Page 23 - Studio International - September 1974

prettiness and anecdotal nature of the work at NEAC member Wilson Steer to teach early success at a time when his more difficult,
home, and enthusiastic for the impressionism of painting. Despite his earlier insularity, Steer more painterly contemporaries were still
Monet, as well as for Manet.'5 Brave words in was one of those who were able, by the end of unregarded.
retrospect. It had originally, and perhaps the century, to make a sympathetic and Mary Chamot, herself a pupil of the Slade
somewhat optimistically, been considered that original response to French Impressionism, and of Tonks, wrote as late as 1937, in her
the club should be called the society of Anglo- and during the 189os he painted some attractive Modern Painting in England, that John was
French Painters. All the founder members sunlit beach scenes with the bright colour and `undoubtedly a great artist . . . in the first
had studied in Paris, but one has to exercise speckled brushwork typical of the later phase quarter of the century the leader of all that
some caution against claiming too much for of Impressionism in France. But by 1910 he was was rebellious, independent and vital in
these studies. Wilson Steer, for instance, who painting landscapes in a more fluid vein, with British art.' (The emphasis upon rebellion is
was in Paris from 1882-4, returned with more emphasis on tonality than brightness of significant. It was an aspect of the rejection of
virtually no understanding of the French hue. He turned increasingly to the use of those restricting moral values which were
language and with little enthusiam for the watercolour. His career was typical of the main identified with the Victorian era, and we shall
Manet retrospective exhibition which he had line of development within the NEAC: a encounter it again in a different context.)
seen at the end of his stay. gradual progress from moderate Impressionism John certainly conducted himself like a
The strongest French influences on the to moderate conservatism. In retrospect it seems Bohemian, and for a while, from the time of his
majority of NEAC members were from men more appropriate to see the work of his later highly successful first exhibition in 1904 for
like Bastien-Lepage, Alphonse Legros and years as a refined survival from the nineteenth half a dozen years, he might have looked to some
Carolus Duran, all comparatively conservative century, continuing a tradition of British like England's most modern artist - i.e. most
painters by the standards of a Monet or a landscape painting which no longer carried the like the image which the new French
Renoir. Manet was generally admired both as same potential significance, than as a professionals were supposed to put across -
an acceptable forerunner of Impressionism contribution to the development of art in the but after 1910 no one as entirely unaffected by
and as one who had paid due respect to the old twentieth. But at the Slade his was the most the art of Cezanne as John was, and was to
masters and to Velazquez (then in vogue among `modern' example among the principal members remain, could fairly have claimed leadership of
painters in London and the subject of a study of staff. the avant garde. His small, idyllic oil paintings,

(Far left) Harold Gilman
Mrs Mounter's Drawing Room 1916
Oil on canvas, 5r x 76 cm.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
(Left) Harold Gilman
The Breakfast Table 1910-11
Oil on canvas, 27 x 20¾ in.
Southampton Art Gallery
(Right) Walter Sickert
Harold Gilman c. 1912
Oil on canvas, 24x 18 in.
The Tate Gallery, London
(Far right) Walter Sickert
L'Affaire de Camden Town 1909
Oil on canvas, 24 x 16 in.
Private collection

emphasizing the importance of techniques). It Despite the innovations in studio practice of 1910-14, which were to remain his most
was, however, largely due to the influence and in the technology of painting, it was still attractive works though he lived until 1961,
of NEAC members, many of whom became considered by the majority that the principal testify to the endurance of a taste for lyrical
teachers, that recent French studio practice obligation upon a school of art was that its subject painting untouched by French
and toned-down French 'plein-air' techniques students should become proficient in drawing influences much beyond Manet.
became adapted in one or two of the more (contrast Clive Bell's 'All that the drawing- The same might be said of the oil paintings of
advanced art schools in London, notably at the master can teach is the craft of imitation', in William Nicholson, a friend of John's and
Slade School, by far the most important Art, 1914), and the models of such proficiency slightly older. His landscapes of the South
college of art in London at the turn of the were still considered to be the old masters. The Downs painted during the first dozen years of
century. The most advanced students of the dominating personality at the Slade, according the century have the same directness and
later 189os, a category which included to the testimony of Paul Nash and many others7, simplicity as John's figure-and-landscape
Augustus John, Harold Gilman, Wyndham was Henry Tonks; and Tonks, though a New paintings from Wales and the South of France
Lewis and Spencer Gore, drew English member, taught drawing with an the former gain by an English restraint and
regularly from live models, to paint direct from anatomist's rigour. Augustus John was refinement of tone, the latter by a French
subjects rather than exclusively from drawings considered one of the first of the Slade's plein-air freshness of colour. John's and
or sketches, to employ 'daylight' tones and `modern' products, and during his student Nicholson's works, like Steer's after a certain
colours, and to cultivate a certain informality. years, from 1894-98, it was as an accomplished date, stand apart from the main channels by
Alphonse Legros held the chair at the Slade draughtsman that he starred. His facility in means of which modern art developed, and
from 1873-93, and was succeeded by Fred drawing was the foundation of his subsequent they offer no alternative direction, but they are
Brown, who immediately engaged his fellow reputation and no doubt the main reason for his among the more attractive English paintings

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