The Pomegranate's Legacy: Major Solo Exhibition of Lucy Caddel Opens November 8 at Soulton Hall

The exhibition, 'The Pomegranate's Legacy,' features a selection of the artist's larger works. Caddel's bold signature style—developed following extensive time spent in South and Central America—is known for its vibrant, Latino-inspired colour palette and compositions. The artist has a long-standing interest in the vivid representation of fruit in her practice.

Caddel is well-established, having exhibited at respected institutions including the Royal Cambrian Academy and the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry. The retrospective includes both privately loaned pieces and works available for sale.

The new commission was made by The Ashton Family, the custodians of Soulton Hall.

Caddel will unveil her monumental triptych, titled 'Through a Glass Darkly,' at an opening event on Friday, November 8, 2025, from 4 pm to 7 pm. The new commission spans an extraordinary 12 feet in length (three 5ft x 4ft panels).

The artwork serves to focus the eye, acting as a kind of visual primer for the Hall's rich philosophical and architectural legacy, and is linked to the ongoing research of James Wenn of Byrga Geniht. This project follows on from the commission for the As You Like It dancers by Jacob Chandler last autumn.

The title, 'Through a Glass Darkly,' reflects the painting's aim: gently to invite visitors to Soulton Hall to focus their gaze upon the significant, consistently coded elements in the building. Its purpose is to assist people in identifying and reflecting upon these elements, leaving them to unlock the deeper meanings fundamental to the geometric and philosophical program of the Renaissance project at Soulton Hall, guided by the sober and attentive handling of these matters by a Renaissance polymath through the model he built in the house at Soulton Hall.

Caddel's three-panel work is a huge contemporary vanitas painting. This genre, traditionally concerned with the transience of life, uses symbols of mortality to remind the viewer of the imperfection and fleeting nature of the material world. Critically, all vanitas works implicitly ask the viewer to reflect after this upon those things that are immutable and permanent. This reflection goes beyond what is mere vanity to what is essential. This aligns directly with the enduring philosophy that Sir Rowland Hill codified into Soulton Hall, which is understood to be a sophisticated Neo-Platonic cypher that becomes readable when one has the correct learning perspectives to understand the building. As the linked play As You Like It indicates, the house itself is effectively delivering "Sermons in Stones". The Hall's underlying code is one of harmony and mathematics, emphasizing eternal reality in a particular moment of contested and turbulent theology where people were being treated violently for their thoughts. This principle connects the art to Hill's interest in Platonic thought, which contrasts the striving, imperfect mortal realm with the higher, unchanging realm of ideal Forms, a philosophical striving mirrored in the classical Renaissance designs of the building.

The commission features the symbolic pomegranate imagery inscribed into the ancient plaster walls of the Hall. This fruit carries a powerful classical resonance, particularly the Greek myth of Persephone, who, after consuming the seeds offered by Hades, was bound to a seasonal cycle of descent and return, symbolising death, rebirth, and fertility. This symbolism links directly to the Eleusinian Mysteries—a powerful historical fact of comparative religious importance—which offered initiates a profound understanding of these cycles. For Renaissance minds facing the violence of the Reformation, engagement with such classical ideas allowed complex, even dangerous, religious and philosophical concepts to be discussed without inviting persecution. Sir Rowland Hill’s interest in these classical mysteries is referenced not only in the Renaissance architecture of the house, but also in his surviving furniture, which specifically displays themes linked to Eleusis and classical antiquity.

The opening event is free and open to the public. Maximalist staging will be provided by local interior designer Kate Parslow and local curtain makers ‘With Love Interiors’ based in Shifnal. For younger visitors, there will be a pomander-making Christmas decoration activity. Caddel will also host a separate pomegranate painting workshop at the Hall from 1-4 pm on Sunday, November 9.

Exhibition Information: The opening is for 'Through a Glass Darkly' and the exhibition 'The Pomegranate's Legacy' on Friday, November 8, 2025, from 4 pm – 7 pm at Soulton Hall, Wem, Shropshire SY4 5RS. Free tickets are available via Eventbrite.