Art – Page 37 – my daily art display

Eric Henri Kennington. Part 1 – World War I and T.E.Lawrence

Photo of Eric Kennington by Howard Coster (1936)

In my last blog I looked at the life and some of the paintings of Thomas Benjamin Kennington, the Victorian painter. Today, in the first of two instalments, I want to look at the life and art of his son Eric Henri Kennington, who was an early twentieth century sculptor and artist.

Eric was born in Fulham in March 1888. He was the second of two sons. His father was the Victorian artist Thomas Kennington and his mother, Elise Nilla Lindahl Steveni, was of Swedish origin. His mother died when Eric was just seven years of age.

Eric was born into a middle-class professional household and received the best education possible, attending St Paul’s School, London, one of the original nine British public schools and from there he enrolled at the Lambeth School of Art. He started exhibiting his works of art at the Royal Academy in 1908 and by the start of the Great War in 1914 he had gained a reputation as a skilful painter.

Costermongers (La Cuisine ambulante) by Eric Kennington (1914)

One of his pre-War paintings was entitled Costermongers (La cuisine ambulante) which was exhibited at the International Society in April 1914, and the work itself was actually bought by the then very famous society portraitist William Nicholson. It is now owned by the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris. It is the depiction of street life in London and is a fascinating capture of the individual characters. The art critic of the Daily Mail wrote in the August 24^th 1914 edition of the newspaper describing the scene as:

“…‘huge staring groups of life-size people, represented in a brutal airless way, though with a great deal of technical cleverness…”

and went on to acknowledge that they were protests against the “namby-pambiness’ of the usual group compositions..”

With the sale of the painting Kennington was able to set himself up in a studio in Kensington High Street.

The Great War broke out in Europe in July 1914 and in the next month, Kennington took himself down to the recruiting office which was close to his studio, off Kensington High Street, and enlisted with the 13^th Battalion, The London Regiment, Princess Louise’s Own Kensingtons. He was sent to the Hertfordshire village of Abbot’s Langley where he did his three months of basic training before being sent to France in November 1914. His days fighting on the front line were numbered as in mid-January 1915 he suffered a wound to his left foot which resulted in the amputation of his middle toe and he was extremely lucky not to have lost the whole of his left foot through infection. He was discharged from the army as being unfit for duty.

The Kensingtons at Laventie by Eric Kennington (1915)

It was during his time convalescing throughout the latter part of 1915, firstly in London, then Liverpool, that he painted one of his most famous works of art. It was a portrait of some infantrymen entitled The Kensingtons at Laventie, Winter 1914, which is now housed in the Imperial War Museum, London. The painting is extremely large measuring 140 x 152cms. The picture is a complex reverse painting on glass, where exterior layers of paint are applied first, giving the oils a particular clarity.

In the painting, Kennington depicts part of his platoon standing around in a deserted street in Laventie, a small French village in the Pas-de-Calais region, close to the Belgium border. The village had been almost destroyed by shell fire. It is set in the winter of 1914 with snow on the ground. The soldiers in this painting were comrades from his unit, Platoon no. 7, C Company of the Kensingtons, and he has even included a portrait of himself in the scene. He is in the top left-hand corner wearing the balaclava. The men have arrived at the village after a long and tiring four days and four sleepless nights of duty in the trenches having had to endure continuous snowfall and temperatures at night which fell to twenty below freezing. It is a loose grouping of men, all but one standing. What is strange about their depiction is that no two men look in the same direction. The men seem disorientated and are awaiting their corporal to find out their next orders. Soon they were going to have to set off and endure a five-mile march to reserve billets, which were out of range of the German artillery.

The painting was first exhibited at the Goupil Gallery in 1916 and caused a sensation. The exhibition was in aid of the Star and Garter Building Fund charity. Kennington’s accompanying notes detailed the individual soldiers and their experiences. The notes about “Who is who” stated:

“…The portraits are of Private A. ‘Sweeney’ Todd (foreground) and (left to right) Private H Bristol in the red scarf, Private A. McCafferty carrying two rifles, the artist in balaclava, Private W Harvey, Private P A Guy, known as ‘Good Little Guy’, Lance-Corporal H Wilson in balaclava, Private M Slade resting both hands on his rifle and Corporal J Kealey…” .

Kennington did not complete the painting until December 1915 and sadly by this time, ninety per cent of the once 700-strong battalion, which he had arrived with in France twelve months earlier, had become causalities. Many had died or had been severely wounded during the battles of Neuve-Chapelle in March 1915, and particularly Aubers Ridge in May 1915..

The painting, when exhibited at the Goupil Gallery between April and June 1916, received glowing revues. Kennington was described by The Times art critic: :

“…the painter who knew how to properly portray the stoically enduring British Tommy’. For example,………: ‘He [Kennington] has painted the real war for us in all its squalor and glory…”

So impressed with the unemotional depiction of the hardships and endurance of the British soldiers whilst fighting on the Front, the War Propaganda Bureau, in June 1917, offered Kennington the chance to become an official war artist. He was sent off to France in August 1917, where he spent about seven months. In fact he was only supposed to be visiting the battlefields for one month but after the first month had expired, he didn’t want to return to England and simply refused to come back home. He would continually write to his employers stating that he needed to be on the battlefield so that he could “learn the war

Gassed and Wounded by Eric Kennington (1917)

One of his first paintings as an official War artist was entitled Gassed and Wounded which he completed in 1918 and can now also be found in the Imperial War Museum. The setting is the interior of a field hospital. Eric Kennington made many sketches when he was at Casualty Clearing Station at Tincourt, a village in the Picardy region, some thirty miles east of Amiens. This point in time when Kennington made these sketches was at the time the German air force was bombarding the English lines, prior to their last big offensive. In the painting we see wounded soldiers, who have been gassed, lying on stretchers. Look at the way Kennington has depicted the agony of the man in the foreground. He lies on the stretcher. His head is bound with bandages. His eyes which have been damaged by the gas are covered. His face is contorted and his mouth is open as he cries out in pain.

Eventually Kennington was persuaded to return to England in March 1918 Four months later a large selection of his pastel and charcoal drawings and watercolours were exhibited in an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries. The art critics and public alike were astounded by the quality of his work

The art critic and poet, Laurence Binyon wrote in the New Statesman:

“…Mr Kennington has a genius for reality. He has not only the gift of exact and faithful record, but the power of giving expression to the latent vehemence, energy and passion that make up the controlled strength of a man. If a foreigner wished to see the British soldier, he could not do better than see him with Mr Kennington’s eyes…”

Kennington, had his differences with the Ministry of Information and parted company in September 1918. He was not unemployed for long as in November 1918, he signed up with the Canadian War Memorial Scheme. This scheme was established by the newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook in 1916. His aim was to commission official war artists to paint the Canadian war effort. The official war art programme would eventually employ close to 120 artists, most of them British or Canadian, who created nearly 1,000 works of art. Eric Kennington went back to France in November 1918 as a temporary first lieutenant attached to the Canadian Army and he attached himself to the 16th Battalion Highlanders of Canada, part of the 3rd Infantry Brigade of the 1st Canadian Division.

The Conquerors by Eric Kennington (1918) (Originally known as "The Victims") — The Conquerors by Eric Kennington (1918)
(Originally known as “The Victims”)

Kennington remained in France between November 1918 and March 1919, during which time he made a series of over 40 studies of individual soldiers from the battalion who fought their last major battle of the war in October 1918. The next painting I am showing you is one entitled The Conquerors and featured men from the battalion of soldiers Kennington was assigned to as a war artist. This was not the original title of the work as when the painting was shown in an exhibition in Canada, it was entitled The Victims but there was an objection to that title from the battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Cy Peck, Kennington who wanted it to be changed and be renamed The Conquerors. Cyrus Wesley Peck objected to the title “The Victims” as it was a somewhat defeatist title for the work of art and so it was changed to a more acceptable title, The Conquerors. The painting depicts kilted Canadians of the 16th Battalion, marching through a battlefield littered with debris and informal graves. Look at the faces of the soldiers. Some have normal skin tones whilst others look much paler and these may represent the deceased. The painting is housed in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

The Conquerors was exhibited in Ottawa during the summer of 1920 and it was later returned to London where, in October and November of that year, it appeared at Kennington’s solo exhibition at the Alpine Club gallery in London. Whilst Kennington was present at the exhibition he met and was befriended by T.E.Lawrence the British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. Lawrence bought two of Kennington’s sketches depicting soldiers. The intrepid Lawrence was a great influence on Kennington’s art and he even persuaded Kennington to come out to the Middle East to draw personalities who appeared in his account of the war with the Ottoman Turks that he was writing at the time, and which was eventually published as The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The book was the autobiographical account of the experiences T.E. Lawrence had, while serving as a liaison officer with rebel forces during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks which lasted two years from 1916 to 1918. T E Lawrence soon became known as Lawrence of Arabia.

Muttar il Hamoud min Beni Hassan by Eric Kennington (1920)

One such portrait was completed by Kennington in 1920 entitled Muttar il Hamoud min Beni Hassan who was one of Lawrence’s s chosen bodyguards. This pastel on brown paper was painted by Kennington whilst he was at a war camp in Western Arabia. Lawrence had wanted Kennington to go out to Arabia and come back with some portraits which could be used as illustrations for his autobiography but strangely he would not let Kennington read the book before he set off on his Arabian journey. On returning back to London Kennington gave Lawrence his sketches and paintings. Lawrence was delighted saying:

“…I first saw one and then another of the men whom I had known and at once I learned to know them better. This may point indirectly to the power of the drawings and it points without contest to their literary completeness. There is quite admirable character here…”

Another portrait by Kennington used in Lawrence’s autobiography was Abd-el-Rahman, a pastel on green-toned paper, which he completed in 1921. Abd-el-Rahman was mentioned in Chapter LXXI of the book as Lawrence recalls:

“…I enrolled Showakh and Salem, two Sherari camel-herds, and Abd el Rahman, a runaway slave from Riadh, now freedman of Mohammed el Dheilan, the Toweihi…”

On Kennington’s return home he exhibited the sketches and paintings from his Arabian trip at the Leicester Galleries in London and the portraits of Arabs became known as the ‘Kennington Arabs’. The illustrations which Kennington worked on for Lawrence did not appear in the first edition of the book published in 1922 but four years later in 1926, in the next edition of the autobiography Kennington’s illustrations appeared along with those done by other well-known artists of the time such as Augustus John, Paul Nash and John Singer Sargent

Head of T.E. Lawrence by Eric Kennington (1926)

Kennington also produced a bust of Lawrence in 1926. It was modelled partly from life and partly from drawings he made in December 1926. It was also chosen by Lawrence’s mother and brother for the Crypt of St Paul’s. Kennington made three further casts of this head in bronze or brass, one of which can be found in the music room at Lawrence’s cottage, Clouds Hill, Moreton, Dorset. Clouds Hill is an isolated cottage near Wareham, Dorset which Lawrence initially rented in 1923 but then bought it in 1925. Lawrence himself loved the bust saying that it was:

“…magnificent; there is no other word for it. It represents not me but my top moments, those few seconds when I succeed in thinking myself right out of things…”

Sir William Rothenstein, an English painter, printmaker, draughtsman and writer on art. who was best known for his work as a war artist in both world wars and as a portrait artist wrote about Kennington’s relationship with T E Lawrence. He wrote:

“…‘Kennington was devoting himself to Lawrence’s glorification – for him Lawrence was the perfect man who could do no wrong…”

Battersea Park Memorial. by Eric Kennington — Battersea Park Memorial.
by Eric Kennington

In 1924, Eric Kennington designed the War Memorial which can be seen in Battersea Park to commemorate the 24th London Division.

