15 June to 16 July 2011
THE FINE ART SOCIETY
Dealers since 1876
148 New Bond Street · London w1s 2jt
+44 (0)20 7629 5116 · [email protected]
www.faslondon.com
CENTENARY EXHIBITION
THE CAMDEN
TOWN GROUP
THE FINE ART SOCIETY
Dealers since 1876
2 the camde n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 3
THE CAMDEN TOWN GROUP
I
T IS NOW exactly a hundred years since the Camden
Town Group held their first exhibition in June 1911. As
a formation they were short-lived and staged only three
collective shows of their work before reconstituting themselves as the much bigger and more diverse London Group
in 1913. But they were enormously influential and breaking
with tradition they represented the beginning of modern
art in Britain. Their work is vernacular and sympathetic,
taking subjects from everyday London life and human experience whether beautiful or banal with which we can still
empathise today. It elicits a direct emotion through colour,
through the touch of paint and the naturalism of its subject
matter; it is not High Art but instead something equally
profound that we recognize in the glimpses of everyday city
life, and human emotions to which we can easily relate. The
outmoded ideals of Academic art were replaced with direct
observation of life as it was really lived, but painted in a
highly innovative way. Post-Impressionism was still virtually unknown in Britain and the colourists of the Camden
Town Group – principally Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman,
Charles Ginner, Robert Bevan, Malcolm Drummond and
William Ratcliffe – took up and adapted this style in canvases painted in pulsating colour harmonies of soft mauves
and pinks and greens using broken touches of dry crusty
paint. This was in contrast to Walter Sickert who employed
a richer, darker, Venetian Old Master palette in his paintings but nevertheless followed modern French principles by
painting the effects of light, whether it be the last glow of
afternoon sunlight as the sun slips behind the rooftops of
Dieppe in St Jacques (no.5) or the thin daylight penetrating
a North London bedroom in Seated Woman, Mornington
Crescent (no.3). Sickert had spent considerable periods living in France and had direct knowledge of French practice
through his friendship with Impressionist painters such as
4 the camde n t o w n g r o u p
Degas, whose example he was able to pass on to younger
member of the Camden Town Group. They were able also
to gather theories of Impressionist painting from another
slightly older member, Lucien Pissarro, who was a direct
link through his father Camille to French innovations still
largely unknown in London. As a young painter Lucien was
mentored by Cézanne, Monet and Gauguin, and met Van
Gogh and was able to pass on directly the information and
example he had received.
The decision to form the Camden Town Group was
taken over a slightly boozy supper held one Saturday in
Gatti’s restaurant in Regent Street in April 1911. ‘We had
indulged in a good dinner’, Charles Ginner recalled ,‘with
abundance of wine to wash it down’. As they emerged
outside, with characteristic theatricality and a perceptive
sense of moment, Sickert announced ‘We have just made
history!’ Sickert, Gore, Gilman, Bevan and Ginner had
gathered to plot the creation of a new exhibiting society that
would showcase the progressive modern painting they were
developing. In large part it was a reaction to the creeping
conservatism of the New English Art Club that had started
to refuse their work and to stifle innovation. Discussion
continued over the following weeks centring on which other
artists they should invite to join them. All had to agree those
nominated to ensure cohesion; just one dissenting voice led
to rejection. It was their aim, Ginner recalled, to gather ‘a
group which was to hold within a fixed and limited circle
those painters whom [we] considered to be the best and
most promising of the day’. There were eventually sixteen
elected members. An able diplomat, Spencer Gore was
appointed President, and James Bolivar Manson created
Secretary because of his early experience working in a bank.
