Page 28 - Studio International - September 1974

area of mostly lower-middle-class housing, Gallery in April 1914, but Ginner was not Whistler of 'flinging a pot of paint in the face of
the public'; Whistler sued and was awarded token
had provided motifs for Sickert, and the really a strong painter and Gilman, who,
damages. Pyrrhic victory this may have been, but
paintings of the other members of the nuclear though never as subtle an artist as Gore, was history has backed Whistler.
group displayed a generally compatible range forceful and independent both in his art and 5 Alfred Thornton, 'The Diary of an Art Student of
of unaugust sites and unsmartened persons. his conversation, was to die of influenza in 1919, the Nineties', London 1938.
6 'The Art of Velazquez' by R. A. M. Stevenson,
Gore's 1912 painting of Harold Gilman's after some ten years of determined and London 1895. The author was critic of the
House, Letchworth28, with its bright reds and substantial work. In 1915 the principle of Pall Mall Gazette and a sympathizer with the
greens and muted yellows, showed just how `Camden Town' painting was perpetuated when NEAC. Writing on Velazquez's technique he asserted
that 'Technique is art'.
much could be done to render vivid but not Bevan, Gilman and Ginner were joined by 7 'Tonks was the Slade and the Slade was Tonks',
sensational a motif which was positively John Nash in the formation of the Cumberland from 'Outline, an autobiography' by Paul Nash,
Cézannesque in its ordinariness. Gilman's Market Group, but this alliance was London 1949.
8 'Sicken', by Wendy Baron, London 1973. I am
bed-sitter interiors of the years 1910-17 add subsidiary to the larger London Group, an indebted to this study for many references and matters
substance, richness and depth to a similarly amalgamation of Camden Town and of fact and have unquestioningly accepted its
undramatic and undramatized world. Vorticist forces under Gilman's presidency, authority in matters of chronology.
9 See Baron p.44. Sickert's essay was published as
By their unromantic, unpatronizing treatment in which all four were involved and which a contribution to a volume on 'Jules Bastien-Lepage
of figures, interiors and urban and suburban had held its first exhibition the previous year. and his Art', and was written in 1891.
landscapes these painters accorded due respect Within the London Group, which has survived 10 According to Hubert Wellington, who was in
Dieppe at the time. His reminiscences were
to the most valuable (if still comparatively to this day, one can find traces of Camden broadcast as 'With Sickert at Dieppe', and were
uncelebrated) aspects of the heritage of late Town influence ranging over a long period, published in The Listener 23 December 1954.
" 'The Derby Day', in Burlington Magazine,
nineteenth-century British painting: a concern but not generally such as do much service to December 1922.
to come to terms with the facts of an existence the memory of Sickert, Gore or Gilman. 12 `To come down to historical fact, I may as well
which a literary mythology did not any longer Ginners' article on 'Neo-Realism', first say that it is my practice that was transformed from
seem appropriately to embroider; a respect for published in January 1914 and used as a 1905 by the example of the development of Gore's
talent', from 'Whitechapel', New Age 28 May 1914.
the appearance of otherwise uncelebrated foreword to the catalogue of the Goupil See also 'A Perfect Modern', Sickert's obituary on
people; and a willingness faithfully to record Gallery exhibition, provides a fitting close to Gore, published in New Age, 9 April 1914.
the conditions and surroundings in which this episode in British art. " See `Sargentolatry', New Age 9 May 191o.
14 'The Language of Art', New Age 28 July 191o.
ordinary unglamorous lives were lived.29 `It is a common opinion of the day, 15 'The No-Jury System; the Allied Artists
In the twentieth century at least, such concerns especially in Paris (even Paris can make Association', Art News 14 July 1910.
have usually been pursued in painting, if at all, mistakes at times), that Decoration is the " In the obituary tribute 'Harold Gilman' by
Wyndham Lewis and L. F. Fergusson, London 1919.
at the expense of 'modernity' and unique aim of Art. Neo-Realism has another " 'The Language of Art', loc. cit.
sophistication of style. At their best the more aim of equal importance . . . It must interpret 18 'With Wisest Sorrow', The Daily Telegraph 1 April
representative painters of the Camden Town that which, to us who are of this earth, ought 1925. Quoted by Baron, op. cit. p. 12.