In the second part of my story of Eric Kennington I will look at his life between the world wars and also the paintings he completed as a war artist during the Second World War.

Thomas Benjamin Kennington

In my next two blogs I am going to look at the lives and works of two English painters, the father, Thomas Benjamin Kennington and his son, Eric. Today I am going to concentrate and examine some of the works of the father and tomorrow, switch to look at the art of his son.

The Pinch of Poverty by Thomas Kennington (1891)

Often when we watch a tear-jerker type film or read a heartbreaking fictional novel, we tend to be critical of the sugary-sweet, heart-tugging subject. My featured artist today produced many paintings which, although of the realism genre, also wanted us to be emotionally moved by what we saw before us. His paintings were often studies of the problems which beset the poor in Victorian England. Today let me introduce you to the Victorian social realism painter and master of portraiture, Thomas Benjamin Kennington.

Kennington was born in the Lincolnshire fishing port of Grimsby in April 1856. As a young man he studied painting at the Liverpool School of Art, where he won a gold medal, and the Royal College of Art in London. He also went to Paris where he enrolled at the Académie Julian and studied under William-Adolphe Bougereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. Thomas Kennington lived at a time when there were a large number of families living on the “bread line”; a term used denoting the poorest condition in which it is acceptable to live, with some even dying of starvation on the city streets. The population of Great Britain increased three-fold during the nineteenth century due to many factors, such as an influx of people from Ireland who were escaping the potato famine, life expectancy had increased and infant mortality had decreased. Jobs were hard to find in the countryside so folks had flocked to the urbanized areas seeking work. With such a pool of workers, owners and businessmen could pay low wages, often so low that workers could not afford to feed or house their families. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was estimated that there were more than thirty thousand homeless children living on the streets of London. However, many of the well-off folk were less than sympathetic with regards their plight and believed that any money given to the poor was simply squandered on drink and gambling and did not, in any way, solve the underlying social problems at all.

Thomas Kennington was a social activist who was disturbed by the poverty he saw around him and decided that, through his art, he would highlight the plight of the poor. The first painting I am showcasing is entitled Homeless which he completed in 1890, whilst living in London. In 1892 it was sent to Melbourne for the large Anglo-German exhibition which was held in Melbourne’s exhibition centre and the painting is now housed in the Bendigo Art Gallery in Australia.

The setting for the work is unknown but presumed to be London. In the background, partly hidden by the smog, we see a gas works and a tall chimney belching out smoke. This is a scene of urban pollution; a gloomy streetscape. In the foreground we see a woman dressed in widow’s garb supporting a young boy’s body, partly lifting him up from the wet pavement. The young lad’s face is white and his head has lolled to the side. He looks to be in a bad way, possibly close to death. His eyes vacantly stare out but he seems unaware of his surroundings. The artist has further depicted the depressing state of affairs by limiting the depiction of nature to a lifeless-looking tree at the right of the painting. It is leaf-less with one of its lower branches broken off and the whole of it is encased in the concrete pavings which will inhibit its growth.

Critics praised Kennington’s painting when it was first exhibited. The art critic of the Melbourne Argus described the work:

“…full of pathos … both a poem and a sermon…”

while another Melbourne newspaper, The Age, told its readers to study the face of the child and described the work as:

“…a chef d’œuvre of artistic power and human sympathy … a face … that expresses all the patient suffering of a whole class, amongst whom the inheritance of sorrow and privation is patiently accepted and endured…”

Widowed and Fatherless by Thomas Kennington (1888)

Another work of art which focused on how poverty can affect families was summed up in Kennington’s work entitled Widowed and Fatherless, 1888. In this depiction we have a mother whose husband has died and she is left with the monumental task of rearing her children. One child is lying on the bed. Maybe she is asleep or maybe she is very ill. Her sister kneels at the bedside praying, maybe praying that her sister will recover from her illness. The mother sits in a chair stitching clothes but she cannot take her eyes off her sick daughter.

A very moving painting depicting the plight of the poor is one Kennington completed in 1885 entitled Orphans. There is a similarity in this depiction of poverty with the 1650 work by the great Spanish painter, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in his work The Beggar Boy. (See My Daily Art Display January 25^th 2011). Before us we see two young boys. They could be brothers. Their clothes are no more than rags. The older boy’s head is slumped to the side due to his tiredness. He can hardly keep his eyes open but they stare down at the head of the younger boy who through circumstances beyond his control, is whom he has to look after. The younger boy, with his rosy red cheeks, sits on the floor and leans against the older boy for comfort, his head and arm rest on the older boy’s thigh. He stares out at us in a beseeching way. What is he asking us? Is it merely sustenance or does he want our love and our protection from the deprivation he is forced to suffer. On the floor before the two boys is a plate with a piece of dried bread highlighting their plight. This is a prime example of Kennington’s depictions of the urban poor. The painting was purchased by Henry Tate, the sugar merchant and philanthropist, who established the Tate Gallery in London.

Daily Bread by Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1883)

A crust of bread appears in another painting by Kennington, entitled Daily Bread which he completed in 1883. The title probably derives from the words of the Lord’s Prayer, give us our daily bread. This is a very emotional depiction of poverty and it was hoped that by depicting such dprivation things would change. Alas, it was not to happen for many years and even now child poverty and child beggars exist in Great Britain.

In contrast to the abandoned children we saw depicted in the previous paintings, the next painting, simply entitled The Mother, was Kennington’s idea of what family life should be about and how children should be brought up in a safe and loving environment. This large work (115 x 168cms), which was completed in 1895, depicts a moment in family life when a mother says goodnight to her children.

This is a form of narrative painting as from about the seventeenth century, genre painting showed scenes and narratives of everyday life. Later, during the Victorian age, narrative painting of everyday life subjects became very popular and such art was often considered as a category in itself termed Victorian Narrative painting. This theme of what family life should be about was a recurrent theme in Victorian art. Domesticity was the order of the day focusing on how children and adults should behave within a family environment. It was hoped that families could learn by what they saw through the medium of visual art. This huge painting of The Mother by Kennington depicts her as the foundation stone of the family, the person who underpins the family group. The painting also alludes to another idea regarding Victorian family group. If you look carefully at the dead centre of the work you will see the wedding ring on the mother’s finger and this could be the way in which the artist want to share his belief that marriage was also very important part of the family structure and family values.

In this painting we see the mother tending two of her young children. Although the mother is the focal point of the painting she is depicted with her back to us. We do not see her face clearly. She is being helped by an older daughter, who is learning about the role of motherhood. The lighting of the painting is interesting. The darker silhouette of the mother is in contrast with the brighter area around the two sleeping children, which is lit up by the light emanating from the lamp held by the mother and which is hidden from our view. Of course this view of the family is a romanticised view of life in Victorian days and maybe it was more to do with what Kennington believed family life should be rather than the actuality. This painting belongs to the Aigantighe’s Gallery in Hobart, Tasmania

Thomas Kennington exhibited his works in the Royal Academy of Arts every year from 1880 until his death in 1916. His paintings were also regularly on show at the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) and the popular Grosvenor gallery in London. Kennington was a founding member and became the first secretary of the New English Art Club which was founded in 1885 and was one of the founders of the Imperial League of Art in 1909. This society was set up to protect and promote the interests of Artists and to inform, advise and assist Artists, who have enrolled as members, in matters of business connected with the practice of the Arts Its role was to aid the artists and the protection of their interests. Kennington exhibited internationally in Paris and Rome and so good was his work that he was chosen to exhibit at the Universal Expositions held in Paris in 1889, where he was awarded a bronze medal.

Portrait of Elise Kennington née Stevani

Besides his genre pieces which highlighted Victorian poverty, Kennington was an accomplished portraitist. Many of his portraits featured family members. In 1883, aged twenty-seven, Thomas Benjamin Kennington married twenty-two year old Swedish beauty, Elise Stevani, who was born in Lund a town in Southern Sweden 1861.

Anne as Alice in Wonderland by Thomas Benjamin Kennington

His daughter Ann also featured in a couple of his works. One was with her as Alice in Wonderland.

Portrait of the Artist's Daughter Anne in Russian Costume Holding a Balilaika by Thomas Kennington — Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter Anne in Russian Costume Holding a Balilaika by Thomas Kennington

The other, when she was older, was of her, dressed as a Russian lady holding a balalaika.

My last offering is another interesting work by Kennington which he completed in 1882 and entitled The Ace of Hearts. There is an element of trickery about this depiction. We see the lady seated before us staring directly at us But are we who she is looking at? Look carefully at the mirror on the wall, above and behind her.

The image in the mirror indicated that the lady is looking straight through us, and focusing upon a man who can be seen scratching his neck. He seems perplexed by what the woman is doing with the cards. Look at the expression on the lady’s face. It is one of satisfied triumph as she points to the ace of hearts and we can thus deduce that she was performing a card trick for the gentleman. He is amazed and she is exultant with her trickery.

Thomas Benjamin Kennington died in London in December 1916 aged 60. His wife Elise died at the young age of 34 in 1895. Their son Eric was to go on to be a famous artist and in my next blog I will look at some of his work.

Dosso Dossi. Part 2 – The tale of the young man who was a famous lady and the Ducal Palace of Ferrara

Dosso Dossi self portrait — Dosso Dossi
self portrait

The first painting of Dosso Dossi I want to showcase is one which is owned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. The gallery acquired the painting from a gallery in London in 1965 for £8000. The title of the oval painting was then said to be Portrait of a Youth. There was an element of mystery surrounding the art work as the artist of the work was said to be unknown. It was only in the start of the twenty-first century that the gallery made a painstaking examination of the work during its restoration which would last several years. The mystery to be solved was two-fold. Firstly, who painted the work and secondly was the sex of the sitter a male. The gallery staff looked for clues as to whether the sitter was a young man or a young woman. In the background, behind the sitter, there is a myrtle bush and in art this was symbolic of Venus, the Roman Goddess of Love and symbolised feminine beauty. Another clue to the sex of the sitter, according to the gallery’s conservator, Carl Villis, can be found in the inscription on the piece of paper which lies on the balustrade in the foreground. The translation of which is:

“…brighter is the virtue reigning in this beautiful body…”

So in the opinion of the conservator the sitter was female. The next questions to be answered were who was she and who painted the portrait. After two years of intense scientific analysis and research in Italy, Australia and America the art curator and conservator, Villis came to the conclusion that the female was no other than a young Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI and brother of Cesare Borgia and furthermore the artist was Giovanni di Niccolo de Luteri, or as we now know him, Dosso Dossi. So why Lucrezia Borgia? Villis postulated that because the female figure in this painting is holding a dagger the depiction alludes to the Roman heroine Lucrezia, who after being raped by Tarquin, the son of the King of Rome, killed herself with a dagger so as to protect the honour of her family.

They also likened the depiction to the 1502 coin which was adorned with Lucrezia’s profile. Maybe these are good arguments to make Lucrezia the woman in the painting but what made them believe the artist who painted her portrait was Dossi? The belief that he was the artist followed an analysis of the painting’s pigments and the artistic style which indicated that it was likely to have been painted by Dossi. Dossi ,if you remember from Part 1 of this blog, came from Ferrara as did Lucrezia. In 1502 the twenty-two year old Lucrezia married her third husband Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who later employed Dosso Dossi as the court painter – a coincidence ? Maybe, maybe not!

