Author: Robjn Cantus

Happisburgh

In 1930, two couples, Henry & Irina Moore (married in 1929), and John Skeaping & Barbara Hepworth (married in 1925) holidayed together at Church Farm, Blacksmiths Lane, Happisburgh, on the Norfolk Coast. The holiday was intended as a working one and it was hoped the time in a new location might help Skeaping / Hepworth marriage, but it did not.

In 1931 Hepworth met Ben Nicholson and later invited him and his wife Winifred Roberts to join them on another trip with the letter below:

I enclose a photo of the farm – the colour is very lovely. The country is quite flat but for a little hill with a tall flint church and a lighthouse… The beach is a ribbon of palesand as far as the eye can see. The Moore’s and ourselves should be so pleased if you came… If you can get away the farm will be less full the first week we are there – 9 Sep – 16 Sep †

Winifred was looking after their three children (Jake, Kate and Andrew) and stayed with her family in Boothby, Cumbria, while Ben went to the farmhouse. The Skeaping / Hepworth marriage hadn’t resolved itself and divorce had been spoken of before the holiday, so at first John Skeaping stayed in London. On changing his mind to join his wife in Norfolk, he found she had fallen in love with Ben Nicholson. The next week into the holiday they were joined by Ivon Hitchens and Mary and Douglas Jenkins.

(left to right) Ivon Hitchens, Irina Moore, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Mary Jenkins, Happisburgh in Norfolk, 1931. Mary’s husband Douglas took the photograph.

Left: Ben Nicholson and Ivon Hitchens
Right: Henry Moore carrying stone

Ben Nicholson with camera

Barbara Hepworth and Ivon Hitchens, by the Church Farm Gate, 1932

Skeaping divorced his wife in two years later. But it wasn’t until 1938 that the Nicholsons got a divorce. In 1932 Hepworth found herself pregnant with Nicholson’s issue, she gave birth to triplets: Rachel, Sarah, and Simon. This would mean Ben Nicholson was the father of six children by two women.

The rest of the photos are taken in 1932 and show the fashion for naked bathing and games. I am sure one day a scriptwriter will turn what must have been an emotionally tense holiday into a screenplay.

† A nest of gentle artists in the 1930s Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson, 2009

Patriotic Messages

Looking in magazines during the First World War, there were adverts from tailors to domestic products all taking on a patriotic flare, as well as appeals for money to help various charities. There isn’t a great deal to say about it all, other than it looks to be profiteering somehow. The child above in the Pears soap advert looks to be sitting on a coffin with wreaths, very odd.

As the years go on the adverts become a little bit more distressing, the advert for Pears’ Soap again just is bizarre, I can’t help but think of the mothers who couldn’t afford it and wondered if they were letting their sons down after they had been slaughtered.

Good-bye dear, off to get blown up by the Germans, You won’t forget to send me some Wright’s Coal Tar Soap.

The charity adverts here also seem remarkably bossy. Have you helped yet?

The Samaritan Free Hospital was for Women and they found themselves with less funding.

Bawden in Dublin

In 1964 Edward Bawden went to Dublin. It is not known if it was a commision for House & Garden or not, but regardless, he illustrated a tour of the city. The magazine follows with a historical account of each of the locations, but below I have scanned the images in for you all to see, as I doubt there are many editions surviving.

Edward Bawden – St Stephen’s Church

Edward Bawden – Lower Baggot Street

Edward Bawden – Upper Mount Street

Edward Bawden – Wellington Bridge

Edward Bawden – Campanile Road

Edward Bawden – Trinity College

Edward Bawden – J O’Meara’s Irish House,

Edward Bawden – Cranes Near the Custom House

Edward Bawden – The Four Courts

Edward Bawden – The Botanic Gardens

The Countrywoman’s Year

Last week, in a box outside a bookshop I found this book for a pound. It is the The Countrywoman’s Year, 1960. Paid for by the Women’s Institute, it is a curious book of crafts, recipes, instruction and advice on making wine, beekeeping, growing indoor plants and all the mumsey crafts of made-do-and-mend. Why it is singled out to appear on my blog? Because it is peppered with Eric Ravilious illustrations. I am unsure how, or why, but I would guess that the illustrations were in the sample books of the Curwen Press and in those days you had books of designs and devices used by the press, as well as typographic books too, a high class version of clipart.

The title page image is a thresholded image of Raviliouses design for Wedgwood’s Garden design. Appearing on a soup bowl, the print likely taken from the transfer plate would have been reversed as in the book.

The image below appears on the back of the contents is The Village, for the cover of a journal by the National Council of Social Science, 1933.

Below is a design for Wedgwood again, but this time for a Lemonade set in 1939. You can see how the image appeared on the jug when it was first released and how it looks without the enamel colouring over the top.

The baking kitchen scene is a December Headpiece to a calendar in The Twelve Months, by Nicholas Breton, ed. Brian Rhys and published by the Golden Cockerel Press, 1927. The image below of the dustpan is from the same book and is the headpiece for February.

