Cyril and Renske Mann. Part 3.

Love at first sight.

“…The very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone…”

– Jane Austen

Bread and Knife by Cyril Mann (c.1955)

Still Life of Bottle and Jug by Cyril Mann (c.1955)

In the mid-1950s Cyril Mann’s painting style changed and he entered what was known as his solid shadow period.  This was a complete change of style for him in comparison to his earlier works which had concentrated on the effects of direct sunlight and yet light came into play with these “shadow” works. They concentrated on shadows that were seen below objects when viewed under an overhead light source. In 2018 the Piano Nobile Gallery in London put on an exhibition of Cyril Mann’s work entitled The Solid Shadow Paintings.  The gallery wrote about the works on display:

“…Undertaken between 1951 and 1957, Mann’s solid shadow paintings were a dazzling interjection in the subdued art world of fifties Britain. This was his most original period and it stands as his lasting contribution to the history of twentieth-century painting.  It is an explosive programme of work, representing ordinary objects with boldly outlined shadows and bright, sometimes luminous colour. A dazzling interjection in the subdued art world of fifties Britain, these works have never been displayed together and the exhibition offers an exciting insight into the artist’s radiant formal language…”

After Mary walked out on Cyril in the middle of the night with her their daughter Sylvia, he had to fend for himself.  Fortunately for Cyril, his daughter maintained contact with him and visited him regularly.  Sylvia, who was a year younger than Renske, won a scholarship to the City of London School for Girls . After successfully completed her schooling she left London, aged eighteen, and went to Keele University to read English Literature and French.  Whilst there, Sylvia also took on some temping work to supplement her student grant.  Cyril was very proud of his daughter and what she had achieved although he had to admit they had, at times, a tempestuous relationship and he found her quite difficult at times.  On occasions, it would appear that Sylvia also found her relationship with her father equally problematic.  Renske got to know Sylvia and often said that she was everything she should have loved to have been herself: tall, a head taller than Cyril and Renske, blonde and beautiful. She also had Cyril’s violet-blue eyes and sensitive mouth and in some ways, Renske often felt pangs of jealousy.

Self portrait by Cyril Mann (1956)

Cyril struggled to survive financially as the sale of his paintings were not going well although this could have been more down to his obstinacy and the cantankerous ways he treated dealers and galleries, rather than the quality of his paintings. 

Ma, Just before she died by Cyril Mann

The years 1958 and 1959 proved to be a distressing time for Cyril Mann.  He had been suffering a great deal of pain and was seriously ill with stomach ulcers.  The discomfort had made him stop painting and teaching and the final straw to this misery was the death of his mother whom he had visited whilst she was in a Nottingham nursing home.  He had made a number of facial sketches of his mother in 1959 during her last days. She had outlived her husband, her daughter and two of her three sons.

Cyril and Renske

Things changed for Cyril at the end of 1959 when on the evening of December 18th Renske van Slooten came into his life.  Renske first met Cyril Mann at the Kingsway Day College in Holborn, London, where he was teaching students.  Her “boyfriend” and dancing partner at the time, who knew she was interested in art, took her to meet his former art teacher.  Renske remembers the moment well and, in her book, The Girl in the Green Jumper, she recalls that first sight of the artist:

“…As I stood on tiptoe peering through the window, I could see Cyril with his back to me, slumped at his desk in front of his students with their easels and drawing boards.  His hair, what there was of it was long and unkempt.  He wore a crumpled tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.  He wasn’t tall a bit over five foot at most.  To me, barely out of my teens and recently arrived from Holland, he looked old, at least fifty.  Yet before I’d even seen his face, I felt drawn to him…”

She also distinctly remembered the park warden’s prediction of meeting and marrying an “old” artist. At that first sighting of Cyril in his art class she was totally captivated by him.  Renske says of her first impression of Cyril:

“…A strange feeling came over me. This was it! I remembered the park warden’s prediction. I was mesmerised. I saw his hair was too long, his tweed jacket with leather elbow patches was tatty, he looked worn out, depressed. Didn’t take any notice of me.  I couldn’t care less what he looked like and how scruffy he was. I was attracted to him, not because he was older, but because I’m always attracted to people who are unusually gifted. And I sensed that he was…”

Cyril Mann painting in a small room in Bevin Court

After that first meeting, Cyril and Renske set up a date for the following evening. She was buoyed by the thought of being in the company of a professional artist.  Cyril was almost half an hour late at the rendezvous admitting he had fallen asleep whilst reading a book.  Fortunately for him Renske had waited patiently for him.  Cyril invited her back to his flat to look at some of his artwork.  At this time, he was renting a top-floor flat in a council housing block at Bevin Court in Islington.  Totally captivated by both Cyril and his painting, Renske admits she paid little attention to the flat itself, which was overflowing with his paintings, books and sculptures.  Renske remembers the artwork as being quite small, dark and gloomy and yet she says that they were among the most beautiful she had ever seen.  She told him that some reminded her of works by Turner.  He was delighted at that assertion as he looked upon the English artists as one of his great heroes.

St Paul’s from Bankside by Cyril Mann (c.1952)

One of the paintings which she really liked was his work entitled St Paul’s from Bankside.  It depicted the dome of St Paul’s looming above the rooftops from across the River Thames.  Nowadays at this point on the Thames, the Millenium Bridge spans the river besides the Tate Modern.  Renske said that at first glance at the work, she thought it was a monochrome depiction but on closer inspection she could see that the greys were shot through with blue, yellow and warm pink.  Cyril told her that the city should be viewed on a grey day. He went on to assert:

“…One day people will recognise my qualities as an artist purely on the strength of my ability to perceive greys in their infinite variety…”

It was this assertion that one day he would be acclaimed a great artist that would haunt him all his life as he never felt recognised as a truly great painter.

St Paul’s by Cyril Mann (1948)

It is interesting to compare the 1952 painting with the one he completed in 1948. The latter was painted in his favoured style at the time that of facing the sun and concentrating on the effect of direct sunlight. The view is from Moor Lane which dominates the foreground in which we see four people walking along the pavement, to the side of which is a low wall. A fifth figure crosses the road. Over the other side of the wall is a vast empty space, the result of heavy wartime bombings. In the midground we see multi storey buildings, churches and to the right, the familiar outline of St Paul’s Cathedral.

St Paul’s from Bevin Court by Cyril Mann (1961)

Another of Cyril Mann’s cityscapes featuring St Paul’s cathedral was his painting entitled St Paul’s from Bevin Court. 

A month had passed since their first meeting and Renske and Cyril were happy about how things were progressing.  Renske, however, was not happy with her communal living at the YWCA and told Cyril she needed another place to live.  He made a few suggestions, including sharing a flat with his ex-girlfriend, but Renske came straight out and asked if she could live with Cyril in his flat !   The problem was that Cyril’s home was a one-bed flat and he slept on a single bed in a room that was full of paintings, easels and other artistic paraphernalia. Renske was not put off by this and said that as they were both small, they could both sleep in the bed.  For Renske, it was nothing to be ashamed of, although her work colleagues at the Dutch-owned company, when they were told, were scandalised,  Scandalised that she was living with a man, scandalised that she was living with a married man twenty-eight years older than her and that his daughter, Sylvia, was only a year younger than her, and scandalised that she was living in a poor and rough council estate. 

Renske and Cyril Mann in the mid 1960s

However, Renske was passionately in love with “her” artist and was not going to listen to subtle and not-so-subtle warnings about what she had done.  News of Renske’s situation of living with a married man got back to her boss who contacted the Dutch embassy in London and asked that her parents be informed about their daughter’s living and romantic situation.  Her father and mother were horrified and she was summoned home.  She was still not twenty-one and therefore, by Dutch law, she remained under their control.  Despite their protestations Renske declared that she would marry Cyril with or without their permission.  One can just imagine the thoughts that were going through the parents’ heads having been told that she intended to marry a man who was a year older than Renske’s own mother.  What her parents failed to realise that it was not the older man who was grooming their young daughter, it was their young daughter who was the prime mover in forging this relationship.  Renske returned to London and moved in with Cyril.  She wanted to marry him but could not as he was still married to his first wife, Mary !

Having lived apart for ten years, the marriage between Cyril and his first wife Mary ended in divorce on August 24th 1960 and eight days later, on September 1st, one week after Renske’s twenty-first birthday, Cyril and Renske were married.

Mixed Flowers by Cyril Mann (1961)

Cyril had suffered stomach ulcers for years and had had to endure constant stomach pains after every meal which had weakened him and caused bouts of ill temper.  One day in April 1960, whilst out walking alone, he collapsed in the street and was rushed to the Royal Free Hospital where he underwent an emergency operation for a perforated stomach ulcer.  Following the operation and probably due to the pressures of having to earn a living from his teaching and the need to sell his artwork, both of which he was unable to do due to his physical illness, he suffered a serious mental breakdown.  Renske was upset by Cyril’s physical and mental decline and set about remedying the situation by putting Cyril’s life back on an even keel.  She believed that Cyril was not able to cope with having to teach, which he hated, and paint and so she maintained her job and became the breadwinner.  For Cyril this financial support from Renske liberated him from the drudgery of having to teach and the necessity of providing money to put food on the table.  After release from hospital Cyril went to convalesce at the Artists’ Rest Home in Rickmansworth, a town in south-west Hertfordshire, where he was allocated a comfortable room, painting facilities and three good meals a day.

Studio Corner by Cyril Mann (1961)

His operation had left Cyril pain-free and he went back to his painting with a noted added gusto, but all was not well.  Renske remembers one horrendous evening when a hyped-up Cyril had decided he was going to design, what he termed, “the greatest mural the world had ever seen”.  She had been sleeping badly and was desperate to go to bed but Cyril refused to let her sleep and demanded that she helped him plan this great mural, an extensive paper plan of which had been tacked to the carpeted floor of their bedroom/living room.  He flew into a rage when Renske just wanted to lay down and sleep and demanded she helped him.  It finally got too much for her and she, determined to have an uninterrupted sleep, took some tranquilizers and sleeping pills and collapsed on the bed.  The next thing she remembered was waking up in hospital.  When she had collapsed, Cyril couldn’t shake her awake, and so he called an ambulance. 

Cyril with black eye

The ambulance arrived along with some police. Cyril demanded that he should accompany her to the hospital in the ambulance but they refused him.  He was furious and lost control, attacking both the ambulance staff and the police and for his troubles received a black eye but worse still another ambulance was summoned and after consultation with a psychiatric nurse, he ordered him to be sectioned, taken to a mental unit, placed in a straitjacket, and then taken to a padded cell.  His passport photograph taken days after the incident shows Cyril with a black eye after his altercation with the ambulance men.