But Sickert, the charismatic, provocative, sometimes frustrating but perennially amusing personality was the Group’s
detail of [ 14 ] >
centenary exhibition 5
hub. He was bent on bringing British art up to date, or ‘sent
from heaven to complete all your educations’ as he only
partly teasingly put it to his painter friends Nan Hudson
and Ethel Sands. Yet these two were prevented from becoming members because for complex and slightly elusive
reasons the majority voted for the Camden Town Group to
be a male only society (the belief is that they feared the possibility of having a friend of Lucien Pissarro’s wife forced
upon them). This undemocratic decision – puzzling in a
gathering of progressive minds – would eventually be one
of the principal reasons why the Group decided to dissolve
itself in 1913. Sickert was a great encourager of female talent,
and a whole school of his pupils, such as Sylvia Gosse or
Wendela Boreel carried forth his aesthetic ideals in paintings the equal of their male counterparts in the Camden
Town Group. For this reason the current exhibition makes
a special focus of such artists to demonstrate the continuity and wider flowering of Camden Town style in a much
greater circle than the original members, something which
has not been visible in previous shows. The chronology of
Camden Town painting is also somewhat more elastic than
the short official term of the Group suggests. Its beginnings
extend at least as far back as 1906 when Sickert painted
his La Hollandaise nude in a grimy bedroom, and this in
turn had its origins in his figure paintings in Venice of a few
years earlier. And its end did not come with the dissolving
of the Group; many followers continued well into the 1920s
to treat urban figure subjects painted in characteristic fashion. Ginner, whose meticulous mature method of painting
became fixed around 1912 continued without variation for
the rest of his life. But some of the energy of the Camden
Town project was lost by the early death of two of its members, Spencer Gore in 1914 from pneumonia, and Gilman
in 1919 from Spanish flu. Each would have been powerful
exponents of a figurative modern style should they have
survived.
The name for the Camden Town Group was chosen because some of the members lived in that area. Sickert and
Gore lived a few doors from each other in Mornington
Crescent, Bevan and Manson were at Swiss Cottage and
Gilman between Euston and Mornington Crescent. But it
was also a name chosen because of the area’s shabby, transient, down at heel character, which fitted perfectly many of
the artists’ interests in working class life and was also mildly
provocative. Ultimately it was Sickert, Ginner recalled in
6 the camde n t o w n g r o u p
1945, who had chosen to name the Group after an area
which he claimed ‘had been so watered with his tears that
something good must sooner or later spring from its soil.’
The first exhibition of the Group opened at the Carfax
Gallery’s downstairs space at 24 Bury Street, St James’s, in
June 1911. Arthur Clifton, the Gallery’s manager, had been
persuaded to offer his gallery for this new departure by
Sickert, but it was already a venue associated with showcasing progressive art in London (and was, for instance,
to hold the first monographic exhibition of Picasso staged
in Britain the following year). Each of the Camden Town
painters were entitled to submit four works to the show, and
they were hung on the wall together, to give a sense of each
artist’s style. There was considerable critical attention in
the press, much positive, some indifferent but little wholly
hostile. The bright colours of Gore, Gilman and Bevan attracted criticism but most negative attention was gathered
by two of Sickert’s canvases he dubbed the ‘Camden Town
Murder Series’. Both depicting a naked woman and clothed
man, these purported to illustrate a notorious recent crime.
While being powerful examples of how Sickert linked his
art to the viewer’s imagination, he is likely to have given
them their title as a cannily provocative publicity stunt, and
one that proved highly effective.
The attraction and inheritance of Camden Town painting continues. When Tate Britain staged a large-scale survey
of the Group’s work in 2008 it attracted 88,000 visitors.
Among post-war painters their painting has exercised a
powerful example. There is a line of inheritance that runs
from Sickert through David Bomberg to 1950s ‘Kitchen
Sink’ painting, and then on to the School of London artists
Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff whose urban subjects,
muted palette and thick, dry impasto owe something to this
earlier generation. The introspective stillness and emotional
frankness of Lucian Freud’s nudes are similarly presaged by
Sickert’s treatment of his own models in dusty London bedrooms. Even Francis Bacon’s rendering of the figure seems
to owe something to Sickert, and indeed he once owned a
work by him.
At the Centenary of the Camden Town Group’s founding
we can still recognise many of the elements of the London
that formed the backdrop to their art. But more importantly
we recognize the beauty and human truthfulness their
paintings contain.
