JERICHO ECHO ARTICLE
February 1981
The death of John Spurling on 12 December 1974 at the age of 65 dismayed a host of Oxonians, who find it very difficult to grasp that the little shop on the corner of Walton Street and Crescent is not after all a permanent club and focus for collectors high and low, from near and far, who came for bargains, excitements, insights, ancient novelties, and above all for an hour of John's bubbling company, generous smile, sparkling eyes, his inevitable cackles of laughter, his depth and breadth of rarely repeated reminiscence, his anecdotes of the beloved pictures he bought and sold, often with anguish after many years in his homes with his friends the Whitlocks, of the ones that got away, of the Great Bear that he saw as a tiny invalid boy in Paddington before a health-giving stay in Devon, or bricklaying on ribbon developments and Dolphin Square, and of cut-throat repointing jobs in the depths of the depression, which with the war finally drove him to Oxford in the 40's from his life in London, where he came from a family gifted in the world of entertainment and music, in which he found deep emotional experience, and in which he was no mean performer, on mandolin or piano.
He had a wiry professional affection for pictures, which he restored with considerable skill and responsibility, and a knowledge derived from close physical examination with eyes and fingers for detail and a capacious and retentive memory. His grasp of an artist's style was direct and usually accurate, his ability or indeed desire to pronounce their names uneven and somewhat Churchillian - Poussin was "that there Pewzar", and Eversen was Evesham; but with his aesthetic loyalty he could comfortably hold his winking own in the Oxford picture market against dons, dowagers, doctors, debutantes and dealers alike.
What a loss that this memorable raconteur was never recorded on tape! Above all, we shall miss the whole Spurling persona: independent, his own man, craquelured, a figure from Velasquez and the brothers Grimm, a generous giver of gifts and friend to his fellows. The above was written six years ago, and John's memory survives. I have not altered what I then wrote, but all John's friends are delighted that his shop and its traditions are surviving in the capable hands of Mrs. Whitlock.