Author: Robjn Cantus

Bardfield and the Beeb

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 2nd October 2019

Walter Hoyle – May, 1963

The BBC Book of the Countryside came out in 1963 and was edited by Arthur Phillips. It featured illustrations from the Great Bardfield artists Walter Hoyle and Sheila Robinson. There are also illustrations from John Nash and Ralph Thompson. It is a book packed with beautiful illustrations that is so often overlooked due to the title.

A while ago I bought all six of the Walter Hoyle original ink illustrations from the book. I got them because they have illustrations made while Hoyle was in the Bardfield area and it’s important to see an artist while they are riding a creative peak.

Walter Hoyle – January, 1963

Walter Hoyle is in danger of being one of the forgotten Great Bardfield artists due to the lack of information on him. He was born in Rishton, Lancashire in July 1922. Hoyle’s artistic education started at the Beckenham School of Art in 1938,

I persuaded my local art school to accept me, and presented as evidence of my serious intent, a series of drawings much influenced by Walt Disney. †

From Beckenham, Hoyle gained a place as a student at the Royal College of Art from 1940-42 and again from 1947-48 after serving in the Second World War. During Hoyle’s time at the RCA one of his tutors was Edward Bawden, who encouraged him to develop watercolours and printmaking.

It was 1940, the phoney war was about to end and the college was evacuated from London to Ambleside in the Lake District, famous for poets rather than artists. It was here that I was first introduced to printmaking – lithography – by a friend called Thistlethwaite, a fellow student from Oswaldtwistle (although these names are true, I mention them only because I like the sound they make). He prepared a litho stone for me with a beautiful finely ground surface and instructed me how to draw in line and wash. †

In 1948, During the RCA Diploma show a visitor was so impressed by Hoyle’s work that he was offered seven months’ work in the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul. Hoyle accepted, the work he saw there made a strong impression. Italian art and architecture also influenced him at that time.

Early in 1951 when Bawden was commissioned by the Festival of Britain to produce a mural for the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion on the South Bank, it was Hoyle that he chose to assist him on account of his great talent. During that summer Bawden invited Hoyle on a holiday to Sicily.

Edward asked to see my watercolours. He looked very carefully and quizzed me about them, and in general was complimentary and encouraging. I felt I had passed some kind of examination. ♠

It was this holiday together that Hoyle would scribe into a limited edition booklet of 10 in 1990 and into a book in 1998 – “To Sicily with Edward Bawden” a limited edition of 350 copies with a forward by Olive Cook.

Geoffrey Ireland – Walter Hoyle at home in Great Bardfield c1955

Walter Hoyle – March, 1963

March I think is Hill Farm in Great Sampford, Essex.

The BBC Book of the Countryside features articles by different nature writers and journalists from the BBC from farming to wildlife. It comes from The Countryside radio show.

Selected from over five hundred scripts and sixty-seven hours of broadcasting, this anthology depicts life and activity in the British countryside as seen through the eyes of some of the contributors to the BBC’s monthly Countryside programme during the past eleven years.

C. Gordon Glover, whose narrative sets the scene for each chapter, lives in an Essex village and the changing face of the countryside from month to month is portrayed as he sees it, from his kitchen window — from the bridge over the village

Claude Gordon Glover was a BBC Radio Broadcaster (you can hear him present an edition of The Countryside here) and he lived in Arkesden, a few miles West of Saffron Walden. He was also for a time, the lover of Barbara Pym. His broadcasts consist of a Betjeman like prose over classical music and the song of birdsong likely to be heard that month. Below is a selection of October.

October: Lovely October of the half-way days, the wayward pause between the certainties of summer and winter – the one is well over, the other not yet begun. For the countryman everywhere this is the month of the great tidying up – the sweeping, the burning, the cleaning, the digging, the transference upon dry days of apples from tree to store. The suns of summer have done their work, the land has given forth and the harvest is home.

Walter Hoyle – November, 1963

Above is a picture for November by Hoyle and in the background is Bardfield Saling church. It is always good to prove that pictures are relevant to artists lives and the history of Great Bardfield. Curiously enough, the artist Celia Hart suggested that the guy might be a self portrait of Walter himself.

The photograph below was taken by John Piper in the late 40s or early 50s when he was working on the Shell Guides and just finished three of the Murray’s Guidebooks with John Betjeman.

John Piper – Photograph of St. Peter & St. Paul’s church, Bardfield Saling, c1950

A poem for May:
A branch of May I have bought you
And at your door we shall stand
It is but a spout but it’s well spread about
By the words of our Lord’s hand.

Fair Maids look out of your window so high
To view the May-Bush fair,
it was cut down so late last night
To take the fresh morning air.

Walter Hoyle – September, 1963

In 1969 Walter Hoyle illustrated the ‘Women’s Institute book of Party Recipes’. This series of little illustrations are some of his best in my opinion.