Interior with Red Chair by Cyril Mann (c.1961)

After a fortnight’s detention at the psychiatric hospital, Cyril was allowed home, heavily sedated, and having had to promise to take his medication every day.  Cyril was unhappy with the terms of his release as he believed the medication would threaten his libido.  Besides doing that, he asserted that the pills would also affect his creative artistic thoughts and to counteract this he unilaterally began to reduce the amount of medication he had been prescribed.  As often is the case, to raise spirits Renske decided to perform a deep-clean of the flat and buy some new furniture, including a garishly bright red upholstered chairs which Cyril loved and said that the new additions inspired him.

………..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

The intimate autobiography of Cyril Mann’s life by his second wife Renske, entitled The Girl in the Green Jumper.

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 6RQ.

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

Piano Nobile Gallery London for information and pictures.

Cyril and Renske Mann. Part 2.

Paris, Mary and Renske

The previous blog ended in the autumn of 1935 with Cyril Mann entering the Royal Academy Schools where he received thorough academic training and a chance to meet fellow ambitious young artists.  Whilst a student there he remained in contact with Bernard Clarke, the chaplain at the Paddington Toc H.  His initial gratitude with being able to study at the school, and have his tuition paid for by his benefactor, Erica Marx, faded a little over the three years he was there as his appreciation turned to the feeling that he was entitled to what the world had on offer and what he had received was rightfully his just desserts.  It was this sense that the world owed him which would last throughout his lifetime and often upset others.  It was this sense of negativity to anything that had benefited him which would blight his life.  The RA Schools stuck to the doctrine of most leading academies of art throughout Europe to savour and teach traditional academic values and skills and dismiss artistic modernity.  However, Cyril, not agreeing with that premise, did agree that he had received a solid technical foundation in painting and drawing. 

Rainy Skyline, Paris by Cyril Mann (c.1938)

It was during his time at the RA Schools that Cyril decided to call into the nearby tea shop on Piccadilly and was served by a young woman, Mary Jervis-Read.  Besides her work at the café, she was also in a school in Regent Street, studying to become an art teacher.  She was described as being pretty, seemingly fragile and yet had an inherent strength of character which certainly fascinated Cyril.  Nothing seemed to come from this initial meeting although contact details were exchanged.  In 1938, Cyril had completed three years at the RA Schools and decided to leave and follow the example of many young British art students – go to Paris to study art at one of the many ateliers.   Fortunately for him, his sponsor, Erica Marx, was still prepared to fund his studies in France,

Park Scene, Paris by Cyril Mann (c.1938)

Cyril Mann arrived in Paris and took a room at the Hôtel de France in the Rue de la Sorbonne and enrolled part-time at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in the Montparnasse district of the city.  Here he came under the tutelage of the Scottish Colourist, John Duncan (J.D.) Fergusson.  For Cyril, studying art in Paris, was like artistic freedom.  Freedom, he believed, from the numbing academic approach served up by the RA Schools.  One of the few close friends Cyril made at the RA Schools, was Guy Roddon, who came over to Paris to see his friend, stayed at Cyril’s hotel. Cyril gave him a tour of the capital and “taught” him how to survive on a few centimes.  They ate at one of Cyril’s favourite workers’ restaurants in St Germain where he said they could eat a hearty meal for hardly any money.  Alas, he was to regret his choice of venues as he came down with a severe bout of food poisoning.  That debilitating illness made Cyril consider his Paris location and lifestyle and so moved out of the putid centre of the French capital and settle for a more salubrious area near the Porte d’Orléans in the city’s 14th Arrondissement. 

Political Rally, Paris by Cyril Mann (1938)

Another visitor for Cyril was the young waitress who had caught his eye in the London tearoom where she worked.  She too was enamoured with the young artist.  Cyril and Guy would regularly meet with a group of international students and would spend many an evening and into the night discussing art.  At this time Cyril had become almost fixated with the works of Turner and how the English Master had depicted the sun and how the effects of direct sunlight had on the subjects of his paintings. 

Place de la Concorde by Cyril Mann (c.1937)

In his 1937 painting, Place de la Concorde, Cyril Mann has once again completed a depiction whilst facing the sun. People are mere silhouetts seen a against a fountain. This method of painting, facing the sun, was one of Mann’s early favourite styles and can be seen in many of his early works.

Pont Neuf, Paris by Cyril Mann (1937)

Another of Cyril’s paintings, Pont Neuf, Paris, which depicted the famous Parisian bridge against a blazing sun backdrop was one he considered to be his first masterpiece.

Cyril and Guy went on a short holiday to Montbazon, five miles south of Tours, a commune on the River Indre, a tributary of the Loire.  It was a rural area and whereas Guy Roddon favoured the views of the landscape, it was obvious that Cyril preferred urban depictions for his paintings and rural beauty never had an emotional impact on him. On occasions when Cyril had depicted trees in his paintings they would be overshadowed by urban elements.   However, although the bustling city of Paris offered Cyril a plentiful opportunity for his depictions, he seemed to be more interested in depicting the effect of the sunlight on the buildings and yet it was maybe more than this.  It appeared to be that Cyril was more interested in the sun itself.

Cyril Mann, on leave from the army,his wife Mary and their daughter Sylvia (1941)

In the early months of 1939, war brewing in Europe and Cyril decided to return to London where Mary Jervis-Read was waiting for him.   By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 Cyril, once again out of work, and Mary, were living together in what could be termed a loving but hand-to-mouth existence but despite all the financial hardship and future uncertainty, the couple married and the next year their daughter Sylvia was born..

The Red Letter Box by Cyril Mann (c.1949)

Before the birth of his dauhter Cyril received his call-up papers and assigned to the Royal Engineers but was turned down for overseas active service due to him suffering from “hammer-toes”, a deformity of the muscles and ligaments and due to this he was never put on active service but instead served with the Royal Artillery in the anti-aircraft defence on the South Coast of England.  His time in the army affected his relationship with his daughter and wife and it also did not give him time to paint.  His return to painting only came in 1946 when he was demobbed.

All his life Cyril was a difficult man to live with.  He frequently had temper tantrums and people around him were very careful what they said to him so as to avoid such “explosions”.  It was not only his friends that witnessed these outbursts, but his wife Mary was also wary of her husband’s fits of temper.  Cyril’s outbursts often centred around his frustration at not being recognised as a great artist.  One cause for discord was that Mary wanted another child but Cyril did not as she was the family breadwinner and he reckoned that they could not afford a new addition to the family.  Sadly, Mary did become pregnant but suffered a miscarriage.  The relationship between Cyril and Mary came to a head in 1950 when she left him, walking out in the middle of the night and taking with her their ten-year-old daughter, Sylvia.  Mary commented on the inevitable break-up:

“…To live with Cyril you had to love him very much.  I suppose that in the end I didn’t love him enough.  But maybe no one could have done…”

Although Mary’s relationship with Cyril was over, his daughter remained fond of him despite and continued to visit him after he and her mother had gone their separate ways.

Bombsites around Spitalfields, London by Cyril Mann

Bombsite around Paul Street by Cyril Mann

The depictions painted by Cyril after the war were surprising.  Many of his paintings featured the devastation of properties during the Blitz.  For some reason Cyril believed that these would be sort after by the public but he had overestimated people’s desire to be reminded about the hellfire they had lived through often resulting in the death of their relatives.  One example of this was his painting, Bombsites around Spitalfields and another was his gouache on brown paper painting entitled Bombsites around Paul Street, an area which was heavily bombed and where the present Barbican is now situated.

Renske’s parents on their wedding day (June 1937)

Due to the rumblings of war in Europe, Cyril Mann had returned from Paris in the early part of 1939 and he and Mary were reunited. That same year, almost seven and a half thousand miles away from London, another woman, who was to play a major role in Cyril’s life, was born.  She was Renske van Slooten, the daughter of a Jewish-Dutch father, Maximiiaan, a civil engineer and his Dutch-Indonesian wife, Nini, who before raising a family, was a newspaper journalist.  Renske was born in the university town of Bandung, Java on August 24th 1939 and was brought up in a well-to-do family lifestyle in a beautiful house, with servants and luxury cars. 

Renske and Bastiaan with their mother Nini.

She had a older brother Bastiaan who had been born the previous year.  All this good living and happy lifestyle came to a shuddering end on February 28th 1942 when the Japanese forces invaded the island.

Baby Renske

Renske’s father was an officer in the army and was captured and taken prisoner and transported to Burma where he was forced to work on the notorious Burma railway and for three years the family had lost contact with him, fearing the worst.  Renske along with her mother and brother were unceremoniously evicted from their palatial home by the occupying forces and went to stay with their grandmother where they remained until the end of the war in 1945.   Renske’s father eventually returned home.  He was very ill and emaciated, so much so, he was barely recognisable and he too was horrified to see the state my brother and I were in, also emaciated, with swollen stomachs brought on by malnutrition and beriberi.   The family moved from Bandung to Java’s capital Batavia (now Jakarta) to try and start a new life but in 1949 The forces of the Indonesian Liberation Movement fought an independence battle with the Dutch-backed government which eventually led to the Dutch relinquishing the country and eventually Dr Sukrano became the first president.  One of the president’s first edicts was that all Dutch-Indonesians must choose between remaining in the country and giving up their Dutch passports or being expelled from their homeland, taking nothing with them.  Renske’s parents chose the latter.

MS Skipjack

In 1950 Renske, her family including her grandmother, left Java on the Sibajak, which was once a luxury liner that had been converted into a troop ship. Her mother was eight months pregnant with her third child, Adriaan. Between 1945 and 1950 the Netherlands Government required the Sibajak as well as other Dutch Liners to be utilised to evacuate their citizens and other people from their threatened colony and also to transport troops to the various theatres of war on the other side of the globe. It was a horrific voyage and Renske remembers her mother being sick during the whole voyage. The ship was over-full with refugees escaping Sukrano’s regime.

The family landed in Rotterdam and travelled to The Hague where Renske’s father had secured some emergency accommodation. On August 24th 1950, a month after their arrival in The Netherlands and eleven years, to the day, after the birth of Renske, her brother Adriaan was born. 

Cyril Mann painting en plein air

Renske’s father’s Bandung civil engineering degree was not recognised in The Netherlands and so he had to return to university in Delft to gain a second engineering degree.  Renske’s mother was struggling with running the household as she couldn’t cook or organise housekeeping, all of which had been carried out by their servants back in Java.  What was worse for the family was the racism they encountered.  The Netherlands had suffered under the five-year Nazi occupation.  There were food and housing shortages and now five years after the war had ended three hundred thousand “dark-skinned” penniless refugees had been given sanctuary in this country.

