Object Details
From:NHerts
Name/TitleLetchworth Common Bandstand
About this objectLetchworth Common Bandstand. Oil on canvas by Gordon House. The bandstand was demolished in the 1970s after years of neglect and vandalism.
The artist Gordon House moved to Letchworth Garden City as a child, winning a scholarship to Luton School of Art aged just 14. House was responsible for the typography on the back of the Beatles’ iconic Sgt. Pepper album, and for many other album covers.
During the first Coronavirus lockdown of 2020 North Hertfordshire Museum Visitor Services Assistant Nicola Viinikka researched and gave her opinion on this work
What is the most interesting thing about this object?
It’s rather a dark and depressing painting, not in keeping with most of his abstract works. Maybe represents how he saw Letchworth!
Further information
In January 2018, Hertfordshire Life ran a feature on Gordon House, coinciding with a retrospective of his work at the Broadway Gallery. A key figure of the British Pop Art movement, the article described him as someone whose impact exceeded their familiarity. In artistic terms, he was something of a polymath, bridging the divide between art and industrial/graphic design. He was a painter, typographer, designer and print maker and his work has left a lasting legacy.
The bandstand in this painting fell into disrepair, no longer being used for concerts, and was finally demolished in the 1970s.
Gordon House was born in Pontardawe, South Wales on 22nd June 1932. As a boy, he moved to Letchworth, his parents going in search of work. After leaving school at 14, he won scholarships to attend first the Luton School of Art and then the St. Albans School of Art. His first job after art school, was as an assistant to Theodor Kern, an Austrian émigré artist who had fled the Nazis and moved to Hitchin. He then worked for a small advertising agency in Letchworth, which helped to hone his skills in typography and graphic design, before moving on to ICI’s plastics division, where he was employed as their designer for 9 years, from 1952-1959. This was followed by two years as a graphic designer for the Kynoch Press (a subsidiary of ICI) in London.
By 1961, he felt sufficiently established to set up on his own as a self-employed designer and typographer. Initially, he was also teaching part-time in art schools around London but was able to give this up in 1964.
Meanwhile, in the late 1950s, heavily influenced by American Abstract Expressionism, House began to paint large-scale abstract works which he was invited to show at the New Vision Centre, Marble Arch, in 1959.
House was very involved in London’s dynamic art scene of the 1960s, and exhibited in ‘Situation’, considered to be the key abstract exhibition of the decade, held at the RBA galleries in The Mall, in 1960. This was also a period when art and the music
scene were intertwined and the gallery of Robert Fraser, AKA ‘Groovy Bob’, on Duke Street, became an important ‘hub’ for this activity. Gordon House, who had designed the catalogues and publicity for the gallery’s opening, was well placed to be part of this scene. In 1967, he collaborated with Peter Blake on the album cover for the Beatles’ Album Sgt. Pepper’s, doing the typography on the back. He followed this up with the White Album in 1968. Later he continued to work with Paul McCartney on both ‘Wings’ albums as well as solo projects.
In the late 1960s, House worked on a regular basis for Apple Records and the Rolling Stones.
He also became the ‘go-to’ designer for a number of London art galleries and museums, which hitherto had had no uniformity of approach to design, either in the exhibits or their promotional material. In an obituary, artist Bernard Cohen stated that ‘House revolutionised the appearance of gallery graphics of the twentieth century and set the benchmark for design now taken for granted as standard in the art world’.
In the 1980s, he teamed up with Peter Blake again to design the Live Aid posters and also worked with Ian Dury, producing the ‘What a Waste’ portfolio of screenprints in homage to him.
In 1961, House began producing his first prints at the Kelpra Studio set up by Chris Prater, a commercial silkscreen printer in Islington. This was the first fine art screenprint ever to be produced in Britain. Other artists including Paolozzi followed suit and started a printmaking revolution in Britain, as well as securing Kelpra’s reputation.
In 1975, aged 43, Gordon House bought a house in Wales, which he visited regularly, feeling inspired by the landscape. This resulted in the ‘Welsh Portfolio’ of 1984.
House continued to both paint and make prints into his 60s and early 70s, and to exhibit them, both in the UK and abroad. After his death of a brain tumour in 2004, a memorial exhibition was held at The Millinery Works, London. His memoir, Tin Pan Alley, was also published the same year.
MakerHouse, Gordon
Maker RoleArtist
Date Made1950
Period20th Century (1901-2000)
Measurements580mm 685mm (HxWxDxDiam)
Named CollectionLetchworth Museum
Object TypePainting
Object number2005.7
Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved