Social Realism – my daily art display

Laurits Ring. Part 2 – True love and happiness.

The Road at Mogenstrup, Zealand. Autumn, by Laurits Ring (1888)

In the later part of the nineteenth century, Ring concentrated on landscape painting. For Ring, painting landscapes allowed him, through the works, to communicate and find expression in the world around him. One example of this is his 1888 landscape painting entitled The Road at Mogenstrup, Zealand. Autumn. This depiction is evidence that he was fond of muted autumn colours and there is a definite hint of melancholia about the depiction which may have mirrored his mood at the time.

A similar type of “drab” work is his 1901 painting entitled Thaw. The dilapidated fence in the foreground renders the depiction even more gloomy as does the artist’s use of yellowish-brown colours. It is yet another example of what one critic called Ring’s “landscapes of the soul”— a type of psychological painting with its own poetic soberness. Ring landscapes project his personal emotions. His friend and biographer Peter Hertz, a Danish art historian and museum worker, wrote how Ring, especially in those periods from 1887 to 1893 when his depressive moods and melancholy were prevalent, discovered a way of liberating himself, by painting his many overcast and misty landscapes. Hertz wrote:

“…With such weather he has closed himself up inside his own loneliness and found a resonance in nature, echoing his own mood… In these scenes of dull, overcast weather he reaches his highest pinnacle, giving most of himself…”

Laurits Rings was in a very bad place mentally in 1892. He had broken off all contact with Alexander Wilde and his wife Johanne. He had suffered the heartbreak of his mother dying and the sudden death of his brother, Ole. These losses made him doubt his belief in God and with this doubt came another doubt, a doubt in his own artistic ability and is hope that the lot of the peasant workers would be addressed came to naught.

Herman Kähler in his Workshop by Laurits Ring (1890)

Salvation came to him in the form of a ceramicist, Henrik Kähler, who owned a Danish ceramics factory. Kähler Keramik was based in Næstved on the island of Zealand. He had started to experiment with more appealing designs with glazed finishes and in 1886, he succeeded in attracting a number of well-known artists to complement his designs. Laurits Ring was one as was his friend Hans Andersen Brendekilde. Through his relationship with Henrik Kähler, Laurits met his daughter, Sigrid who was also a painter as well as a ceramicist. Sigrid Kähler was the third woman who took on a special importance in Rings’ life.

The Artists Wife by Lamplight by Laurits Ring (1898)

She was literally his lifesaver. Friendship between them soon changed to mutual love and the couple married on July 25^th 1896. Laurits was 42 and Sigrid was 21. The couple moved to a house in the harbour town of Karrebæksminde on the south-east coast of Zealand.

Sigrid featured in many of Laurits’ paintings. In his paintings of Sigrid we can depict subtle symbols of love and affection and the use of soft hues are different from his more melancholic ones he used in his Realism works. One depiction of Sigrid was his 1898 work entitled At the Breakfast Table. We see his wife seated at the breakfast table reading Politiken, the Danish daily broadsheet newspaper, which is Laurits’ way of reminding us about the world outside. The scene is lit up by the streams of sunlight which come in through the open door, and if we look outside, we can make out the lush green of summer.

In the Garden Door. The Artist’s Wife by Laurits Ring (1897).

Sigrid also featured in her husband’s 1897 work entitled In the Garden Door: The Artist’s Wife. The painting is housed in the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), National Gallery of Denmark and has proved to be one of the most loved works on show. Peter Nørgaard Larsen Chief Curator, Senior Researcher at SMK says of the work:

“…It’s one of my favourite pictures, and there are several reasons for that. It is fantastically nice painted and has a very crisp and delicate colour scheme. And then it’s a picture you’ll be happy to look at. This is the summer we dream of with a fertile garden and a beautiful woman. After all, this is the woman he just married, so he’s obviously interested in portraying her as part of a world he experiences as happy. A very positive picture…”

