Camouflage and its part in WW1 has a curious and quaint history. Most people know of the dazzle ships and how the painter Norman Wilkinson found that painting the ships not to fit in made them harder to target by the enemy. But other areas of WW1 where more subtle.
Leon Underwood – Looking Toward Ardregne, 1917
It was another artist, Leon Underwood who worked with Solomon J Solomon on making a fake tree Observation post. With so much of the war being fixed with both sides in trenches, any height was an advantage to see what the enemy was up to. You can see how trees ended up looking after months of shell-fire from the Paul Nash painting below, a fractured set of stumps piercing the sky.
Paul Nash – The Menin Road, 1919
The plans for the Trees were drawn out in blue print to look like Shelled Trees and then would be transported to the place and erected side-wards and hope the enemy didn’t notice one new tree on the horizon
Construction blueprint plan of the Observation Tree.
Below is a photograph of one of the trees in the state of manufacture. In front of the men are the shredded crowns of the trees.
Below is another photograph of a tree in situ on the field with a warren for the men to get in and out of. In the side would be a slit for the men to look out of, rather than looking over the top.
The painting below is a large Leon Underwood of how the tree was erected, foundations laid into the side of a trench so men could get under and in, others carrying the sides ready to be grafted together.
What I like about the camouflaged tree is how bonkers it is but also how obvious. Below is a painting in the epic, almost religious style by Leon Underwood, not unlike Jesus at the Cross.
The school had no formal curriculum and students studied what and when they wished
The Grosvenor School of Modern Art sounds like it was a liberal progressive place, but what I have always wondered was, what was the teaching like? I find it a curious place in how much of the teachers hand has been passed on to the pupils.
In Wood:
The Grosvenor School of Modern Art was a private British art school. It was founded in 1925 by the Scottish wood engraver Iain Macnab in his house at 33 Warwick Square in Pimlico, London. From 1925 to 1930 Claude Flight ran it with him.
The influence of the teaching of Iain MacNab is a strange one. I have noticed that many of his pupils at the
Grosvenor School of Modern Art made prints under his direction with a Spanish flare to them, mostly in the buildings. It is a signature look for MacNab, so I can’t help wondering if he was such a dominant presence that he got his pupils to mimic his work? Was it a way to succeed under him? Were the pupils expected to pick up a style and mimic it in the same way old masters like Rembrandt used to with their pupils?
The main characteristic is the buildings have have a roof that slopes down with no central pitch. I wonder how many of the pupils travelled to Spain in the late 30s or were they showing a solidarity towards the Spanish Civil War? This post is full of questions I have no answers for.
I do know that Macnab did travel to France, Spain and Corsica himself. Many of his later works in the 50s were of such landscapes. The Grosvenor School was closed in the Second World War.
Iain MacNab – A Southern Landscape, 1941
Peter Barker Mill – Spanish Lane
Tom Chadwick – Unknown, c1930s
Suzanne Cooper – Back Gardens, c1930s
Rachel Reckitt – The Farm or House in Catalonia, c1930s
Guy Malet – Gran Canaria, 1939
Alison Mckenzie – Staithes
In Lino
When it came to Linocut, in the School they followed the external fashions of Futurism. A movement that started publicly in 1909 it inspired many British artists in the First World War, mostly C R W Nevinson. But these prints are much later from the 1930s. So maybe they are post-futurist? The mechanical features, repeating patterns and graphic devices made a beautiful set of prints. Ending up looking so similar to each other I still find it hard to know what is Power and
The painting series by Bawden named as ‘Pengwern’ is really in ‘Dyserth’ in Wales. The limestone quarry is in the hills above Dyserth in Denbighshire and it was closed in the 1980s.
Bawden’s paintings capture a curious geometry in the landscape with the sides of the quarry looking like large pieces of flint. Paintings two and three are the same view so are interesting to compare. At this time Bawden would start the paintings off with a drawing and then finish them in the hotel or at his Saffron Walden studio.
Edward Bawden – Quarry at Pengwern I, Llanrwst, 1977
Edward Bawden – Quarry at Pengwern II, Llanrwst, 1977
Edward Bawden – Quarry at Pengwern III, Llanrwst, 1977
The David Parr house is a new discovery for Cambridge. The exterior was very shabby and the interior was a mystery to most of the world, but it is highly decorated in the Arts & Crafts style. The house was owned by David Parr, who worked for F. R. Leach & Sons.