National Gallery of Victoria paintings conservator Karl Villis (right) and director Gerard Vaughan stand beside the painting

The gallery awaits authentication by external scholars and art history experts and are right to be wary of being too dogmatic with regards their discovery as in 2007 the National Gallery of Victoria was embarrassed after it was revealed that it had wrongly attributed a painting by an unknown Dutch painter to Vincent van Gogh !

Dosso Dossi was a contemporary of four great High Renaissance Italian artists, Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Titian and it is because of one of their famous works of art, Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne that Dossi came to complete his own work, Bacchus in 1524.

In 1523, Titian finished his painting entitled Bacchus and Ariadne which is now housed in London’s National Gallery. The commission for Titian’s work was one of a cycle of mythological works, which he and Giovanni completed for Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and it was to be hung in the Camerini d’Alabastro, a private room in the ducal castle. Originally this part of the commission was given to Raphael who had made plans and sketches for what was to be his Triumph of Bacchus but he died in 1520 and Titian was given the commission to complete.

In the left of the painting we see Ariadne who has been abandoned on this island of Naxos by her lover Theseus, who has sailed off. The white sails of his boat can be seen in the extreme left background. In the painting we see Bacchus, the god of wine, leaping energetically from his chariot which is drawn by two large cheetahs. His followers and fellow revellers appear, emerging from the forest in the right of the picture. Bacchus is immediately smitten by the sight of Ariadne, who steps back in fear of his sudden arrival. He promises to turn her into an eight-star constellation, which we see halo-like in the sky, above her head. This beautiful painting from the Venetian School painter Titian is awash with beautiful colours, blues, reds and browns which enhance the mythological scene.

Dosso Dossi was a contemporary of four great High Renaissance Italian artists, Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Titian and it is probably due to the popularity of Titian’s work that he was commissioned to copy part of Bacchus and Ariadne, a commission he completed in 1524. The painting was simply entitled Bacchus and is a copy of the central character in Titian’s painting, with just a few small changes to the background landscape. The painting probably came about through a commission given to Dossi from an admirer of Titian’s work, which he or she saw when it arrived at Ferrara the year before.

A woman fleeing on a wooded path by Dosso Dossi (c.1542)

Another of Dossi’s paintings featuring Ariadne is entitled A Woman Fleeing on a Wooded Path. This work at one time was thought to have been painted by Dosso Dossi’s younger brother Battista but now is generally believed to have been painted by Dosso himself because of the forms and the drapery, and the detail of the landscape, particularly the buildings in the upper right section. The female figure has since been identified as being of Ariadne as noted in the lists of paintings by the influential scholar of the Italian Renaissance, the art historian Bernard Berenson.

The Three Ages of Man by Dosso Dossi (c.1515)

One of Dossi’s most accomplished landscape works was completed around 1515. It was entitled The Three Ages of Man. This motif has been painted by many artists including Titian and Giorgione and depicts three pairs of males in three particular stages of their life, infant, youth and old age. It is an allegorical concept of the cycle of life with depictions of the wonderment of the young child to the earthly pleasures of youth and finally the forlorn and Vanitas-like depiction of ageing men contemplating the end of life. However there is some doubt whether the painting by Dossi falls into this allegorical category. It is true there are three pairs of humans of differing ages but in each pairing there appears to be one male and one female. Look at the two children. They are connected to the “youthful” pair simply because they are spying on them as they enjoy the pleasures of youth. He could well be a goat herder as accompanying the amorous couple are a number of goats also watching them intently. The Italian biographer, historian and contemporary of Dossi, Paolo Givio, wrote that the artist’s works fell into two categories – the ones with serious subjects which he termed justis operibus and his landscape works which he termed parerga, which he says:

“…contain embellishments, intended to simply delight the eye and refresh the spirit without implying any more serious message…”

This painting by Dossi seems to fit into this second category

Much has been said about the ducal palace of Alfonso I d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara and the art that graced the walls of his palace. In fact, by 1529, he had managed to create the most magnificent private art gallery of his time, including several masterpieces by Titian, hung as an ensemble. The Duke’s gallery, known as the camerino d’alabastro with its alabaster walls and gilded ceiling, contained the finest sculpture and paintings that money could buy. The power and wealth of Duke Alfonso allowed him to commission paintings from the most famous artists of the day. The elderly Giovanni Bellini completed the Feast of the Gods in 1514, which was the last painting he completed before he died. Sadly both Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael died before completing Alfonso’s commissions and so as we saw with the painting Bacchus and Ariadne the Duke turned to Titian who was still only thirty years old and though he was a student of Bellini he was still not famous.

Aeneas at the Entrance to the Elysian Fields by Dosso Dossi (c.1514)

In 1514 Alfonso commissioned Dossi to produce ten paintings for his Camerino d’Alabstro. These works were to illustrate scenes from the twelve books of Virgil’s epic poem, Aeneid and would be so hung, high up on the walls, so as to imitate a frieze. The first painting I have featured from this set, which is part of the National Gallery of Canada collection, is entitled Aeneas in the Elysian Fields and it illustrates a scene from the sixth book of the Aeneid. In the work of art, we see Aeneas in the far left of the painting with his plumed hat, carrying the golden bough, and accompanied by the Cumaean sibyl as they arrive at the Elysian Fields.

Aeneas and Achates on the Libyan Coast by Dosso Dossi (c.1520)

The second of the three surviving paintings from the “frieze” is entitled Aeneas and Achates on the Libyan Coast. This work is housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The depiction is based on the first book of Virgil’s Aeneid which is all about the story of Aeneas, who after the fall of Troy and seven years wandering, founded a settlement on the Italian peninsula, establishing the Roman state. In Book 1, Aeneas and his faithful companion Achates, having only just started their journey, and are forced to take refuge on the Libyan coast after their ships are wrecked in a storm.

Dosso Dossi worked for the Dukes of Ferrara for almost three decades. He died in 1542. His brother Battista who had taken over the mantle of chief court painter to the Duke of Ferrara on his brother’s death, died six years later.

I will leave you with the words from a pre-exhibition write-up that accompanied the 1999 exhibition of Dossi’s works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

“…In Orlando Furioso — the most widely read epic poem of the 16th century — Dosso is listed alongside Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian as one of the great figures of his age by the renowned Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto, who likely admired Dosso’s poetic and subtle — indeed enigmatic — representations of myth and allegory. Dosso’s paintings have long been appreciated as celebrations of pictorial freedom and artistic invention, characterized by a rich palette, brilliant contrasts of light and shadow, and by the enduring echoes of joyousness, wit, and sensual delight. With the devolution of the Ferrarese court into the papal states in 1598, virtually all of Dosso’s oil paintings were dispersed to collections in Rome and Modena, removing them from the elaborate context for which they were created…”

Dosso Dossi. Part 1 – The Constabili Polyptych

In my last blog I looked at the lives of two American landscape artists, Marion and Elmer Wachtel and for many people outside of America these painters may have been completely unknown. Today in my blog I want to introduce you to a great painter who may also be unfamiliar to many. Today let me introduce you to the Italian High Renaissance painter Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri who became known as Dosso Dossi.

Dossi was born in St Giovanni del Dosso, which is a small village thirty kilometres south west of Mantua. His actual birth date is something of a mystery with various historical documents and biographers disagreeing, albeit a consensus of opinions puts it at around 1487. His early upbringing is also somewhat shrouded in mystery. However we do know Dossi had a younger brother, Battista, who was also a painter but said to be not as talented as his older brother. We also know that his father, Niccolò de Luteri, was a native of Trentino, an autonomous northern province of Italy, close to the Austro-Italian border. His father was a member of the Ferrara court of Duke Ercole I d’Este the Duke of Ferrara and later, after his death in 1505, his son Duke Alfonso I d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara. His role was that of a spenditore, a bursar or land agent for the court and it was the name of the Duke’s property, Villa Dossi, which lent its name to his two sons.

Portrait of Alfonso I by Dosso Dossi (c.1530)

There is much conjecture about Dossi’s early training. Giorgio Vasari believed Dossi studied under Lorenzo Costa in Ferrara whilst others say he studied in Venice. Dossi’s seventeenth century biographer, the priest, poet and writer, Girolamo Bruffaldi, wrote in his 1704 book Vite de’ pittori e scultori ferraresi (Biogrpahy of Ferrara artists) that Dossi studied in Rome and Venice. Records show that Dossi was working for the House of Gonzaga in Mantua in 1512 and two years later was working as a court painter in Ferrara at the court of Alfonso I d’Este, and later his son Ercole II d’Este. As a court painter Dossi’s time would have been spent decorating the private residences of the Court with large frescoes and paintings, often detailing historical or mythological themes. Court painters of the Renaissance, like Dossi, would have been asked to provide designs for elaborate tapestries and conjure up theatrical sets and backdrops. There would have been many portraiture commissions to carry out featuring the Duke and his family as well as portraits of the family members of the wealthy courtiers.

In his early days at court Dossi was sent by the Duke to Venice, Florence and Mantua. The Duke also sanctioned Dossi and his brother Battista to produce altarpieces and secular works for the local nobility and princely patrons, such as the Duke of Urbino and Cardinal Bernado Bles the prince-bishop of Trent.

Portrait of a Man in a Fur Collar (Antonio Constabili) by Dosso Dossi (c.1520)

One of Dossi’s first tasks as a court painter was a collaboration with the painter, Benvenuto Tisi, known as il Garofalo. Garofalo, who had been living in Rome, where he had once studied under Raphael, received an invitation to come to Ferrara and complete a commission from the Duke of Ferrara to decorate a small chapel. On completion of the commission he was approached by Antonio Costabili to decorate an altarpiece. Antonio Costabili was a Ferrarese soldier, nobleman and diplomat and prominent figure at the court of Alphonso I and was a leading patron of the arts. The commission taken on by Garofalo and Dossi was the polyptych, which became known as the Costabili Polyptych. It was for the high altar, which stood at the rear of the chancel, raised above the choir stalls of the Augustinian church of Sant’ Andrea in Ferrara, which was home to the Ordo Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, the order of the Augustinian Hermit monks. This was an order of monks accepted into the Roman Catholic family by Pope Alexander IV in 1256.

The completion date of this magnificent work is contested by art historians but one clue as to the date is that Vasari wrote that the polyptych was completed prior to the death of Raphael and he died in 1520. It should be remembered that Vasari, on two occasions, met with Garofalo in the 1540’s and therefore should have had accurate knowledge with regards the completion date of the altarpiece. Others narrow down the completion date to around 1514.

Constabili Polyptych in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Ferrara

The altarpiece is now housed in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Ferrara. The paintings are still in the original altarpiece’s wooden frame but there has been much work on reconstructing it as it was badly damaged during World War II. The altarpiece measures 31ft 6 inches high and 19 feet wide (9.6 x 5.8m).

The main central panel measures 174 inches x 96 inches (474 x 262cms) and features the Virgin Mary enthroned with the Christ Child. Alongside her throne, on the right, is the infant Saint John the Baptist.

Above the throne, on either side there are angels and spiritelli.

On the steps below the throne sits John the Evangelist, cross-legged, pausing from his writing to look upwards towards the Virgin. On the floor besides him is a chalice. The chalice is often associated with and symbolises John the Evangelist. It alludes to John being put to the test by the high priest of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. The high priest said to him:

“…If you want me to believe in your god, I will give you some poison to drink and, if it does not harm you, it means that your god is the true God…”

Saint John blessed the cup of poison, neutralizing it and was then able to drink the liquid.