The block below of pancakes in a pan is from the Kynoch Diary 1933 that Ravilious illustrated in 1932, it’s title is Block 122. The book is below.

Below is another block from the Kynoch Notebook, this time, Block 110

Kynoch Press, 1933 illustrated by Eric Ravilious.

The illustration for summer is a larger version of the title page image, and the illustration as previously seen for Wedgwood’s Garden plates.

The illustration by Eric Ravilious below was originally used for the Country Life Cookery Book, June, 1937.

The wood engraving below was a bit of a mystery, I thought it was Ravilious but it wasn’t in any of the reference books on him (Greenwood) and it was identified by David Wakefield as being a wood engraving for a Apple box label for the Ministry of Agriculture in 1934. In 2018 it was published in the ‘Eric Ravilious Scrapbooks‘.

For the chapter ‘Painting for Pleasure‘ uses part of the cover to the BBC Radio Talks Pamphlet on British Art. January 14th – February 18th, 1934.

Eric Ravilious – BBC Radio Talks Pamphlet on British Art, 1934

The wood-engraving used above can be seen below, called Two Cows and was used for the cover of a London Transport Walking and touring guide.

1936 cover to Country Walks, 3rd Series with a Ravilious Design of Two Cows.

Below you can see the work re-cycled into a watercolour also named Two Cows. Here keeping the study of a cow in the same pose and doubling it, both cows are the same tracing but coloured differently.

Eric Ravilious – Two Cows, 1936, The Fry Gallery

Above and below are both from the Country Life Cookery Book, July (above) and October (below), 1937.

The last little wood engraving was a projected design for a book plate but looks to illustrate a chocolate log and christmas pudding,

Eric Ravilious – Projected Bookplate, 1937

The editor of the book was Elizabeth Shirley Vaughan Paget, Marchioness of Anglesey, DBE, LVO, Shirley Morgan began her career in the Foreign Office as personal secretary to Gladwyn Jebb until her marriage to Lord Anglesey in 1949. As Marchioness of Anglesey, she served as President of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes 1966–1969, a board member of the British Council 1985–1995, chairman of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission 1987–1991, and vice-chairman of the Museums and Galleries Commission 1989–1996.

La Joie De Vivre

This is a short cartoon by Anthony Gross & Hector Hoppin from 1934. It is interesting to think about how Gross went on to become a war artist, and became famous for his etchings. But this short film is full of joy and the verve of the age. I added colour in places.

The War Paintings of Anthony Gross

When the war broke out Anthony Gross, was working in Paris with Hector Hoppin on a cartoon animation of Around the World in 80 Days. With the help of Eric Kennington and Edward O’Rorke Dickey, Gross became a war artist in 1939. He travelled to Middle East, India, Burma and North West Europe. While Gross was working in his Cairo hotel room, he met Edward Bawden for the first time, Bawden had burst in, and said “What the hell are you doing here?”, he was under the misapprehension that Gross was there to replace him, but Gross was there to follow the 9th Army and so Bawden relaxed and they became friends.

Gross and Bawden in Cairo being silly with a postcard

Anthony Gross is one of the artists who like Edward Ardizzone, has a style so distinctive it is like handwriting. His work is rather like Raoul Dufy, in that elements of the drawing tend to become transparent to compliment the drama of what is happening, but it might also be down to him working on the sport and then adding the colour washing in his evenings.

Anthony Gross – The 50th (Northumbrian) Division, 1944

Anthony Gross – Sandbags in Bethnal Green, 1940

Anthony Gross – Final Stages of the German War: Krupp’s Works at Essen, 1945

Anthony Gross – Gateway into Germany: The Maas in Flood near the Berg Bridge, 1944

Anthony Gross – Desert Patrol, 1942

Anthony Gross – Liberation and Battle of France: The Fall of the Arsenal at Cherbourg, 1944

Anthony Gross – Liberation and Battle of France: Cherbourg, Battalion H.Q. of the East Yorks, 1944

Anthony Gross – Fire in a Paper Warehouse, 1940

Anthony Gross – The 50th (Northumbrian) Division, 1944

Rather like Henry Moore, Gross was able to document the lives of people in the London Underground stations as well.

Anthony Gross – Southwark Tunnel, 1940

Anthony Gross – Southwark Tunnel, 1940

Eric Ravilious and the Country Life Cookbook

Recycled

There are many examples of Eric Ravilious recycling designs for work and it’s something I hope to focus on in a few weeks time on a post, but here is a snippet showing how he recycled a woodcut illustration from The Hansom Cab and the Pigeons, L.A.G Strong, published in 1935 by The Golden Cockerel Press and this design for Wedgwood’s Travel china in 1938.

