Page 27 - Studio International - September 1974

yet the subjects remain entirely credible. considerable fault with the NEAC approach to in 1894, where he had met Gauguin; Grant and
Being evidently the works of a professional subject-matter: 'A glance round the walls of Lamb had both studied in Paris under Sickert's
deeply engaged with the technology of painting, any NEAC exhibition does certainly not give us friend Jacques-Emil Blanche; John and Innes
they are none the less manifestly pictures of the sensation of a page torn from the book of had both travelled and painted in France at
real people in real places and as such represent life. There is an over insistence on two motifs. various times; Lucien Pissarro had been
an extension beyond the range of subjects and The one the august-site motif, and the other the involved in the development of
sympathies generally deemed acceptable in smartened-up-young-person motif.'26 Neo-Impressionism (`Divisionism' or
British art at the time. The NEAC was still recruiting from the `Pointillism') almost since its beginning in
Sickert's paintings of the years 1903-10 Slade, and Gore was elected to membership Paris in the mid-188os. The formation of the
take their place among the few paintings in 1909, but as Sickert's criticism suggests, the group reflected a new and growing desire for
produced in Europe during this century which club had failed to adapt to meet the needs of cosmopolitanism in British art. Although less
have been, at the time of their production, the new generation and had been becoming than half of the founder members were to remain
genuinely controversial in terms of subject- increasingly conservative. By 1910 many of its at all closely associated, that so diverse a number
matter rather than merely in terms of members had joined the very Academy they of painters should have banded together at all
treatment. In particular the group of two- had originally banded together to oppose. testified to an urge towards the centralization
figure compositions, with clothed man and Among younger painters like Gore, Gilman, of the modern movement in England— a grouping
naked woman, which culminated in the Ginner and Bevan 'Post-Impressionist' interests of various forces towards some kind of common
Camden Town Murder series of 1908-9, had come to supersede the now orthodox end. Such alliances were to become increasingly
incurred widespread disapproval and were interest in Impressionism. An exhibition of 305 common, but for sheer weight of talent the
regarded by many as blatantly pornographic. Impressionist paintings staged by Durand Camden Town group has remained unmatched
The measure of the price Sickert paid for his Ruel at the Grafton Galleries, with large to this day.
resistance to what he called 'puritan standards of representations of the work of Degas, Monet and The group was formed primarily as an
propriety' is given by the response of his former Renoir, had passed without arousing much exhibiting society, and its first exhibition was
friend and colleague at the NEAC, Fred Brown, controversy in 1905. That was the penultimate held in June 1911; a second was staged in
principal of the Slade School, who wrote to year of Cézanne's life; Gauguin had been dead December of the same year, and a third, the
Sickert, in Dr Baron's words, 'that the sordid for two years and Seurat and Van Gogh for last, one year later. Thanks no doubt to
nature of his pictures since the Camden Town fifteen. Not before time 'Post-Impressionism' Sickert's prestige, all were held at the Carfax
Murder series made it impossible for there to be was in the air. In 1910 Gilman and Ginner made Galleries in London, and were followed there
any friendship between them.'22 a visit to Paris in the course of which they saw in 1913 by individual showings of the work
It is perhaps again necessary to stress that `everything that could be seen'; this included of Gilman, Gore, Sickert, Bevan and Pissarro,
Sickert's emphasis at this time (and it was a paintings by Van Gogh, Douanier Rousseau, who, together with Ginner, were the principal
comparatively brief period) upon what his Vuillard and even Picasso, Pellerin's Cézannes and characteristic exponents of the style which
contemporaries for the most part regarded as and the various holdings at Vollard's and came to be associated with the group. This was
`sordid' subjects, was not the consequence of Sagot's.27 The formation of the AAA was a certainly at best a 'Post-Impressionist' style:
any 'social realist' conviction. If he admired sign of the reluctance of younger artists to among the younger men the colours used were
painters like Millet and Courbet, as he submit their work to the now established often enriched far beyond the possibly
certainly did, it was partly in the context of his `modern' institution. Harold Gilman, who tried, naturalistic as intensification of hue took
belief that 'the plastic arts . . . fade at a breath found that his work was rejected, and it was he precedence over tonal organization — Gilman and
from the drawing room',23 but he would not who first suggested the formation of a new group. Ginner in particular came to paint at times like
have considered the expression of sympathy for There was a strong need for a new alignment English Fauves, though the true influences were
the poor as any more likely a means to good art of forces in some context more public than that Van Gogh and Gauguin; there was a tendency,
than the expression of adulation of the rich. provided by the Fitzroy Street 'at homes', and recalling Gauguin's 'cloisonnism', to enclose
He believed that the duty of the painter was to in 1911 the more advanced nucleus of that areas of dense impasto by means of a strong
accept facts as they presented themselves to wide circle was formalized into the Camden outline, particularly in the work of Bevan and in
him and to abstain from any practice aimed at Town Group. some of Gore's paintings such as The Balcony
the direction of sympathy. 'He (the painter) Gore, the most respected member among the at the Alhambra of 1911; and there was an
has no business to have time for preferences',24 advanced younger painters, was elected as occasional Cézannesque organization of forms
he wrote in rebuke of Whistler. And yet, in president, and the other founder members across the picture surface into highlighted
the end, each artist inhabits a different world were Manson (secretary), Bevan, Gilman, planes and shadowed backgrounds, particularly
of 'facts'. That the subjects of Sickert's Ginner, Malcolm Drummond, Augustus John in Gore's work of 1913-14. Sickert had already,
paintings should have been asserted as and his friend J. D. Innes (who died four years by the time of the first Camden Town Group
representative of la moyenne de la vie' in later), Henry Lamb, R. G. Lightfoot, Lucien exhibition, begun to turn from the dense,
itself constituted a criticism of established Pissarro, William Ratcliffe, J. Doman Turner, heavily-worked surfaces of the Camden Town
worlds of 'representative facts', a powerful Sickert and Percy Wyndham Lewis (doubtfully Murders paintings back to a lighter technique
criticism, in fact, of other pictures. 'The more accepted on Gilman's strong recommendation). more consistent with his work before 1906.
our art is serious, the more it will tend to avoid Lightfoot was replaced on his death a year later By the time of the last group exhibition his
the drawing-room and stick to the kitchen. by Duncan Grant, a member of the Bloomsbury period of major influence over the younger
The plastic arts are gross arts, dealing joyously circle. painters was at an end, although he had another
with gross material facts. . . •'25 Although there was certainly no consensus of 3o years of work before him. The typical and
attitudes among them to French painting, the most successful exponents of 'Camden Town'
In 191o, when Sickert came to review the majority of these painters had studied or worked painting were Gore and Gilman.
achievements of the NEAC, he accorded due in France during a period when the work of the Apart from the benefits they were also able
credit to that institution's influence upon the four great Post-Impressionists, Cézanne, to draw from late-nineteenth century French
painting techniques of a whole generation: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat, was already painting, what distinguished the better painters
`Technically we have evolved . . . a method of well established. Ginner had lived there until of the Camden Town Group was their
painting with a clean and solid mosaic of paint 1908; Gore had worked in Paris and Dieppe selection and interpretation of subjects.
in a light key'; but not surprisingly he found from 1904-6; Bevan had been to Pont-Aven Camden Town, then a comparatively depressed
81