Robert Upstone
WALTER SICKERT
1860–1942
SPENCER GORE
1878–1914
ROBERT POLHILL BEVAN
1865–1925
MALCOLM DRUMMOND
1880–1945
CHARLES GINNER
1878–1952
JAMES BOLIVAR MANSON
1879–1945
LUCIEN PISSARRO
1863–1944
WILLIAM RATCLIFFE
1870–1955
HAROLD GILMAN
1876–1919
centenary exhibition 7
WALTER SICKERT
1860–1942
Sickert was born in Munich, the son of a Danish artist
and an Anglo-Irish mother. When Sickert was eight the
family moved to London. His father appears to have discouraged his following him as an artist and instead in 1879
Sickert embarked on a theatrical career, at one point joining Sir Henry Irving’s company. In 1881 he abandoned the
theatre and started at the Slade, leaving in 1882 to become
Whistler’s pupil and assistant, for whom he pulled etchings
and carried out various tasks. Among these was to take the
portrait of Whistler’s mother to Paris, and with a letter of introduction Sickert met Degas with whom he was to become
friends. In the later 1880s Sickert took London’s music halls
as the subject and focus of his art and at the New English
Art Club he became the centre of impressionist agitation.
But increasingly he migrated to the Continent. In the 1890s
he made the first of a series of visits to Venice but spent
extended periods in Dieppe, where he settled, abandoning
London. In 1905 he returned to England thanks to the enthusiastic account of the younger generation of artists given
him by Spencer Gore. He formed an exhibiting group in
Fitzroy Street which showcased progressive and impressionist art which was a precursor to the Camden Town
Group. After the Camden Town Group’s demise Sickert
took an increasingly hostile attitude to innovation, resisting the rise of modernist art. Nevertheless Sickert holds a
unique position, without whom the evolution of modern
British art would have been wholly different.
8 the camde n t o w n g r o u p
[ 1 ] Walter Sickert
Chicken – Girl at a Mantelpiece c.1908
Oil on panel 38 x 32 cm (15 x 12½ inches)
Provenance: Mrs A.E. Anderson (née Jean McIntyre); the
Misses Anderson and Mrs Donald Bulmer; Christie’s, 4 March
1988 (215); The Fine Art Society; private collection; The Fine Art
Society 2000; private collection.
Exhibited: The Camden Town Group, The Carfax Gallery,
London, June 1911 (9); Camden Town Recalled, The Fine Art
Society, Oct.-Nov. 1976 (137); The Painters of Camden Town
1905–1920, Christie’s, London, Jan. 1988 (49); Walter Sickert:
Paintings, Drawings and Prints, The Fine Art Society, 2000 (12).
Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert, London 1973 no.280; Denys
Sutton, Walter Richard Sickert, London 1976, pp.174–5; Wendy
Baron, The Camden Town Group, London 1979, pl.105; Wendy
Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, New Haven & London
2006 no.351.
Chicken appeared later in a number of Sickert’s paintings
when in 1914 he was renting a studio in Red Lion Square
from her parents. But in this picture showing her contemplating her reflection she would have been only about eleven.
Chicken’s real name was Emily Powell, and she went on to
become a singer in the Royal Opera House chorus. Her
family came from a theatrical background that would have
fascinated Sickert, who had himself been an actor as a young
man. Emily Powell told Sickert’s biographer Denys Sutton:
‘Father and sister and all my people even my Granma was all
in the theatre. Mr Sickert loved to get talking to Granma
about the old Strand Theatre in Surrey Street years ago.’
The picture was one of the four canvases with which
Sickert represented himself in the first Camden Town exhibition in June 1911. The pathos of representing a figure in an
interior entirely without narrative had the effect of building
an enigmatic and indefinable mood or atmosphere. In this
respect it followed the aesthetic principles of James McNeill
Whistler, Sickert’s first master, whose famous Symphony in
White No.2: The Little White Girl (Tate) Sickert evidently
had in mind in approaching his portrayal of Chicken.