Cyril Mann setting up his exhibition at the Park Row Gallery of the Midland Group of Artistsand Designers in 1953

Things did improve for Renske and her family.  Her father was appointed a lecturer in mechanical engineering at the local technical college and the family received a legacy on the sudden death of Renske’s wealthy Jewish grandmother with which her father purchased a semi-detached house in an upmarket suburb.  In October 1953 there was another addition to the family with the birth of Francisca.   After completing a torrid time at primary school where she was bullied, Renske managed, after some private coaching, to gain entrance to an all-girls grammar school where she gained good results in her final exams in maths and four foreign languages.  Then came a dividing of opinions on her future between Renske and her parents.  She wanted to go to art college but they demanded that she took a paying job and contribute to the family finances. This did not please fifteen-year-old Renske who vividly remembers an incident shortly after hearing of her parents’ plans for her:

“…I was walking around a park in my home town of Dordrecht, when the Park warden came up to me and asked why I looked sad. I told him: my parents won’t let me go to art school. I have to learn shorthand typing.’ The park warden replied: ‘I’m psychic, and I tell you that you’ll have all the art in your life you could want. You’ll marry an artist. You’ll know him the minute you see him. In fact, I see him standing behind you.’  A few minutes later, the park warden again: ‘No, that can’t be him… he’s  too old. That must be his father. He’ll look after you for the rest of your life…”

The family Renske left behind in Holland when she went to London.      Mother Nini van Slooten, Francisca born in 1953, Adriaan born in 1950 and Bastiaan her elder brother and father, Max van Slooten.

And so at the age of sixteen she was enrolled at a secretarial college to learn shorthand and on securing her first secretarial job, her mother took half of her take-home pay, which made her aggrieved and, in her mind, poor. Renske intensely disliked living in Dordrecht and was delighted to leave there and travel to London where she arrived in July 1959, a month before her twentieth birthday. She received no opposition from her parents with regard so her travel plans and maybe her departure ended the clashes between her and her mother and father. In her own words Renske explained:

“…I think my parents were relieved to see the back of me, and I don’t blame them in retrospect. I was not the perfect daughter, sulky and bored, frequent boyfriend trouble and never falling for the right prospect. Lacking ambition myself, badly educated with frequent spells without any schooling due to the war and later independence struggles, nobody had any expectations of me (including myself)…”

Renske, aged 19, just before she went to London

On arriving in the English capital, Renske had to secure a secretarial position but she was well qualified as she was competent in Dutch, French and English shorthand as well as being fluent in them.  She soon found work with a salary four times greater than she was receiving in the Netherlands.  She stayed in the local YWCA and soon struck up friendships with the other girls who were from many different countries.  It was not all work and no play for Renske and one day a young Cypriot asked her out to go with him to a dance at the Hammersmith Palais in West London. As he got to know her he realised that she, like him, had a love of art and he offered to take her to one of his art evening classes he used to attend and so meet his former teacher. She agreed, they went and he introduced her to his art teacher – Cyril Mann.

……. 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

The intimate autobiography of Cyril Mann’s life by his second wife Renske, entitled The Girl in the Green Jumper.

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

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

Piano Nobile Gallery London for information and pictures.

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 28th 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.

Artcatto Gallery Revisited

I have just returned home from a twelve-day holiday in Spain and Portugal and once again when I was in the Algarve I visited the town of Loulé and went to one of my favourite small galleries, Artcatto, one which I featured in September 2022.  There was a new selection of outstanding contemporary art, and in this blog I will concentrate on work by three of  the artists.

Voka

Voka at work in his studio

Voka in his studio

“I’M EVER SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT PAINTING. BUT ALWAYS HOPING NOT TO FIND IT – BECAUSE IT’S THE SEARCH THAT I REALLY LOVE SO MUCH.”

These are the words of the artist known as Voka.  Voka was born in Austria in 1965 and now lives and works in his studio in Puchberg am Schneeberg, a town in the south-eastern part of Lower Austria. 

Jimi by Voka (2020) Acrylic on wood.

He has described his artistic style as spontaneous realism.  For him, this style is a revival of the significance of contemporary art, which he looks upon as a valued tradition in a new era.  His paintings are distinguished by his use of bright colours which portray subjects of everyday life, portraits, and sports.

Frida by Voka

His paintings exploit texture and his dramatic mark making animate the subjects of his artwork. In his portraiture series simply called Heads, VOKA put his subjects in the centre of his work. His artistic style is easily recognisable, which evolves out of the vitality of a moment in time.   His portraits are not only of important personalities but also often depict unknown characters.  The aim of Voka’s portraiture is not only to capture the facial characteristics of his subjects but he endeavours to ascertain the “true being” behind the presence”.

Andy Warhol by Voka

Voka says that every one of his paintings is a huge challenge for him, but especially with the “heads” series.   He says that he exhaustively analyses every person he depicts. For him, every person is special and exceptional in their own way. The person I depict is unique. He believes that every person who he observes or meets or who hurries past him has their own story to tell. He also reckons that when he paints them, these stories become his. None of his portraits are a mirror image of the real person.  They are always a portrait of his point of view.

Vienna by Voka

Voka’s artwork is not just portraiture. He has completed many cityscapes such as Vienna……

Venezia by Voka

……..and Venice.

The city by Voka

NYC by Voka

Voka also liked to depict the chaotic life in the city such as his many paintings of the streets of New York. He described his love of these vibrant city depictions, saying:

“...I like to go to the busy parts of a city- the pedestrian zones, market halls, usual meeting places. Here, in a short space of time, new pictures are always being created before my eyes without me ever having to change location. Cities are often rigid and unmoving places in spite of their impressive architecture. It is the people who breathe life into them and this life couldn’t be more diverse: the movement of the people, their clothing, mentality and customs, their dealings with one another often differ notably depending on where you are. Every bit of this earth has its own rhythm and I try to capture it…”

Voka’s artwork can be found in collections and museums throughout Europe, Russia and America.

Thomas Bossard

Thomas Bossard

In the gallery there were also a number of paintings by the French artist, Thomas Brossard.

Le Bonhomme de Niege by Thomas Bossard

Thomas Brossard was born in the French town of Poitiers and studied Graphic Arts in Lille from 1987 to 1993 at the Institut Saint Luc à Tournai, Belgium.  His original plan was to go into advertising where his graphic art would be needed.  His future plans were put on hold when he became enamoured with the theatre.  He explains his change of heart:

“…It was at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, as a painter-decorator, that I was able to Begin to express my artistic palette in all its versatility: illustration, painting, scenography, frescoes, photography, decoration, etc. by creating numerous decorations for works of art (Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, Twilight of the Gods, The Magic Flute, The Auberge du Cheval Blanc, etc.). I then worked as a set designer for various directors’ stage, notably Pierre Debauche. I have also directed storyboards for short films and commercials, not to mention sets designed for a TV series produced by Vagabonds Movies. I also made drawings on porcelain for Yves Deshoulières’ factory. Finally, I have created posters for shows, festivals and feature films…”

Balade à Venise by Thomas Bossard

His depictions of the theatre reveal the humour and comical life behind the scenes and his large canvas’s show the insignificance of man.  Prior to becoming a professional artist, he worked with in the theatre, creating and putting together stage sets for plays and opera. 

Les Gagnants by Thomas Bossard

Looking at his work, it is easy to see that Bossard has a very deep understanding of human nature.

La Cuisine Gastronomique by Thomas Bossard

His work has been greatly influenced by artists such as Velasquez, Vermeer, and Rembrandt. Thomas works long hours in his studio with just his music as company; he has a great love of classical music. He exhibits his work in Paris, Toulouse, and throughout France, as well as in British galleries in London, Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Falmouth.

La Petite Balcon by Thomas Bossard

There is a childlike simplicity about Bossard’s work and yet there is a certain something which captures our gaze.  The depictions are often mischievous and naïve and yet are pleasing to the eye.

Mr Brainwash

Mr Brainwash (Thierry Guetta)

My third offering is works of art from Thierry Guetta who uses the psuedonym Mr Brainwash. His contemporary art is best thought as a morphing between pop art and street art and came to the fore after a documentary film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, directed by Banksy. 

The film was Academy nominated and regales the evolutionary passage of the street art movement with Mr Brainwash, like Banksy, bringing art to the masses.

Banksy Thrower by Mr Brainwash

Guetta’s art style has been described as both innovative and fearless. It is a combination of pop art of the past and the raw components of his early street art work. There is such a similarity between the works of Mr Brainwash and Banksy that some believe they are one and the same person.

Not Guilty by Mr Brainwash

His exhibitions are breathtaking in size and his artwork can be seen in the film and TV world , such as Molly’s Game, Billions, Shameless and The Kardashians. 

Madonna’s “CELEBRATION” Album cover by Mr Brainwash

He has designed a number of album covers for the likes of Madonna who approached him to design fifteen different covers for the worldwide release, singles, DVDs and special edition vinyl of her Celebration album.

Pele by Mr Brainwash

Photo of Pele with Mr Brainwash

There is a childlike simplicity about Bossard’s work and yet there is a certain something which captures our gaze.  The depictions are often mischievous and naïve and yet are pleasing to the eye.

Work Well Together by Mr Brainwash

Thierry Guetta was born on January 31st, 1966 in Garges-lès-Gonesse, a commune in the Val-d’Oise department in northern France, He is best known by his moniker Mr. Brainwash, and now lives in Los Angeles.

Brother’s Advice by Mr Brainwash

Mr Brainwash has had his work shown at many exhibitions, both in America and Europe.

Shen Ming Cun

Although I said at the beginning I would be featuring three different artists who had works on show at Artcatto when I visited there a fortnight ago, I cannot end this blog with out mentioning my favourite paintings which still have a small room to themselves and are still on show.

Beautiful Headress by Shen Ming Cun

Shen Ming says that he draws his inspiration from the ancient traditions, crafts and culture of the tribes of the Miao, Yao and Dong of the remote GuangXi region of China. Time does not stop still and there are large changes in China which is causing a massive strain on the ancient way of life in these small village communities and as the young people leave the villages to seek work in the large cities one has to wonder how long these cultures can survive.

Looking at You by Shen Ming Cun

Each of the tribe has a quite unique tradition in dress and adornment from the other. The young girls sew everything entirely by hand and their jewellery is crafted in the village.  Shen’s artwork the inimitable customs, dress and heritage of these minority tribes of Southern China. His painting demonstrate his empathy and admiration of these tribal people as they possess a lyrical beauty, dignity and grace.