They form a curious set of mixed media works that I believe to have been printed by Hoyle in lithograph then sent off to the book printers to be mass-printed, with the look of being a lithograph, but without it being so. Clearly the book was designed to be cheaply printed, for one it is spiral bound – but this is rather helpful in a cookery book. The other indicator of cheapness is that it has a very limited colour palette of orange, red and black. It was printed by Novello & Co Ltd, who mostly make sheet-music scores.

Below is an illustration from the cookery book of a man picking apples in an orchard and, above is almost the same drawing made four years later for the BBC Book of the Countryside by Walter Hoyle in 1963. As the WI book illustration have been drawn on to printing plate the image would have been reversed – so the ladder, man and fruit crate are a mirror image to the figures below. I know the picture from the Countryside book isn’t mirrored as it came from an ink drawing and I own those drawings.

† Printmaking Today, Volume 7, 1998. page 9-10.
‡ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_Abchurch
♠ To Sicily with Edward Bawden, Previous Parrot Press, 1998.
The Great Bardfield Exhibition by Gerald Marks, Realism, August – September, 1955
♣ http://www.fryartgallery.org/the-collection/search-viewer/691/artist/15/Walter-Hoyle–/22

Tags bbc, great bardfield, Walter Hoyle

The Penguin Print Series

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 25th September 2019

The boom in interwar printmaking in Britain was immense, it followed the same popularity of books; naturally the process of colour printing and printmaking where not so dissimilar. People were owning their own homes and they wanted affordable art to put inside.

In the 1920s and 1930s you could either source prints from the Studio Magazine or companies like the Medici print company but then came a series of print publishers who were issuing prints by contemporary artists, not from the past. The first major series of lithographs of modern artists for the public to buy would have been the Contemporary Lithograph series of prints. It was them who started the ball rolling in 1937 and proving that large colour reproduction prints could be made and sold cheaply. Sadly it, like all of the others I will list, were not a financial success. The early print schemes had aspirations of making art more affordable for people. The AIA series was a source of fund-raising for the group and showed off art from their members. The Schools Print series would have likely worked out if it wasn’t for the difficult third series from European artists. But with Lyons Lithographs the public may have felt a little saturated.

Lyons and Guinness both used the idea to their advantage when they needed to brighten up their shabby looking teahouses and pubs in an era of post war austerity.

Contemporary Lithographs Ltd – 1937-38
AIA Everyman Prints – 1939 – 1942
Schools Prints – 1945 – 1949
Festival of Britain Print Series – 1951
Coronation Print Series – 1953
Lyons Lithographs – 1947 and 1955
Guinness Lithographs – 1956 – 1957

The Penguin series was unusual in that all the prints where old and not designed to be prints for the scheme. It is why they are auto lithographs. The choice of the works were down to Kenneth Clark and it is a curious selection of traditional art and abstract works. The only work I really question is Pieter de Hooch – Courtyard in Delft at Evening- a Woman Spinning, 1656. It is not a picture I can think would hang easily anywhere.

The prints were presented in folders with a size of 13¼” x 17″. Each folder also contained information on the artist and the painting/work of art.

Only 11 prints were produced before Penguin ended the scheme. The first Print was by Turner and appeared in December 1948. The last print was published in April 1952. Below are the works from this long forgotten scheme.

J. M. W. Turner – Yacht Approaching Coast, 1840

Turner painted this view c1840-5 and it was published by Penguin in December 1948. PR1.

In this painting the light in the sky and on the sea dazzles the viewer, obscuring the scene. This visual effect echoes the progress of Turner’s own work on the painting as he returned to areas of the canvas over a period of several years, covering the original subject. Dark shapes that appear through the layers suggest boats, while the buildings on the left have not been definitively identified but may represent Venice. By reworking the canvas, Turner has created less tangible subjects – those of light and colour themselves.

Paul Klee – Landscape with Yellow Birds, 1923

It was published by Penguin in December 1948 PR2

John Piper – View of Windsor Castle, 1940

The John Piper painting was originally made in 1940-41. It was published in 1948. PR3. A blog post about his work at Windsor can be found here.

Pablo Picasso – Le Chardonneret, 1936

This print is from Picasso’s series of illustrations for Buffon’s Natural History. The drawings were made in 1936, and that book was published in 1942. The Penguin print is from December 1948. PR4

Paul Klee – Ad Marginem, 1930

Ad Marginem was painted in 1930. It was published by Penguin in May 1951.

Amedeo Modigliani – Le Petit Paysan, 1918

Amedeo Modigliani – Le Petit Paysan was published as a Penguin Print in 1950.

Henry Moore – Family Group, 1944

This work from 1944 looks at Henry Moore’s work earlier in the Second World War of Shelter Drawings, it is visually similar to those drawings and a sculpture he made on the theme. Towards the end of the war Moore made many drawings and sculptures of the family group.

Pieter de Hooch – Courtyard in Delft at Evening- a Woman Spinning, 1656

A curiously odd picture to choose I think as it has nothing that is truly compelling to me about it. The scene is dull, the woman a little surreal but the maid with water jug looks repressed. It’s a sad image.