Sickert has built up his composition with a series of
dots, made with the end of a fully loaded brush much in
the manner of pointillisme. But it was a manner of working
that was closest to his Camden Town Group colleague
Harold Gilman, and Sickert also emulated here his more
colourful palette.
centenary exhibition 9
[ 2 ] Walter Sickert
The Camden Town Murder c.1907–8
Oil on canvas 61 x 40.6 cm (24 x 16 inches)
Signed ‘Sickert.’ bottom left
Exhibited: The Camden Town Group, The Carfax Gallery,
London, June 1911 (11 or 12); Sickert: Paintings and Drawings,
Arts Council Tour 1960 (118); Modern Painters: The Camden
Town Group, Tate Britain, February-May 2008 (65)
Lent FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION [not for sale]
This was one of a pair of pictures Sickert exhibited at the
first Camden Town Group exhibition under the collective
title ‘The Camden Town Murder Series’. With this he alluded to the notorious killing of a Mornington Crescent
prostitute and the media-led manhunt that followed. It was
a masterful piece of provocation which gathered him considerable attention when the show opened, but undoubtedly
at the expense of critical attention of the other members of
the Group.
Sickert relied also on the complex psychological effects
of pairing two still figures in an interior where one is naked
and the other clothed. The woman’s nudity is emphasised
by her male companion being dressed, and suggests a vulnerability as well as raw sexuality. The disjunction between
the title and what the picture showed made viewers question what stage in the narrative they were glimpsing, and
whether this was the prelude or aftermath of the murder. In
fact Sickert experimented with the same dynamic combination of figures in other Camden Town Murder pictures
but at different times gave them completely different titles
such as What shall we do for the rent?, playfully shifting the
viewer’s perception of what they were looking at.
10 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 11
[ 3 ] Walter Sickert
Seated Woman, Mornington Crescent c.1908–9
Oil on canvas 51 x 40.5 cm (20 x 16 inches)
Signed bottom right ‘Sickert’
Provenance: Given by the artist to Sylvia Gosse; Dr Robert
Emmons; Agnew’s; Roland, Browse & Delbanco 1945; E.
Michael Behrens 1947; his sale Christie’s, London, 8 June 1990
(207); private collection; Sotheby’s, London, 3 December 1998
(50); The Fine Art Society 2000; private collection.
Exhibited: Sickert, National Gallery, London (89, as
‘Mornington Crescent’); Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings
by W.R. Sickert from the Collection of Robert Emmons, Agnew’s,
London, May-June 1947 (48, as ‘Granby Street’); An Exhibition
of Paintings and Drawings by Walter Sickert, Royal Scottish
Academy, Edinburgh, 1953 (29); Sickert: Paintings and
Drawings, Arts Council tour, Tate Gallery, London, May-June,
Southampton Art Gallery July, Bradford City Art Gallery,
July-August 1960 (116); Sickert, Browse and Darby, London,
November-December 1981 (18); Sickert, Browse and Darby,
London, Nov.-Dec. 1992 (55); Sickert: Paintings, Drawings and
Prints, The Fine Art Society, 2000 (14).
Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings,
New Haven & London 2006, no.353 reproduced in colour;
Lillian Browse, Sickert, London 1943, pl.35; John Rothenstein,
Sickert, London 1961, pl.7; Marjorie Lilly, Sickert: The Painter
and his Circle, London 1971, pl.37.
12 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
Sickert has placed his model in front of the first floor front
windows of his studio at 6 Mornington Crescent. The
warmer shadows of the room contrast with the play of
cooler daylight on the figure. As part of the impressionist
tradition through his friendships with Degas, Whistler and
others, one of Sickert’s principal preoccupations in his art
was the rendering of the effects of light, and in particular
the highly complex fall of light in interiors. His other great
interest was in the ordinary working people of London,
and the model for this picture is likely to have been a
­local coster girl. Sickert used the rooms at Mornington
Crescent to create a sequence of realist tableaux in which
we are offered what appear to be glimpses into the lives of
the people he depicts. The woman’s faraway look, gazing
out of the window, and the vulnerability of her state of
undress create an ambiguous atmosphere of great intimacy
and calm contemplation which engages the viewer with
the strength of its truthfulness. Another of Sickert’s central
concerns was the naturalistic presentation of the nude, removing it from any idealised context and placing it instead
into a domestic environment. Pioneered in France, notably by Degas, this was wholly new and quite shocking in
Edwardian Britain. The combination of complex lighting,
subtle sensibility and undercurrents of class and sex make
this one of Sickert’s quintessential and most sophisticated
Camden Town images.