Silver Necklace by Shen Ming Cun

Shen’s artwork manages to capture the chromatic vibrancy of the costumes and ornate silver jewellery with a lightness and confidence that has undoubtedly led to his success. Their clothes and adornments are genuine symbols of the wealth, religion, ritual and national consciousness that shape their lives. Shen explains his inspirational art:

“…I have spent a long time researching the richly colourful cultural heritage of the Yao and Miao nationalities and the Dong minority of Southern China. Over the years I have lived amongst them and become friends with these beautiful people who radiate pure goodness and a simple love of life. Cultivating their ancestor’s achievements, they turn life into immortal art…”

Laura Sylvia Gosse

Laura Sylvia Gosse (1881-1968)

For a number of years now, probably for centuries, many female artists have been discounted as hobby-painters or painting because art for many was like playing the piano, a social grace that every young woman should achieve.  It is even more annoying when a man and a woman work side by side and yet it is the reputation of the male artist that is remembered.  An example of this is looking at two Camden Town Group artists, one a founder, the other on the periphary as it was an all-male domain.  I am sure you have heard of Walter Sickert but what about his friend and contemporary, Laura Sylvia Gosse.  Sylvia who ?  Let me set the record straight.

The Artist’s Mother by Laura Sylvia Gosse

Sylvia Gosse was actually born Laura Sylvia Gosse but was always known by her Christian name, Sylvia.  She was born in London on February 14th 1881, the youngest of three children.  She had an elder sister, Teresa Emily and an elder brother, Philip Henry.  

Edmund Gosse by John Singer Sargent

Her father, Edmund Gosse was a poet, literary critic and librarian of the House of Lords.  Her mother was Ellen Gosse (née Epps), an artist in the Pre-Raphaelite circle who had studied under Ford Madox Brown, and whose sister, Laura Theresa, an aspiring artist, had married Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Fountains at Pernes Les Fountaines, Provence by Laura Sylvia Gosse

Sylvia’s family home in Delamere Terrace was in the London borough of Paddington, and was always inundated with people from both the art and literary world with visitors such as the great writers of the time, such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling.  In early childhood, Sylvia loved to paint and draw and her favourite subject being her pets. At the age of thirteen, Gosse went to an art school in France, where she stayed for three years and she recounted that it was there that she felt she belonged.  She returned to England and studied at the St John’s Wood School of Art.  In 1906, aged fifteen, she enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools.

The Gossip by Laura Sylvia Gosse

One of the frequent visitors at the Grosse household was the artist Walter Sickert and it was during one of his visits that he began talking to Sylvia and looked at her artwork.  He was captivated by her work and obvious artistic talent and suggested she learn the art of etching.  Sylvia began to attend Sickert’s evening classes at the Westminster School of Art and in 1909 went as a pupil to his new art school, which he ran with Madeline Knox at 209 Hampstead Road, London.  Sickert’s dual role with Knox at the art school ended when Knox resigned following Sickert’s illness, and having had to run the school singlehandedly.  Sickert approached Sylvia Gosse, his pupil, to see if she would accept the position as associate director. 

Rowlandson House – Sunset by Walter Sickert (1911)

Walter Sickert rented Rowlandson House in Camden Town from 1910–14, during his time with the Camden Town Group. This summertime depiction of the building looks north up Hampstead Road from the back garden, the time of day nearing twilight, which Sickert has indicated by daubs of pink and mauve in the pale sky. The trees in the far background form the edge of Mornington Crescent Gardens. 

Walter Sickert by Sylvia Gosse (1923-25)

Sylvia was made co-director of the Rowlandson House School but did this position alongside Sickert put them on an equal footing?  As a woman in an artistic world which did not always value them, it became clear during her time at Rowlandson House, that her relationship with the Camden Town Group which she was ineligible to join, being a female, despite Sickert being its leader, was not even-handed.  According to Kathleen Fisher, Gosse’s biographer and friend, who wrote Conversations with Sylvia. Sylvia Gosse – Painter, 1881-1968, Sylvia Gosse taught the less-able students at Rowlandson House, as Sickert would grow bored and impatient and dismiss them. The School became known as the Sickert and Gosse School of Painting and Etching.  Silvia served as co-principal from 1910 until it closed in 1914 and during that period, she taught some of the classes and took over responsibility for the practical organisation and finances.  Sylvia Gosse had an independent income, and without her financial backing the school would have closed much sooner.

The school which Gosse and Sickert jointly ran until 1914 when it closed. During those years, Gosse’s own painting career also began to progress. Sylvia Gosse could be described as being slightly introverted (or was she just shy?) and was not known as a very sociable person.  One of her pupils, Marjorie Lilly recalled Sylvia, saying:

“…she might appear at Number 15 [Fitzroy Street] on At Home days, but rarely; being very shy, she always chose the most inconspicuous corner she could find, looking harassed and hunted, and hardly spoke…”

Despite this she was always very supportive of her fellow artists and completely dedicated to Sickert.

Chateau Dieppe by Layra Sylvia Gosse (c.1925)

La Place Saint Jacques by Laura Sylvia Gosse (c.1920)

Grande patisserie, Place Nationale, Dieppe, France by Laura Sylvia Gosse (1930)

Walter Sickert had always loved visiting France and would regularly travel to the Normandy coastal town of Dieppe.  Sylvia often accompanied Sickert on his travels, notably when he stayed in Dieppe, and she had a small cottage near his home.  Many of her paintings featured the French town.

Envermeu, France by Laura Sylvia Gosse (c.1920s)

The small town of Envermeu which lies ten kilometres east of Dieppe also featured in many of Sylvia’s paintings.

The Seamstress by Laura Sylvia Gosse

Many of the paintings of the Camden Town group focused on the subject of ordinary life, which often concentrated on the life of the poor and dispossessed, and how their life was one of boredom and squalor.  Gosse tended to focus more on the hard-working women, such as the seamstress and the printer.

The Printer by Laura Sylvia Gosse (c.1915)

Sylvia’s painting, The Printer, which she completed around 1915 shows a woman labouring at a press.

The Nurse by Laura Sylvia Gosse

In her painting, The Nurse, we see her approaching her patient.  In this depiction, we see her as she is reflected in a mirror above the sickbed.  This is not a depiction that beautifies the nursing profession it is simply one that shows us an unglamorous workaday appearance of a nurse tending the sick.

Mrs Alexandra Russell by Laura Sylvia Gosse

During the 1920s and 1930s Sylvia’s paintings were on display at many of best-known commercial galleries. She was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1930 and continued to support Sickert loyally until his death in 1942.

In 1951 Sylvia bought a bungalow in Ore, a large village in the urban area of Hastings, in the county of East Sussex.  It was here that she planned to spend her last days painting, but alas, she suffered from cataracts, which made painting and sketching increasingly problematic.  However, it was her belief that every painter should die with a brush in their hand, so despite her severely reduced vision, she still managed to visit exhibitions and help inspire young artists. She died in the Buchanan Hospital, Hastings on June 6th 1968 at the age of 87.

Jasper Francis Cropsey

Among the most vibrant and spectacular works of the nineteenth century, were the sweeping landscape depictions of the Hudson River School which managed to capture the rugged beauty of the American countryside and wildernesses.  The name Hudson River School was first used disparagingly by trendy Europhile critics who preferred the dignified depictions of the realism of L’École de Barbizon.  The beautiful paintings of the Hudson River School compellingly convey the natural grandeur, not just of the Hudson River Valley, as the name would imply, but also the Catskills, Adirondacks, White Mountains, the Maritimes, the American West and South America.  My guest artist was one of the great painters of that School.

Jasper Francis Cropsey

Jasper Francis Cropsey was born at Rossville, Staten Island on February 18th 1823.  He was the eldest of eight children and his ancestors were of Dutch and Huguenot ancestry. His father was Jacob Rezeau Cropsey who had a farm in Rossville and his mother was Elizabeth Hilyer Cropsey (née Cortelyeu).  During his early years, Cropsley suffered many bouts of ill health which resulted in him missing school and forced him to rest up at home.  During those frequent periods of inactivity, he taught himself to draw. Many of his sketches featured architectural drawings and landscapes.  Whilst attending the local country school he would help is father on the farm but in his pre-teen and teenage years he developed his main love, sketching and painting.  Much to the chagrin of his teachers he would often be found doodling on his school books.  In his 1846 unpublished biography, Reminiscences of My Own Time he wrote:

“…I was so disposed to adorn my writing book, on the margin, wherever there was a blank space, with fancy letters, boats, houses, trees, etc., and paint, or color the pictures in my books that I would undergo the reprimand of the teacher, rather than desist from it…”

The Valley of Wyoming, by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1865)

Cropsey as a young teenager was fascinated with architecture and this led him to assemble an elaborate model of a country house which he submitted to the 1837 fair of the Mechanics’ Institute of the City of New York and it won him a diploma.  The model was well received and Joseph Trench, a New York architect who saw it, offered fifteen-year-old Cropsey a five-year apprenticeship in his architectural office. After eighteen months, Cropsey’s proficiency in drawing had earned him the responsibility for nearly all the office’s finished renderings.   Cropsey prospered at the firm and during his penultimate year at the company he began painting the backgrounds of the architectural designs. To improve that skill, Joseph Trench persuaded his young apprentice to study watercolour painting with English-born watercolourist, Edward Maury.  The firm even provided him with paints, canvas, and a space in which to study and hone his artistic skills.

The Narrows from Staten Island, by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1868)

Cropsey left the Trench’s office in 1842 and in 1843 he first exhibited a painting, which was quite well-received.  It was a landscape entitled Italian Composition, probably based on a print he had seen at the National Academy of Design. Jasper Cropsey was elected an associate member of the Academy the following year and became a full member in 1851.

Sunset on Greenwood Lake by Jaasper Francis Cropsey (1877)

Having left the Trench architectural company Cropsey managed to support himself for the next two years by accepting commissions to provide architectural designs.  Although that brought him financial support, his main love was sketching and painting landscapes and he would often take painting trips to New Jersey and Greenwood Lake, which straddles the border of New York and New Jersey.  After one such trip, Cropsey had put together a number of sketches of the area, which on his return home he converted them into two paintings of Greenwood Lake that were accepted at an 1843 exhibition at the American Art Union.

Autumn Foliage in the White Mountains (Mount Chocorua) by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1862)

During one of his trips to Greenwood Lake, Cropsey met Maria Cooley, whom he later married in May 1847. They went on to have two children, Mary Cortelyou Cropsey in 1850 and Lilly Frances Cropsey born in 1859. He and his wife crossed the Atlantic for a two-year European honeymoon and visited England during the summer of 1847, travelled throough France and Switzerland and reached Italy wheree the Cropseys spent a year among the colony of American artists who had settled in Rome. During that lengthy stay in Rome, Cropsey worked out of the former studio of Thomas Cole, the founding father of the Hudson River School. Cropsey became familiar with the works of the Nazarenes and other German artists in Rome and it was their influence which may have reinforced his own liking of detail in his paintings. Like many other American artists who visited Italy, Cropsey made frequent sketching trips to the Roman Campagna and other regions of Italy, such as Sorrento, Capri, Amalfi, and Paestum.

