Legal paintings, painters and collectors are in vogue, reports Grania Langdon-Down

When former England cricketer Jack Russell sat down in Middle Temple to sketch some of the buildings for his latest collection, ‘Legal London’, he was mobbed by passers-by wanting to buy the pictures before he had even finished them.


The paintings, drawings and prints, including the Royal Courts of Justice, the Old Bailey, Middle Temple, Devereux Chambers and the squares at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Gray’s Inn, have been exhibited at a private show at Nine Bedford Row chambers.


The attraction between art and law has always been strong. Rupert Powell, managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, says: ‘One thinks of the caricatures done in the late 18th and early 19th century where lawyers were lampooned.’ They are much in demand and mostly affordable, he says, at anything from £100 to £300.


Next week, Bloomsbury will be auctioning an etching of the late Lord Goodman, founder of City firm Goodman Derrick and lawyer to Harold Wilson, by his client Lucien Freud. It will be somewhat less affordable – estimated at £30,000 to £35,000. ‘Freud is one of the buzz people at the moment,’ Mr Powell says.


The law as depicted in art comes in many forms. Tony Price, who has been in the picture library business for 20 years, has set up a Web site to market his archive of prints and illustrated material. (www.lordprice.co.uk). One of the sections – ‘law ‘n’ (dis)order’ - has about 70 prints ranging from Vanity Fair cartoons to Rowlandson watercolours of the courts, including the Old Bailey, Court of Chancery and Court of Exchequer, from around 1805, as well as movie posters and pulp fiction book covers.


Mr Price says: ‘There is enough interest for the law to have a category in its own right – there are a lot of lawyers out there.’


Modern, contemporary art is very much in vogue. Stuart Evans, head of corporate finance at Simmons & Simmons, is in charge of the City firm’s large collection of contemporary art, which it started putting together in the late 1980s.


‘I have been the decision-maker in terms of buying the work. It hangs in the London office with separate dedicated collections in some of our international offices. Our collection is cutting-edge contemporary art with its finger on the pulse – Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst, the so-called YBAs, and the younger artists coming to the fore like Christian Ward.


‘It is a particular passion of mine. I think Simmons was the first firm to collect in this area. The pictures are all hung in public spaces – including a series of 13 pieces called “The Last Supper” by Damien Hirst, which hang in the staff restaurant – and we do it because it is necessary to give an office building a human face. And the human face this kind of art gives is creative, perhaps slightly humorous, perhaps challenging, certainly not pompous or stuffy.’


Mr Evans, a collector in his own right, has been successful in picking out promising artists. ‘The raison d’être of the Simmons collection is to support young artists early in their careers. It started off as very much a British collection but it has become increasingly international.’


Clifford Chance has built up a collection of 800 British prints from the 1930s onwards over the last decade. Partnership secretary Keith Salway says: ‘It is not a collection with a capital C. We try not to be grand about it – the only criterion is we acquire prints which make the day go better.’


The firm also has an annual loan programme with the Arts Council National Collection, administered by the Hayward Gallery. At the moment, there are three paintings and two sculptures, one by Sir Anthony Caro, on display in the ground floor of its Canary Wharf offices. ‘All this fits in with our arts club, which arranges talks in the office and breakfast viewings of exhibitions at the Royal Academy, Tate and Hayward,’ he explains.


Other firms have gone a step further and established their own art galleries. Collyer-Bristow opened its gallery 11 years ago. It is closing temporarily next month, while the firm’s offices in Bedford Row are refurbished, and will reopen in October with an exhibition of ‘The Body’, a collection of nudes and artworks inspired by the human body by both established and young artists.


Tamar Arnon has been curator since 1995. She says: ‘The gallery will be transformed. It has proved a tremendous success and attendances and sales have increased so the partners felt it was worth investing in a bigger and better gallery.’


DMH Stallard has professionally managed galleries in the reception areas of its offices in Brighton and Crawley in Sussex to reinforce its image as a forward-looking and approachable firm. It has also sponsored the Brighton Festival for more than eight years.


The firm, which was awarded the Arts & Business south-east outstanding achievement award 2005, has an arts club, which runs evening classes and organises talks by local artists and gallery trips. It also uses art-based training for staff.


Welsh firm Leo Abse & Cohen, which has 14 partners and offices in Cardiff and Swansea, has also held a day-long arts workshop for staff, using drama and print-making to address key issue such as client care, cross-selling and working as a team.


Marketing director Robert Lloyd Griffiths says: ‘We also display the works of young artists throughout our offices and boardrooms to showcase new talent. We only started a year ago but we have recently won an Arts & Business award for our involvement in the arts.’


Another regional firm that is a keen sponsor of the arts is Burt Brill & Cardens in Brighton. For the last ten years, it has awarded prizes to the top final-year students of the faculty of arts and architecture at Brighton University. Assistant practice manager Virginia Legg-Willis says: ‘We believe in giving something back to the community which we have been a part of for more than 100 years.’


When it comes to art collections, it could prove tricky dividing them if a firm splits. Graham Brown, senior partner of central London firm Payne Hicks Beach, acts for a number of families with ‘amazing’ collections of art, including one with an ‘unrivalled’ collection of Van Dyke and Stubbs pictures.


He says it is part of the firm’s history that when it divided into two back in the 1770s, the partners going off to another law firm took their portraits with them. ‘That firm has recently allowed us to have very good copies of them painted so we now have the full complement of portraits back in our offices.


‘If I was advising on the division of a partnership today, I would look at the art in the same way as the furniture and computers as an asset that needs to be valued before finding some way of dividing it up.’


For the 45 year-old Law Society’s Art Group, one problem is the cost of holding exhibitions. Tom Butler, former shipping partner at City firm Holman Fenwick & Willan, has chaired the 110-strong group for six years. He is proposing the chairmanship should be taken over later this year by Richard Davidson, the former Baker & McKenzie partner featured in the Gazette previously for retiring from law in 1995 to go to art school (see [2004] Gazette, 22 January, 28). He has just had his first solo exhibition at the ‘eyestorm britart’ gallery in London.

The art group, which organises painting trips, talks and gallery visits, holds its annual exhibition at the Law Society. He is in discussions with Chancery Lane because the costs have gone up significantly. ‘I do get the feeling they like having us there so I hope we can carry on.’


A Law Society spokesman says it has to be careful about how it uses its resources, adding: ‘The art group’s booking is currently heavily discounted and we hope provides them with the ideal setting to exhibit and sell their work.’


Mr Butler maintains art is important to solicitors. ‘Life is short but art is long. When you are practising as a solicitor you feel somewhat at the mercy of your clients, whereas when you are being creative, you have control, you can make things happen.’


For Jack Russell, his foray into the legal districts of London provided him with plenty of inspiration. And, as his business partner Jim Ruston says: ‘A lot of the legal profession are very keen cricketing fans, so it was a double whammy for us.’


Grania Langdon-Down is a freelance journalist