The company Leach & Sons were mostly employed in Cambridge restoring and painting churches and the university. Most noted is the work at All Saints Church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge in 1870 for
George Frederick Bodley. William Morris was previously employing Leach at Jesus Chapel as early as 1866.
Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge. William Morris Designed Ceiling. Executed by F.R.Leach & Sons
After working as Morris’s executant painter at Jesus College and for Bodley and Kempe at All Saints’ F.R.Leach developed a flourishing practice as a decorative artist on his own, and also branched out into the design of stained glass. Further research is needed to establish the complete corpus of his work, but during the 1870s and 1880s he carried out schemes of decoration in the Churches of St Clement, St Edward, Holy Sepulchre and St Michael. Painted work inside Scott’s new Master’s Lodge at St John’s College is also ascribed to him.
In St Michael’s, he worked under the younger Gilbert Scott to decorate the chancel arcades and east wall in 1874. Four years later he also painted the nave and designed stained glass for the west window. The firm was continued by his son, Barnett Leach, at the original premises of 36-37 City Road, until well into the middle of this century. †
Interior of All Saints Church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge. Designed by George Frederick Bodley and executed by F. R. Leach and Sons.
We may state that the roof of the nave has been richly decorated with black monograms of the Holy Name, and varied scroll work in red colour on the plaster ground… Great praise must be given to Mr F. R. Leach, our fellow-townsman, who is carrying out these works, for it is no small credit these days to be able to work out such details in free hand drawing… and we rejoice that so important a step in the education of the Art workman should be so successfully illustrated in Cambridge. †
My memories with the Parr house don’t factor him at all, but I do remember Mrs Palmer. The shop that I have my artworks in is just over the road from 186 Gwydir Street and I would see her walking up and down the road with her walking stick and large coat. Elsie Palmer came to Gwydir St in 1927 aged 12 to look after her grandmother, David Parr’s wife. She lived there for 85 years and inherited the house, got married and had a family within this gothic revival interior.
When she died the property was preserved and has been in the process of being cleaned and restored. As when the house was opened I wasn’t allowed to take photographs inside all of the photos are scavenged from other people who could.
† Duncan Robinson – Morris & Company in Cambridge, 1980
The power of the Great Bardfield artists over the past few years is being tested, the prices they command when exhibitions happen and how much they command at different times. I have lot of people who sell me work tell me how they could pick up a Olive Cook or Bawden so cheaply years ago, but this is now not the case. It’s the power of the Fry Art Gallery and their sales over the years. Fry Art Gallery is now coming into force and artists are being called Bardfield Artists, just because they are in the Gallery, but they are not. One is John Bolam. Lately I just corrected the Wikipedia page on him as it stated he was a Bardfield artist but I have found no evidence of this.
John Bolam – North Down Visit III, 1991
John Bolam was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire in 1922. He originally studied painting at Hornsey School of Art and furniture design at High Wycombe School of Art. From 1970 to 1983 Bolam was Head of the Cambridge School of Art working with Warwick Hutton and Walter Hoyle.
John Bolam is painting is influenced by John Piper, Ivon Hitchins and Graham Sutherland. His first major exhibition was the the AIA Gallery. Further exhibitions were at Whitechapel Art Gallery, Arts Council Gallery, the Leicester Galleries and the New Art Centre. He is in the collection of the Fry Gallery, P&O Orient Line, Nuffield Trust, Contemporary Art Society of Wales, Cambridge Pictures for Schools Scheme, Rank Xerox, Barclays Bank and Touche Ross.
Mr Bolam is an imaginative abstractionist who l;eaves nothing to chance.. such work of Bolam’s that I have seen persuades me that no artist could have cultivated his chosen plot with more delicate care and refinement. †
Due to being in the Fry Art Gallery collection there is a myth that Bolam was part of the Bardfield Group but I have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate it. It is not in any of the books of Artists in the Fry or any of the reports about the exhibitions at Great Bardfield.
What he did do was move to Saffron Walden later in his life and so would have contended as an artist in North West Essex and thus for The Fry Art Gallery collection. But this myth is commonplace within a lot of the auction houses and galleries that sell his work. What is amazing is how no one does research anymore. It’s all copy and pasted from wikipedia.