Samuel Palmer – Garden in Shoreham, c1830

An older picture here with Garden in Shoreham but it was part of the revival of interest in Samuel Palmer and his work. Both William Blake and Samuel Palmer were enjoying retrospectives at this point in time.

Paul Cézanne – Still Life: Apples, Bottle and Chairback. 1902-1906

One of the looser Cezanne pictures and not an oil like many of his Apple paintings. It is a lovely vibrant still life.

Matthew Smith – Still Life with Clay Figure, I, 1939

The Still Life with Clay figure was part of a series of works Smith made in the same studio space, all rather different to each other. This was the final Penguin print before they abandoned the scheme in 1952.

Tags Henry Moore, john piper, Penguin Books, Print Series

What comes next

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 18th September 2019

It would be fair to suggest that the antiques trade has never been more alive and buoyant. With the television full of shows like Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Roadtrip, Flog it and various shows about upcycling antiques and furniture it might be hard to ignore. But at the back of my mind is the dark future for the trade – it comes from housing and education.

Richard Bawden – Sitting Room of his Home, 1997

The housing problem today for antiques is, large furniture doesn’t sell, because people are living in smaller houses than they were. When it comes to the young people who would be the target demographic for buying antiques, most of them have small flats and houses they rent in the major cities. Cambridge, where I am from has this issue. One of the biggest dooms for renters is that many landlords now charge tenants for the damage to the walls of putting up pictures, so it isn’t uncommon to walk into someone’s flat and see there are no pictures on the walls at all.

David Gentleman – Illustration from Elizabeth Kendall’s Home from Home, 1962

I also find that books are the possessions of people I feel more affiliated with. In the days when I would date, a good test would be to see if they looked upon my book collection with horror or joy. To some people owning books is a waste of space; or they flaunt an education or social aspiration. Maybe it looked obsessive. A lot of the novels I had bought for the dust jackets because I liked the artists at that time.

My Bookcase.

When it comes to education I am less informed to make the argument, I can only go on my own education, artistically. That was when we were only taught about Pop Art and Impressionism. To me then, they were exciting movements but it doesn’t do much to teach people about craft. Our ceramics classes were about making hideous slab work boxes with wonky sides. We were never told about the ideals of pottery or the movement in studio pottery. I would have been more engaged if the ideals of Japanese craftsmanship were told to us, but I feel my education was a matter of ticking boxes in the curriculum with teachers who were not engaged. I am happy to report my latter education was much more interactive.

The Study of Peter Parker – World Book Day, 7 March, 2019

But as a reader of this blog I want to know if you too are worried about what will happen to the world of studio pottery, paintings… Will John Lewis and Ikea furniture rule the homes as much as they currently rule the landfill. These questions are all selfish really. I am asking ‘who will care for the things I care for’.

Kettles Yard, the House of Jim Ede.

The only antidote to my moral in Cambridge is to visit the house of Kettles Yard and avoid the gallery area. It’s a beautiful home with function and full of art. My friend’s homes are similar, and the more cluttered it is the more I admire them if it is full of items they have collected or love. As film sets go I always admired the sets of The Servant. A mixture of hip modern items and Georgian charm.

David Gentleman – Illustration from Elizabeth Kendall’s Home from Home, 1962

Tags Houses, Kettles Yard

Cecil Beaton’s Royal Portrait

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 5th September 2019

Above is a famous photograph of the Queen on her Coronation day. Though I don’t have a strong affection for the royals I do enjoy propaganda and symbolism and they are all in use in this wonderful photograph.

It is worth looking at one of the components that makes up the photograph and that is the dress. The dress was designed by Norman Hartnell, above is his original design for the dress.

The much celebrated British designer, Norman Hartnell, has been synonymous with elegance and glamour since the 1930s. As the royal dressmaker to the Queen, he was naturally the first choice to design H. M.’s dress for the big day in 1953.

Cecil Beaton was one of the most famous photographers of the day and his contacts with the fashion world and talent for both candid and formal photographs.

Cecil Beaton by Cecil Beaton, c1930

Cecil Beaton attended the ceremony, along with 8,000 other guests. He sat in a balcony close to the pipes of the great organ, recording his impression of the glorious pageant in animated prose and black ink sketches. After the ceremony he returned to the Palace to make final preparations for the official portrait sitting. †

Below are other variations of the same photo session and various tinted photos.

Queen Elizabeth’s Ladies in Waiting preparing her clothing for the photograph.

A contact sheet of final and edited proofs of the Coronation Day.

† The lady in waiting website.

Tags Cecil Beaton, The Queen

Discoveries of Ravilious

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 28th August 2019

Green Line Bus Advert with Ravilious’s Suburban Home Wood-engraving, 1935

Some time ago I was looking at all the Ravilious wood engravings and their links to each other for a book called Ravilious Recycled. I still haven’t finished the book but in doing it I have made a few discoveries that would add to what is known about the work of Eric Ravilious.