Maria Cooley Cropsy by Daniel Huntingdon (c.1850)

Cropsey and his wife returned to America in 1849 and he made his first trip to the White Mountains, a mountain range covering about a quarter of the state of New Hampshire and a small portion of western Maine.  Cropsey rented studio space in New York which he shared with Edwin White, the Massachusetts-born artist, at 114 White Street in New York City. Here he taught and worked up his European sketches into finished oil paintings. Cropsey and his wife made their base in New York and from there in the summers they would make exploratory trips through New York State, Vermont, and New Hampshire, and he would continually sketch what they saw. Cropsey specialized in autumnal landscape paintings of the northeastern United States. He would convert sketches into finished paintings and sell them but also to supplement the family income he would teach.  

 Bayside, New Rochelle, New York by David Johnson (1886)

One of his pupils was the landscape painter David Johnson, who became a member of the second generation of Hudson River School painters.

Lord Byron’s Dream, by Charles Lock Eastlake (1827)

Cropsey and his wife made a second trip to England in 1856 and rented a studio in London at Kensington Gate.  It was an ideal place to host parties and make friends such as the art critic John Ruskin, John Singleton Copley, 1st Baron Lyndhurst, who was a British lawyer and politician and was three times Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake who was a British painter, gallery director, collector and writer of the 19th century. He became the first director of the National Gallery and from 1850 to 1865 he served as President of the Royal Academy.    

Walton on Thames by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1860)

It was with friends such as these that ensured many English and American landscape painting commissions came Cropsey’s way from both English and American patrons. When Cropsey arrived in England he brought with him many commissions from his American patrons who wanted paintings depicting English castles and abbey ruins. He also found that there was a great interest amongst English clients for his American landscapes. The London printer Gambert and Company commissioned thirty-six views from Cropsey for publication in the American Scenery journal.

Autumn—On the Hudson River , 1860 by Jasper Francis Cropsey

In 1860 Cropsey completed one of his most famous paintings entitled Autumn—On the Hudson River of 1860. This monumental view of the Hudson River Valley was painted from memory and in-situ sketches he had made, in his London studio. Cropsey adopted a high vantage point, looking southeast toward the distant Hudson River and the flank of Storm King Mountain. It is an autumnal scene which would soon become Cropsey’s trademark.  The work was praised by critics and the public alike, including Queen Victoria.  The painting depicts a sweeping panoramic view of the river under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting (60 x 108 inches).  The leaves on the trees are fiery autumnal oranges and reds.  In the background we catch a glimpse of the mountains through the haze.  At the bottom of the painting we can see vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy grey boulders.  At the bottom left we can just make out a trickling waterfall and small pool. 

Although not easy to spot, on the bank of the pool, three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. From our viewpoint, the land stretches down to a grassy meadow which is crossed by a meandering stream at the heart of the painting. 

In the right foreground we see cattle on the riverbank drinking the water close to a wooden bridge. 

Artist’s signature on flat rock

Cropsey signed the painting as if he had carved it into the flat top of a rock at the centre foreground of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”

Summer, Lake Ontario by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1857)

Besides earning money from the sale of his landscape paintings he also provided illustrations for books of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Moore and did a series of views of American scenery published by Gambert and Company, London.  Cropsy was acclaimed not only for his beautiful autumnal landscapes such as Autumn—On the Hudson River, 1860 which is now part of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. collection, but for bringing to the untravelled British people the exquisite scenery of the great Western continent.   Queen Victoria was so impressed by Cropsey’s works of art that she appointed him to the American Commission of the 1862 International Exposition in London, and he subsequently received a medal for his services.

Coast of Genoa by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1854)

Cropsey and his wife returned to America in 1863. The 1860s were the most successful time for Cropsey as far as the sales of his work and his ever increasing bank balance. Shortly after their arrival home to America they visited Gettysburg to record the battlefield’s topography in a painting. Cropsey also began to accept architectural commissions once again and produced his best-known designs, such as the ornate cast and wrought iron Queen Anne-style passenger stations of the Gilbert Elevated Railway along New York’s Sixth Avenue.

High Torne Mountain, Rockland County, New York by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1851)

Cropsey’s father-in-law, Isaac P. Cooley was a justice of the peace from 1837 to 1839 and became a judge over the New Jersey Court of Common Pleas in 1840.    Cooley later became a member of New Jersey State House of Assembly from 1860 to 1861.   Cooley offered to build his daughter and son-in-law a studio on his estate but Cropsey declined the  offer and instead, purchased forty-five acres of land near Greenwood Lake in Warwick, New York, where he designed and built a 29-room Gothic Revival mansion with its own studio which he called Aladdin. The family then divided their time between living in New York City, and spending time in Warwick.

The Old Mill by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1876)

Unfortunately for Cropsey, the art of the Hudson River School began to lose its popularity and by the early 1870’s would be completely out of favour in the art world. In 1876 Cropsey completed his last major work, The Old Mill, which is now part of the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA. Collection.  The painting is a depiction of the Sanford gristmill, which stood on the banks of the Wawayanda Creek near Warwick, New York, and close to where Cropsey had built his palatial estate, Aladdin. The rural water mill was at the heart of the American pre-­industrial economy, but time moved on and in the 1870s, the water mills were quickly being replaced by more efficient steam-powered mills and factories.  This loss of such bygone icons concerned Cropsey.  For him, it was symbolic of the loss of the simple past.  It was a sentimental bereavement.  The depiction was typical of Cropsey’s past output – autumn landscapes that beautifully captured the sunlit atmosphere of autumn in New York and New England.  Cropsey exhibited it at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where he was awarded a medal for “excellence” in oils.

Wickham Pond and Sugar Loaf Mountain, Orange County by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1876)

The Hudson River School artwork began to lose its popularity by the mid 1870’s and by the end of the decade would be completely out of favour in the art world. In the early 1880’s the sale of Cropsey’s landscape paintings was dwindling eclipsed in popularity by the smaller scale works which were, softer, mood-evoking landscapes of Barbizon-inspired painters such as George Inness. As a result the Cropsy family’s financial situation became dire and the family was perilously close to having their home, Aladdin, in Warwick, NY, taken from them.   Fortunately, they managed to sell their lavish estate and at the same time, auctioned off many paintings, furniture, and household possessions in preparation to move to a smaller property.

Ever Rest,  49 Washington Avenue, Hastings-on-Hudson

In 1885 the Cropsey family moved from Warwick to Hastings-on-Hudson, a village in Westchester County located in the southwestern part of the town of Greenburgh in the state of New York.  He firstly rented a property then later bought a house at 49 Washington Avenue, which they named Ever Rest. Cropsey and his family lived there for the rest of their lives.  They were content to live a quiet existence there at Ever Rest and did very little travelling.  As far as painting was concerned Cropsey concentrated in depicting local views or views based on the hundreds of sketches he had completed through the years, including studies he did in the two year period spent in Rome. .

Jasper Francis Cropsey by Edward Mooney (1850)

Jasper Francis Cropsey suffered a stroke in 1893 and died at Ever Rest on June 20th 1900 at the age of 77,  and Maria, his wife of 54 years, passed away in 1906.

The Cropsey home, known as Ever Rest,  was built in 1835 and purchased by Jasper F. Cropsey in 1885. Cropsey extended Ever Rest by adding an  artist’s studio to it in 1885. The Homestead is located at 49 Washington Avenue, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.   On May 17, 1973, both the New York and National Historical Societies declared the Homestead an historical site. The Homestead is listed in the “National Register of Historic Places in New York”.

A great deal of information I needed cam fro some excellent websites:

Newington-Cropsey Foundation

Welcome Autumn with Jasper Cropsey’s Colorful Landscape Paintings

National Gallery of Art

Mark Murray Fine Paintings

Spellman Gallery

Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley, Self Portrait (1897)

The artist I am featuring today is the American painter and watercolourist Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley.  She was born on July 13th 1860 in the small coastal town of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Her father, Peter Radcliffe Hawley was an officer in the coast guard and her mother, Isabella Hawley (née Merritt), a Canadian-born dancer. Wilhelmina’s ancestors were English and Scottish migrants, who moved to the east coast of the United States and Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth century

Birthplace of Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley, Merritt Peck House, 213 High Street, Perth Amboy, New Jersey

Wilhelmina had three siblings: an older sister Jeanne and two younger brothers William and Alan Ramsey.  When Wilhelmina was four-years-old, the family moved to the New York suburb of St Albans, a residential neighbourhood in the southeastern portion of the New York City borough of Queens. Wilhelmina developed two loves during her pre-teen years.  One was a love of sketching and painting thanks to two of her unmarried aunts, Florence and Georgina Agnes Merritt and the other was the love of travel once her grandparents took her to Europe when she was just twelve years of age and it was the excitement of visiting so many new places that encouraged her to start writing a journal.

The Cooper Union

Wilhelmina soon developed a love of art and decided to follow the dream of becoming a professional painter.  In 1879, at the age of nineteen, she enrolled in the Cooper Union Women’s Art School, one of the New York art academies that is open to women.  The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art was established in 1859 and is among the nation’s oldest and most distinguished institutions of higher education. The college, founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist, Peter Cooper, offers a world-class education in art, architecture and engineering as well as an outstanding faculty of humanities and social sciences.  Cooper took the revolutionary step of opening the school to women as well as men. There was no colour bar at Cooper Union. Cooper demanded only a willingness to learn and a commitment to excellence, and in this he manifestly succeeded.

Two Women near the River Waal by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (1894)

Wilhelmina remained at the Cooper Union for a year and then enrolled at the Art Students League where she honed her artistic skills eventually becoming the first woman vice-president of this progressive institution. Her tutors included William Merritt Chase, Julian Alden Weir, Charles Yardley Turner and Kenyon Cox. The popularity of the Art Student League was that it was based in New York and the city attracted many European artists, many of whom Wilhelmina met while living and studying at the Arts League.

