Group of Seven – my daily art display

Cyril and Renske Mann. Part 1.

Cyril Mann – the early years and Canada.

No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed.

Harold MacMillan

In many of my blogs I have related the story of a husband and wife who had both been artists but after the marriage and after the birth of the children one has had to give up their career as an artist to look after their spouse and children and that caring role always seems to land at the feet of the wife, who then dedicates her life to her artist husband or partner. The next few blogs are going to look at the lives of a great British artist and the support and love he received from his young wife which allowed him to become a well-known painter. This is not simply a tale about an artist, it is about the resilience of his young wife and how she battled his moods and supported him through times of his severe depression. Please settle back and join me as I explore the lives of the English artist Cyril Mann and his beautiful young wife, Renske.

My earliest self-portrait by Cyril Mann (1937)

To start this journey, one must look at Cyril’s upbringing and, as one knows, a person is often affected or moulded by their early life experiences. Cyril’s father was William Aloysius Mann who was brought up in a reputable middle-class Nottingham family environment. He was the third child of four, having an elder sister and brother, Annie and Will and a younger brother Austen. Like most parents Cyril’s grandparents were hopeful that their four children would make good in life. Their aspirations for Cyril’s father turned to despair when the only job he could secure was one of a bricklayer, which they considered to be a menial profession and somewhat below the family’s social status. If that was not bad enough, Cyril’s father became romantically entangled with a local working-class woman, Gertrude Nellie Burrows, whom his parents believed was not good enough for their son. In a pointed slight to her, they would refer to her as Gertie, when she was better known as Nellie.

William and Gertrude Mann’s circumstances became worse when he became unemployed and so, to seek work, the family left Nottingham and moved to London. Their son Cyril was born in Paddington, London on May 28^th 1911. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 William Mann was conscripted into the army and was shipped off to fight on the Western Front. In 1918, after many years of witnessing the horrors of war, he was honourably discharged as “shell shocked”.

Saxondale Psychiatric Hospital

The war had taken the toll on William’s mental health and he would never be the same again. On returning to civilian life, the family returned to Nottingham and William was committed to the Saxondale Hospital in Sneiton, the city’s psychiatric hospital. Cyril’s father would remain there until his death in 1938 but during his twenty years of incarceration he would make a number of escapes !

Times were hard for Gertrude who had to try and survive on her husband’s small war pension and bring up four children. Unlike her husband who had been lazy, untrustworthy and very often easily distracted, his wife was the total opposite. She was resilient, down-to-earth and strongminded when it came to bringing up her young family. One does not know for sure how the children were affected by the family circumstances but going on public transport to collect their father from the asylum for his home leave on public holidays must have affected them psychologically.

The children did survive their early childhood. Cyril’s brothers Austen and Will proved to be musical with Austen winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music but never got to go there as he was diagnosed as being partially deaf. Cyril’s father, before going off to war, was also musical and had been an accomplished violinist. Cyril’s paternal grandfather had been a talented amateur artist who had had his work exhibited at the Nottingham Castle Art Museum. Cyril developed his own artistic flair when young and was always top in his art class at school. He was so talented that at the age of twelve, he won an art scholarship to Nottingham School of Art and his mother had to get special dispensation to take him out of regular school as he was under fourteen years of age.

One of Constant Troyon’s paintings featuring cattle (Pastoral Scene c.1860)

In later years Cyril talked about his early interest in art and how he had been impressed at seeing one of Constant Troyon’s paintings of cattle.

Dark Satanic Mills by Cyril Mann (1925)

One of Cyril’s early paintings that still exists is entitled Dark Satanic Mills which he completed in 1925, when he was just fourteen years of age. The painting depicts a park in the foreground and a dark threatening-looking factory in the background with thick black smoke issuing from its chimneys. In the midground we see figures enjoying park life. It is an extraordinary landscape work for someone so young. Cyril’s mother needed financial support from her children to supplement her husband’s pension and so she had to withdraw Cyril from the Art College and install him in a paying-job that would bolster the household finances. Cyril must have been upset at being taken away from the art school but took an exam to join Boots the Chemist as a clerk. He failed and this must have come as a surprise to his mother as her son had always excelled at regular school and one has to wonder whether Cyril had deliberately failed as he hated the thought of a job as a clerk when he wanted to continue with his art. However, and probably much to his annoyance, he did eventually work as a clerk until he was sixteen.