In the right foreground of the central panel we have Saint Jerome holding an open book whilst his foot rests upon a skull. In the left foreground of the central panel we have Saint Andrew, the titular head of the church, who holds a cross and points towards the Virgin.

The two side panels of the polyptych depict two further saints. Saint George, the patron saint of Ferrara, is featured in the lower right side panel whilst Saint Sebastian, the popular saint who was looked upon as a protector of the people against the plague appears in the lower left side panel.

Above these side panels there are two spandrels. A spandrel is the almost triangular space between the left or right exterior curve of an arch and the rectangular framework surrounding it.

Saint Augustine, the patron of the Augustinian order can be seen in the right spandrel dressed as a hermit in the robes of an Eremitani friar with his bishop’s mitre on the floor by his feet and Saint Ambrose appears in the left spandrel with a manuscript resting on his lap. His demeanour is one of contemplation as one hand rests on his breast as he studies the text. Both spandrels have in the background an oculus window through which comes the light which illuminates the two saints.

The resurrected Christ is displayed within the pediment at the top of the polyptych.

This is a truly remarkable work of art. At first sight it would appear that the Saints that have been depicted were just a random selection but having read Dosso Dossi, Garofalo, and the Costabili Polyptych: Imaging Spiritual Authority by Giancarlo Fiorenza he believes they were chosen very carefully and he goes into great detail in his article about the reasoning. The article appeared in The Art Bulletin Volume 82, No.2 (June 2000). It was from this complex article that I got most of my facts about this work but I decided to steer clear of the theories about the inclusion of the saints and other symbolic aspects of the polytypch and will leave you to seek out the article if you want to delve further.

In my next blog I will look at more of Dossi’s paintings and look at one of a young man which is now believed to be a portrait of a famous young woman !

Peder Balke. Part 2 – The great Norwegian journey and disillusionment

Winter Landscape. Near Vordingborg, by Johan Christian Dahl (1827)

Balke returned to Christiania in 1830 and stayed with Professor Rathke and in that May travelled to Copenhagen and was fortunate to be able to view royal collections of art. Of all the works he saw, Balke was most impressed by a winter landscape painted by Johan Christian Dahl, entitled Winter Landscape. Near Vordingborg, which he completed in 1827. The large (173 x 205cms) work of art depicts a somewhat oppressive atmosphere with its undertones of death, symbolised by the dolmen behind the lifeless branches of the two oak trees. A dolmen is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of two or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone. Nature is depicted in the form of its icy winter garb. He wrote of the painting to Rathke saying that it was the most life-like painting he had ever seen. The fact that he had managed to see the works of the great Masters at the royal collection, although influencing him, also depressed him somewhat as to his own ability. He wrote:

“…I sometimes felt a certain heaviness of heart and lack of courage when I compared my own insignificance with these true masterpieces; quietly and I admit somewhat superficially I calculated how much I would have to learn and how many ordeals I would have to go through before I would be able to achieve a mere fraction of the perfection in aptitude and skill in execution exuded by these paintings…”

Balke was determined to succeed and in the summer of 1830 having returned to Norway from Copenhagen he set off on foot on an artistic journey through the Telemark region and over the mountains to western Norway and then north to Bergen returning to Christiania via the Naeroydalen valley and the town of Gudvangen. He later recalled his short time spent in the area around Gudvangen, writing:

“.. I first arrived late at night, because I became so engrossed in admiring the sublime beauty of Naeroydalen that I hardly knew whether what surrounded me was real or supernatural. So fascinating and uplifting did my youthful imagination, with its passion for the beauties of nature….”

From North Cape by Peder Balke (c.1860's) — From North Cape by Peder Balke (c.1860’s)

Two years later, in April 1832, Balke set off another artistic journey. This time, setting off in his own carriage he went to Trondheim where he was to catch a boat to the north of the country. His planned journey hit a snag when he arrived late in Trondheim and missed the boat. He had to wait a further seven weeks for the next boat but spent the time sketching the town and the surrounding areas. Peder Balke finally embarked on his northbound boat trip, passing the Lofoten Islands and arrived at Tromso. From there the boat went further north to Hammerfest and then proceeded around the North Cape to Vardø and Vadsø. He was the first Norwegian painter to record the harsh beauty of the northern landscape. Eventually Balke and the boat returned to Trondheim. During the long journey Balke had completed a large collection of sketches of the places he had seen and many were used in his many seascape and moonscape works of art which he worked on when he returned to Stockholm. He sold many of his paintings to wealthy Norwegians and Swedes as well as members of the royal family. In 1834, now, financially secure, Peder married Karen Eriksdatter, the woman he had been secretly engaged to for several years, but had been too poor to marry.

The Severn Sisters by Peder Balke (1847)

The couple settled in Christiania and Balke, now accepted, not simply as a decorator but as a landscape artist, tried to establish himself and sell his artworks. However competition at the time was too great and the sales he had hoped for never materialised. However, in 1835, he managed to sell another of his works to the king and with that money he decided on fulfilling his dream of travelling to Dresden and work with the Norwegian artist, J C Dahl. Many Norwegian artists had trodden this path, including Thomas Fearnley (see My Daily Art Display November 24th & 28th 2012). With help from a friend, Balke set off for Germany and reached Berlin in the winter of that year. He remained in Berlin for several weeks and was able to visit the Royal Museum and whilst in the German city he saw paintings by the German romantic landscape painter, Casper David Friedrich. It was this artist who was going to have a great and lasting influence on Balke.

Ship in Breaking Waves by Peder Balke (c.1849)

Balke left Berlin and travelled to Dresden via Leipzig. He received a great welcome from Johan Dahl who helped him find accommodation. J C Dahl introduced Balke to Casper David Friedrich and Balke was able to watch the two great artists at work. In a letter to Rathke, dated March 29^th 1836, he wrote about watching J C Dahl at work:

“..to see Dahl paint, I know with which colours and have seen how he uses them, and though I at present cannot proceed successfully in the same manner I hope that with time I will also reap the benefit. What I regret most is my lack of studies from nature. Dahl certainly has several thousands of them, of all kinds. He has told me there is no other way to become a real painter than by painting from nature, which admittedly has been my intention, and I shall now try to see whether I can make up for what I have hitherto neglected, in Norway, though not in Germany – there is no nature here…”

Sami with Reindeer Under the Midnight Sun by Peder Balke, (c.1850)

Balke left Dresden but returned in the 1840’s to work once again with J C Dahl. Landscape art was popular in Norway and Balke managed to sell many of his works but things were to change when a number of young Norwegian landscape artists having returned from studying at the Dusseldorf Academy, which at the time was looked upon as the most modern art-educational institute. The teaching of landscape art was more to do with what was termed “cautious Realism” rather than Balke’s Romantic landscapes which suddenly became less fashionable. He had to endure much criticism with regards his work which had once been loved by his people. In an article in a 1944 edition of Morgenbladet, the eminent art critic Emil Tidemand scathingly wrote about Balke’s paintings:

“… There is no question here of a grandiose, poetic perception: no not even the simplest technical demands of drawing, perspective, clarity, strength and depth of colour have been met……………….This is not a representation of nature – his whole production is merely the mark of a dirty palette handled without discrimination…”

Maybe it was the vitriolic criticism which made Balke realise that there would be no hope of becoming financially secure through his art sales in Norway and so in 1844 he, along with his pregnant wife and three young children, left their homeland and travelled to Paris via Copenhagen and Germany There was also another reason to visit Paris and this was that Balke was well aware that the country’s ruler Louis-Philippe had, as a young prince in exile in 1795, travelled along the Norwegian coast from Trondheim to the North Cape just as he had done. As Balke did not speak French he asked a friend to write a letter on his behalf to the king in which he reminded the king of his exile and his Norwegian journey and that his nine sketches of the area would remind the king of that journey. Louis-Philippe was intrigued and summoned Balke to the palace. Balke and the king immediately became close and the two would meet regularly and reminisce about their travels to the North Cape

A View of the Sarpsfoss Waterfalls, Norway by Peder Balke (c.1859)

Louis-Philippe commissioned a set of paintings derived from the sketches. Balke’s financial future seemed to have been rescued and he set to work on the commission. Alas fate was to take a hand in the form of the February Revolution of 1848 which saw the downfall of Louis-Philippe. Balke realising the dangers of being close to the unpopular ruler decided in late 1847 that he and his family would have to hurriedly leave Paris which meant he had to abandon, what was to have been a very lucrative commission. Balke moved back to Dresden. Shortly after his arrival in the German city in 1848 his young son Johann died. His death came around the same time that his wife gave birth to their daughter Frederikke. Sales of his art in Dresden were hard to come by and so he decided to leave his family with a friend and head back to Christiania. He managed to sell some of his work, one of which was The North Cape by Moonlight but still the Norwegian people favoured the Dusseldorf School of landscape painting and so Balke returned to his family in Dresden. In the Spring of 1849 he and his family moved to London where Balke believed his art would be more appreciated. London had fallen under the spell of Joseph Mallord William Turner and his marine paintings and so Balke believed his works of art would do well. He was proved right and managed to sell more of his works of art.

In the autumn of 1850 Balke and his family moved back to Christiania. In 1855 his good friend and benefactor Professor Rathke died and left Balke a sizeable amount of money which Balke used to buy eight acres of land just outside the city limits at a place known as Vestre Aker. He virtually abandoned his career as an artist of large scale landscape works, concentrating on small scale paintings which he believed would be bought by the middle class. He now concentrated on his property portfolio and in particular the development of housing for workers in his newly attained property in the suburb of Balkeby, He dabbled in local politics championing the cause of pensions for men and women, and also of grants for artists. His painting was now just a hobby and for his own pleasure.

Balke, as you may realise, was an unlucky man and more bad luck came in June 1879 when his beloved Balkeby went up in flames. Nearly every house, including his own, was burnt to the ground. Four years later Balke suffered a stroke, and he died in Christiania on February 15^th 1887 aged 82. The obituaries that followed after his death were all about his political work and little was said about Balke the artist. Maybe his penchant for ignoring criticism and sticking to what he believed in was apparent in the obituary which appeared in the magazine Verdens Gang in March 1887. It emphasised Balke’s pugnacity:

“…Fearless and straightforward as he was, it would never occur to him to defer to people in an argument. He considered only the matter in hand and did not bother in the least about who was for or against him. This does not always result in popularity…”

I can recommend an excellent book about the artist and his work entitled Paintings by Peder Balke, from which I derived most of my information about this Norwegian painter.

Sir George Clausen. Part 1. Rustic Naturalism and the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage

Sir George Clausen (Self Portrait) — Sir George Clausen
(Self Portrait)

There is something very intriguing about “–isms” when talking about genres in art. We are all aware of them common ones such as realism, impressionism, cubism, etc. In fact I have an art history book about “-isms”. Today I want to introduce you to another “-ism” which is not mentioned in the knowledgeable tome. It is ruralism, often referred to as Rural Naturalism, an art genre through which artists pictorially champion life away from the grime of cities and, through their paintings, exalts life in the countryside. One of the great exponents of ruralism is the subject of my next two blogs, the English painter, Sir George Clausen.