So, is this just a depiction of his wife, Sigrid, pregnant with their first child, Ghitta Johanne, who stands before a beautiful Spring garden scene which symbolises a consummated and fertile love between the artist and his wife? Is this simply a painting honouring fertility and the up and coming new life? Or is there something else we should be contemplating as we look at the painting. Remember Laurits Ring was, besides a man dedicated to Social Realism depictions, also a Symbolist painter. Let us look a little closer at the depiction. His wife stands before us on the patio with her belly bulging with her unborn child. This is about new life. Compare that with the potted bush by her side. It looks stunted being confined to the pot. Its branches are gnarly and old. In all, it looks as if it is coming to the end of its life. The depiction is a comparison of new life and death. It is a painting depicting transience and in some way a reminder that all things come to an end. It is Ring’s appreciation that the opposite to life is death. Ironically the painting is somewhat premature as Sigrid did not give birth to her daughter until January 5^th 1899 !

The Artist’s Wife and Daughter by Laurits Ring (1901)

In 1901 Ring produced a painting featuring his wife, Sigrid and their two-year-old daughter Ghitta.

For me, his Social Realism art is his best genre. In 1890 he completed a work entitled The Drunkard. It depicts a group of angry villagers, fist-waving and shouting at an elderly man with a walking cane, some distance from them. He has been forced back to the edge of the village by the baying crowd. He has been isolated. It is a sign of rejection. However, it is not what we perceive it to be. The scene is actually part of a children’s social play. It is all about rejection and isolation of a lone figure at the hands of an unsympathetic group. The artist is testing us to think about times when we have shown little sympathy towards our fellow human beings. He wants us to examine our own conscience. The painting sadly verifies Ring’s pessimistic view of the human race.

A Waiting Horsecart on a Village Road by Ole Ring (1946)

On October 9^th, 1900, Laurits and Sigrid’s second child was born, a son Anders Herman, who became a painter, silversmith and sculptor. The family moved to the old school in Baldersbrønde near Hedehuse, where on August 6th, 1902, their third and final child, a son, Ole was born. He like his father would become an accomplished artist and well-known for his local landscape works.

A Visit ot a Shoemakers Workshop by Laurits Ring (1885)

Laurits Ring’s interest in politics and social issues was an ever theme in his paintings. An example of this is his 1895 painting entitled A Visit to the Shoemaker’s Shop. It depicts a politician from the Social Democratic Party who has called on a pair of cobblers hoping that he would secure their support. It was through Laurits’ political convictions and his social realism depictions of workers and peasants during the early industrialization in Denmark, that he played an important role in what was termed The Modern Breakthrough. Unlike many of his contemporary artists and writers, you have to remember that Laurits Ring was not from a comfortable middle-class or upper-class background but originated from an impoverished peasant farming background and as one reviewer noted in 1886:

“…One implicitly trusts that Ring truly knows the life he portrays…”

Drænrørsgraverne (Laying the drains) by Laurits Ring (1885),

Another of Ring’s painting, from that year, which highlights the hard work of the less well paid is his depiction of drain-layers in his 1885 work, Laying the Drains. Laurits Ring was always sympathetic with the workers’ struggle for better living conditions and throughout his life he expressed respect for the poor. Ring was always careful to depict the everyday life among workers and rural people with dignity, and avoided sentimentality, choosing to highlight a realistic view of people’s lives, notwithstanding whether his subject was a poor farm couple or a pair of ditch diggers.

When the Train is Expected. Level Crossing at Roskilde Highway by Laurits Ring (1914)

My favourite three paintings by Ring are ones which show his innate ability to portray everyday life. The first is his 1914 work entitled Waiting for the Train. Level Crossing by Roskilde Highway.

The second is his true to life work entitled Has it stopped Raining

A Boy and a Girl Eating Lunch by Laurits Ring (1884),

And the third is his 1884 Social Realism painting entitled A Boy and Girl Eating Lunch in which we see two children sharing a bowl of broth which focuses on the plight of poor children who often struggled to get sufficient food.

Laurits Ring led a nomadic life during his single and married years. He frequently moved house preferring to live in small Zealand villages which probably reminded him of Ring, his birthplace. This life of wandering was interspersed by periods of calm and waiting.

