There are some familiar names and familiar paintings in Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 at Southampton City Art Gallery, but it’s the unfamiliar that makes it especially worth the trip to a venue you might not normally consider for an exhibition. This show provides an excellent overview of art trends in this country in the first half of the 20th century. And it’s free!
Southampton has a very good collection, but we often get the feeling that a lot of interesting works are in store behind closed doors. Pleasant surprises await when they finally see the light of the day, in this case in combination with a selection from the extensive Ingram Collection of modern British art. In all, there are more than 100 works by over 100 artists, demonstrating how the British reacted to the latest developments in art on the Continent.
So let’s start with a couple of hidden gems from the Southampton treasure trove, first of all a Landscape that really stopped us in our tracks. Just look at these colours!
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You’re not really expecting to see something quite as Fauvist from a pre-World War I British painter; this was made in 1912 by Lawrence Atkinson, who’d studied music before turning to painting under the guidance of JD Fergusson, one of the Scottish Colourists. It really is eye-catching with lots of detail to explore. Take in the different fields and trees, the reflections in the water and the path on the right that guides your eye into the middle of the painting. But best of all are the different ploughing patterns and colours of the fields flowing in to that distant horizon that divides the canvas in two. And what about that yellow sky below the clouds? Atkinson later became part of the Vorticist movement; there are only a handful of his works in public galleries, and nothing else like this.
And here’s another painting and another artist from the same era we don’t recall seeing before: We were very taken by this work with its thickly applied paint that gives texture and adds forms and shapes to some of the patterns.
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In just 51cm x 61cm, William Ratcliffe crams The Coffee House with an inordinate amount of detail. And the mirror on the back wall adds to the jumble of disorientating spaces. But it is not just about space and shape: the five figures make it a slice of real life. How long has that man nursed his cup of tea or coffee? What is absorbing the attention of the pair looking out of the window? And is the waitress waiting, perhaps in vain, for the lunchtime rush? It’s 1245 according to the clock on the back wall.
We found the first room of this show, covering Post-Impressionism from 1910 to 1930, much the most compelling, so let’s mention another previously unseen composition that grabbed our attention, the striking reds and pinks of In the Park (St James’s) by Malcolm Drummond, a founder member of the Camden Town Group.
But now a couple of more familiar names, starting with another Camden Town man, Harold Gilman.
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This is his portrait of Sylvia Gosse, herself a painter and etcher, who grew up in a very artistic and literary environment. Visitors to her family home included the writers Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. The artist Walter Sickert, also to be found in this Southampton show, became a lifelong friend.
And then, Laura Knight:
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The striking thing about Knight’s Sea and Rocks — again a picture we don’t recall seeing before — is the texture and colour of the paint, in particular how it captures the turbulent water where the incoming waves meet the breakers that have already hit the rock and are flowing back. You can almost hear the crash on the rocks and that after-fizz sound as the water recedes. This was made around 1928, but the caption recalls her experience of visiting Staithes in North Yorkshire in the 1890s: “The life and place were what I had yearned for — the freedom, the austerity, the savagery, the wildness.”
You’ll want to see Spencer Gore, Dod Procter and Gwen John’s Mère Poussepin, but let’s just cross the Atlantic for something completely different.
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Maxwell Armfield — again, a new name to us — was born in Hampshire but lived in the US from 1915 to 1922, and this 1916 depiction of Central Park, New York seems to come from a strange other world, far away from the Great War raging in Europe.
Between the wars, don’t miss the chance to wonder at Glyn Philpot’s dramatic Ascending Angel and to contemplate again the odd relationship between Stanley Spencer and his second wife Patricia Preece, partner-in-art-and-bed of Dorothy Hepworth. And, as we’ve been to the seaside recently, we mustn’t forget Robert Duckworth Greenham’s On the Beach.
But from leisure and pleasure, it was soon back to the chaos of war in Edward Burra’s 1942-43 Ropes and Lorries.
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The human forms seem to take on the mangled shapes of the machines that are even more distorted by the baffling and disturbing effect of the various sources of light and muted colours. Another very memorable image from the conflict: Alick Knight’s Parcel from Home, which appears to have conjured some intense emotions in the three soldiers contemplating its contents.
We weren’t quite so moved by the penultimate room in this show, with its focus on abstraction, so let’s end with an artist who died half a century ago this year and has truly made a mark on the British consciousness: LS Lowry and his matchstick men and women. The Canal Bridge has plenty of those figures and a few of his characteristic puny dogs too. And it also features the factories, terraced houses and smoking chimneys typical of the Lowry industrial scene.
The art historian and critic Herbert Read said Lowry created “the most realistic picture of the life of industrial workers in this country”. You can see a lot more Lowry this winter, by the way, in a solo exhibition at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes marking the anniversary of his death. But before then, we recommend a trip to Southampton.
Practicalities
Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 is on at Southampton City Art Gallery until February 21. Admission is free, and we’re pleased to note that the museum’s previously rather limited hours have been expanded. It’s now open from 1000 to 1630 Tuesday to Saturday and from 1100 to 1600 on Sunday. We spent 75 minutes in the exhibition. The gallery is in Southampton’s 1930s Civic Centre, with the entrance on the north side facing Commercial Road, just a few minutes walk from Southampton Central station.
Images
Lawrence Atkinson (1873-1931), Landscape, 1912, Southampton City Art Gallery
William Ratcliffe (1870-1955), The Coffee House, c. 1914, Southampton City Art Gallery
Harold Gilman (1876-1919), Portrait of Sylvia Gosse, 1912, Southampton City Art Gallery
Harold Gilman (1876-1919), Portrait of Sylvia Gosse, 1912, Southampton City Art Gallery
Laura Knight (1877-1970), Sea and Rocks, c. 1928, The Ingram Collection
Maxwell Armfield (1881-1972), Central Park, New York, 1916, Southampton City Art Gallery
Edward Burra (1905-1976), Ropes and Lorries, 1942-43, The Ingram Collection. © Estate of the Artist, c/o Lefevre Fine Art Ltd, London
Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976), The Canal Bridge, 1949, Southampton City Art Gallery
Maxwell Armfield (1881-1972), Central Park, New York, 1916, Southampton City Art Gallery
Edward Burra (1905-1976), Ropes and Lorries, 1942-43, The Ingram Collection. © Estate of the Artist, c/o Lefevre Fine Art Ltd, London
Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976), The Canal Bridge, 1949, Southampton City Art Gallery