George Clausen was born 8 William Street, Regents Park, London in April 1852, the son of Jorgen Johnsen and Elizabeth Clausen. His father, an artist and interior decorator, was of Danish extraction and his mother was of Scottish descent. Up until the age of fourteen and a half, George attended St Mark’s School in Kings Road Chelsea. In 1867, three months before his fifteenth birthday he started a five year apprenticeship in the Chelsea drawing office of Messrs. Trollope, a firm of interior decorators. During this period he was trained in drawing by John Cleghorn, whose job title was a copyist and limner, an old term for a painter of ornamental decoration, a book illustrator or somebody who illuminates manuscripts. Cleghorn had an artistic background having studied at The Royal Academy Schools. George Clausen had a thirst for artistic knowledge and to supplement Cleghorn’s tuition, also attended evening classes at the National Art Training School, South Kensington, which in 1896, would become the Royal College of Art. One of the jobs Clausen was involved in was to decorate the home of the English genre, history, biblical and portrait painter, Edwin Long. Clausen’s boss, an Irish man called Brophy, gave Clausen the task to paint some lilies on the panels of a door in Edwin Long’s house. Clausen remembered this time and it must have made an impression on him, for sixty years later in his Autobiographical Notes which appeared in the Spring 1931 edition of the Artwork magazine he recalled the time:

“…Long looked at my work and said ‘May I see your sketchbook?’ He gave it back to me and said ‘Did you ever think of becoming an artist?’ I said ‘Yes, but I saw no opportunity of getting the training.’ Long said ‘I think you’d have a chance. And if I were you I’d try for a scholarship at South Kensington.’ Brophy readily agreed. I had already taken medals in design, and I was worked up in my spare time, and obtained a two years’ scholarship in decorative painting at £50 a year!…”

Clausen was not enamoured by the training he received during the two year course at South Kensington School of Art. He believed that there was not enough teaching and lacked structure as students were left to get on with things themselves.

The Baylonian Marriage Market by Edwin Long (1875)

He did however keep in contact with Edwin Long and did a lot of research work for him with regards some of Long’s large biblical paintings. Long would pay Clausen for his help and also tutored him. Long realised that Clausen’s artistic ability needed to be carefully nurtured and believed, for Clausen to receive the best artistic tuition, he needed to leave England and move to Antwerp and attend the Antwerp Academy of Art.

George Clausen accepted the advice and travelled to Holland and Belgium and for a short period enrolled at the Antwerp Academy where he studied under the tutelage of Professor Joseph van Lerius. His sketches and paintings around this time were heavily influenced by Dutch subjects such as the coastal fishing villages and he exhibited a number of these at the Dudley Gallery, which was originally located in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London. It was completed in 1812 and financed by Earl of Dudley to house his valuable collection of pictures during the erection of his own gallery at Dudley House in Park Lane. It was known for its promotion of French and Dutch artists.

High Mass at a Fishing Village on the Zuyder Zee, Holland by George Clausen (1876)

One example of Clausen’s “Dutch period” was his small (47 x 84 cms) oil on canvas painting entitled High Mass at a Fishing Village on the Zuider Zee, which he completed in 1876 and is part of the Nottingham Castle Museum collection. The work was the result of a summer holiday Clausen had taken to the island of Marken, in the Zuider Zee, with his friend and fellow artist Dewey Bates. They had visited the village of Volendam on a Sunday, where there was a celebration of a High Mass. The mass was so well attended that the church was full and many parishioners were left outside. In the painting we see into the fully occupied church as well as a group of fishermen with their wives and children kneeling on the cobbled street outside the main entrance door.

The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy, the first work he had ever submitted to the prestigious establishment, and the art critic of The Times, seeing the work of art and Clausen’s name immediately believed he was a Dutch artist painting a scene from his homeland and wrote :

“…a very clever Dutch painter, hitherto only known in this country by two drawings exhibited at the Dudley Gallery…”

The art critic of the Spectator was full of praise writing:

“…a quiet thoughtful picture, in every sense of the word. A work of true art and deep feeling…”

Whilst in Europe George Clausen made many visits to Paris. His paintings around this time showed that he had been influenced by the likes of Whistler and William Quiller Orchardson, a well loved Scottish portraitist and painter of domestic and historical subjects. He was also very interested in the rustic natural depictions of the Scottish artist John Robertson Reid and Léon Augustine Lhermitte, a French realist painter, whose primary subject matter was of rural scenes depicting the peasant worker.

In 1880 Clausen exhibited his work La Pensée at the Grosvenor Gallery in London. It was a difficult depiction for an artist with the model seated in an interior. The figure is not seated parallel to the plane of the picture and the rear wall. It is a work of art full of detail. Look at the right background and you can see the edge of an elaborate chimney piece. In the left background there is a drop leaf table and on the floor a goat skin rug. The lady sits upright in the chair looking out at us whilst grasping a knot of violets in her right hand which rests in her lap. This is the key to the title of the painting (Thought). Here is a lady lost in thought about her lost love.

Spring Morning, Haverstock Hill by George Clausen (1881)

Clausen often used this model for his paintings and one I particularly like featuring her was completed in 1881 and entitled a Spring Morning, Haverstock Hill. It was exhibited at that year’s Royal Academy exhibition. This London street scene was an ambitious work featuring not just the main female model, who walks along the street accompanied by a small child, but a number of other characters some at rest, some at work, including labourers digging up the cobbles in the road and, directly behind the main character, a flower seller.

Les Foins by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1877)

When Clausen exhibited La Pensée at the Grosvenor Gallery amongst his fellow exhibitors was Jules Bastien-Lepage who was exhibiting nine paintings, including Les Foins (Haymaking), which depicts resting haymakers. This painting had been exhibited at the Salon in 1878. Clausen, like the critics, were enthralled by this work of rural or rustic naturalism. Clausen shortly after moved to the countryside and went to live in the Hertfordshire village of Childwick Green. He later wrote in his 1931 Autobiographical Notes about his new surroundings and the new opportunity and challenges it gave him as a painter

“…One saw people doing simple things under good conditions of lighting: and there was always a landscape. And nothing was made easy for you: you had to dig out what you wanted…”

Soon his sketchbooks were full of sketches and paintings depicting workers in the countryside surrounding his house. One of Clausen’s first works depicting labourers in the fields was completed in 1882 and was entitled The Gleaners. The work was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882. It was greeted with great acclaim by the critics and art reviewers. In Vol. V 1881-2 of The Magazine of Art, the reviewer wrote about how Clausen sympathetically depicted the labourers:

“…He shows us a little company of the poor not in picturesque rags but in garments of fact, gleaning modern English fields…”

Pauvre Fauvette by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1881)

In 1881 Bastien-Lepage completed a work entitled Pauvre Fauvette. He often painted the peasants from the town he was living in at the time, Damvillers which is situated in north-eastern France. In his painting we see a very small young girl, the ‘little wild girl’ of the painting’s title. Her job is to patiently and quietly guard a cow, which we see on the other side of the tree. In a way it is a depiction of isolation in the way the artist has depicted the small child, even dwarfed by the tall thistles. She stands alone next to a leaf-less tree surrounded by a very barren landscape. It is a pitiful depiction and we note her haunted and sad eyes and the way she tries to cover herself up and keep herself warm in a threadbare blanket leads us to believe it could have been a cold winter’s day.

The Stone Pickers by George Clausen (1887)

The next work I am featuring was also probably influenced by Bastien-Lepage’s work above. It was one which Clausen began in the autumn of 1886 and completed in 1887. It was entitled The Stone Pickers. On completion Clausen sent it to Goupil, the art dealer and in 1887 it was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, London and also appeared at the second New English Art Club exhibition of 1887. It is now housed at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne. The model for the painting was Polly Baldwin and the setting was at Cookham Dene. Look how in this work the girl has sacking wrapped around her lower body to keep her warm, similar to the attire of the child in Bastien-Lepage’s painting. Stone pickers were sent out into the fields to pick up loose stones prior to ploughing. In Clausen’s painting we see a young girl depositing stones, which she had picked up, on to a pile. In the background we see another woman bent down picking up stones from the field. One can only imagine what a backbreaking and tedious job the women had to endure. Many artists of the time liked to depict hard working labourers/peasants at work in the fields, This was the essence of rustic realism or rustic naturalism. Look at the expression on the young girl’s face as she looks down at the pile of stones. It is a sad and almost haunted expression. Behind her there is a can containing water and a wicker basket containing food for her lunch. Our eyes are drawn to this area because of the red colour of what could be a table cloth.

In my next blog I will complete Clausen’s life story and have a look at some more of his works of art.

Frederick Elwell. Part 4 – More of his genre works

Frederick William Elwell (1870 - 1958) — Frederick William Elwell
(1870 – 1958)

In my final look at the life of the twentieth century Yorkshire artist Frederick William Elwell I want to conclude his life story and look at some of his genre paintings.

In the last blog, when looking at his life, I had reached 1914. It was in the August of that year that the Great War began in Europe and it was also in that year, two months later, that Fred Elwell married his close friend and fellow artist, Mary Dawson Holmes. The newlyweds made their home at Bar House, a residence Mary and her late husband George Holmes had bought in 1910. Mary loved the house and its garden and they were depicted in a number of paintings by both Mary and Fred.

In the work entitled At the Mirror by Mary Dawson Elwell we see the interior of one of the bedrooms of their house which overlooked York Road. There are two large double beds each covered with a purple quilt. One of the bedroom’s windows is in the central background and through it we are able to see the neighbouring house, Wyles House. The technique of allowing viewers to catch a glimpse of the outside world, seen through the framing device of a window, had always been popular with artists. To the right of the window a woman stands before a mirror brushing her hair totally oblivious of the outside world that we see through the window. The large full length mirror reveals a reflection of the room. The light which shines through the windows of the room lights it up and the polished brass fender casts its reflection on the dark polished wooden floor.

Bar House Garden, Beverley by Fred Elwell (1914)

Fred Elwell painted a number of depictions of the interior of the house but I particularly like the one he completed in 1914 of the garden at Bar House entitled Bar House Garden, Beverley .

It was also around this time that Fred Elwell developed an idea based on the blissful event for a mother, the birth of her child. This type of painting was not a new idea for artists but the mother/baby scene had been depicted as far back as the Renaissance period. In 1913 Elwell completed an oil on canvas work entitled The First Born. The setting for the work is a farm worker’s cottage in Beverley. The furnishings are simple. The large canopied tester bed with its old-fashioned chintz curtains and turned bed-posts takes up centre stage in the painting. A floral-covered ottoman sits next to the end of the bed. By the bed is a ladder-backed cane chair. In the work we see the young father who is still wearing his gamekeeper clothing. He has rushed home from work to be with his wife and their first baby. The father sits on his wife’s bed, leaning slightly forward to catch a better glimpse of his child. He grasps small bouquet of primroses as a small present for his wife. Primroses are associated with spring which in turn is associated with new beginnings which fits in nicely with the birth of the newborn baby. It must have been a warm spring day as the sliding window is open and the delicate lace curtains gently flutter in the breeze which penetrates the room. The thing which strikes you when you look at this work is how light and airy it is. This was a factor in the work of the French Impressionists and was taken on board by the artists involved with the Newlyn School in Cornwall around the end of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century.

