In 1981 Michael and Jane opened The Midhurst Gallery in Midhurst, West Sussex, England, for picture framing and the retailing of oil paintings, watercolours and drawings, antique and modern prints. In 1988 we became main suppliers of Daler-Rowney and Winsor & Newton artists’ materials.
More than 50 artists, listedhere, have exhibited with us since then, all with connections to the locality or through the subjects of their works.
In 2013, Jane retired from the day-to-day running of the business but remains a director and is our art consultant. The picture framing was taken on by Midhurst Framing (www.midhurstframing.com) as an entirely separate business in The Mint Market. The Midhurst Gallery closed its main retail shop and moved into premises at the rear of The Mint Market where, since then, Michael and Clare have been designing The Midhurst Gallery’s website while at the same time renovating its new surroundings. When the refurbishment is completed we will be able to re-open the Gallery for personal shoppers to complement our on-line business.
Clare first started working for The Midhurst Gallery in 2007 as a part-time assistant, and then re-joined us with a BA (Hons) degree in Media Communications and Film & Screen Studies taking on the leading role in managing the design of our website, cataloguing all of our picture stock, refurbishing our new premises and opening up and running our new Gallery and art materials shop.
In the course of our redesign work we are very pleased that Caroline Anstey has been able to create a new logo (above) for us which is an updated version of the first logo (below) she gave us in 1981. We are close to Midhurst’s 800-year-old South Pond, home to many water birds including the mallard, and it is this resident of the South Pond that our logo represents.
Midhurst and Surroundings
Midhurst is in the Rother Valley and is home to the administrative centre of the newly created South Downs National Park (SDNP) which extends from Winchester in Hampshire to Eastbourne in East Sussex, an area of some 1600 sq kilometres (600 sq miles). Its heritage includes the Roman and Anglo Saxon occupations of Britain (43 AD to 1066 AD), archaeological sites from the Bronze Age (2500 BC - 800 BC) and artefacts from earlier pre-historic times.
The river Rother rises near Selborne in Hampshire and flows through Midhurst to Pulborough in the east where it joins the river Arun and continues down to the sea at Littlehampton. In closest proximity are the pretty and historic villages of Easebourne, Lodsworth, Selham, Graffham. Heyshott, West Lavington, Heyshott, Cocking, Bepton, Didling, Treyford, Elsted, Trotton, Chithurst, Iping, Stedham, Woolbeding. Further afield and to the east is Petworth, the seat of Lord Egmont; to the north, Fernhurst; and to the south, the Goodwood Estate on the South Downs, and Chichester the county town of West Sussex and cathedral city.
