Gallery aims to remember Liverpool's pavement artists

Mar 18 2008

SHAMROCKS hung on the walls, a St Patrick Day’s piper played the Mountains of Mourne and an MP spoke of a bare-footed painter’s grand legacy to his native city.

The great and good of culture rubbed shoulders over Irish sausages at the formal opening of Liverpool’s latest gallery.

How James William Carling would have smiled at scenes in the gallery named after him and his elder brother in the rooms above Maggie May’s cafè on Bold Street.

For when they were starving pavement artists, James and Henry Carling weren’t even allowed on this “promenade of the local aristocracy”.

“Bold Street! My heart sickens at your name,” wrote James (1857- 1887). “I could not draw in that street. I could not walk on it. The sight of a ragged coat was enough to bring the most harsh applica- tion of the (policemen’s) staff.”

Yesterday (Mon Mar 17) the Carling Gallery was opened by Louise Ellman, MP for Liverpool Riverside, as a highlight of this European Capital of Culture year.

Among the VIPs watching her was Phil Redmond, Daily Post columnist and deputy chairman of the Liverpool Culture, whose special interest is community initiatives. And this, undoubtedly, is a home-grown story Liverpool could sell to the world.

James was the youngest of six children born to Henry, who boiled boot blacking, and his wife Rose, in Addison Street, off Scotland Road, the old Irish quarter of Liverpool.

When their loving mother died, five-year-old James and Henry were sent out by their new step- mother to earn their keep as pavement artists.

When he was eight, James was arrested and sent to the Liverpool Industrial School, run by Father James Nugent. At 14, he was released with a good education and joined his brother in the USA. They were hailed in the press as “instant caricaturists” with trav- elling shows and fashionable enough to do portraits of the rich.

James also submitted 33 paint- ings for a competition seeking an illustrator for a new edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven. Though James didn’t win, his paintings are kept at the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where they are regarded as masterpieces of the Gothic style.

Ron Formby of the Scottie Press community paper contacted the Carling family in the USA and they sent copies of paintings by James and Henry, who was four years older.

James had to return home and died of consumption in the Liver- pool workhouse, before being laid in a pauper’s grave at Walton Cemetery.

His story was told yesterday at Maggie May’s by Michael Kelly, the historian, whose books include Liverpool: The Irish Connection, and Mothers of the City (about famous Liverpool women). Urban Canvas’ Pathè News films of pavement art were shown. John Inrie of Warrington played the pipes.

Ron Formby, Urban Canvas, Phil Redmond’s team and Anna Gilbert, director of the Liverpool Irish Festival, are considering further ways of promoting the Carling story. An international festival of pavement art is one idea. Meanwhile, some walls in the gallery are being given to local artists and an exhibition of community life in Liverpool’s Vauxhall neighbourhood. The cafè is run by John Lea, his wife Sue and children Andrew and Carly.

“This is great,” said Phil Redmond said: “When I was growing up there were lots of spaces like this in the city, but they seem to have drifted away. Hopefully, this will encourage others to do things that they are interested in. Often it is a question of putting the right people in touch with each other.

“At one time Bold Street was a no-go area for some because it was for the toffs, but in that great renaissance in the sixties, the beatniks colonised it with all the coffee bars and it was a very artistic street.”