Leaving your mark

This might be a short post but it is from something I discovered this week that is extraordinary to the western mind. When we think of leaving our mark behind on something we have owned it is normally a bookplate in our books, or maybe a label on the back of a painting we once bought from an exhibition, but in China and Japan there is a history of stamping the front of a work with the owners mark. They are called ‘collector’s seals’.

This is special type of seal are used by collectors. This tradition started in Tang Dynasty. When collector gets a valuable piece of art work, for example, painting, calligraphy, or book, he would use his collector seal to stamp on the art work. However, you need to be careful with where you stamp the seal. The principle is not to destroy the original painting balance. However, this principle is very easy to be broken since every collector wants to leave a stamp on the art work.

Ma Hezhi – ‘Illustrations to the Odes of Chen’, 1131-1162

Ma Hezhi – ‘Illustrations to the Odes of Chen’, 1131-1162

Wang Xianzhi – Xinfu Dihuang Tang Tie ,Tang Dynasty

Alfred Flechtheim

This post isn’t about an artist but a gallery owner, Alfred Flechtheim. He was born in Münster, Germany. His father, Emil Flechtheim, was a grain dealer and for a time Alfred worked in his father’s offices in Germany and France. Aged 22 in 1900 he was buying art, with a collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne; French Avant garde early works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and André Derain; paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, Maurice de Vlaminck, Alexej von Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter, and the Rhein Expressionists Heinrich Campendonk, August Macke, Heinrich Nauen, and Paul Adolf Seehaus.

Nils Dardel – Alfred Flechtheim, 1913

Flechtheim opened his first gallery in Düsseldorf in 1913, followed by galleries in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Vienna, however when the First World War started there was no market for buying art and his business closed. He re-opened in Düsseldorf in 1919. He went into the swinging twenties with style and became known for his glamorous parties with the glitterati of the new Berlin: movie stars, titans of finance, prizefighters and artists. All the people you need to run a good art gallery.

He founded the modernist art journal Der Querschnitt (The Cross Section) which ran from 1921 until 1936.

As the thirties rolled on Flechtheim found himself more out of step with the rising Nazi party, being Jewish for one didn’t help, being a successful Jewish man also had him on the Nazi’s radar, but the biggest affront to the party was the art he promoted and sold.

In 1922 he hired Alexander Vömel. When Flechtheim moved to Berlin, he entrusted the Düsseldorf gallery to Alex Vömel, and in 1926 he appointed him managing director. They survived the stock market crash of 1929. In 1933, men from the Sturmabteilung (precursor to the SS, the Brown Shirts) matched into an auction of Flechtheim’s paintings and stopped proceedings. Vömel (also a Sturmabteilung member), confiscated Flechtheim’s Düsseldorf gallery stock. After the war, former party member Vömel said he didn’t even remember who Flechtheim was. The Nazis seized and sold off Flechtheim’s private collection, as well as the contents of his gallery. In the same month Flechtheim fled via Switzerland. Six months after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Flechtheim, penniless, fled to Paris, and tried to find work with his former business partner, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Flechtheim subsequently organized exhibits in London of the paintings of exiled German artists.

“I lost all my money and all my pictures.”

By November 1936, another of Flechtheim’s former gallery assistants, Curt Valentin, had made a deal with the Nazis that would allow him to emigrate to New York and to sell “degenerate art” to help fund the Nazi war effort. In January 1937, with financing from Buchholz, Valentin left for New York and set up the Karl Buchholz Gallery at 3 West 46th Street which was later accused of serving as a conduit for bringing Nazi looted art, including paintings that had been seized from Flechtheim, into America.

In March 1937 in London, Flechtheim slipped on a patch of ice, was taken to a hospital, punctured his leg on a rusty nail in his hospital bed, developed sepsis leading to amputation of his leg, and died. Flechtheim’s attempts to gain a foothold as an art dealer in exile failed; he died impoverished in London on March 9, 1937. Flechtheim was cremated in Golders Green, his ashes are in plot 4062A.

Rudolf Belling – Alfred Flechtheim, 1927

Flechtheim married Betty Goldschmidt, a wealthy Dortmund merchant’s daughter. On a honeymoon trip to Paris, Flechtheim invested Betty’s dowry in cubist art, to the horror of his inlaws. The marriage was childless. Betty Flechtheim was with her husband in London during his final days. Then she returned to Berlin. In 1941, when she was ordered to report for deportation to Minsk, she ingested a lethal dose of Veronal. The Gestapo seized her art collection.

Flechtheim’s heirs are attempting to recover artworks stolen from Flechtheim. These works reside in German museums and the Museum of Modern Art.

Oskar Kokoschka’s “Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac” (1910) was sold by Alex Vömel to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm where it would later be transferred to the Moderna Museet. It remained in the Moderna Museet’s collection until 2018, when it was restituted to Flechtheim’s heirs. In November 2018, it sold at Sotheby’s for $20,395,200 (including fees).

Oskar Kokoschka – Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac, 1910