Sickert presented this painting to his pupil and collaborator at his art school Sylvia Gosse. It then passed to his first
biographer Robert Emmons.
centenary exhibition 13
[ 4 ] Walter Sickert
The New Bedford 1915
Tempera on canvas 167.6 x 117 cm (70 x 46 inches)
Signed bottom left ‘Sickert’
Provenance: Beaux Arts Gallery, London; Christie’s, London,
22 February 1957 (14); Beaux Arts Gallery, London; Vincent Price,
Los Angeles; Mary Grant Price, Boston; James Kirkman; The
Fine Art Society 2000; private collection.
Exhibited: ?Paintings by Sickert, Beaux Arts Gallery, London,
1953 (12); Sickert: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, The Fine Art
Society, 2000 (25).
Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings,
New Haven & London 2006, no.470 reproduced in colour;
Wendy Baron, Sickert, London 1973, under no.367; Wendy Baron,
‘Dating Sickert’s Paintings of the New Bedford, Camden Town’,
The Burlington Magazine, no.146, May 2004 fig.55.
In 1914 Sickert’s friend Ethel Sands commissioned him
to make a sequence of paintings to decorate the dining
room of her recently built house in Chelsea. They were all
to show the interior of the New Bedford Music Hall and
were designed to create a kind of panorama of the theatre’s
interior; the present picture was to hang to the left of the
fireplace. The music hall was a key subject in Sickert’s art
and he had moved from painting its stars in the 1880s and
1890s to depicting the audience and evocative gilt and plush
of the theatres themselves. The New Bedford, so called after
the original ‘Old’ Bedford burnt down, opened in 1899 and
was located in Camden High Street. It was famed for its
opulence, with large plaster caryatids, red velvet hangings
and ornate gilded decoration.
Ethel Sands’s idea to commission Sickert to make his
picture cycle was likely to have been inspired by her contact
with Vuillard, who had carried out similar domestic decorative projects in France. Sickert’s original interest in the
music hall also had French origins, and stemmed from his
friendships with Degas and Manet and their own interest in
incorporating theatrical subjects in their art. But the music
halls encapsulated Sickert’s fascination with the specific raw
vitality of London life, the bawdy energy of the performers
and audience, and the glitter and unusual lighting of the
theatres’ interiors.
14 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 5 ] Walter Sickert
The Façade of St Jacques, 1902
Oil on canvas 130.8 x 101 cm (51½ x 39¾ inches)
Signed ‘Sickert’ bottom left
Provenance: Commissioned by M. Mantren, Dieppe; Frederick
Fairbanks, France, 1902; Arthur Tooth & Son, London; 2nd Duke
of Westminster, London; his sale, London, Christie’s, 3 July 1942;
Alex, Reid & Lefevre, London; Arthur Tooth; Royan Middleton,
Aberdeen 1944; private collection, Scotland; Lefevre Gallery,
London, 1997; The Fine Art Society, 2000; private collection.
Exhibited: Paris Salon des Independents, 1903 (2234); Sickert,
The Fine Art Society, London and Edinburgh 1973 (42);
Sickert Paintings, Royal Academy, London, Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam, 1992 (30); Important XIX & XX Century Works
of Art, The Lefevre Gallery, London, 1997 (19); Walter Sickert:
Paintings Drawings and Prints, The Fine Art Society, 2000 (6).
Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings,
New Haven & London 2006 p.241, no.130.10 reproduced
in colour; Lillian Browse, Sickert, London, 1943, pl.19; S.