Young Woman in the Meadow by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

To escape the cold climate of New York, Wilhelmina spent the winter of 1891/2 on the island of Bermuda where she fell in and out of love with a mysterious Englishman whom she had agreed to marry.  Fortunately, she realised the error of her judgement and the two split up.  Once again, like so many American artists of the time, who succumbed to the magnetism of Paris, Wilhelmina was drawn towards the French capital to continue with her artistic tuition. On June 18th 1892, just a month before her thirty-second birthday, Wilhelmina once more, set sail for Europe on the Holland-America steamer Veendam.  During her Atlantic voyage, Wilhelmina was accompanied by the Dutch-American artist John Vanderpoel and his wife Jessie Elizabeth Humphreys. Vanderpoel. He was a well-known artist and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago where one of his tudents was Georgia O’Keeffe, and it was he who most likely suggested to Wilhelmina that she should spend the summer months at the charming village of Rijsoord near Dordrecht in the Netherlands, where he had founded an artists’ colony in 1886. 

Interior with Mother, two Children and Cat by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

On arriving in Paris Wilhelmina registered at the Académie Julian, one of only two art academies in the city to which women and foreign students were admitted.  Having arrived in the Summer, all the Academies were closed for the summer break and would not re-open until the September.  Wilhelmina used the time to travel throughout Belgium and the Netherlands and on 4 July 1892 she made her first visit to the Dutch flax village and artists’ colony at Rijsoord, where various foreign artists and art students had been living and working since 1888 especially during the summer months.  In 1893, Wilhelmina achieved her first artistic successes at the French Academy where she was awarded a prize for best composition.  Also for the first time, one of Wilhelmina’s paintings was selected for the Paris Salon that year, and success came from across the Atlantic when her painting, Holland Peasant Girl was shown in New York at an exhibition of the National Academy of Design

Girl Knitting in a Field by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

In 1893, Wilhelmina was appointed as an art teacher at Academy Colarossi and it was around this time that she met English-born Canadian art student, Laura Muntz  A friendship between the two women sprung up and Laura moved in with Wilhelmina at her studio at No. 111 Rue Notre-Dame-des -Champs. Close to the Palais de Luxembourg.  Directly across from their studio was the studio of American artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.  Both Laura and Wilhelmina were regular visitor to Whistler’s studio, and he to theirs.

Laura Muntz Lyall. 

Laura Munz, who was born in 1860 in Radford, Warwickshire, England, was the same age as Wilhelmina and is recognised as one of the most talented painters of her time.  She was an impressionist painter, best known for her depiction of mothers and children. When she was a small child, she emigrated with her family to Canada, where grew up on a farm in the Muskoka District of Ontario. 

A Daffodil by Laura Munz Lyall (1910)

In 1882, Laura began to take classes at the Ontario School of Art in Toronto.   She also studied briefly at the South Kensington School of Art in 1887, then returned to Canada to continue her studies at the Ontario School. She came to Paris in 1891 and before she met Wilhelmina had been living alone and earning money by teaching and administrative work.  She was the first Canadian to receive the distinguished “Honourable Mention” at the Paris Salon exhibition in 1895.

Portrait of Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley by Laura Munz (1897)

In 1896 Laura returned to Canada for a short spell to help look after an ailing relative.  She returned to Paris and the Academy Colarossi and was promoted to the post of  massiere (Studio head) at the Académie Colarossi.  In 1898 she returned to Canada in 1898 and set up a studio in Toronto to teach and paint.  In 1906, she moved to Montreal to continue her career and built up a large clientele that regarded her as the premier Canadian portraitist of children.  Following the death of her sister in 1915, she returned to Toronto and married her brother-in-law Charles W.B. Lyall and cared for his children of her sister’s marriage, eleven in all, but many had left home by then.  She set up a studio in the attic of their home, and started signing her works with her married name. Laura Munz Lyall died in Toronto in 1930, aged 70.

Rose by Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (1895)

Wilhelmina and Laura spent part of the summers in the French countryside as well as the artists’ colony of Rijsoord in the southern Netherlands. She would often take her international students of the Académie Colarossi with her on these painting trips.   It was here that Wilhelmina captured the villagers in oils and watercolours. The village of Rijsoord was well situated for passing travellers on the Rijksstraatweg (State Highway), an important European road that connected Paris to The Hague.

The bridge over the River Waal at Rijsoord, with Hotel Warendorp on the right

An inn was constructed on the spot near the river Waal where the eighteenth-century tollhouse had stood. The building is still standing and for several years had housed the restaurant Hermitage. When Wilhelmina first visited Rijsoord, the inn was called Hotel Warendorp. Hotel Warendorp functioned as the headquarters of the summer academy. The ground floor of the building comprised a livingroom, diningroom and a room for drinking coffee. Most of the guestrooms were also on the ground floor. On the floor above it, the large space under the roof was used as an artists studio, where the artists would hang their most recent paintings and watercolors for discussion. On rainy days, when it was impossible to work en plein air, the artists would actually work in the studio. Wilhelmina’s great granddaughter, Alexandra van Dongen, wrote about how her great grandmother met her husband in her blog: For Two Years, or Perhaps Forever”; Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley and the Artists’ Colony in Rijsoord.  The tale is an instalment in a monthly series of blogs telling stories about the rich history shared by the American and the Dutch peoples.  She wrote:

“…In 1899, Wilhelmina apparently first encountered the 31-year-old Rijsoord farmer Bastiaan de Koning (1868-1954). They most likely met during a boat trip on the river Waal, as the story goes, as local villagers including De Koning, regularly rowed the artists to their outdoor painting locations. In the summer of 1900 Wilhelmina returned to Rijsoord again and announced her engagement to Bastiaan. They married a year later on December 5, 1901. Another three years later, when Wilhelmina was 44 years old, she gave birth to a daughter, my grandmother, Georgina Florence de Koning (1904-1973), named after Wilhelmina’s aunts. By that time, Wilhelmina had been active in the art world for twenty-five years. Family life did not prevent her from traveling abroad, visit exhibitions or meet her friends in Paris and New York. In 1915, her family in Rijsoord engaged a young housekeeper, Geertrui van Nielen (1895-1981), who became an important supporter in her life. Trui, or Troy, as she was called by Wilhelmina, took care of household matters and looked after Georgy, as Wilhelmina’s daughter was called, when her mother was traveling abroad …”

Wilhelmina continued to live with her husband and daughter in Rijsoord.  Years later she enjoyed the summer holiday visits from her daughter, Georgy, her husband, Hans van Dongen and their six children.  On February 18th, 1958, Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley passed away at home at the age of 97.

The information I used for this blog came from a number of excellent websites, all of which are worth visiting. They are:

The Society of the Hawley Family

For Two Years, or Perhaps Forever”; Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley and the Artists’ Colony in Rijsoord

Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley

Schildersdorp Rijsoord 1886-1914

New York Almanack

Finally, may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope that peace may return to us all.

John White Alexander

During the nineteenth century, Paris was considered the art capital of the world.  Once the American Civil War had ended, aspiring American artists, who had the necessary funds, made their way across the Atlantic to the French capital and enrolled in one of the many ateliers there, to learn from the foremost painters of the time.  Many enrolled in the prestigious government-sponsored École des Beaux-Arts and in thriving private academies and studios.  They also had the chance to visit the Louvre and study the works of the Masters of byegone days and be impressed by the modern works on display at the Paris Salons, World’s Fairs, and other exhibitions, including the eight shows staged by the Impressionists.  These young Americans also submitted their own works to the various exhibitions.  Today I am looking at the life of one such American, John White Alexander.

The American photographer and art critic, John Nilson Laurvik, wrote about my featured artist in the December 1909 edition of the Metropolitan Magazine:

“…In the whole history of art one looks in vain for anything approaching his inimitable skill in the arrangement and play of his figures. . . .[He is] pre-eminent as a delineator of feminine beauty and charm…”

John White Alexander

John White Alexander was an illustrator, landscape and still life painter, printmaker, muralist, society portraitist,  and production designer of posters, costumes, scenes, lighting, and tableaux vivants.  Alexander was born on October 7th, 1856, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, which is now a part of the city of Pittsburgh.  He was orphaned at the age of five and was subsequently raised by his grandparents. When Alexander was 12 years old, he quit school and became a telegraph boy. One of his employers, Colonel Edward Jay Allen, the secretary/treasurer of the Pacific & Atlantic Telegraph Co., noticed Alexander’s aptitude for drawing and began working with him to help him develop that talent. So impressed with Alexander that he assumed guardianship of the young boy and persuaded him to return to the local High School for eighteen months.

Six years later, in December 1874, Alexander and a friend took a trip down the Ohio River,  earning money for food by sketching farmhouses and selling them to the locals.  It is said that Mark Twain read about their trip and a number of incidents on their voyage of exploration were used in his 1884 novel,  Huckleberry Finn.  Soon after his adventure, Alexander relocated to New York and spent three months seeking a job in New York City, visiting a number of publishers, showing his sketchbook.  He was finally employed as an office boy at Harper’s Weekly magazine where he was later promoted to illustrator and political cartoonist in 1875. He remained working for the magazine for three years. 

Alexander then travelled to Paris but found it very expensive and moved on to Germany and the city of Munich where he received his first formal artistic training at the Royal Academy, winning a bronze medal for drawing.    It was in Munich that Alexander first met Kentucky-born German painter, Frank Duveneck.  In 1878, Duveneck had opened a painting school in Munich.

Portrait of John White Alexander by Frank Davenek (1879)

However, like Paris, the cost of living in the city of Munich proved too onerous for Alexander and so he and Duveneck moved to the Bavarian town of Polling, a small town fifty miles east of Munich, where Duvenek set up another painting school and Alexander taught a private watercolour class in Duveneck’s school.  His students were known as the Duveneck Boys and included such aspiring painters as John Twachtman, Otto Henry Bacher, and Julius Rolshoven.  In 1879 Duvenek completed a portrait of John White Alexander.

Venice Canal Scene by John White Alexander (1880)

From 1879 to 1881, Alexander travelled and studied with Frank Duveneck in Italy. The pair spent the summer of 1880 in Venice.    One day, Alexander met Whistler by chance as he was painting next to a canal. Alexander returned to America in 1881 and was able to pick up illustrative commissions from various magazines.  One such commission saw him travelling 2,100 miles along the Ohio River in the Spring of 1881 resulting in sixteen sketches of the local coal industry.

Oliver Wendell Holmes by John White Alexander

On his return to America besides returning to his work as an illustrator, he became a very successful portrait artist. Many well-known individuals sat for Alexander such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, an American physician, poet, and humourist notable for his medical research and teaching, and as the author of the “Breakfast-Table” series of essays.

…..also Thomas Worthington Whittredge, an American artist of the Hudson River School.

Walt Whitman by John White Alexander (1889)

….and Walter Whitman Jr. who was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American history.

