Toplis and The Book of Sark |
The museum's 2008 exhibition Toplis and the Book of Sark celebrates the centenary of this highly collectable book, good copies of which still command a respectable price. In addition to a full set of framed prints the exhibition includes:
There is a simple online slideshow of the Book of Sark images here... William Arthur Toplis (1857-1942) visited Sark in 1883, for a holiday with his wife and a group of friends. Born and educated in Sheffield, he had already established a sound reputation as an artist in the UK but had been living in Jersey for two years prior to the Sark holiday. Toplis was so captivated by Sark and its coastline that the holiday simply turned into a lifetime residency and he never left the island except for brief business trips. His images of Sark remain just as potent today, reflecting the natural beauty of an island and coastline which has many devoted admirers. Except for modern trappings around the harbour and the safety rails at La Coupée, much of Sark's coastal scenery remains much as Toplis painted it a hundred and twenty years ago. |
In 1908 the artist William Arthur Toplis published a lavish picture book illustrating twenty-one of his paintings of the island of Sark. Ten of the original works had been exhibited at the Royal Academy and each was accompanied by descriptive text written by his friend, the author John Oxenham. Toplis' strong, colourful and detailed images are popular advocates for the scenery of Sark and the additional short accounts of the island's geology and flora helped ensure that the 500 limited edition copies of the book were all sold by the early 1920s.