Packenham, 60 Miles from England: The English at Dieppe
1814–1914, London 1967, p.202; Wendy Baron, Sickert, London
1973, pp. 68–9, 71, no.157; Denys Sutton, Walter Sickert, London
1976, pp.110–11; Wendy Baron and Richard Shone, Sickert
Paintings, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1992 pp.114, 124,
reproduced.
This is the largest and grandest of Sickert’s many paintings
made of St Jacques, the principal church in Dieppe. It is
one of a quartet of large-scale paintings commissioned by
the owner of the Hôtel de la Plage, Dieppe. In these four
large paintings, the statement of design, expressed as a
strong pattern of simplified tones, is direct and simple. The
power of this painting may be due to the fact that Sickert
was able to concentrate almost exclusively on stylistic expression. Usually his preoccupation with style was diluted
by his intense concern for the handling of paint. The works
in this series represent the distilled essence of Sickert’s
experiments and experience since 1898 in the handling of
landscape painting.
Sickert painted the façade of St Jacques on canvas, on
panel and on board: there are also many drawings and
watercolours. More paintings of this view survive than of
any other site in Dieppe. He painted the scene in different
effects of light, a reminder of his close association with the
16 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
Impressionists, and their working method is likely to have
been in his mind during the long period spent away from
London, in Dieppe, Paris and Venice.
The paintings commissioned for the Hôtel de la Plage
were never installed there and the owner sold them to
Frederick Fairbanks, who lent them to the Salon des Indépendants in March 1903. Fairbanks was a young American
expatriate musician who married Eliza Middleton, a
friend of Sickert in Dieppe. The Façade of St Jacques was
later bought by the 2nd Duke of Westminster. The other
three large paintings are now in the collections of the
National Gallery of Canada (La Rue Notre Dame and the
Quai Duquesne), Manchester City Art Gallery (Le Grand
Duquesne) and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Bathers,
Dieppe); the last two were bought direct from Fairbanks in
1935.
Whistler had given Sickert a letter of introduction to
Degas when he took Whistler’s painting Arrangement
in Grey and Black: the Artist’s Mother to Paris in 1883.
Sickert spent most summers in Dieppe and his friendship
with Degas developed after they met again there in 1885.
Following his separation from his first wife, Sickert made
Dieppe his base until 1905. The town and its surrounding
countryside were to be the source of more of his subjects
than any other place and Dieppe was central to Sickert’s
art. It was here Spencer Gore met him for the first time in
1904 and whose enthusiastic account of young British artists persuaded Sickert to return to London.
centenary exhibition 17
[ 6 ] Walter Sickert
Clarence Gardens c.1924–5
Oil on canvas 40 x 55.2 cm (15½ x 21¾)
Signed ‘Sickert’ bottom right
Provenance: Savile May, 1926; Marlborough Fine Art; Anthony
d’Offay 1980; Reader’s Digest Association; Christie’s, London,
19 November 2004 (56); Christie’s, London, 10 June 2006 (17);
private collection.
Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings,
New Haven & London 2006 no.528 reproduced.
Clarence Gardens was part of Nash’s sequence of squares
and terraces south of Mornington Crescent. Sickert knew
it well, as one of his very first studios was in nearby Robert
Street which he had occupied in the early 1890s. The square
was destroyed by bombs during the war.
Harold Gilman and William Ratcliffe both painted
Clarence Gardens around 1912, and Wendy Baron believes
Sickert may have painted his own canvas from an earlier
drawing. It is painted in the lighter, brighter palette that
Sickert adopted in the earlier 1920s for a number of pictures
of city streets and landscapes.
18 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 19
[ 7 ] Walter Sickert
Nina Hamnett 1915
Pencil and pen and ink on buff paper 35 x 25.3 cm
(133/4 x 10 inches)
Nina Hamnett (1890–1956) was an artist, writer and expert on sea shanties who became known as the Queen of
Bohemia. In 1912 she went to live in Paris, and became a well
known part of the artistic scene there, modelling for her
friend Modigliani, who painted her portrait, and on close
terms with Brancusi and other members of the European
avant garde. She was notorious for her riotous behaviour,
dancing naked on a café table in Montparnasse on one
­occasion, and following a promiscuous path of free love
with both men and women. In this period Hamnett divided
her time between London and Paris, contributing work to
the Omega Workshop and having an affair with Roger Fry.