Queen Victoria died in 1901 and this solemn period and the Victorian period prior to her death saw many artists concentrate on human loss and the grief felt when a loved one died. Queen Victoria suffered the loss of her beloved husband, Albert in 1861, and continually wore mourning clothes for ten years after he died. Many paintings compared the happiness of life before the death of a loved one with the inconsolable grief of those left behind. Elwell beautifully captured such a moment with his painting, The Wedding Dress, which he completed in 1911. The setting for Elwell’s painting is the widow’s bedchamber. The lady lies slumped against the ottoman at the end of the bed, the lid of which is open. On the floor next to her is her wedding dress and we can see more wedding clothes in the chest. She is grief-stricken and buries her face in her hands. We cannot see her face. This is a private and very sad moment for her. It could be that although she had her wedding dress, she never had a chance to marry her fiancé or maybe she did marry and is now remembering the day her and her late husband got married and the happy life they once had. It is a pictorial tale of two worlds. The white of the dress and the happiness of marriage in contrast to the black mourning clothes she wears in respect of her late husband or fiancé. It is the contrast between innocence and happiness and the darkness of sadness and loss. One other thing which makes this depiction even more poignant is the fact that the model for this painting was a local girl, Violet Prest, a costumier of Minster Moorgate West, in Beverley, and three years after the painting was completed, her husband was killed in the Great War.

Violet Prest also modelled for Elwell’s soon-to-be-wife Mary for her painting entitled The Wreath which she completed in 1908, three years before Fred Elwell completed The Wedding Dress.

With this being the last part of my blog featuring Frederick Elwell I was in a quandary as which paintings to feature or more to the point which ones could I bear to leave out. My next painting by Elwell was completed in 1921 and is one of my favourites. It is entitled The Last Purchase and is housed in the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. The painting depicts Fred’s father, James Elwell, sitting at a table in the book-lined study of Fred and Mary Elwell’s house. We see before us a very satisfied and happy man who has just returned from an antiques auction with his purchases. James Elwell was a great lover of ceramics and in the painting we can see him carefully eyeing the vase which was one of his purchases. It is not in perfect condition but this master craftsman considers how best to repair the lip of the vase. The table he sits at is covered with his beloved purchases some of which still retain their auction lot number.

The painting was originally entitled His New Purchase but on James Elwell’s death in 1926, Fred Elwell changed the title of the work to The Last Purchase in memory of his late father. What I like about this work is that it highlights the artistic ability of the artist. It is not just a meticulous and lifelike portrait of his father, it is an example of his ability to paint a still-life work as well as it being a beautifully crafted interior painting

In 1931, Elwell was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and, in 1938, he was elected as a member of the Royal Academy. Elwell felt very honoured to have been elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. The honour came with one drawback, which he wrote about to one of his friends – the writing of acknowledgements to all his well wishers on them hearing of this artistic honour. He humorously wrote:

“…Can you picture me trying to cope……with twenty suitable acknowledgements every evening? No club, no cinemas, no dinners, no theatres until they are finished for such are the Kingdom of God…”

Having accepted the honour of becoming a full member of the Academy, he was asked to serve on the Royal Academy Council and become a member of the selection and hanging committee, which was a group of Academicians, who decided which works of art submitted by the public should be accepted into the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition.

The Royal Academy Selection and Hanging Committee by Fred Elwell (1938)

Having featured the portrait of his father in the previous work set me thinking, what could be more difficult than crafting a single recognisable portrait? I suppose the answer is to craft a work of art which includes fourteen individual recognisable portraits and this is exactly what Fred Elwell achieved in his 1938 painting entitled The Royal Academy Selection & Hanging Committee, 1938, which was his diploma work on being made a Royal Academician and was retained by the Academy as an example of his extraordinary artistic talent.

The setting for this work was the assembly room of Burlington House. This 18^th century room was walled with dark wood panelling and the only light emanates from behind the artist himself as he tries to incorporate all the members of the picture selection and hanging committee who sit around the dining table. Elwell has included himself into the group portrait. He stands to the left with brushes and palette in hand. Look how the light source has not only illuminated the faces of the Academicians but also lit up the tableware and napkins.

Armstrong's Garage by Fred Elwell (1921) — Armstrong’s Garage by Fred Elwell (1921)

The next two paintings I am showcasing show how war changes every facet of daily life. The first work is entitled Armstrong’s Garage which Elwell painted in 1921 and features the interior of the Elizabethan timber-framed building which was a garage and workshop in Beverley, owned by Gordon Armstrong since 1907. It was close to Fred and Mary’s Bar House. Fred Elwell was fascinated by motor engineering and the innovative skill of the owner who designed and built his own car, known as The Gordon. Gordon Armstrong also patented the Armstrong shock absorber which made motoring much more comfortable. In the foreground of the painting we see two mechanics working at a bench and behind them we see the vast empty expanse of the workshop. The timber “A” frames and beams play a prominent role in the depiction and are lit up by the light streaming through the skylights. The work is now part of the permanent collection of the Williamson Art Gallery at Birkenhead.

A Munitions Factory by Fred Elwell (1944)

Fast forward twenty three years and Elwell painted another picture featuring Armstrong’s Garage but it could not be more different. Armstrong’s business boomed and he eventually moved to a larger premises on the other side of town in the late 1930’s. However with the onset of the Second World War, his garage was taken over by the government and turned into a munitions factory. The painting which Elwell completed in 1944 and was entitled A Munitions Factory. In the left foreground of the painting we see a table on which lay tracer bullets and other munitions which had been produced in the factory. This is not just a beautiful work of art but forms a pictorial record of the time. The factory employees will be almost all women who helped the war effort whilst their male partners had gone off to fight the war. This will be a daytime scene as we can see windows in the roof which would have been covered with black-out curtains had this been a night shift. Despite it being the day shift there is a lack of natural light which would have added to the difficulty in working conditions.

Maids with Pigeons by Feed Elwell (1916)

I have reluctantly come to the last painting I am featuring by Elwell. There are so many and yet far too many for me to feature so I will choose another of my favourites. When Fred and Mary married in 1914 they went to live in Mary’s Bar House. Mary, on the death of her husband George Holmes, had been left financially well off. So much so they were able to employ staff to help run the house. In his 1916 painting, Maids with Pigeons, two years after their marriage, Fred Elwell depicted their kitchen maids in the houses’ kitchen. This was just one of many Elwell’s depictions of domestic life at Bar House. The realism of the paintings was well loved by both public and critics alike. This work is a fine example of naturalism. The two maids pay no attention to us but focus on two pigeons who have braved their way through the open window in search of food. One holds out the palm of her hand on which there is some food for the hungry birds. On the sink we see a bowl of water, the wetness of which has been skilfully depicted by Elwell using coloured highlights. On the window sill is a plate and a colander. To the left of the window we can just make out a wooden casing which highlights the water pump.

Married in 1914, Fred and Mary lived a long and happy life. In 1945 Mary suffered a series of strokes which meant that she had to have round the clock nursing. She died in 1952. Fred Elwell continued to paint finding his art very theraputic. He was his own tough taskmaster and even in his eightieth year would rise early to work on his canvases. In 1953, the Ferens Gallery in Kingston upon Hull and the Beverley Art Gallery held a retrospective exhibition featuring ninety of his painting and a small selection of his wife’s work.

Frederick William Elwell died in January 1958, aged eighty-seven.

It has given me great pleasure over the last four blogs to look at the life and work of Fred Elwell. He was a truly talented painter. I will certainly make the effort to visit Beverley and Kingston upon Hull and visit the galleries which house so many of his paintings. In the meantime I will satisfy myself with the excellent book, Fred Elwell RA – A Life in Art by Wendy Loncaster and Malcolm Shields. It is well written and has 141 colour plates of Elwell’s art. It inspired me to write these four blogs and I do recommend you buy it.

Fred Elwell. Part 3 – Landscapes and Mrs Elwell

As far as art was concerned, Fred Elwell was a master of many art genres. In my last blog I looked at his superb portraiture and in this blog I want to feature some of his landscape paintings as well as introducing you to his wife, another landscape painter.

In telling his life story I had reached the year 1896. Fred Elwell had returned from Paris and had tried to forge himself a successful career in London but it had not worked out for the twenty-six year old artist and in this year he had been rescued by his father who brought him back to the family home in the East Yorkshire town of Beverley. Although Elwell had left England and studied in Antwerp and Paris he had always made many trips back home to Beverley. He had returned for good to the beauty of Yorkshire, not as a student painter but now as an accomplished artist and he was pleased to test himself and his artistic skills by setting out to paint the magnificent local landscape and some of the fine local buildings.

Beverley Minster from the Hall Garth by Fred Elwell (1900)

One such painting, which he completed in 1900, was of Beverley Minster and was entitled Beverley Minster from the Hall Garth.

His year in London and his struggle to survive had taken a toll on him so the first thing the family had wanted him to do was to relax and enjoy the tranquillity of the Yorkshire countryside. Elwell also enjoyed the freedom offered by sailing and he would often take a small boat and cruise along Beverley Beck which joined the River Hull. Many like-minded painters would do the same as the clarity of light and the beautiful countryside including the East Riding flatlands surrounding the river was an idyllic setting for landscape artists. On occasion he would tie up the boat alongside a jetty and would welcome visitors to look at his artwork and, by so doing, would often receive commissions. Elwell’s love of landscape painting coincided with the English public’s change of attitude of what they wanted to see in a work of art. Depictions of city life were becoming less popular, displaced by depictions of the tranquillity of the countryside. This was a period when people wanted to “go back to nature”. They worked in cities but hankered for the fresh air of the countryside. They wanted to soak up country life by sailing along inland waterways or get themselves horse-drawn caravans and lose themselves in the peacefulness and serenity of the rural areas.

In 1899, Elwell set himself up in a studio in Wood Lane in the centre of Beverley. It had once been home to the local theatre and later a meeting house for the local Quakers and it was in that year that Elwell launched his first solo exhibition. It was a great success for here was the local boy making good. Locals flocked to see their “own son” and what he had achieved.

One day in 1904 Fred Elwell had a visitor to his studio. The visitor introduced himself as George Alfred Holmes. Holmes, an oil broker, was a well respected member of the Beverley community. He asked Elwell whether he could paint a portrait of his wife, Mary. Mary Dawson Bishop, the daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant, was born in Liverpool in 1874. Her father died when she was very young and the family moved to Manchester. Her late father’s wealth ensured that Mary received the best education that money could buy and she was educated at Ellerslie College, which was described as a ‘fairly exclusive school’, and the college would undoubtedly have provided instruction in painting and drawing. In 1896 she married George Holmes.

A pen and ink sketch of a canoe-yawl by George Holmes

Elwell agreed and made many visits to the home of George and Mary Holmes and soon the three became good friends. Holmes and Elwell had one thing in common, they both loved boats. Holmes was a founder member of the local Humber Yawl Club and Fred Elwell owned his own boat. It was a small twenty-two foot sailing houseboat which had the strange name of Callathumpian. This too was a canoe-yawl but had been adapted with a large deckhouse. George and Mary would often visit Fred on his boat and go for days out sailing the boat along the many tributaries and canals.

Mary Dawson Holmes by Fred Elwell (1904)

Elwell completed the Portrait of Mary Dawson Holmes in 1904 and had it exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. It is an exquisite work of portraiture with the sitter depicted as a lady of gracious sophistication. Her clothes are reminiscent of the French fashion of the time. She wears a tight-fitting dress finished off with a fine white lace collar. Her head is tilted slightly to one side. She holds an upright stance. She has dark almond-shaped eyes. Look at her expression. It gives little away. What do you make of it? Is there an unwillingness, a reticence to pose or is this reserve due to her modesty or shyness?

Detail from Les Parapluies by Renoir (1880-6)

The way she stands and the fact that she is holding a basket is the reason why many people have compared the painting with one of Renoir’s ladies depicted in his painting of 1886, Les Parapluies, which Elwell may have seen.

