2008), Westminster Abbey; mosaic (2016), St George’s Chapel, Westminster Cathedral.
Other artworks in Westminster Cathedral: Bartlett Mosaics (Leonard McComb), St Thérèse of Lisieux (Giacomo Manzù), Blessed Sacrament Chapel mosaics (Boris Anrep), Stations of the Cross (Eric Gill).