I thought it would be good to have a dedicated Instagram account for the blog and so this morning I started one. You can follow me there too if you so choose. Be there at the start
The process of a picture is always interesting to me. I like seeing how a drawing is made, abstracted and translated into other mediums. Here are three versions of the same view of Thameside by John Minton. After the Second World War Minton took on a series of paintings of London’s Riverside and Docklands in rather bold contrast to some of his muted war works.
One of the most famous follies in Britain was in Gillingham. It was a folly for it was never completed, it was to be the Jezreel Temple of the Flying Roll. It was built by a religious sect, led by an ex-Indian army corporal
James Roland White, later known as James Jershom Jezreel. It was painted by Tristram Hillier for one of the Shell Posters.
The printed word in books, pamphlets, newspapers and the postal service may have helped the social situation that made for a boom in new religious orders at the time. In America there were the Mormans but in Britain there was also a wide range of strange religions and cults based on Christ, the power of the pyramids or séance and speaking with the dead, but mostly cranks seeking power. It happens that I collect the books of such people (especially on the pyramids), as a comedic and weird area of my library.
James White enlisted in the British Army on 27 July 1875 joining the 16th Regiment of Foot as a private, based in Chatham, Kent. It was at this time that White was also becoming interested in other spiritualists who had become famous. One was Joanna Southcott, a domestic servant who aged 42 in 1792 believed she had supernatural powers. Southcott wrote and
dictated prophecies in rhyme, announced herself as the Woman of the
Apocalypse spoken of in the Book of Revelations.
John Wroe was another inspiration. Wroe had set up the Christian Israelite Church at Chatham in 1875. The church was originally set up in Gravesend, Kent, ten miles from Gillingham.
White, while in Secunderabad, India, with his regiment complied a book made up from the writings of Johanna Southcott and John Wroe. To this compilation he gave the title of “The Flying Roll.” It is emblematically sculptured on the western tablet on the south front of the tower building as it remains today. The Flying Roll was described as a “ramshackle” book, made up of extracts “ransacked from the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations” together with references to Southcott and Wroe.
White joined a small branch of a Southcottian sect of Christian Israelites at Chatham, led by a Mr and Mrs Head and calling itself the New House of Israel. Shortly after joining he wrote a version of the manuscript to become known as the “Flying Roll” and took over the church. White adopted the name of James Jershom Jezreel and persuaded some worshippers that he was the Messenger of the Lord. White also went to Wrenthorpe, in Yorkshire, taking his “Flying Roll” with him. Here dwelt a community that had long followed John Wroe and Johanna Southcott. To these he made a fervid appeal claiming himself to be “a messenger sent by God to succeed their former prophet.” They promptly rejected both him and “Flying Roll.” He then returned to Chatham. As the “Flying Roll” had so signally failed him in both of these early appeals James decided to keep it back for later and happier days.
White completed his military service in 1881 and left the army to set about building a headquarters for his church. Leaving the army he changed his name from White and went on to be called Jezreel.
The site for his church was at the top of Chatham Hill and the highest point in the area. It was chosen, Jezreel said, after a revelation from God.
He envisaged a building based on Revelation xxi, 16: “And the city lieth foursquare, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth … the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal.” It was intended to be a
sanctuary, assembly hall and headquarters of the New and Latter House
of Israel, as the church was now called.
Around the perimeter there would be shops plus accommodation for Israel’s International College, a school he had already set up at his home in Woodlands Road, Gillingham.
Jezreel wanted the new HQ to be a perfect cube, each side 144 ft long. The architects, however, persuaded him the design was impractical and he agreed a modified version – 124 ft on each side and 120 ft high at each corner. It was to be built of steel and concrete with yellow brick walls and eight castellated towers. The trumpet and flying roll, crossed swords of the spirit and the Prince of Wales feathers (signifying the Trinity), were to be engraved on the outer walls.
First, an enormous cellar had to be constructed for storage, lift machinery, a heating system and the all-important printing presses to turn out thousands of copies of the Flying Roll and other literature essential to the
sect.
The circular assembly room was a vast amphitheatre, said to be capable of accommodating up to 5,000 people. In the roof would be a glass dome, 94 ft in diameter. Jezreel planned gardens and stately avenues from adjoining streets, making it a focal point for the area. The estimate for these plans was £25,000 and completion was set for 1 January 1885. The money came from his followers savings and fundraising.