Sixteen-year-old Cyril Mann prior to moving to Canada (c.1927)

In 1927, aged sixteen, Cyril’s life changed. His mother Nellie had always been a religious person and had insisted that her children attended the High Anglican Church and Cyril, for a time, was an altar boy. In a way, and in the mind of his mother, this churchgoing brought to the family an air of respectability and sophistication and, in her mind, it was a way to gain social progression and an elevated status. Cyril at this time became very friendly with a local priest who offered to accompany him to Canada, all expenses paid, so that he may “enter” the church and become a young missionary.

Fishermen, Canada by Cyril Mann (1929)

It took little time for young Cyril to acquiesce to the priest’s request. It was probably a combination of the thought of adventure similar to what he had seen in the Boy’s Own Paper, youthful religious zeal and the thought of freeing himself from his controlling mother. Having reached Canada, it was not long before Cyril began to question his decision about serving God as a missionary and he and the priest parted company.

Eighteen-year-old Cyril Mann in Canada (Winter 1929)

Cyril then tried out many jobs – a miner, a logger, a travelling salesman and ended up as a printer in British Columbia on the Canadian side of the Alaskan border.

Cyril Mann, artist at work in Canada (c.1930)

He was now living in the midst of beautifully spectacular landscapes – a landscape artist’s paradise, and soon he began to sketch and paint the breathtaking views.

Canada- Mountainscape by Cyril Mann (c.1931)

Panning for Gold by Cyril Mann (c.1929)

In Canada at that time, the prevailing influence in Canadian art was the artwork of the Group of Seven. The Group of Seven also known as the Algonquin School was a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933. The original members were Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley. They believed that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with nature, the Group is best known for its paintings inspired by the Canadian landscape and they initiated the first major Canadian national art movement. Their artwork was highly colourful and often depicted Autumn and Winter scenes, and they believed that the power of the light from the sun was to be recorded in their work.

Six of the Group of Seven, plus their friend Barker Fairley, in 1920. From left to right: Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Barker Fairley, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and J. E. H. MacDonald. It was taken at The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto.

Cyril Mann was impressed and influenced by the work of the Group of Seven along wth one of their associates, Tom Thomson and in 1932 he visited a Group of Seven exhibition in Vancouver and met one of the group, Arthur Lismer who was then working as a lecturer.

Old Pine, McGregor Bay by Arthur Lismer (c.1929)

Arthur Lismer had been born in Sheffield, England in 1885 and had emigrated to Canada in 1911. Lismer advised Cyril that if he wanted to become a professional artist he should return to England and access the best artistic tuition available, Cyril saw the sense in the advice and in early 1933 he returned to his homeland.

A Mann family outing in Skegness. Cyril on the far right whilst his mother Gertrude is in the middle, Cyril’s older sister Annie is second from the left next to her husband. The other two men are thought to be Gertrude’s brother Austen on her left and Cyril’s younger brother Austen wearing the white clothes. on her right.

Nottingham Houses by Cyril Mann (c.1933) Cyril has depicted his mother tending the garden

After landing in England, he travelled to the family home in Nottingham. To his surprise he wasn’t greeted with a hearty welcome from his mother, instead she was very critical about his physical appearance. Cyril was both upset and very annoyed by his mother’s authoritarian manner which he had had to endure through childhood and, there and then, decided his future home would not be with his family in Nottingham but instead he would head south to the English capital.

Maida Vale Canal by Cyril Mann (c.1934)

Arriving in London in 1933, during the Great Depression, Cyril the young aspiring artist, despite finding it impossible to find a job carried on with his watercolour painting depicting various loacations around Paddington and around the Little Venice canal in Maida Vale, while he he took time off from his paintingnto to join the ever-lengthening dole queues. He found and rented a cheap apartment in Paddington, close to where he was born, and endured the degradation of poor living standards and little money for sustenance. With not having employment he had plenty of free time which he partly filled with painting local scenes using watercolours. Having left school at the age of twelve he realised he had missed a lot and he now developed an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He was a regular visitor at the local libraries and was always willing to engage in conversation with those he encountered so that his knowledge of the world would be broadened and because of his current circumstances, he soon gained an interest in left-wing politics.