One is a design for the Green Line, the ‘Suburban Home’ with the silhouette of a man in top hat and umbrella standing in the doorway. The house turns out to be the Old Vicarage in Castle Hedingham, the same in the background of Vicarage in Winter, 1935. The steps, the ionic colonnaded door and the window above all say so – it isn’t a fact I have seen in print before and a genuine discovery by myself.

Eric Ravilious – Suburban Home, 1935

The advert was much smaller in printed size when in the newspapers than the other ‘banner’ like designs London Transport made around Ravilious blocks. It was not used on the Country Walks books. Nearby Greys Hall, in Sible Hedingham also became famous by proxy when used by illustrators Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone as the inspiration of Hell Hall in The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

The Old Vicarage, Castle Hedingham today.

In the memoir of Ravilious by Helen Binyon she writes of when Eric and Tirzah came to Castle Hedingham they didn’t know anyone in the village but soon befriended the Vicar and his wife, Rev. Guy and Evelyn Hepher.

The first time that Eric called at their large Georgian vicarage, he found the vicar having a bonfire of the temperance hymn books inherited from his predecessor – an activity that Eric certainly approved of. The vicarage was too large and uncomfortable to be easily run, but it afforded a refuge to the Raviliouses one very cold Christmas when all their pipes had frozen up. ‡

It was the same Christmas period in 1935 that Ravilious painted Vicarage in Winter below.

Eric Ravilious – Vicarage in Winter, 1935

Ravilious would go on to use Castle Hedingham for inspiration, as can be found in the Vicarage in Winter watercolour, started in the Winter of 1935. Tirzah writes in her diary that Eric’s paint had frozen on the brush and some days later Eric wrote to Helen Binyon

The snow picture is finished and not bad – rather pretty but so was the thing, like a Christmas card. ‡

The Old Vicarage, Castle Hedingham today.

This watercolour takes us back to the Green Line illustrations and in 1936 Ravilious used the cottage to the right in Vicarage in Winter for one of his wood-engravings for London Transport. According to Barry Kitts

Ravilious has transformed the slates on the Essex cottage – into thatch. †

The Vicarage can be seen from behind with the same greenhouse as in the painting still standing today.

The block shows a woman cutting the hedge by the path leading up to a V shaped Sussex style stile. It is the shape of the wall to the left of the engraving and the hedge in Vicarage in Winter that bind them together as the same location.

Eric Ravilious – Cutting the Hedge, 1935

In Castle Hedingham I found the lane from Cutting
the Hedge. Looking at the watercolour Vicarage In Winter
I just went to about the same view point and found it on
a village footpath. The photograph (below) shows the same
stepped wall. The house Pottery Cottage has had a lot
of work and is just recognisable. If Vicarage In Winter
were painted today it would be covered in various states
of mid century architecture. It’s a joy to stand on the spot of location and see the work of art before you.

Cutting the Hedge’s view today.

The Lane was named after Castle Hedingham Ware, potted by Edward Bingham between 1864 and 1901.

Eric Ravilious – Kynoch Press Block 121, 1932 and the original woodblock.

The V Stile also appeared in the Kynoch Press Notebook for 1933. The stile is on the page for the 8th May but its technical name is Block 121. The Notebook has 42 engraved vignettes of rural life.

Eric Ravilious – Cutting the Hedge, 1935

Below is the press advert, the text in the advert talks of the clean breeze of the downs.

Eric Ravilious – Cutting the Hedge as part of a Green Line Advert, 1936

† Ravilious – Engravings by Jeremy Greenwood, Wood Lea Press, 2008.
‡ Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist by Helen Binyon, Lutterworth Press, 1983

Tags Castle Hedingham, Eric Ravilious

Nevinson in New York

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 21st August 2019

Nevinson caused a sensation with his one man exhibition of war paintings in 1916. The images presented the modern age’s first industrialized war, often in bold modernistic style derived from Futurism, and the pictures all sold. †

Nevinson’s artistic legacy in Britain had been established by his two exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries in 1916 and 1918. It was his work during this time, documenting the First World War that gave him some fame. The works at this time being a mixture of abstraction and futurism. When he first went to New York, it was as a war hero, a survivor and documenter of war in a bold new ‘futurist’ way.

Nevinson was invited to New York in 1919 by David Keppel of the print publishers Frederick Keppel and Co, to exhibit his War prints. Manhattan’s architecture inspired him, not only by the sheer beauty of its skyscrapers. ♣

Nevinson made two trips to New York, the first in 1919 and again the following year. His first visit was to attend the exhibition of his war etchings and lithographs. This first exhibition held at Keppel and Co was a great success and the catalogue came with an introduction by the well known American critic and connoisseur Albert Gallatin.

It would have been during this first trip that Nevinson started a whole series of new works based on New York City. Many of these works were made from sketches and studies he made from the first trip, but were sold during his second. Many of the works are harder to date, a lot of the works are considered 1919/1920 but many of the dates rely on the year they were sold, not the year they were made. The process of lithography and etchings needed to be made in the studio later, some were sold at an exhibition in 1921. It is likely that many of the works that are etchings where also made into oil paintings(The Great White Way, Three AM), but their location is currently a mystery.