Looking at Laurits Ring’s work reveals the extent to which the themes of travel and waiting infuse his art. His paintings record the historical changes that took place in the decades around the turn of the century. This was a period of great change with the coming of modern life and Ring tried to capture how it affected the less well-off.

The aging Laurits Ring, photographed in 1926 as a guest of the couple Johanne and Paul Buhl. Ring sits on the terrace in front of their summer residence on Egevangen on the outskirts of Randers.

In January 1914, Laurits and his family moved to a newly built house on Sankt Jørgensbjerg in Roskilde. Nine years after that move Laurits’ wife was taken seriously ill and on May 9^th, 1923, three days before her 49^th birthday, Sigrid Ring died of lung cancer. After his wife’s death Laurits, then sixty-nine, went to live with his twenty-one-year old son, Ole. In September 1933, Laurits Ring suffered a brain haemorrhage with slight paralysis of his left arm. He died on Sunday, September 10th, 1933, aged 79.

Newgate: Committed for Trial by Frank Holl

05_-Holl-Frank-Newgate-Committed-for-Trial-1878 — Newgate: Committed for Trial by Frank Holl (1878 )

Today I am going to revisit the Social Realism art movement and look at one of the leading English Victorian Social Realist painters, Frank Holl. I featured two of his very moving paintings Hush and Hushed in My Daily Art Display of February 9^th 2012). The Realist movement which has its roots in France came to the fore in French art in about 1840 in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution which threw out the monarch, Louis-Philippe and saw the start of the Second Empire under the rule of Napoleon III. Realist art flourished in France until the late nineteenth century.

The Social Realism Movement originated from this European Realism, and from the works of the great French Realist painters such as Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. A revolution was also taking place in England in the nineteenth century – the Industrial Revolution, where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a tremendous consequence on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. It was a time of poverty and unemployment for many of the lower classes and it aroused a concern in many artists for this urban poor. During 1870s the work of many of the Social Realist artists, such as Luke Fildes (see My Daily Art Display May 17^th and 18^th 2011), Hubert Herkomer (See My Daily Art Display July 25^th 2011) and today’s featured painter, Frank Holl came to the fore.

Frank Montague Holl was born in Kentish Town, London in 1845. His father, Francis, was a well-known engraver and Academician as was his grandfather, William Holl. His family environment was politically driven for his family were steadfast Socialists and even when he was just a youngster his family instilled in him the thought that he had a duty in life to change society and make it better for the common people. Holl went to Heath Mount School in Hampstead and at the age of fifteen he was accepted as a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools. He proved to be an outstanding student but often shocked his tutors by adding a hint of political content to his works of art. At the age of seventeen he won a silver medal for his work and the following year was awarded a gold medal and a travel scholarship for his painting entitled The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. It was a painting that depicted a family bereavement and when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869, the then monarch, Queen Victoria, attempted to buy the painting but the original purchaser refused to sell it. Two years later Holl painted another painting on the same theme entitled No Tidings from the Sea and on this occasion Queen Victoria purchased it for a 100 guineas.

Holl went away to Italy on his travel scholarship but the Italian sojourn lasted only two months, at which time he wrote to the Royal Academy saying that he wanted to return home and concentrate on his social realism paintings based on working-class life in England. Holl began exhibiting his work in 1864 when he was nineteen years of age and from 1869 onwards he was a regular contributor to the Academy Exhibitions. Many of these works were depicting the plight of the less fortunate and their pitiful existence, such as No Tidings from the Sea (1871) and Leaving Home (1873). After he had he completed his studies in 1869 he was employed by William Luson Thomas, a successful artist, wood engraver and social reformer, who had just founded a new weekly illustrated newspaper, called The Graphic.