" Charles Marriot, 'Modern Movements in
Group offered exceptions to this rule. The most to lie nearest to our hearts, i.e. life in all its Painting', Universal Art Series, London 1920.
widely esteemed and rewarded artists of the aspects, moods and developments. 20 'Walter Sickert: a Conversation', Hogarth Press,
1934.
time were skilled men who painted portraits `Realism, loving life, loving its age, interprets 21 Virginia Woolf was the dedicatee of Bell's
glamorizing the wealthy, as did Sargent, its epoch by extracting from it the very essence `Civilization'. Bell's own view of Sickert's status was
John Lavery and William Orpen, or who of all it contains of great or weak, of beautiful given in typical voice in 'Since Cezanne,' published
painted genre scenes sentimentalizing the poor, or of sordid, according to the individual in 1922: 'Not much of English art is seen from Paris.
as did Alfred Munnings. Augustus John temp erament.'q We have but one living painter whose work is at all
well known to the serious amateurs of that city and he
squandered much of his considerable talent is Sickert. . . . In the remoter parts of Europe as
gets the cars and the cocktails is a matter of
doing both these things. During this period 1 late as the beginning of the seventeenth century
were to be found genuine and interesting artists
complete indifference to anyone who cares for
Sickert and the younger painters of the civilization and things of that sort. The trade- working in the Gothic tradition: the existence of
Camden Town Group stood for virtues central unionist is as good as the profiteer; and the profiteer is Sickert and Steer made us realize how far from the
to the practice of art as a social activity, and as good as the trade-unionist. Both are silly, vulgar, centre is London still. On the Continent such
good-natured, sentimental, greedy and insensitive; conservatism would almost certainly be the outcome
for all their bright colours and studied forms
and as both are very well pleased to be what they are of stupidity or prejudice; but both Sickert and Steer
it was this, rather than the mere pursuit of neither is likely to become anything better'. This have still something of their own to say about the
modernist style, that distinguished and is from the conclusion of Clive Bell's 'Civilization', world seen through an impressionist temperament.'
published in 1928 but, according to its Dedication, The unjustified characterization of Sickert as a
dignified their work. Theirs were not on the
the last part to be salvaged of a lengthy study of 'The provincial and conservative impressionist has stuck.
other hand paintings made at the service of any New Renaissance' on which Bell was working in 1910, 22 Baron, loc. cit. p. 109. According to Baron
rehearsed social or political ideology. They and of which his 'Art' of 1914 was also an extract. `Sicken reported this in a letter to Miss Ethel Sands
2 See for instance Clive Bell's introduction to the written during the 1914-18 War'. Although Sickert
were no more, and certainly no less, than the
Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition of 1912 : used the man accused and acquitted of the crime as a
representative works of men capable of putting `... The battle is won. We all agree now that any model for some of the Camden Town Murder
into practice in their art, as the majority of form in which an artist can express himself is compositions, his paintings on this theme are not
legitimate, and the more sensitive perceive that there identifiable as illustrations of the murder itself, which
their contemporaries were not, a concept of
are things worth expressing that could never have took place in 1907. Sickert seems to have used the
social life which allowed due recognition of the been expressed in traditional forms. We have ceased title as if to point towards certain aspects of the
actual facts of the organization of society in to ask, "What does this picture represent ?" and ask subject matter; one painting in the series has the
instead, "What does it make us feel ?" ' alternative title What shall we do for the Rent ?
early twentieth-century England. In the end
3 Compare Whistler, from his 'Ten O'Clock Lecture' 23 From 'Idealism', Art News 12 May 1910.
it was a matter of the superiority of their of 1885: 'Nature contains the elements, in colour 24 'The New Life of Whistler', Fortnightly Review
ability to experience without exclusiveness, and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains December 1908.
the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick 25 'Idealism', loc. cit.
and of their capacity for basic human sympathy.
and choose, and group with science, these elements, 26 'The New English and After', New Age 2 June
The outbreak of war in 1914, and the death that the result may be beautiful — as the musician 1910.
of Gore from pneumonia in the same year, gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he " See 'Harold Gilman' by Charles Ginner in
brings forth from chaos glorious harmony'; with Art and Letters vol. 3 no. 3 1919.
brought to a premature close one of this Maurice Denis, from his 'Definition of Neo- 28 Exhibited Anthony d'Offay Gallery, March 1974,
century's very few successful, modern, realist traditionism' of 1890: 'It is well to remember that a now in the Leicester Museum.
movements. Ginner and Gilman exhibited as picture — before being a war horse, a nude woman, or 29 I am thinking of such later nineteenth-century
some anecdote — is essentially a plane surface painters as Frank Holl, Luke Fildes, Ford Madox
`Neo-Realists' in the AAA exhibition of 1913
covered with colours assembled in a certain order.' Brown and Stanhope Forbes.
and in a two-man exhibition at the Goupil 4 Writing of his Nocturnes in 1878, Ruskin accused 30 New Age, January 1914.
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