Tea with Sven

In 1963, long before Sven Berlin came into his life, Anthony Green took his mother Freda to the Panorama Tea Rooms at the Mayes Department Store in Southampton. He still recalls Sven’s colourful paintings on the walls and not thinking much about them, probably concentrating on the tea and cake!

In the 1960s Sven Berlin was exhibiting everywhere. This slightly random show called One Man’s Paintings which ran from November 21st to December 10th (and was extended to December 27th)  was one such event and several of the works shown have found their way into our collection today.  This is one of them…

Gitano with fiddle, painted in 1959 following Berlin and Juanita’s visit to the Camargue in Southern France.

The store held a cocktail party on the 21st November which included invitations to Sven’s relatively new friend John Paddy Browne, as well as ‘Zetters’ (Mai Zetterling), the writer Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald and Colonel Le Marchant, famous for his red longhorn cattle at his farm in Fritham along with Jack Hargreaves, a well known New Forest personality of the time.

As often the case not all ran to plan or was to Sven’s liking. A series of letters to the Manager expresses Sven’s umbrage, following an article in the Southern Evening Echo in which Sven was described as an ‘ex-tramp, coal-heaver, labourer, salesman, soldier and clown’.  Sven had provided a precis of his life, begging them to ‘ask any press men to…get it right and stick to the facts’.

Mayes Department Store, by then owned by Owen Owen, was, originally an elegant art deco building, which was rebuilt after it was bombed in the Blitz.

He grumbled in response “….it would appear that I am a kind of Arthur Haynes of painting and have taken it on as a recent occupation.” The full letter of explanation and protest was printed on the Echo on November 26th - see above!