Piano Nobile Gallery London – my daily art display

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 14^th 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 28^th 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.