Mary Emma Woolley by John White Alexander

In 1909, Alexander completed the portrait of Mary Emma Woolley, an American educator, peace activist and women’s suffrage supporter. She was the first female student to attend Brown University and served as the 10th President of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937.  It is a beautiful portrait of the woman, exuding elegance and his brushstrokes along with the delicate shadows depict her as a dignified woman of great importance.  The sitter lightly thumbs a book with one hand while the other is clenched into a fist which was possibly referencing her knowledge and passion.  It is said that the way Alexander portrays Woolley validates a tendency among male artists of this era, who often painted women as domestic, inwardly emotional beings with exquisite exterior refinement.

Owing to the fact that they both had the same surname, John White Alexander was introduced to and later married, Elizabeth Alexander.  She was the daughter of James Waddell Alexander, president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society.   John and Elizabeth had one child, the mathematician James Waddell Alexander II.  In 1881 John White Alexander completed a black and white sketch of Elizabeth.

Portrait of Mrs John White Alexander (1902) by John White Alexander

……….and in 1902 he completed a full-length portrait of his wife.

Azalea (Portrait of Helen Abbe Howson) by John White Alexander (1885)

A turning point in Alexander’s artistic career came when, during a summer European holiday in 1884, he wrote to his early mentor, Colonel Allen, telling him of his desire to complete a “subject picture”. The result was his 1885 painting entitled Azalea (Portrait of Helen Abbe Howson). In Alexander’s painting, we see Howson adorned in a white dress seated on a sofa on the left of the horizontally elongated painting.  To counteract that, on the right is a white-flowering azalea branch in a large celadon vase and on the back wall one can see the bottom of a framed image.  The main title of the painting refers to the flowers Helen Howson stares pensively across the room at.  This pose of Howson is one of contemplation and in many of his figurative works Alexander depicts women who avoid the gaze of the viewer.  Some believe that Alexander’s depiction of self-conscious subdued women may be his way of counteracting the growing activism of women in their battle for suffrage and other forms of equality that was manifesting around this time.

Whistler’s Mother by James Mcneil Whistler

Historians believe the depiction was influenced by Whistler’s portrait of his mother which had been exhibited in New York in 1882.  The poses are similar. The “cut-off” picture frame is depicted in both paintings.

Six years later in 1897 Alexander completed another memorable work featuring a single woman.  It was entitled Isabella and the Pot of Basil and is based on a poem written by the English poet John Keats entitled Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. Keats had actually “borrowed” his tale from the Italian Renaissance poet Giovanni Boccaccio.  The story goes that Isabella was a Florentine merchant’s beautiful daughter whose ambitious brothers disapproved of her romance with the handsome but humbly born Lorenzo, their father’s business manager. The brothers murdered Lorenzo and told their sister that he had travelled abroad. The distraught Isabella began to decline, wasting away from grief and sadness. She saw the crime in a dream and then went to find her lover’s body in the forest. Taking Lorenzo’s head, she bathed it with her tears and finally hid it in a pot in which she planted sweet basil, a plant which is now associated with lovers. 

This scene was made famous by William Holman Hunt’s 1868 version…

 …….and the 1907 one by John Waterhouse,

However Alexander’s pictorial rendition of the scene is so different to the other two.  His depiction has used theatrical effects to depict this gruesome scene.  He has isolated Isabella in a shallow recess and illuminated her from below, almost as if she were an actor on a stage who has been illuminated solely by the footlights.

There is an eeriness about the way Alexander has utilised a cold monochromatic palette, and if we allow are eyes to follow the sensuous curves of Isabella’s gown, they are finally drawn to the loving attention Isabella gives the pot, as she gently caresses it. Isabella seems to be in a world of her own totally oblivious to us, the viewers.  It is a tragic depiction of lost love.

Panel for Music Room, by John White Alexander (1894)

There has always been a connection between fine art paintings and music.  So many famous works of art have depicted people playing musical instruments.  It is the conjoining of two great arts.  Many such paintings depict young ladies playing a musical instrument or intently listening to a musical recital.  Take a look at this beautiful work by John White Alexander as he depicts two young women laying back languorously on a long and plush sofa. 

Look carefully at their facial expressions.  The woman on the left who is playing the guitar is lost in concentration and in some ways seems mesmerised by the sounds coming from her instrument.  The woman on the right lies towards her resting on an ornate cushion.  She seems to be in a dream-like state lost in thought.  It is a frieze-like horizontally elongated depiction which measures 94 x 198cms (33 x 78 inches) portraying a dream-like atmosphere.

Memories by John White Alexander (1903)

Another of Alexander’s paintings featuring the interaction between two women is his 1903 work entitled Memories.

Repose by John White Alexander (1895)

One of Alexander’s most famous works is his 1895 painting entitled Repose. Once again it is a depiction of a woman lying languourously across a large cushion on a long sofa. The curves of her body can be seen despite the voluminous white dress she wears. Her head rests on her hand and she looks out at the viewer. 

The facial expression of the woman, whose lips are slightly parted, gives an added touch of sensuousness to the depiction. This provocative facial expression along with the sinuous curves are a reflection of the then current French taste for sensual images of women as well as the undulant linear rhythms of Art Nouveau.

Murals by John White Alexander on the Grand Staircase of the Art Museum of the Carnegie

Alexander held his first exhibition in the Paris Salon in 1893 and it was held to be a brilliant success.  Immediately following the exhibition, he was elected to the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts.  In 1901 he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and in 1902 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1900 at the Paris Exhibition he was awarded a gold medal.  Another gold medal was awarded to him in 1904 at the World’s Fair at St. Louis. His works are in museums in both America and Europe.

Grand staircase, Art Museum of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh

In addition, in the entrance hall to the Art Museum of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, a series of Alexander’s murals entitled Apotheosis of Pittsburgh covers the walls of the three-storey atrium area.

View overlooking Grand Staircase of the murals by John White Alexander

At the top of the Grand Staircase of the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh, a cultural haven sponsored by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, there is a sweeping mural completed by John White Alexander in 1907.  This total number of murals cover almost 4,000 square feet of wall space of the interior.  The Apotheosis of Pittsburgh is a series of forty-eight murals, all painted by Alexander between 1905 and 1915.  The murals reflect turn of the century Western ideals of progress across three floors of the Grand Staircase. Alexander was given creative freedom for the project, and the resulting murals tell a story of Pittsburgh through the lens of Andrew Carnegie’s vision of the steel industry and the wealth gained through Industrial Capitalism that fuelled his philanthropy. Alexander completed the first elements of the mural in 1907 and the remainder in 1908.

Jonathan Scorch’s blog has a full description of the murals.

John White Alexander died May 31st 1915, aged 58, before finishing the mural panels for the third floor.

Laura Wheeler Waring. Part 2.

Houses at Semur by Laura Wheeler Waring (1925)

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port by Laura Wheeler Waring (1925)

After her short stay in the south of France, Waring returned to Paris in the Spring of 1925 and continued her studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére whilst staying in the Villa de Villiers in Neuilly-sur-Seine.  That year Laura completed her paintings, Houses at Semur, France and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Critics believed this was a turning point in her artistic style as we see her use of vivid colours in order to express vivid, brilliant atmospheric conditions. Both works enhanced her growing reputation.  The following year, she had works shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And her standing in the art world was such that she was asked to curate the Negro Art section at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  

On June 23rd, 1927, Laura Wheeler was married to the Philadelphian, Walter Waring, a public-school teacher, who was ten years her junior and who was then working as a professor at the all-Black Lincoln University. The couple had no children. That same year, Laura won a gold medal in the annual Harmon Foundation Salon in New York. Laura Waring was actively painting during the Harlem Renaissance.  The Harlem Renaissance was an influential movement in African American literary, artistic, and cultural history from 1918 to the mid-to-late 1930s. The movement was originally referred to as the New Negro Movement, which referred to Alain LeRoy Locke’s 1925 book, The New Negro, which was an anthology that sought to motivate an African-American culture based in pride and self-dependence.

She was also involved with the Harmon Foundation.  It was established in 1921 by wealthy real-estate developer and philanthropist William E. Harmon who was a native of the Midwest, and whose father was an officer in the 10th Cavalry Regiment.  The Foundation originally supported a number of good causes but is best known for having served as a large-scale patron of African-American art and by so doing, helped gain recognition for African-American artists who otherwise would have remained largely unknown.

In 1944 the Harmon Foundation, which was under the direction of Mary Beattie Brady, organized an exhibition Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin.  The idea behind the exhibition was to try and counteract racial intolerance, ignorance and bigotry by illustrating the accomplishments of contemporary African Americans. The exhibition featured forty-two oil paintings of leaders in the fields of civil rights, law, education, medicine, the arts, and the military. Betsy Graves Reyneau, Laura Wheeler Waring, and Robert Savon Pious painted the portraits that became known as the Harmon Collection. US Vice President Henry A. Wallace presented the first portrait, which featured scientist George Washington Carver, to the Smithsonian in 1944. The Harmon Foundation donated most of this collection to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 1967.

Anna Washington Derry by Laura Wheeler Waring (1927)

Laura Wheeler Waring will always be remembered for her portraiture and her most acclaimed work was not of the prosperous and famous African Americans which I have highlighted below but of a poor laundress, Anna Washington Derry.  She was one of five children who had moved with her family from Maryland to the eastern Pennsylvanian town of Strodsburgh, a borough in Monroe County.  Monroe was home to a small free Black community who had arrived via the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses used by enslaved African Americans to escape into free states.

The beautiful realistic depiction of the old lady beautifully conveys the lady’s dignity and inner determination through her use of simple, brown-beige tones of her dress, her expressive face, her folded arms and hands.  In the town where she lived Derry was looked upon as that of a community matriarch who was fondly addressed locally as “Annie”. The portrait was unveiled in 1926 at an elite exhibition for Black Philadelphian professionals some of whom may not have identified with Waring’s “ordinary” subject. The art historian Amanda Lampel commented:

“…Although Derry’s portrait did not sell that day, the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest continuously published African American newspaper in the United States, called it remarkable……… Compared to fellow contemporaries like Aaron Douglas, Waring was much more conservative in her painting style and subject matter. This was in keeping with the types of artists who won the prestigious Harmon Foundation award, which sought to spotlight the up-and-coming Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Most of the award winners painted more like Waring and less like Douglas…”

In 1927 Laura exhibited the portrait of Anna Washington Derry at New York’s Harmon Foundation where it received the First Award in Fine Art – Harmon Awards for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes. From there it was exhibited at Les Galeries du Luxembourg in Paris and across America.  The depiction was often reproduced in magazines and journals. The exhibition had its premiere at the Smithsonian Institution on May 2nd, 1944.  For the next ten years, Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin, exhibition, travelled to museums, historical societies, municipal auditoriums, and community centres around the United States.  The public response was overwhelmingly positive in every venue.