C.R.W Nevinson – Temples of New York, 1919 (Etching)

C.R.W Nevinson – The Statue of Liberty from the Railroad Club, 1919 (Oil)

C.R.W Nevinson – New York, Night, 1919 (Oil)

The print below ‘Looking down Wall Street’ has a view of the Brooklyn Bridge in the top left corner, though only 30 something years old at the time, the bridge and its size were still a marvel of engineering.

C.R.W Nevinson – Looking Down into Wall Street, 1919 (Lithograph)

He was clearly captivated by the city, compared to the London of the 1920s it must have been something, the skyscrapers of the time in New York would have been the Woolworth Building (60 stories) and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower (50 stories), but most of the ‘skyscrapers’ of the early 1920s peaked around 30 stories tall. London didn’t start building above 20 stories until the 1960s. Nevinson is quoted below:

‘New York, being the Venice of this epoch, has triumphed, thanks to its engineers and architects, as successfully as the Venetians did in their time.. Where the Venetian drove stakes into his sandbanks to overcome nature, the American has pegged his city to the sky. No sight can be more exhilarating and beautiful than this triumph of man. ♥

C.R.W Nevinson – The Great White Way, 1920 (Lithograph)

Between the New York exhibitions of 1919 and October 1920 Nevinson exhibited in the Senefelder Club – Leicester Galleries in February 1920 and also at the Manchester City Art Gallery in July 1920. The Great White Way was shown first at the Senefelder Club and Three AM shown first at Manchester.

C.R.W Nevinson – Three A.M. – A Corner by Madison Square at Night. 1920 (Etching)

C.R.W Nevinson – Looking through Brooklyn Bridge, 1920 (Etching)

His second exhibition held at the Bourgeois Gallery was much larger, with a series of paintings and etchings of New York that failed to capture the attention of the public. The press were kind but the works did not sell well and there is little reporting of the second exhibition in comparison to the first. Nevinson hired a cuttings agency to collect all items about him that featured in the press.

Below is an extract from the New York Herald, 24th October, 1920.

“Art,” says Mr. Nevinson, “triumphs in utility, and the most beautiful products of the modern world are a Rolls-Royce car and a skyscraper. They have been built for strict utility; their lines are perfect and they must appeal to the genuine artist. New York will be remembered for its introduction of the architecture of the skyscraper long after its people have been forgotten for other things.“ ◊

New York should like Mr. Nevinson and his work, for surely he is her friend. No native could ever idealize America’s greatest city more than this foreigner. ◊

C.R.W Nevinson – Under Brooklyn Bridge, 1920 (Etching)

Here I start to look at the station and railway pictures. Here is a photograph of the Fulton Street Station and the Elevated railway. Railways like this started in London but were built of bricks with viaduct structures. In New York, the buildings were made of iron girders and so the railways were bridged with girders.

In a wonderful bit of research I found a photograph of the station at the intersection of Greenwich Street in Manhattan. When the railway line was taken down the World Trade Centre was built just to the left of this photograph.

Greenwich and Fulton Streets, 1914

The photograph shows the same view only 4 years before Nevinson stood in the same spot. Being able to pinpoint the location of the station has helped with the location of other works too.

C.R.W Nevinson – Third Avenue, Elevated Railway, 1920 (Drawing)

C.R.W Nevinson – Third Avenue, Elevated Railway, 1920 (Oil)

Critics have suggested that the almost Monet style of the oil painting Third Avenue, Elevated Railway is down to it being painted on the spot and not in Nevinson’s studio. The etching that would have been made later still has some of the free feeling that the painting has and is more pictorial and more photo accurate than many of his pictures are.

C.R.W Nevinson – Under the Elevated, 1921 (Etching)

C.R.W Nevinson – New York: An Abstraction, 1921 (Etching)

C.R.W Nevinson – Fulton Station of 3rd Ave El, c1950

With the help of the drawing above and finding the location we can see that Nevinson was working in this part of New York on many views. The photo above is the same view as the etching above and the painting below. You can look at the metal fire escapes on either side of the buildings and find they match up. It is the view from the very end of the platform of the Fulton station. The skyscrapers become a theatrical fantasy.

C.R.W Nevinson – The Soul of the Soulless City, Previously known as New York – an Abstraction ,1920 (Oil)

The poor reception of this exhibition may have accelerated Nevinson’s disaffection with the city. His growing embitterment is perhaps reflected by the change of title. Originally exhibited in 1920 at the Bourgeois Galleries, ‘New York, as New York – an Abstraction’, it was re-titled ‘The Soul of the Soulless City’ in the Faculty of Arts Exhibition, Grosvenor House, London, in 1925 probably at Nevinson’s instigation. ♦

C.R.W Nevinson – Looking Down on Downtown, 1920 (Oil)

C.R.W Nevinson – New York, Night, 1920 (Mezzotint)

† Michael Walsh – A Dilemma of English Modernism: Visual and Verbal Politics in the Life and Work of C. R. W. Nevinson (1889-1946), 2007
♣ C.R.W. Nevinson 1889 – 1946 Retrospective Exhibition Of Paintings, Drawings And Prints: Kettle’s Yard Gallery 1988
♥ David Cohen – C.R.W. Nevinson, The Twentieth Century, p46, 1999.
◊ New York Herald, 24th October, 1920.
♦ Tate, London, T07448.