Mary and Fred Elwell also some had a common interest – art, for she was a talented painter and he encouraged her to submit some of her work to the Royal Academy for inclusion at their annual exhibition. She had two works accepted and Fred also had his portrait of her included at the same exhibition. It is believed that Fred, George and his wife Mary would often travel to Europe, visiting Venice and Switzerland where Fred Elwell and Mary Holmes would take the opportunity to sketch and paint the local landscapes.

In 1910 George and Mary bought their dream home in Beverley. It was known as Bar House. It was a house that afforded the occupants beautiful views of the surrounding areas. It even had its own tower from where one could watch the local racehorses training on the Gallop around Westwood, close to Beverley racecourse. Sadly the joy of moving to their beautiful home was tinged with sadness as shortly after taking up residence her husband George became ill, so much so, he had to retire from his Hull shipping business. As his health deteriorated he had to give up his beloved sailing. Mary and Fred’s became more distressed with George’s health as he became more and more incapacitated. His illness eventually was diagnosed as being terminal. Knowing he was dying George spoke privately to Fred and asked him to look after his wife once he had died. George Holmes died in August 1913, aged just 58.

Fred Elwell and Mary Dawson Holmes married on October 1^st 1914, two months after the start of World War I.

……………………… to be continued

Fred Elwell was a multi-talented painter and in this blog I want to feature some of his landscape works and those of his wife, Mary.

Upper Reaches of the River Hull by Fred Elwell (c.1905)

One of his early landscape works was Upper Reaches of the River Hull which he painted in 1905. The work now hangs in the Beverley Art Gallery. Its original owner was John Brown of Beverley who was a local tailor and provided suits for Elwell and could well have taken the painting in part payment for tailored clothing. It is a beautiful work of art and features Elwell’s favourite area, the flatlands on either side of the River Hull, which he would have seen so many times from his boat. Harvest is over and the stooks of corn sit up proudly in the newly harvested cornfield.

Corsican Landscape by Fred Elwell (1927)

The next painting was completed by Fred in 1927 and entitled, Corsican Landscape. This landscape work, which has a distinct feel of Impressionism, depicts a farm in the centre ground along with grazing cattle and a few figures, all of which are surrounded by a mountain range which, on the left hand side, have been partially lost in shadow. I particularly like the colours Elwell has given to his tall trees ranging from green and golds to the black-shaded ones which have lost the light of the sun.

Mary Elwell completed a painting, around the same time depicting and probably during the same holiday, of the Corsican landscape, entitled Corte, Corsica. It is a depiction of the hillside town of Corte, in northern Corsica. Again, like Elwell’s Corsican landscape, the town is in the centre ground, surrounded by mountains. The buildings are painted white and yellow with red terracotta roofs. In the foreground we see a river cascading down a shallow waterfall. The contrast between the blue of the water and the whiteness of the boulders it flows over adds to the beauty of the work.

Another foreign landscape work by Fred Elwell was completed in 1937, entitled Zermatt. The oil on wood panel painting is a typical Swiss-style landscape dominated by the church and its tower on the right, with the clock showing seven o’clock. On the left we can see some chalets which disappear down the hillside. In the background we have mountains, some in full sunlight others in full shade. Fred and Mary Elwell loved this Swiss Alpine region and spent many happy journeys between 1937 and 1939 in the surrounding region completing a number of works in the region of Zermatt and the Matterhorn. On the outbreak of World War II they had to make a hasty retreat back to England.

One amusing anecdote accompanies this work. Elwell did not sell it to a dealer or art lover for a vast sum of money. He sold it to a neighbouring pig farmer, a Mr Symmons and all Elwell wanted in return was a number of photographs of the Symmons’ pigs !! These he used in another work he completed that year, entitled Pigs in Barn.

Brick Bridge, Swinemoor by Fred Elwell (c.1943)

The next work by Fred Elwell probably brought back fond memories of his childhood. It is entitled Brick Bridge and features a brick-built bridge which straddles the Barmston Drain. In Fred Elwell’s days this was a favourite place for Beverley folks to come and enjoy a swim on a hot summer’s day. The picture was painted in 1943 during the Second World War and was the only place the people from Beverley could go for a swim as troops had commandeered the local swimming pool. Again there is a hint of Elwell’s use of Impressionistic techniques with dabs of various colour representing reflections on rippled water and also the blurring effect of some of the features as if we are looking at the scene through the hazy atmosphere of a summer afternoon.

Bathers at Asnières by Georges Seurat (1884)

The painting by Elwell could well have been influenced by the work of the French artist, Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières which like Elwell’s work has people relaxing on the riverbank as well as in the water and in the background is the horizontal structure of a bridge crossing the water which in both paintings creates a horizontal axis. In the case of Elwell’s work the bridge almost hides the horizon from our view whereas in Seurat’s work our eyes leave the bathers in the foreground and follow the river towards the bridge and the industry on the far side of it.

In my next blog I will be complete the life story of Fred Elwell and take a look at some of his genre paintings.

Once again let me recommend an excellent book on the life and works of Fred Elwell. Most of the information for this blog was gleaned from this book which I bought in Harrogate. It is entitled Fred Elwell RA – A Life in Art by Wendy Loncaster & Malcolm Shields.

Fred Elwell. Part 2. Portraiture

In my second look at the life and works of Fred Elwell I want to concentrate on his masterful portraiture.

In the last blog I left Fred Elwell studying in Paris with his friend Claude Rivas. The year was 1892. They had found themselves some rooms and had enrolled at the Académie Julian under the tutorship of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Bouguereau was far more than just a teacher of art at the Academy, he was a fierce defender of the academic method of teaching art. He was also the chairman of the selection panel of the Paris Salon and thus had, with the other jurists, the power to accept or refuse submitted entries for the annual exhibitions and the jurists’ refusal to accept non-academic art angered many such as Paul Cézanne, Manet and Whistler.

Life at Académie Julian was an exciting time for aspiring artists and many travelled great distances to be part of the Academy’s chosen few. The artists were made to work hard and it also developed their competitive nature by offering a number of annual prizes. Fred Elwell blossomed under this heavy workload and managed to win a number of these prizes during his stay. Friendships were born at this Paris academy and Fred developed long term and special friendships with two other English artists, Richard Jack and the Lincoln-born, William Tom Warrener. Warrener was nine years old than Elwell and had already established himself as a painter. He was also a great social animal and spent much time in the bars of Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge nightclub which had come into being in October 1889, in the Jardin de Paris, at the foot of the Montmartre hill. Warrener had become friends with Toulouse-Lautrec and, like Lautrec, had been commissioned to design a number of advertising posters for the Moulin Rouge.

Elwell would often visit Warrener at his apartment on rue Ravignon and would see the walls of his rooms covered with paintings he had done of the nightlife of the Moulin Rouge. It was during one of those visits that Elwell was introduced to the actress, Léonie, who was one of Warrener’s models and Elwell managed to persuade her to also become his model (see Part 1 of my Fred Elwell blog where I have included Elwell’s painting of her, Léonie’s Toilet).

Elwell’s stay in Paris coincided with La Belle Époque. This period from the late 1870’s to the start of World War I was one of optimism. It was the golden age. For France, this was a period of stability and peace squeezed between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, quickly followed by the brutality of the Paris Commune and the Great War of 1914. It was a time of peace and prosperity. It was time of joy and many took the opportunity to visit clubs and theatres and Elwell, who worked and studied hard during the day, managed to sample the night life in the evening and late into the night and it was during his stay in Paris that he developed the love of pipe-smoking, a habit which stayed with him for most of his life. Another facet of Paris life which Elwell took to was what we now term as café culture which he continued to follow when he returned to England. However, life in Paris had its downside for Elwell, as with most wannabe artists the burden of financial problems was ever present and Elwell’s financial predicament, despite the odd help from his father, was the same, so much so that he had to give his beloved portrait of Léonie to his landlord in lieu of rent.

Whilst he studied at the Académie Julian, Fred would often go back to Beverley to recharge his batteries and sample the delights of home comforts. Elwell finally left Paris in 1895 deciding to live and work in London, although he still exhibited his works at the city’s Salon des Artistes Français (Paris Salon). Elwell was determined to get some of his paintings excepted by the Royal Academy in London and believed he would be able to fund his London life through commissions. Unfortunately for Elwell many artists had the same thought and the contest for painting commissions was ruthless. Elwell realised that the streets of London were not paved with gold and soon he became very despondent with his lack of success. It is thought his despondency led to a nervous breakdown. His father rushed down to London to support his son and eventually convinced him to return home to Beverley

………..to be continued.

Fred Elwell was a master of many painting genres and the paintings I am featuring today deal with his skilful portraiture. The first portrait, Florence, is one Elwell completed around 1902. It features his twelve year old niece Florence Elwell. Florence had been brought up by Fred’s mother and father after she came to live with them at their Park Villa home, close to the racecourse in Beverley, following the death of her parents. She looks a little moody and frustrated at having to sit for her uncle and pouts with annoyance. There were more joyous things to do for a twelve-year old including mixing with the racing fraternity who would often congregate at her uncle’s home during Beverley horse-racing events. It is believed that Fred Elwell completed the portrait in just one hour.

Portrait of a Small Boy by Fred Elwell (1917)

My next featured work is also of a youngster and is entitled Portrait of a Small Boy which Elwell completed in 1917. Before us we see an immaculately dressed young boy in a white suit holding his hat in his right hand and his beloved yacht in the other. His short white socks show signs of falling down towards his shiny black leather sandals. The portrait must have been a challenging task for Elwell as boys of his age are reluctant to stand still and the crumpled look of his white suit is an indication of much movement. It was so challenging that after he had completed the painting, Elwell swore that he would never paint the portrait of a child again.

Seated Nude in the Studio by Fred Elwell (1935)

As I mentioned in the first part of the Fred Elwell story, the first time he was allowed to paint live nudes was when he moved to Antwerp. One of his best works of a female nude was completed in 1935 and was simply entitled Seated Nude in Studio and can be found at the East Riding of Yorkshire Council Museum. The lady depicted in this work is seated on a stool and is depicted in graceful semi-profile. Her blue dressing gown lies besides her. In the background there is some dark furniture which contrasts with the radiant flesh tints of the lady. It is a quirky set-up as she sits before a painting on an easel as if she is the artist admiring her own work.

Another female portrait by Elwell which I really like is entitled In a Bar which he completed in 1943 and was exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. In the work we see the model sitting at the bar, cigarette in hand with a glass of gin and tonic on the bar beside her. There is an air of casual indifference about the way she poses, a somewhat challenging facial expression which challenges us to query her drinking and smoking habit. This is twenty-eight year old Muriel Fox a favourite model of Fred Elwell and believed to be the lady who posed nude for him in the previous work. Muriel was a cook at the Beverley Westwood Hospital and would often call into the Beverley Arms Hotel on her way home from work. This bar was later known as Elwell’s Bar. She was a well-known regular at this hostelry and this was “her stool”. There is great poise in her expression as she stares out at us. As was the fashion in the 1940’s her cheeks were applied with a liberal amount of rouge and her hairstyle , tightly waved, was the fashion of the day. It was rumoured that she had recently given birth to her daughter and baby and basket had been placed out of sight behind the bar.

My next offering is a male portrait and it is a real gem. The work is entitled A Man with a Pint and was completed by Elwell in 1932 and exhibited at the Royal Academy a year later. The painting depicts and elderly man tightly clasping his pint of beer whilst pointing at something in the newspaper which he had been reading. He has a red face and a bulbous nose. There is something very comical about the portrait. The public loved this portrait and the art journal, The Artist, maintained that Elwell “belonged to the School whose purpose is Life”. This portrait is a wonderful realist depiction. Elwell has chosen his sitter, not for his handsome qualities but for his down-to-earth demeanour. This is a depiction of man, like the many elderly men, who love to spend the time with their pint in a welcoming hostelry.