James Weldon Johnson by Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura Wheeler Waring will be most remembered for her portraits of successful, upper class Negroes and whites including James Weldon Johnson, the successful Broadway lyricist, poet, novelist, diplomat, and a key figure in the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.  In 1900, he collaborated with his brother to produce “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song that later acquired the subtitle of “The Negro National Anthem.”

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois by Laura Wheeler Waring

Another sitter for Laura was William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W.E.B. DuBois), who was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University  He then became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University, and  co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), and founder and editor of the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis. Laura Waring had worked for Du Bois, creating several illustrations for The Crisis. Laura depicts Du Bois seated at a wooden desk or table, looking to the right. The spectacles he holds in his right hand, and the small paper he holds in his left, confirm his status as an intellectual and academic.

Marian Anderson by Laura Wheeler Waing (1947)

Many women were sitters for Laura’s portraits including Mary White Ovington, an American suffragist, journalist, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).  Another of her most famous female portraits was of  the opera singer, Marian Anderson.  This contralto singer, like many African American artists of the time, first achieved success in Europe. She was persuaded to return to America in 1935 and that year had a triumphant concert which secured her standing in the opera world.  In 1939 she became embroiled in a historic event when the Daughters of the American Revolution banned her appearance at its Constitution Hall because she was black. President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, stepped into this controversial banning and arranged for her to take top billing at the Easter Sunday outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial, an event which drew in 75,000 opera fans as well as having the event broadcast to a radio audience of millions.

Jessie Redmon Fauset by Laura Wheeler Waring (1945)

Another female to have her portrait painted by Laura Wheeler Waring was Jessie Redmon Fauset, the first African American woman to be accepted into the chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell University, where she graduated with honours in 1905. Fauset then taught high school at M Street High School (now Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C., until 1919  She then moved to New York City to serve as the literary editor of the NAACP’s official magazine, The Crisis. In that role, she worked alongside W. E. B. Du Bois to help usher in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson by Laura Wheeler Waring (1927)

In the 1890s women formed national women’s club federations, most of which were dominated by upper-middle-class, educated, northern women. Few of these organizations were bi-racial, a legacy of the sometimes uneasy mid-nineteenth-century relationship between socially active African Americans and white women. Rising American prejudice led many white female activists to ban inclusion of their African American sisters. The black women’s club movement rose in answer in the late nineteenth century. The segregation of black women into distinct clubs produced vibrant organizations that promised racial uplift and civil rights for all blacks, as well as equal rights for women. Soon there followed another, more powerful group known as the National Association of Coloured Women in 1896. Women, including Laura Wheeler Waring and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, came together from a variety of backgrounds to combat negative stereotypes and fight for basic rights. Alice Dunbar-Nelson became the subject of Laura Wheeler Waring’s 1927 portrait. By the time the portrait was completed, Dunbar-Nelson was a prominent political activist and journalist and was much in demand as a public speaker. The depiction of her radiates her self-confidence and both artist and sitter were talented, intellectual women whose friendship helped advance the rights of both women and African Americans.

Waring died on February 3rd, 1948, aged 60, in her Philadelphia home after a long illness.  She was buried at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania. In 1949, Howard University Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. held an exhibition of art in her honour.  Her paintings were also included in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at Philadelphia’s Woodmere Art Museum.

Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948)

There is no doubt that although Laura spent most of her life in America she always treasured her three stays in France which played an important role in her artistic progress. During those three periods on French soil she was able to engage in its culture, and associated with famous French, African, and African American intellectuals. Her scholarship, her study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and her solo exhibition in Paris gave her recognition in the United States in the form of awards, supervisory and teaching positions, and additional exhibitions.  Like many of her colleagues, Waring cherished the freedom she found abroad, declaring in her diary:

“…In my very busy seasons here to come I shall want to relive some of these moments of atmosphere. I record them so that I can never say “I wish I had enjoyed that more” or “I didn’t apprecate all that then but now—[.]” I can never say the above truthfully because am grateful every minute and even the least of things gives me a thrill. . . . The very feeling of freedom is a pleasure and the ride on the bus down will be a joy…”

Much of the information for this blog and many of my other blogs in the past has come from an excellent website entitled The Art Story.

Other sources were:

A CONSTANT STIMULUS AND INSPIRATION”: LAURA WHEELER WARING IN PARIS IN THE 1910s and 1920s by Theresa Lieninger-Miller

BLACKPAST

SPEEDWELL

Laura Wheeler Waring. Part 1.

The art critic Patricia Tilton commented on the artist I am featuring today, Laura Wheeler Waring, writing:

Waring is the perfect role model for little girls who have big dreams. Determined and committed to pursuing her passion, young Laura began to manifest her dreams. She was self-confident, believed in her gift, and welcomed each opportunity that came her way.

Laura Wheeler, later Laura Wheeler Waring, was born in Hartford Connecticut on My 26th 1887.  She was the fourth of six children. 

Her father was Reverend Robert Foster Wheeler, who was the pastor of the first all-Black church in Connecticut, the Talcott Street Faith Congregational Church. It had been built in 1819 as a place for African Americans to worship on their own since they were previously only able to worship in the backs of churches and in church galleries in that city.  Her mother was Mary Wheeler (née Freeman), who was a teacher and amateur artist. Laura’s maternal grandparents were Amos Noë Freeman, who was a Presbyterian minister, and her maternal grandmother, Christiana Williams Freeman, was an anti-slavery activist who worked as part of the Underground Railroad which was the given name to a secret network of escape routes and safe houses run by abolitionists in Portland, Maine, and Brooklyn, New York. Laura’s family were well educated.  Her father studied Theology and graduated from Howard University in 1877 and her mother graduated from Oberlin College.

Still life with Heather by Laura Wheeler Waring (1927)

Laura’s parents were determined that their children should learn about African history and were attendees at the local bible classes.  The family would also make regular visits to Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art as well as other local art events. The children soon developed a love of art and would frequently sit around their dining room table to sketch and paint together. The American art critic Patricia Campbell Carlson wrote about young Laura:

“…[Waring] would even bribe her brothers and sisters with peppermints to get them to pose for her. And although she knew there were no portraits of African Americans in museums yet, she hung her paintings in her room as a ten-year-old so that her sisters and brothers could see pictures of people with all different shades of brown staring back at them,,,”.

After Sunday Services by Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura Wheeler Waring attended Arsenal Grade School and Hartford High School and was a model student who graduated from Hartford with honours. Whilst at the High School she showed an interest in art and the school fostered this love of hers, encouraging her enthusiasm for drawing and painting with watercolours.  She graduated from Hartford High School in 1906 with honours.

Institute for Colored Youth Building Historical Marker

In the Autumn of 1907, Laura, now a twenty-year-old, through the auspices of her father was offered and accepted a position at the Institute for Coloured Youth, an African Institute, a trade school that taught young Black people necessary skills to retain employment and later became a training institution for teachers. In 1902, the Institute moved to George Cheyney’s farm, 25 miles west of Philadelphia, and afterward the name “Cheyney” became associated with the school and became known as the Cheyney Training School for Teachers. Nowadays and since 1983 it has become the Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

Girl in Green Cap by Laura Wheeler Waring

Times were difficult financially for Laura who was paid just seven dollars a month although room and board were provided. She needed money to pay the train fare to Philadelphia where she attended drawing classes, still life painting, portraiture, and illustration at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.   She remained there for the next six years.  The person who influenced Laura the most at the Academy was Henry Bainbridge McCarter, an American illustrator and painter known for his influence on the modernistic art movements. McCarter had worked as an illustrator in New York before becoming an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for forty years.  He managed to encourage Waring to take on board and appreciate Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

Girl in Red Dress by Laura Wheeler Waring

In 1914, Laura graduated from the Academy, and she was awarded the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Scholarship. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts prize was a two-year scholarship for foreign travel awarded annually to their art students.   This award for artistic excellence, which began in 1902, was funded by Emlen and Priscilla Cresson in memory of their son William Emlen Cresson, an Academy alumnus, who died in 1868 at the age of 23. He had been a child prodigy painter who began exhibiting at the Academy at a very young age. The award allowed recipients to study art at the Louvre.  Laura was the first Black woman to receive the award,

A Rural Landscape by Laura Wheeler Waring

Whilst in Paris Laura studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and travelled throughout Great Britain. During her stay in the French capital, she spent much time in the Louvre Museum studying the works of Monet, Manet, Corot, and Cézanne. In Theresa Leninger-Millerher article:  A constant stimulus and inspiration”: Laura Wheeler Waring in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s, she quotes Laura as saying:

“…I thought again and again how little of the beauty of really great pictures is revealed in the reproductions which we see and how freely and with what ease the great masters paint…”

Still Life with Fruits by Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura Wheeler Waring had originally planned to travel more around Europe visiting Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, but her trip was cut short when war was declared in Europe and she had to return to America.

Four Friends by Laura Wheeler Waring

Back in America, Waring returned to teaching at Cheyney, and she played an important role in setting up the school’s new art and music departments. For thirty years she acted as the department’s art director and Chair, and between 1921 and 1934 she conducted the Cheyney Choir, training her students in high-toned spirituals and classical music. The Cheyney College like the local church, the Thornbury African Methodist Episcopal Church, slowly became the community centre for the black residents of Cheyney. Laura took her choir to sing at the church.  It was through her involvement with the church that she first met Annie Washington Derry, who would later become the subject of her most famous portrait which she completed in 1927 and which is owned by the Smithsonian is American Art Collection in Washington DC.

Landscape with River by Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura took a year out from teaching between 1924 and 1925 and returned to Paris.  This time she was accompanied by African-American novelist and poet, Jessie Redmond Fauset. On her arrival at the French capital she enrolled for classes in Expressionism and the Romanticism which were run by French artist and designer Bernard Boutet de Monvel, and the American painter Robert Henri. In October 1924 she enrolled to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére, where she studied painting and it was here that she began her life-long love of portraiture.

Once More we Exchange Adieu by Laura Waring (1925)

In January 1925, Laura Waring travelled to the South of France where she spent four days in the coastal town of Villefranche-sur-Mer. While living there she began to create illustrations for short travel stories and completed a number of figurative pen and ink drawings for The Crisis magazine. One of these was her pen and ink drawing entitled Once More We Exchange Adieu.  It depicts an African American woman dressed in a modern collared long sleeve dress, with black pumps holding a briefcase and waving goodbye to a white woman and child dressed in winter attire.

Houses at Semur by Laura Waring (1925)

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port by Laura Waring (1925)

In the next blog I will be looking at Laura Wheeler Waring’s portraiture, a genre which she is most famous for.

……………………………………………………to be continued.