Mountain Landscape by Cyril Mann

Having said this, Cyril never joined any official political group but a group he did join was the Toc H Group. The Toc H Group was an international Christian movement whose name was derived from Talbot House, a soldiers’ rest and recreation centre at Poperinghe, Belgium. Its aim was to promote Christianity and look after young soldiers who were returning to civilian life. Each branch of the Toc H had a chaplain to look after the spiritual needs of its members. During the Depression Toc H looked after the many civilians hit by unemployment and, as one of the many people without a job, Cyril came to be one of those who regularly met at the Paddington Toc H in a canal boatmen’s’ club room. Here he could talk to people, which must have been a Godsend for the young man who was out of work and lived alone. The new young chaplain who arrived at the Paddington Toc H in 1935 was Oliver Fielding Clarke, known to everybody as “Bernie”. The chairman of the association asked Clarke to keep a close eye on Cyril, whom he described as “out of work, practically a communist and sometimes pretty blunt with others”. Shortly after receiving that “task” Clarke met Cyril and was completely captivated by the young aspiring painter. In Clarke’s 1970 autobiography Unfinished Conflict, he remembers his conversations with Cyril Mann:

“…I have had many friends and a good deal of the first part of my ministry was given to young men, but few if any of them did more for me than Cyril. We would spend hours and hours together in the evenings and he never spared himself for me. In the early days he had been a [alter] server so that he was not in the least awed by parsons and he also knew how to challenge, or perhaps blister is a more accurate word, a parson’s conscience. I used to get back to Liddon House in the small hours of the morning feeling almost as if we had been engaged in physical combat. Cyril pulverised capitalism and the Church for being its running- dog. He tore to shreds any suggestions that milk-and-water Christian Socialism was the answer and we argued hotly about the existence of God and the nature of morality… All this was interspersed by talk about his art, when he would show me what he had been drawing or painting and what he was looking for as an artist….Both of us thoroughly enjoyed those long evenings; but they did not work in the way that had been expected. Cyril did not move further away from Communism nor nearer to the Church. Instead, I became more and more critical of the Church and increasingly convinced of the truth contained in the teachings of Karl Marx…”

St Pauls by Cyril Mann

It is quite clear from this description that Cyril Mann was an outspoken person with strongly held views which he stuck to notwithstanding the views of others. It is also obvious he had a great self-belief but it could be levied against him that he was aggressively antagonistic to those who did not share his views and it was this latter characteristic which would become a problem for him in later life.

Despite their fiery discussions and the intransigence of Cyril, Bernie Clarke did not give up on him and decided to call in favours from friends in order to get Cyril into employment. The chairman of the Paddington branch of the Toc H arranged for a place at the Royal Academy Schools be made available to Cyril and a friend of Clarke, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a rich German businessman, Erica Marx, who was a poet, philanthropist and loved art saw the artistic potential of Cyril and set up a trust fund for him to finance his time at the art school. She would remain a lifelong friend and supporter of his and would often buy his paintings.

Dahlias by Cyril Mann

The first half of the 1930s had been a rollercoaster ride for Cyril Mann. Out of work unable to feed himself and yet came through it all and entered the Royal Academy Schools in the Autumn of 1935. The lives of his family back in Nottingham had also been a rollercoaster ride caused by tragedy. Cyril’s elder brother Will died in a lift accident in the Midland hotel in Nottingham where he worked and his younger brother Austen drowned in a river whilst out swimming. His death was witnessed by his wife and two young children who thought his violent thrashing in the water was him playing.

In 1935, now at the Royal Academy Schools, Cyril Mann had taken the first step in becoming a professional artist.

……….to be continued

It would not have been possible for me to put together this and following blogs about the artist, Cyril Mann, without information gleaned from a number of sources:

The comprehensive biography of Cyril Mann, The Sun is God by John Russell Taylor

Renske Mann with her book The Girl in the Green Jumper, My life with the artist Cyril Mann.

This intimate autobiography of her life with Cyril Mann by his second wife Renske, entitled The Girl in the Green Jumpe was a beautifully written story of her life and love for her husnband.

This autobiography has now been turned into a play which receives its World Premiere on Wednesday March 13th at the Playground Theatre, London, 8 Latimer Rd, London W10 6RQU.

The Piano Nobile, a London art gallery which was established by Dr Robert Travers in 1985. The gallery plays an active role in the market for twentieth-century British and international art and has held exhibitions of Cyril Mann’s art.

Finally, and most importantly, I owe many thanks to Renske Mann herself who provided me with information and photographs appertaining to herself and her late husband Cyril.