Portrait of George Monkman, Mace Bearer of Beverley by Fred Elwell (1890)

The next portrait is also of an elderly man but in this instance he is not an unknown character but a member of the local Beverley Council. He is the official mace bearer that the town rolls out on official occasions. His name is George Monkman and the title of the pastel painting is Portrait of George Monkman, Mace Bearer of Beverley. This was painted by the twenty-year old Elwell in July 1890 during the time he was attending the Antwerp Academy and, like many of Elwell’s works, is housed in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council Museum. Before us sits a grey-haired sad-faced man in top hat and dark gold rimmed livery. He sits in a high-backed chair. Look how the light shines on both the man’s face and the gilt mace. It is a great study of character and is a testament to Elwell’s ability in the way he has depicted the demeanour of the man, who looks old and tired but still proud of his position as the mace bearer. The frailty of the man, who was eighty-four years old at the time, is brought home by the way Elwell has got him to hold the large ornamental mace with his left hand grasping on to the weighty implement as he holds it against his body. Elwell remembered the portrait well, stating that to keep the sitter happy he had to ply him with brandy. Sadly a fortnight after the portrait was completed Monkman died. Elwell completed an identical portrait in oils thirty years later in 1921.

Canon Fisher and his Wife by Fred Elwell (1905)

The final work of portraiture by Fred Elwell is entitled Canon Fisher and his Wife which he completed around 1905 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1929. Before us we see an intimate dining room scene featuring the Reverend Robert Fisher and his wife Charlotte. It is thought that painting had been commissioned to mark the retirement of the Canon paid for by his loyal parishioners and was one of Elwell’s first portraiture commissions. The portrayal oozes warmth and there is an aura of affection and kind-heartedness surrounding the couple. Robert Fisher sits at the table writing which probably alludes to the fact that he wrote a number of books on subjects such as plants, flowers and Yorkshire villages. His wife sits by his side and works on her knitting. The Canon retired from his position at St Mary’s Church in Beverley in 1905.

In my next blog I will be continue with Fred Elwell’s life story and look at more of his paintings.

Most of the information for this blog was gleaned from the excellent book I bought in Harrogate, Fred Elwell RA – A Life in Art by Wendy Loncaster & Malcolm Shields. It is a beautiful book and well worth buying.

Frederick William Elwell. Part 1. The early days.

When I look back on the four and half years of doing this blog I see my early entries were quite short but appeared nearly three or four times a week. Nowadays due to other commitments and my being sucked into the life of artists the blogs are longer and often in multiple parts. My last three blogs looked at the life of the American genre painter, William Sidney Mount and today I start a multiple-part blog on a home-grown nineteenth century English painter Frederick William Elwell, who many of you, like me, may have up to now, been unheard of. In a way you have to thank my wife for this look at Frederick Elwell as she persuaded me to go with her to Yorkshire for a big three-day cooking event in Harrogate and I managed to slide out of the culinary arena and visit some small local galleries in this beautiful town, where I came across a book on Frederick William Elwell.

Frederick William Elwell was born at St Mary’s Cottage in the small Yorkshire market town of Beverley in on June 29th 1870. His father, James Edward Elwell, was a well-known and well-established wood carver who played a prominent role in Beverley society. In 1900 he was a member of the town council and mayor of Beverley. And when he held the position of Chairman of the Library Committee, he organised the first exhibition of paintings in 1910. The exhibition featured a selection of art which the town had loaned from local collectors. It also included a large selection of works by his son Fred.

Fred Elwell’s schooling began with his attendance at Beverley Grammar School but in 1878 the education establishment had to close temporarily and Fred’s parents had to decide where their son should next be schooled. The family were already aware that their eight year old son was talented at drawing and his father trained him in draughtsmanship and so his father decided to look for some scholarly opening which would allow Fred to further train in art and maybe later architecture as well as attain an all-round education. The decision was made to send Fred to Lincoln to live with his two aunts, and by doing so, it would allow him to attend Lincoln Grammar School and at the same time afford him the chance to enrol in evening art classes at the nearby Lincoln School of Art on Lindum Hill. Fred’s two aunts were a formidable pair of Victorian ladies. One was the principal of the Lincoln Training College for Women whilst the other acted as its secretary

Still Life with Fish by Fred Elwell (1897)

Elwell proved to be a talented scholar and although his father wanted his son’s career path to head towards architecture Fred was in love with painting. He was so good that he was awarded the Gibney Scholarship, named after Rev. J.S.Gibney the canon of Lincoln Cathedral who with others founded then Lincoln School of Art in 1863, and this allowed him to continue on with a three year course in art. In 1887, aged seventeen, Fred Elwell won the Queen’s bronze medal in the National Art School’s competition for his painting, Still Life with Fish. This painting by the seventeen year old Elwell shows the dawning of a great artist in the way he depicts different textures in the painting, such as the shiny reflective glass bottle in contrast to the dull matt finish of the red lobster. On the wall in the background he has depicted fading Delft tiles. The head of the codfish, with its mouth open, is well illuminated against a dark background. Its body is curved and the head turns to the right whilst its tale disappears into the darkness. The curve of the fish is, in some way, countered by the dried herrings which hang in front of the tiles with their tales curving towards the left, balancing out the body position of the cod. Elwell has used the old artist’s trick of depicting depth by incorporating the edge of the marble shelf in the foreground of the painting. This picture is housed in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council Museum.

The head of the college at the time of Fred Ewell was Alfred George Webster and he was a great admirer of the French Impressionism movement which had come to being in the early 1860s in Paris and it was Webster who taught the Impressionist technique to his students. This introduction of Impressionist techniques to students, including Ewell, was strongly opposed by the Royal Academy.

In 1889, at the age of nineteen, Fred Ewell left the Lincoln Art College and followed the path of many aspiring painters of the time and, financed by his father, Fred travelled to Belgium where he enrolled at the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp which had been founded in 1663 by David Teniers the Younger. Fred Elwell and a fellow student Claude Rivaz shared a city studio on the Rue des Aveugles. For many this establishment was considered the most important training academy for those artists who wanted to hone their artistic skills and follow classical Academic training. Many great artists, such as Van Gogh, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Ford Madox Brown at one time studied at this establishment. It was here that the students would learn more about the great Masters of art and in fact the Academy itself housed many works by the old Masters. Fred Elwell’s tutor at the Academy was the landscape and portrait painter, Piet Van Havermaert. Havermaert pressed his students hard and would not suffer any slackers, once telling his students:

“… Always remember that for the money your father pays to keep you here, he could keep four pigs…”

Havermaert was a hard task master and pushed his students to the limit demanding more and more from them.

The Butler takes a Glass of Port by Fred Elwell (1890)

Elwell flourished under this strict teaching regime and during his final year at the Academy produced a genre piece which harked back to the typical type of art that was so popular in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. It was entitled The Butler takes a Glass of Port. The title is a play on words, meaning, on one hand, the partaking of a drink but, on the other hand, meaning “stealing” a drink. The scene is set in a dining room and we see the butler, emerging from the shadows. He had just finished serving his master and guests at the dining table and has come to arrange the clearance of the plates. However he has decided to help himself to a small glass of his Master’s port. Look at the miscreant. Look how his face is lit on the side by the candlelight. This use of light was very popular with the Dutch genre painters of the past and Elwell, even at the young age of twenty, managed to master the art of dramatic lighting. Look at the butler’s expression of anticipation as he pours himself a drink. His nose has been given a reddish tinge suggesting that he and alcohol were old friends. It is amusing to note that the painting’s alternative title, another double-entendre, was All Things come to the Man who Waits ! It was at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp that Elwell began to perfect his skill in portraiture and still life through the influence of the work of 17th century Dutch and Flemish artists.

This Academy was also a stopping off place for art students who headed for the artistic academies of Paris, a route that Fred Elwell and his friend Claude Riaz, followed in 1892. The two young artist found themselves some rooms in rue de Campagne Première, on the left-bank, in the city’s 14th arrondissement of Montparnasse. Elwell was fascinated with the French capital and soon built up a large collection of sketches of all that he saw of Paris life. Elwell enrolled at the Académie Julian and was fortunate to be tutored by a giant among artists, William-Adolphe Bouguereau. It was whilst study at the Academy that Fred Elwell started his training in life drawing using living models . He was never given the opportunity to sketch nude men and women whilst studying at Lincoln, probably because of the presence of the cathedral in the city, the Academy thought life classes were somewhat inappropriate. Out of this training came one of Elwell’s finest early paintings entitled Dolls or Léonie’s Toilet.

Leonie's Toilet by Fred Elwell (1894) — Leonie’s Toilet by Fred Elwell (1894)

Léonie’s Toilet was completed by Elwell in 1894. Fred Elwell was introduced to the sitter of this painting, Léonie, by Thomas Warrener who was a friend of his from Lincoln, who, like Elwell, had studied at the Lincoln Art College. Warrener then attended the Slade School of Art before moving to Paris and the Académie Julian where the two friends met up once again. Léonie was also a model for some of Warrener’s paintings. To the left of the painting in the foreground is the washbasin, draped over which is the newspaper famed for its gossip, Gil Blas, which leads us to believe Elwell was interested in the comings and goings in French society. The periodical often serialised French novels as well as being known for its opinionated arts and theatre criticism. Another hint of Parisian life in the 1890’s is the two Japanese dolls hanging from the mirror. Japonisme was sweeping through Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the term used to describe the influence of Japanese art and fashion on Western culture, and was particularly used to refer to Japanese influence on European Art and Impressionism. This painting’s original title was Dolls, referring to the dolls seen in the work. Sibylle Cole in her 1980 book, FREDERICK W. ELWELL, R.A. 1879-1958. A Monograph with eight selected prints in colour describes the skill of Elwell in the way he has painted the naked back of Léonie. She highlighted the way in which he used a wide range of whites and lovely soft edges where she says “the light leaks into the background”. There is an interesting story behind this work. Elwell, like all struggling artists, had to part with his beloved depiction of Léonie, giving it to his landlord as payment for his rent. Fifty years later the artist James Bateman R.A. was walking down Kings Road in Chelsea when he saw the painting of Léonie in an antiques shop. He bought it and gave it to the seventy year old painter. Elwell was delighted to have Léonie back with him !

Young Woman Powdering Herself by Georges Seurat (1890)

The subject, a girl powdering her face, may have come to Elwell after seeing Georges Seurat’s 1890 work, Young Woman Powdering Herself, a painting depicting Seurat’s secret lover, a working-class woman, Madeleine Knobloch. The painting was exhibited at the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1892, the year Elwell arrived in the French capital.

My final offering in today’s blog could well have derived from a Cezanne painting Elwell may have seen, one which was painted by Cezanne in 1892 entitled Man with a Pipe, a depiction of a peasant relaxing, staring out at us with his pipe in his mouth.

Old Man with a Pipe by Fred Elwell (1898)

Fred Elwell completed a work in 1898 which was entitled Old Man with a Pipe and depicts a gardener, with pipe in mouth, which projects towards us. It is a somewhat cut-off painting with the man’s right fist which grasps the handle of the rake and his left elbow, almost cut out of the lower part of the composition

In my next blog I will continue with Elwell’s life story and look at some more of his beautiful works of art.