Sickert adored Nina and held great respect for her abilities as an artist. In 1918 he published an enthusiastic article
about her in the Cambridge Magazine, which also served
as the introduction to an exhibition she held there. In
1915–16 Sickert painted her portrait with her then husband
Roald Kristian as The Little Tea Party (Tate, London). The
present sheet is one of the principal drawings on which this
oil was based. The low perspective indicates that Sickert was
drawing Nina from the vantage of his armchair. She looks
back at him, striking a stylishly dashing pose with hand on
hip and a cigarette in her other hand. It is a perfect piece of
Camden Town observation, a figure in an ordinary domestic
setting in which character is expressed only through the set
of the body without narrative direction.
20 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 21
[ 8 ] Walter Sickert
A Passing Funeral 1913
Pen and ink, pencil and watercolour on paper 37.5 x 27 cm
(145/8 x 10¾ inches)
Exhibited: Paintings & Drawings by Walter Sickert, The Carfax
Gallery, London 1914 (17)
Literature: Ruth Bromberg, Walter Sickert Prints, New Haven
& London 2000 pp.176–178; Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and
Drawings, New Haven & London 2006 p.379 (other versions)
Sickert used his models like actors on a stage, placing
them in naturalistic domestic surroundings amid the
props of everyday life and having them adopt expressions
of stillness that suggested a particular state of mind, be it
boredom, anxiety or contemplation. It was a very subtle
approach to the tension between art and artifice in which
the viewer drew conclusions about what they were viewing.
Here the two women look out of the window of his studio
at 6 Mornington Crescent, the London light falling with
immense subtlety across their figures. They are recognisible
as two coster girls – market stall traders – who lived locally
and whom Sickert used in a number of his pictures. He
delighted in their company and the stories they told him
about their colourful lives. Sickert’s figure subjects exploit
the power of stillness to create tension or a very particular
psychological mood, and it is this that is the true subject
of his art. The titles he assigned them also operated on the
viewer’s imagination, in this case claiming the women are
watching a passing funeral.
22 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 23
SPENCER GORE
1878–1914
Gore trained at the Slade from 1896–9 where he knew
Harold Gilman. In 1902 he visited Madrid with Wyndham
Lewis another Slade contemporary, who subsequently he
successfully proposed for the Camden Town Group, later
a source of friction. Gore was introduced to Sickert in
Dieppe in 1904 by Albert Rutherston and because of his
enthusiastic account of the younger artists in London was
instrumental in Sickert’s return to England to work after a
virtual absence of a decade. He was a founder member of the
Camden Town Group and elected its President. In 1911 he
was given his only lifetime solo show at the Chenil Gallery
in Chelsea. Gore and Sickert were on close terms and they
on occasion painted side by side in Mornington Crescent.
But Gore moved away from pure impressionism towards a
more rigorously modern style and he both tolerated and encouraged truly advanced art. In 1912 he organized the avantgarde decorations for The Cave of the Golden Calf nightclub, drafting in Camden Town Group members Gilman,
Ginner and Lewis, and also Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill.
He was included in Roger Fry’s Second Post-Impressionist
exhibition in 1912 and in 1913 Gore organised the exhibition of ‘English Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Others’
that brought together the varied factions of the London
avant-garde. The summer and autumn of 1912 were spent
in Gilman’s house at Letchworth where he produced some
of his most advanced work. In 1913 he and his young family
moved to Richmond. Painting in all weathers in Richmond
Park, Gore succumbed to pneumonia in March 1914.
24 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 9 ] Spencer Gore
The Thames at Richmond 1913
Oil on canvas 40.6 x 51.2 cm (16 x 201/8 inches)
Stamped ‘S.F. Gore’ bottom right
Provenance: By descent to the artist’s widow Mollie Gore;
Agnew’s, London; R.A. Bevan; by descent.