Spring Ice by Tom Thomson

The exhibition I visited back in November at the Dulwich Picture Gallery was entitled The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. The reason for the Group not including Thomson himself was, although he was closely connected to and had greatly influenced the seven members of the Group, he died before they had formed this artistic association in 1920.

Tom Thomson, who was born into a large western Ontario farm family in Claremont, Ontario, was the son of John and Margaret Thomson. It is interesting to note that unlike many early stories of artist’s lives, Thomson never showed an early interest in art. In his youth, he was far more interested in music and literature. At the age of twenty-two, he worked as an apprentice in an iron foundry owned by a friend of his father. It is possible that Thomson took advantage of his father’s connection with the owner and failed to fulfil his part of the apprenticeship as within a year he had been sacked because of his lack of time management. Thomson then decided that the excitement of military life was for him and applied to fight in the Second Boer war but was rejected on medical grounds. Later he would be turned down again by the Canadian military when he tried to enlist and fight in the First World War.

In 1901, aged twenty-four, he was admitted into a business college at Chatham but stayed there for less than a year, at which time he went to Seattle where his brother George had a business school. It was in this American city that he worked as a photoengraver and designed commercial brochures and spent a lot of his free time sketching and fishing.

Thomson returned to Canada in 1905 and two years later joined Grip Limited, a leading Toronto artistic design company. It was whilst working there that he met some of the future members of the Group of Seven. Apart from Lawren Harris, who came from a wealthy background and enjoyed an independent income, all the artists, who formed the Group of Seven, supported themselves at one time or another as commercial artists or graphic designers producing lettering and layout as well as illustrations for magazine and books. Thomson and his newly found friends, who all loved to sketch and paint, would often go off together at the weekends on sketching trips.

One of Thomson’s favourite destinations on his painting trips was Algonquin Park, a forestry reserve north of Toronto, which stretches between Georgina Bay on the west and the Ottawa River to the east. It is a vast stretch of pristine wilderness and an ideal location for landscape artists. Thompson first journeyed there on a sketching expedition in 1912 returning home clutching numerous sketches of the areas he visited. These sketching trips up north were a bit of a logistical nightmare as the artists had, as well as carrying food, shelter and cooking utensils, had also to carry their painting and sketching materials and this culminated in an almost impossible burden. The weather conditions for en plein air painting or sketching was not conducive for the artists due to the cold and wet and this necessitated them having to try and paint or sketch with speed in changing light.

My Daily Art Display featured painting today is one of Tom Thomson’s early works which he completed in 1916 and which is entitled Spring Ice. The 1915 study for this painting, in the form of a small oil on cardboard sketch, as well as the finished oil on canvas painting are normally housed at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. One should remember that many artists looked upon their preparatory sketches as works in their own right and not just as a preparation for the finished article. Thomson made some subtle changes to his finished painting in comparison to his contemporary sketch. Although the positioning of the land, trees and lake remain the same, the colours on the final canvas are noticeably different. In the finished work Thomson has used much brighter pastel colours and by doing so has cleverly brought to us a hint of spring. Also, whereas the sketch had a square shape, the oil on canvas work was wider and horizontal in shape. This added width allows us to get a better view of the blue waters of the lake. One can imagine the difficulty Thomson endured to capture the scene. Probably squatting down on the thawing earth, balancing his sketch box on his knee so as to obtain a low-level view of the lake. Can you imagine how cold it must have been and how cold his fingers must have been in the chilling air? It was those same frosty conditions which bit unmercifully at his limbs that prevented the ice flows from melting as they moved slowly in the water. We can see that there is a long time to go before the warmth of summer arrives to add warmth to the ground and tease the vegetation from the earth. We are still in spring and the trees have yet to open up their buds to the elements.

Artists like those of the Group of Seven had to endure great hardships in the cause of producing a realistic representation of nature. They had to paint quickly to capture the scene with its many moods as the light from the sun or moon changed. The mood for this painting is one of serenity and tranquillity and one can understand why artists like Thomson put up with the harsh conditions so as to record the beauty of nature.