The newspaper when launched in December 1869 was printed in a rented house. A successful artist himself, the founder, William Thomas recruited talented authors for the story lines and exceptional artists for the illustration which were to accompany the words. The gifted artists included Luke Fildes, Hubert von Herkomer and John Millais and great writers who worked on the journal included George Elliot, Thomas Hardy and Anthony Trollope. Thomas believed that it was not just words but the illustrations which had the great power to influence public opinion on political issues. Thomas said later of his newspaper idea:

“…The originality of the scheme consisted in establishing a weekly illustrated journal open to all artists, whatever their method, instead of confining my staff to draughtsmen on wood as had been hitherto the general custom… it was a bold idea to attempt a new journal at the price of sixpence a copy in the face of the most successful and firmly established paper in the world, costing then only fivepence…”

For William Luson Thomas, his commitment was to force social reform and he hoped that the visual images in The Graphic would have a political impact on the reading public. In his 2004 biography of Thomas, entitled Thomas, William Luson (1830–1900), Mark Bills, described Thomas’ journal:

“…The format of the paper offered artists an unprecedented opportunity to explore social subjects, and its images of poverty made it a catalyst for the development of social realism in British art. Many of the wood-engravings which it featured were developed into major paintings…”

This commitment to social reform by Thomas was exactly what Frank Holl desired and what he had been brought up to hear at the family table when he was growing up. He, like Thomas, believed passionately in the cause for political and social change. Frank Holl produced a series of pictures that were used to illustrate stories in the magazine and sometimes he and the other artists working on the journal would turn their engravings, which they had fashioned for the pages of The Graphic, into oil paintings. These depictions of the hard and squalid life lead by the “under-class” of the nation lead them to become known as the Social Realist Movement. Although we may look upon these depictions of poverty as a welcome wake-up call to the nation, they were badly received by the Victorian establishment at the time. The more fortunate viewed the works as being disloyal. The establishment and many of the people who had never suffered poverty wanted to turn a blind-eye to the suffering of the less fortunate. Their motto was “out of sight, out of mind” and they frowned upon these upstart young artists who wanted to drag the social differences which existed into the public forum.

The featured painting in My Daily Art Display today is entitled Newgate: Committed for Trial which Frank Holl completed in 1878 and is housed in Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, just outside London. It came about when Holl was given and assignment to visit Newgate Prison by the management of The Graphic. Holl visited Newgate on a number of occasions and over time he and the Governor became friends. What we see before us is what Holl described as a “cage” It was where prisoners on trial were allowed, at certain times, to see visitors and talk to them through a double row of bars. The space in between the two sets of bars was patrolled by a warden. Holl later commented that he became very emotional when he saw the desperation of the prisoners and their visitors as they awaited the results of their trials. In an attempt to better capture the emotion of imprisonment, Holl painted this picture whilst inside the Newgate Prison. In the painting today we see Holl’s depiction of two women and their children visiting their husbands who had been incarcerated. Look at the face of the prisoner on the left. It is a look of wide-eyed innocence but as we catch sight of his wife that stands before him we note how she seems wearied by her husband’s protestations of his innocence. Could it be that she has heard it all before? Almost hidden by this female visitor we can just make out a second prisoner. He is in a much more animated and distressed state and seems to be pleading to his wife who is seated clutching her baby to her chest. Is it a plea for forgiveness and understanding or is it a plea of innocence? Whatever it is, the young woman seems unmoved and somewhat resigned by what she hears.

As I said earlier, the rich and aristocratic were unmoved by what they saw in Social Realist works and it is remarkable that the wealthy English philanthropist, Thomas Holloway, who had made his fortune patenting medicines, would buy this work and add it to his collection, which grace the walls of the Royal Holloway College, which he had built in 1880. Of his collection of seventy seven works of art which can be found there some were simple idyllic landscapes depicting the beautiful English countryside but like today’s work of art by Frank Holl, some were harrowing aspects of Victorian life.

The painting received mixed reviews when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878 but one critic summed up what we see before us, writing:

“…The characters are so real in this fine work that one feels there is a story to be told of ruined ambitions, of broken home ties, of devotion scorned and trampled underfoot….”

In the next few blogs I will stay with Social Realism art and look at the works of Social Realist artists from other countries