Tags CRW Nevinson

Paul Nash – Different Places

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 14th August 2019

Paul Nash’s book ‘Places – 7 Prints’ has some curious works you might think were only made for the book. It is a rare book to find, being printed in 255 editions (55 of those a folio copy).

Many of the woodcuts also came with a poem following them. It was 1922 and a great time for poetry; it was just after the First World War and the Georgian Poets series of books published by Edward Marsh were popular. I can’t help but feel personally that Nash was only interested in poetry because Marsh made it fashionable and he was also a great patron of young artists. Marsh did go on to buy one of the pictures in this post, Tench Pond in a Gale in 1922 (Before the war Marsh wanted to publish a book of young artists work called Georgian Drawings, it never happened).

The cover features a woodcut ‘Meeting Place’ of two naked swimmers by a tree lined pond, printed in 1922.

Paul Nash – Meeting Place, 1922 (Woodblock)

Rather like what I have found with Eric Ravilious, many works are recycled from a sketch, to a woodcut and then a painting. It is all part of a long process – one at the time that would be new, ‘commercial art’ and in tow, printmaking; by this I mean that a woodblock printed book is more ‘mass production’ in the same way a limited edition print of 250 is.

It is nice to pin the location down to reality. The pond was in the garden of Claud Lovat Fraser’s parents’ home at Buntingford, Hertfordshire.

In preparation for the oil Nash wrote to the present works first owner, Desmond Coke, requesting ‘The Chestnut Waters I really do want photographed very badly because I am doing a large painting of that design for the show.’. †

He wrote again to Coke stating that the oil ‘is the best of the lot and nearest to being an achievement I think’ †

Paul Nash – Chestnut Waters, 1923 (Oil)

A year before the oil was made, Nash made a watercolour of the same location. What I always took to be a tree in the middle of the woodcut, appears in the Oil and watercolour to be heavy branches, laden down over the pond and the reflections. I rather think the oil painting is lovely in that Cézanne cubist style of colour shading light-to-dark. But the watercolour to me has a lightness more like a cathedral interior.

Paul Nash – Chestnut Waters, 1922 (Watercolour)

Below is an undated landscape in the Fitzwilliam, from what I can tell of the notes it is the back of another painting and so, likely unfinished. We can never say it is a relation of the paintings above, but there is a squared off pond lined with trees and could well be the plein air version made in the garden before working ‘Chestnut Waters’ up in his studio.

Paul Nash – Landscape, The Fitzwilliam Museum

The year before in Iden, Sussex, Nash drew one of his more famous works, Tench Pond in a Gale (Below). Is it a painting that puts to use all Nash’s wonderful skills of drawing trees but gives them a drama and movement unlike his other works.

Paul Nash – Tench Pond in a Gale, 1921–2

Below is another woodcut from the 7 Places book. Not unlike the Tench Pond in a Gale picture, but not like it enough either.

Paul Nash – Black Poplar Pond, 1922

Most of the illustrations in 7 Places came with a poem by Nash. The poems here are not amazing and may be why they have been forgotten.

Paul Nash – Black Poplar Pond
Black Poplars shudder in the sun. Erect or slanting, their whorled shafts project a glinting shower into the crowded scaffolding of trees. Blunt shards of pine absorb the falling beams which polished leaf and rounded bole reflect in myriad facets of fierce light. With height of noon floods of cool wind pass over the fields, shattering quiet. The corn stalks bend, boughs swing their burdens to and fro. Dark waters image changes in grimace. The choir of leaves opens its song.

Ponds were clearly an inspiration to Nash in his 7 Places, there are many examples of pond works from 1921 – 1922. The one below is a wonderful example with the textures in his trees.

Paul Nash – Landscape in pale tones, 1921

Paul Nash – Garden Pond, 1922

Paul Nash – Garden Pond
With silence force the sun hurles down light, With no disturbance, with no sound it falls upon the trees, the grass, the waters of the pond. Noiselessly, without movement, light mutilates the trees, the grass, beats upon the waters. No tumult comes. There is no cry, no moan. The leaves glitter, the grass is shining, the waters flash in the still pond.

Paul Nash – Garden Pond, 1st Proof with studies to the sides, 1922

Paul Nash – Dark Lake, 1922

Paul Nash – Dark Lake
In a black pine wood is a lake, an inscrutable, dark face, staring up at the sun or into the moon’s face or at the stars peering down. Above, the pines in tall columns and mighty domes and great arches stand nearly motionless. At the water’s edge rushes and irises mass their slender swords. The grey teeth of an old fence look ghostly against dark waters. Beyond a platform jutting out, a woman, naked gleams in this shadowy place.