Thomson’s life ended suddenly and in mysterious circumstances. It was the summer of 1917 and he had been out alone in a canoe on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park when he disappeared. His empty canoe was spotted later that day. Thomson was an expert fisherman, canoeist and hiker, and when his body was found eight days later in the lake it seemed incongruous that he could have died accidentally. To this day the circumstances of his death have remained shrouded in mystery. The official cause of death was given as “accidental drowning”. The investigation claimed there was a fishing line wrapped around his legs and he had suffered a blow to his head before he died. As with all deaths in unusual and suspicious circumstances, the conspiracy theorists have had a field day, putting forward numerous scenarios, which ultimately led to the artist’s death. Murdered by a neighbour, killed in a drunken brawl over money he owed his assailant, and killed by the father of a girl whom he had got pregnant were just a few of the many suggested circumstances that led to the artist’s demise. Maybe closer to the truth was the belief that it was a simple accident or that he had committed suicide during one of his many bouts of depression. We will probably never know the truth but the one thing we do know with great certainty is that on that lake in July 1917, Canada lost one its great artists, aged just forty.

The Corner Store by Lawren Harris

A few weeks ago I visited family in London and as usual I just had time to take in one art gallery as recompense for a crowded, although fast, rail journey. The problem I faced was which gallery to visit. I suppose logically I should go for the Leonardo exhibition on at the National Gallery which is receiving such rave reviews. However as I thought it would be too crowded I postponed that delight until next January. In the end I plumped for the Dulwich Gallery which lies south of the Thames and went to see a Canadian art exhibition entitled Painting Canada, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. Over the next few weeks I will give you a taste of some of the works by Thomson himself and some of the other artists who were part of The Group of Seven.

The Group of Seven, also sometimes known as the Alonquin School, were a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920-1933. The seven members of the group were Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, Alexander Young (A.Y.) Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, James Edward Hervey (J.E.H.) MacDonald and Frederick Varley. Tom Thomson who was part of the movement died in 1917 before the official formation and naming of the Group of Seven but has always been considered one of the group’s founders. This group of artists was to become noted for its works, which were inspired by the landscape of their country and in some ways are looked upon as being part of the first Canadian national art movement.

Many of the movement, namely Thomson, Varley, Lismer, MacDonald, Johnston and Carmichael had met when they all worked at Grip Limited, which was the name of the Toronto design firm and which was home to many of Canada’s foremost designers and painters during the first half of the 20th century. Later the final two members of the group, Jackson and Harris would join the firm. The Group was financially sound due, in the main, to the financial support from one of its members, Lawren Harris, whose parents owned the Massey Harris farm machinery company which would be later known as Massey Ferguson.

My choice for the first featured artist of the Group of Seven is Lawren Harris. Lawren was born in Brantford, Ontario in 1885. He was the first born of two sons. Lawren had a radically different background from that of the other artists of the Group of Seven. As I said earlier, Lawren came from a wealthy conservative family of industrialists as the Harris family was co-owners of the Massey-Harris agricultural equipment conglomerate. Harris had the luxury every aspiring artist could only dream of and he was able to pursue a career in the arts without ever having to worry about holding down a regular job.

He was privately educated and received his initial education at the Central Technical School and later the independent St Andrew’s College at Rosedale. At the age of nineteen he went to Berlin to study where he remained for three years. There he studied philosophy and became interested in theosophy, which in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy which has developed since the late 19th century.

He returned to Canada in 1908 and once again settled in Toronto and became a founder member of the Arts and Letters Club, which was a club whose sole purpose was to be a rendezvous where people of diverse interests might meet for mutual fellowship and artistic creativity.

One may have thought that Harris, with his wealthy background, would concentrate on the wealthy aspects of life in Toronto for the subjects of his art but in fact his first subject after returning from Berlin was a series of six paintings of houses in what was known as the Ward, an area where much of the Toronto immigrants lived. My featured painting in My Daily Art Display today is one Harris completed in 1920, entitled The Corner Store and is housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario and is in complete contrast to his later paintings which I will feature in a forthcoming blog along with the rest of his life story. The painting is not of one of the beautiful mansions of his home area of Rosedale but of a simple building which housed the local grocery store. Lawren Harris appreciated the simplicity of its structure which contrasted with the complicated and erratic patterns of the shadows cast by the trees on the shop’s frontage. I love the way the bright winter sunlight illuminates the shop’s façade. I love the colours of the pale green wooden window shutters which contrast beautifully with the terracotta- red trim of the window surrounds. Look at the tranquil and cloudless blue sky above the building. This is a beautiful portrayal of a winter’s scene.

In a few months time a number of us will be overwhelmed by snow and curse winter so maybe snow is a beautiful thing if it is reserved for postcards, Christmas cards and paintings like this one.