Jezreel insisted his followers were abstainers from drink – a rule that did not apply to the leader, who often appeared to be drunk.
Jezreel fell ill towards the end of 1884 and died on 2 March 1885. Nobody mourned his death, for the word was without meaning in the sect, who expected his speedy resurrection. His coffin bore the simple inscription James Jershom Jezreel, aged 45 years, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Grange Road cemetery near his home in Gillingham.
The sect was taken over by his wife Clarissa (née Rogers), a follower 10 years his junior whom he had married on 17 December 1881. (On the marriage certificate she added the name Esther by which she was then known.) She ensured the building work continued. The foundation stone was laid on 19 September 1885.
Digital version of White’s original design.
Much of the tower’s foundations were in place by early 1886 and some of the peripheral buildings were occupied. As building costs soared, Clarissa made economies in the budget for keeping followers. She found the cost of feeding Jezreelites was particularly high and declared the sect would become vegetarian, living off a diet of bread and potatoes.
“Queen Esther” (the derogatory name by which she was called in the press), however, was often to be seen in the area riding in a coach and dressed in fashionable clothing. Inevitably, this led to dissent and the number of followers – at one point as high as 1,400 – began to dwindle. After a legal case involving one of the followers, who had given all his money to the cause, a mere 160 Jezreelites remained.
By June 1887, the whole of the outside except for the roof was finished, while inside the ground floor was complete with the newly installed steam printing-presses rapidly turning out the sect’s publications – the ‘Flying Roll’ and ‘Messenger of Wisdom’. On the floor above, large quantities of steel girders had been installed to construct the meeting hall, balconies, the hydraulic choirs and preacher’s revolving platform.
However, payments to the builders began to slow down. In November 1887, the building was ready for its concrete and asphalt roof but this had to be delayed, and as the money finally ran out in March 1888, work ceased. So, roofless and surrounded by scaffolding, Jezreel’s fantastic tower lay exposed to the elements. By that time, £30,000 had been spent and it was estimated that another £20,000 would be needed. There was a possibility that the building could have been finished, but the sudden death of Esther in June 1888 removed the Jezreelites’ unifying influence and almost certainly ensured that this would not happen.
In July, 1888, Mrs Jezreel died suddenly from peritonitis. She was 28. The sect fragmented and work on the tower was suspended forever. It was demolished in 1961. The shops (and members accommodation) mentioned near the site of the tower and demolished in 2008.
The work of Warwick Hutton is a bit of a rarity in the UK sadly. In Cambridge (where I live) he is known as a teacher as he was head of Fine Art at the Cambridge School of Art. Across the UK he is known as a painter and wood engraver and internationally he is remembered as an illustrator.
Hutton was born in England to an artistic family originally from New Zealand. His father was the glass engraver John Hutton (famous for the windows at Coventry) and his mother was Helen (Nell) nee Blair a talented painter. In 1939 the couple had twins, Macaillan (Cailey) John Hutton and Warwick (Wocky) Blair Hutton.
Warwick attended the Colchester School of Art where John O’Connor was the Principle and John Nash was teaching Botanical drawing. Richard Chopping was also teaching there. There Hutton met Elizabeth Mills and they were married in 1965.
Warwick Hutton – Two illustrations from Cats Free and Familiar, 1975
Warwick was working as an illustrator while helping his father engrave and install the windows for Coventry Cathedral. He worked for small private presses and major publishers, from the The Keepsake Press (Throwaway Lines, Cats Free and Familiar, Rider And Horse.) to the Cambridge University Press and their limited edition Christmas Book series (Waterways of the Fens, A Printer’s Christmas Books).
One of Hutton’s illustrations appeared in John O’Connors book The Technique Of Wood Engraving. Three years later Warwick published his own book Making Woodcutswith Academy Editions Ltd.
The major successes for Warwick Hutton were to come with a series of retelling of Bible Stories (Noah and the Great Flood, Jonah and the Great Fish, Moses in the Bulrushes) and Grimm’s Tales (Beauty and the Beast, The Nose Tree, The Tinderbox, The Sleeping Beauty) all of these internationally published.