Paul Nash – Winter, 1922

Paul Nash – Pond in the Fields, 1927

Paul Nash – Study for Paths into the wood, 1922

Above is a drawing dated 1921, dedicated to William Rothenstein from Paul Nash as a Christmas card in 1923.

Being the drawing that would have been used to carve a woodcut, the woodcut is in reverse and printed below. The figure is harder to see below in the woodcut.

Paul Nash – Paths into the wood, 1922

Paul Nash – Winter Wood, 1922

† Paul Nash by Andrew Causey, p378, 1980

What is Studio Pottery?

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 31st July 2019

It is always hard to say what the joy is in studio pottery, but I think it is knowing that it is crafted and made rather than mass produced in a factory. There has always been a tradition of decorated slipware in pottery as other than paintings, carvings in churches and textile embroidery there were few opportunities to ever see any decoration on items. If you did, it was normally because you too had money.

Thomas Toft – Staffordshire Slipware Dish, c1670-90

After the fashions of early slipware and large decorated chargers came the smaller refined pots that the public would buy in the Victorian periods. This followed the social change of home ownership and so factories had new markets to cater for. This is the time when Royal Doulton and Brannam Pottery both stopped making sewage pipes and chimney pots and started to make domestic kitchenware and vases.

Arthur Bamkin for Charles Brannam – Sgraffito Cup, 1898

After the fashions of early slipware and large decorated chargers came the smaller refined pots that the public would buy in the Victorian periods. This followed the social change of home ownership and so factories had new markets to cater for. This is the time when companies like Royal Doulton and Brannam Pottery both stopped making sewage pipes and chimney pots and started to make domestic kitchenware and vases.

Robert Wallace for Martin Brothers – Double Sided Face Jug, 1901

The Martin Brothers whose large birds command such high prices also demand a mention for they were the blurred line of Doulton’s factory made designs and Brannam Pottery’s craft. They created vases with bold and bright decoration before going into a series of ceramics with natural earthy tones. The most interesting thing about them is that they can be incredibly surreal, and, well, tacky. Some are beautiful, but I thought it was good to show some early surrealism.

Joseon Dynasty Moon Jar, 18c.

The moon Jar above is the most famous example of Bernard Leach’s effect on British Crafts. He bought the jar while out in the East and brought it back to Britain and when he died he left to Lucie Rie, who in-turn left it to the British Museum.

Bernard Leach was raised in the days of the British Empire. His father worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and as a child he was based in Hong Kong and in Japan before returning to Britain to attend schooling. He attended the Slade for a time and then the London School of Art in Kensington where he was taught etching by Frank Brangwyn. Leach was at this time very fond of Etching and returned to Japan with the intention of teaching it to the Japanese.

Bernard Leach – A London Scene (Etching), 1908-9. (Leach-Redgrave Restrike)

While in Japan Leach became obsessed by the craft of pottery and took lessons with Urano Shigekichi. After learning the industry for a year he set up his own pottery in Japan before moving to China. He exhibited his works and this lead to the introduction to Shōji Hamada.

Bernard Leach – Leaping Fish Vase, c1965

Hamada was deeply impressed by a Tokyo exhibition of ceramic art by Bernard Leach, who was then staying with Yanagi Sōetsu, and wrote to Leach seeking an introduction. The two found much in common and became good friends, so much so that Hamada asked and was granted permission to accompany Leach to England in 1920 when the latter decided to return and establish a pottery there.

Edgar Skinner – a friend of Leach’s father introduced him to the St. Ives Guild of Handicrafts which was supported by local wealthy philanthropist called Francis Horne who lived at Tremorna in Carbis Bay. She offered him a capital loan of £2500 to set up his pottery with Hamada and also an assured income of £250 for 3 years.

The Leach Pottery was founded and over the next ten years they would experiment with the clays, slips and glazes in the UK and different woods to burn in the kilns. In 1923 Michael Cardew joined the pottery and left some years later to found Winchcombe Pottery.

The Leach Pottery took on various students to work there: Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie, Norah Braden, Charlotte Epton and Dorothy Kemp. It was not the only pottery but I think it is honest to say the Leach pottery and the skills learnt in Asia have made him important. His influence would go on when there was a serge in home pottery in the 1960s and people copied his designs and used his glaze recipes.

Charlotte Epton – Jar and Lid, c1930

The other pottery that helped the surge of British Studio Pottery would be at Dartington Hall. Bernard Leach helped set up the pottery in the late 1920s. He recommended Sylvia Fox-Strangeways who was the first potter at Dartington. She was joined by Marianne De Trey who would later run it and education pupils.

