Date: 14-05-2000
Owning Institution: Waddington Galleries, courtesy the Estate of Patrick Caulfield
Publication:         Sunday Telegraph “In The Picture”  
Subject:       20th Century    

Today being the first day of British Sandwich Week (“events include the Total Sandwich Show and the British Sandwich Association Dinner and Awards”) this week’s choice of picture is Patrick Caulfield’s Fish and Sandwich. One of relatively few depictions of sandwiches to be found in the canon of western art, it is also the only still life painting known to have caused a diplomatic incident.

A beautiful picture by one of the most gifted British painters, Fish and Sandwich is a thoroughly secular work of art, its setting perhaps the sideboard of some interestingly decorated ethnic restaurant in London. Yet both subject and handling communicate a vestigial sense of food as sacrament, distantly calling to mind the parable of the loaves and fishes. So it may not be entirely coincidental that the painting should have become embroiled in what was, essentially, a religious controversy. The story of how it was acquired and subsequently rejected by the British Government is a small comedy of errors and misunderstandings which shows just how important the filling of even an imaginary sandwich can be.

In 1984, while Caulfield was painting the picture, the British Embassy was being built in Saudi Arabia’s new capital city of Riyadh. The architect, Trevor Dannatt, had designed a modern-looking building and he wanted modern furniture and modern pictures to be part of it. Wendy Baron, then Head of the Government Art Collection, was asked to see what she could find.

“I was on my usual trawl through the London galleries,” she remembers, “when I suddenly saw Fish and Sandwich at Waddington’s. In dimensions and style it seemed absolutely perfect for the dining room of the new embassy. It was right in its clean lines and bold colours, and there’s even a slightly Moorish cast to the architecture in the painting. The subject of fish – which looked to me like a St Peter’s Fish, which is an Arab and Lebanese delicacy – meant that everything was perfect. Even the niche it was to go into could have been built for it. We measured, and it turned out that the painting fitted it perfectly, with just an inch of space all round. It was as if we were meant to have it.” Baron agreed a price with Lesley Waddington and took the picture away to show it to the committee responsible for the Riyadh embassy project. It was then that things began to get difficult.

"The architect was there with a lot of his people, as well as a group from the Foreign Office. The incoming ambassador and his wife were there, Patrick and Lady Wright. Delightful people, lovely people. But they looked at the picture and drew in their breath and said, as one, ‘That’s a ham sandwich. We can’t possibly have a ham sandwich in a dining room in Riyadh’.”

“My jaw dropped. I must say the contents of the sandwich simply hadn’t occurred to me. But I couldn’t deny it. The inside of the sandwich was distinctly pink. It was felt that it would offend Muslim sensibilities. So I said, as a sort of joke, ‘It’s probably a pastrami sandwich. What if we persuaded the artist to change the title to Fish and Pastrami Sandwich’? But the committee said that wouldn’t do because people wouldn’t read what it says on a label. I think it probably wouldn’t have annoyed anybody, but they didn’t want to take the risk.”

Baron was so reluctant to give up her acquisition that she tried one last desperate measure. “I know it was naughty, but I rang up Lesley Waddington and asked him if it might be possible, given that the picture was so perfect for us, for the artist to repaint the filling of the sandwich so that it looked slightly less like ham and slightly more like tomato. Lesley didn’t take to this very kindly. Artistic integrity was obviously being treated flippantly. He called me later and told me that Patrick wouldn’t do it. Given the circumstances, Lesley agreed to take the picture back. The next time I saw it, it was in Charles Saatchi’s collection, where it still is to this day.”

After hearing Wendy Baron’s version of the events surrounding Fish and Sandwich, I went to interview Patrick Caulfield. Two main points came out of the conversation. First, Baron’s pastrami hypothesis may have been closer to the mark than she suspected. Secondly, the whole unhappy story might easily have turned out differently, had the lines of communication been a little clearer. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned for Government here.

“All I remember,” Caulfield said, “is being rung up by a lady at my gallery who explained that some purchasers had become dubious because they thought the filling of my sandwich might be ham. They wanted me to repaint it as tomato. I didn’t want to know. I thought it was totally ridiculous. As far as I was concerned, it was merely a strip of pink paint. But for what it’s worth, while we’re on the subject of sandwich fillings, when I painted the picture I was working in Archer Street in Soho and I used to go round the corner to have lunch in a very good Jewish restaurant, where I’d almost always have salt beef on rye.” When I went over Wendy Baron’s reasons for wanting the picture so badly, the painter suddenly seemed rather sad. “Do you know, I never knew anything about any of that until now. I wish they had written to me to explain about the niche being the right size, the fish being the right kind of fish, the appropriateness of the architecture. If I’d known all that I would have stretched a point, I’m sure. After all, it’s only three inches of paint. It would have taken me five minutes. What a shame.” Then he brightened a little. “Of course, if it happened all over again, I know what I’d do. I’d send the Government a menu. Then they could choose to have the sandwich with any filling they liked. They would all have different prices. Tomato would be very, very expensive.”

© The Estate of Patrick Caulfield, courtesy Waddington Galleries. Photography supplied by Prudence Cuming Associates, London.