ウォリックハットン – ねむりひめ, 1979
My two favourites are the Adam and Eve story for it not being shy about nakedness in children’s books and Sleeping Beauty for the wonderful use of the rose thorns and the patterns used throughout the book.
Warwick Hutton – Illustration from The Sleeping Beauty, 1986
The most attention came for Hutton when he worked with Susan Cooper, the author best known for The Dark Is Rising series. Hutton illustrated three books for Cooper: The Selkie Girl, Tam Lin and the Silver Cow for her, many of these are still in American libraries.
The later series of books by Hutton were re-telling of Greek Myths, Odysseus and the Cyclops, Persephone, Perseus, Theseus And The Minotaur the latter gaining much attention as mentioned in the New York Times Children’s Book Award review below:
The gifted British watercolorist turns to Greek myth and captures the bravery of young Theseus, the terrifying half-human Minotaur and the haunting beauty of ancient Crete. Here, as in all his other books, the ocean scenes have astonishing intensity and power. †
Hutton collaborated with other authors illustrating their books: Margaret & Raymond Chang on The Cricket Warrior: A Chinese Tale and James Sage on To Sleep.
Warwick Hutton – Illustration from The Cricket Warrior, 1994
Becoming Head of the Foundation course at the Cambridge School of Art Hutton was able to encourage the students to publish their works and set up and edited
Private View: The Journal from the Cambridge School of Art. The magazine republished works by famous artists as well as the students own work.
As a teacher at the Cambridge School of Art, Warwick provided the Council with a painting as part of the Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire, part of the Pictures for Schools series. The Pictures for Schools project came out of, and alongside many other famous ‘utopian’ projects like Contemporary Lithographs (1937-38), AIA Everyman’s Prints (1940) and the School Prints series of lithographs where major artists would be paid to design a lithograph that would be printed in thousands and then sold to schools cheaply.
In the founding of the Pictures for Schools project Nan Youngman wanted to have paintings more than prints from artists. Early contributors were L. S. Lowry, Tirzah Garwood, Stephen Bone and Bernard Cheese. After some decades it was taken over by Walter Hoyle who was the head of Printmaking at the Cambridge School of Art. Together they encouraged their student’s to donate works to the collection to be hung in schools.
Hutton’s painting of ‘Adam and Eve’ followed with a book he published in 1987 under the same name by Hutton with Atheneum Books.
Warwick Hutton – Adam and Eve, 1986 (In My Collection)
Hutton died of cancer in 1994 in Cambridge, England. An audiobook of Jonah and the Great Fish is for sale in the USA as an audiobook and a video can be found here. Interior of Noah’s Ark can be purchased as a card from Orwell Press Art Publishing.
Private View: The Journal from the Cambridge School of Art.
Bibliography
Throwaway Lines by Gavin Ewart, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1964
Waterways of the Fens by Peter Eden, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1972
Making Woodcuts by Warwick Hutton, 1974
Practical Gemstone Craft by Helen Hutton. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1974.
Cats Free and Familiar by Robert Leach, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1975
Rider and Horse by Martin Booth, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1976
Noah and the Great Flood re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1977
Mosaic Making Techniques by Helen Hutton, 1977
The Sleeping Beauty re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1979
The Nose Tree re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1981
Private View – Cambridge School of Art Magazine Editor and co-editor, 1982-1989
The Silver Cow: A Welsh Tale by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1983
Flesh of His Flesh – Poems by Florence Elon, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1984
Beauty and the Beast re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1985
Jonah and the Great Fish re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986
Moses in the Bulrushes re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986
The Selkie Girl by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986
Adam and Eve – The Bible Story re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1987
The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen and re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1988
Theseus And The Minotaur re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1989
To Sleep by James Sage. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1990
Tam Lin by Susan Cooper, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1991
The Cricket Warrior – A Chinese Tale retold by Margaret & Reymond Chang, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton
Perseus re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1993
Persephone re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1994
Odysseus and the Cyclops by Homer and re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1995.
A retelling of the Bible story and part of a series of stories published by Hutton on the Bible for release in America, the UK. It was also translated into French and German. It won the 1984 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Picture Books and was nominated for the 1984 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book. These videos were produced for the American Librarys to show and as teaching aids. They were also broadcast on USA Public TV. Not Animations but Icongraphic (the illustrations with a narrator and panning).