Many other potters were forging the way in Studio Pottery in the interwar years: William Staite Murray, Dora Billington, Lucie Rie, Ursula Mommens, Ray Finch and Hans Coper. But to list the styles they made, the shapes of pots and their individual glazes would make this post too long

In the 1960s and 70s in the UK there was a boom in the amount of small potteries. Some looked back at the methods of making pottery in the Leach-Asian tradition, some went on to make domestic wear, others just experimented with styles. There are so many wonderful potters from all over Britain and their decorations and ways of potting are all so different. To collect it now doesn’t have to be expensive as some galleries would have you believe and I have been both collecting and selling pots in Cambridge for years.

Peter C Arnold for Alderney Pottery – Pot and Lid, c1970

I don’t know if the modern potters would call it their moment of postmodernism, but there are many craftsmen out there who are experimenting with the size and form of things. Below is plate by Dylan Bowen who has an amazing eye for almost careless slip designs.

Dylan Bowen – Plate, c2015

Now some potters make record amounts at auction and museums have exhibitions of their pottery, like Kettle’s Yard with Jennifer Lee. In the 1990s David Bowie invested in the Leaping Fish Vase by Bernard Leach and in the sale of his collection of art it broke the record for a Leach work at £32,500.

Tags studio pottery

Who is Robin Darwin

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 24th July 2019

Robin Darwin – Near Dedham, Suffolk, 1956, Government Art Collection

Sir Robert Vere “Robin” Darwin KCB CBE RA RSA PRWA NEAC has more names and honours to his name than you would think possible, so why isn’t he better known?

He was the son of the golf writer Bernard Darwin and his wife the engraver Elinor Monsell. His aunts were Gwen Ravarat and Margaret Keynes. One of his sisters was the potter Ursula Mommens who married and divorced Julian Trevelyan before Mary Fedden. He was a great-grandson of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Robin was both an artist and an educator.

Robin Darwin – The Thames at Kew, Oliver’s Island, 1954

Robin started off at Eton and then went on to the Slade art school, under Henry Tonks he lasted only a term. When the Second World War came he found himself as an artistic administrator in the Camouflage unit under the Ministry of Home Security in Leamington Spa designing things from inflatable rubber tanks to working out how to disguise large factories from the air with trees and their shadows. He went back to teach art at Eton and there set up the school’s famous ceramics department.

Robin Darwin – Suffolk Landscape, c1935

He then moved on to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in 1945, looking at the post-war reconstruction of London. Then he was appointed education officer in the newly formed Council of Industrial Design. It was under the Board of Trade and a propaganda unit for British Design. Under the leadership of Gordon Russell and Paul Reilly it became the Design Council.

Robin Darwin – The Wittenham Clumps

He was also involved with the Festival of Britain but he is now famous for being the rector of the Royal College of Art from 1948 until 1971.

Through his reforming leadership of the Royal College of Art, Robin Darwin had an enormous impact on C20 art and design. As a subsequent Rector of the RCA, Sir Christopher Frayling, points out in his introduction to this first biography of Charles Darwin’s great-grandson, Darwin’s influence at the College has lasted for over sixty years, far longer than the Bauhaus existed (thirteen years) or Black Mountain College’s celebrated twenty-year heyday.

Tags Robin Darwin

Thorpeness

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 17th July 2019

Thorpeness is a curious place on the Suffolk coastline. Between Aldeburgh and Sizewell, it is a toytown. There are some old properties in the village but many of them are 20th century.

In 1910, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, a Scottish barrister who had made his money building railways around the world, increased the family’s local estates to cover the entire area from north of Aldeburgh to past Sizewell, up the coast and inland to Aldringham and Leiston.

Most of this land was used for farming, but Ogilvie developed Thorpeness into a private fantasy holiday village, to which he invited his friends’ and colleagues’ families during the summer months. A country club with tennis courts, a swimming pool, a golf course and clubhouse, and many holiday homes, were built in Jacobean and Tudor Revival styles. Thorpeness railway station, provided by the Great Eastern Railway to serve what was expected to be an expanding resort, was opened a few days before the outbreak of World War I. It was little used, except by golfers, and closed in 1966.

For three generations Thorpeness remained mostly in the private ownership of the Ogilvie family, with houses only being sold from the estate to friends as holiday homes. In 1972, Alexander Stuart Ogilvie, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie’s grandson, died on the Thorpeness Golf Course. Many of the houses and the golf course and country club had to be sold to pay death duties.

In many ways Thorpeness reminds me of Frinton-On-Sea, a protective elite of housing owners, but Frinton (though also hellish) has some fantastic art deco properties. Thorpeness is a poorly maintained theme park of some strange Tudor England. It reminded me of the home-made houses for tri-ang train sets and early dolls houses.

Tri-ang dollhouses #93

While walking around I kept thinking of the quote below by Linda Smith on golf courses vs the countryside. To me Thorpeness is fake architecture vs historical homes.

People say ‘it’s out in the countryside’, a golf course is not the countryside – it’s the countryside tidied up, it’s the countryside for people who wished the countryside had wipe clean surfaces, it’s the countryside for people whose gardens are full of conifer and heather.

Tags Photography, Suffolk