Exhibited: The Bevan Collection: A Selection of Paintings by
British Artists including the Camden Town Group and a Tribute
to John Nash, Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, August 1978 (38)
To escape the smoky environment of Mornington Crescent
the Gores moved to Richmond in the summer of 1913, a
more suitable environment to bring up young children.
The high summer foliage of the trees indicates that this
must have been among the first works Gore painted there.
He shows perhaps the classic view from the riverside at
Richmond, looking downstream from a position beyond
The White Cross pub towards the rowing club boathouse.
The stamp in the bottom right corner was the one applied to all of Gore’s works left in his studio after his death.
Harold Gilman and Gore’s widow Mollie ordered the
paintings, recording their dates and stamping each painting.
Gilman often made notes on the stretchers of the canvases.
centenary exhibition 25
[ 10 ] Spencer Gore
[ 11 ] Spencer Gore
Cambrian Road, Richmond 1914
The Alhambra c.1910
Charcoal crayon and pen and ink
27.4 x 20.3 cm (10¾ x 8 inches)
Provenance: By descent to the
artist’s widow, Mollie Gore;
Agnew’s, London; John Wood
Palmer; R.A. Bevan; by descent.
Exhibited: Drawings of the Camden
Town Group, Arts Council 1961 (43)
Pencil, coloured pencil and watercolour 25 x 25.5 cm
(9¾ x 10 inches)
Stamped ‘S.F. Gore’ bottom right
Provenance: Private collection.
Exhibited: The Camden Town Group and Related Pictures, City
Art Gallery & Museum, Plymouth, May-July 1974 (17)
26 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
Gore lived at 6 Cambrian Road and this drawing was made
from just outside his front garden looking up towards
Richmond Park, which is at the end of the road. The trees
and shrubs are given a stylised treatment that gathers them
into geometric patterns, lending what is a suburban scene a
subtly avant-garde edge.
The Alhambra Theatre of
Varieties dominated the eastern
side of Leicester Square and was
one of Victorian and Edwardian
London’s most famous music
hall venues. As its name would
suggest it was lavishly decorated
in Moorish style, surmounted
by a series of domes topped by
crescent moons while its Charing
Cross road façade was made up of
successive layers of arabic arches.
Inside the theatre was decorated
equally imaginatively with tiles,
mosaics and carvings. Gore’s
drawing shows the right side of
the proscenium and the adjacent
tiered boxes with their pierced
Moorish decoration. The heads of
the audience are visible, a device
derived from Degas’s pictures of
the theatre. In its upright format,
composition and subject it is
reminiscent of Sickert’s paintings
of the New Bedford Music Hall.
centenary exhibition 27
[ 12 ] Spencer Gore
[ 13 ] Spencer Gore
Alhambra Ballet:
On the Square 1909
Musicians at the Footlights,
Alhambra Music Hall 1910
Charcoal crayon on paper 21 x 27.7 cm (8¼ x 101/8 inches)
Stamped ‘SFG’ bottom left
Pencil on buff paper 24 x 20.9 cm (9½ x 8¼ inches)
Exhibited: Lucien Pissarro et le Post-Impressionisme Anglais,
Musée de Pontoise, November 1998–March 1999, ChâteauMusée de Dieppe March-June 1999 (93)
Gore shows the backdrop at the Alhambra Theatre for their
1909 popular ballet ‘On the Square’. Set in Herald Square,
New York, this followed the arrival of British hero John
Brown in an airship, his subsequent romantic complications and exposure to American culture, and his daughter’s magical transformation into a marionette. The Times
praised the ballet’s energy: ‘Buzz? Fizzle? We give it up. The
English language as spoken on the east of the Atlantic has
no fit word for so starry and stripy a production. The scene
is Herald Square, New York. In the foreground a cocktail
bar confronts a dry goods store; in the background a “flat
iron”, or some such stripy, star-y-pointing “contraption”
soars in all the beauty of aspiration towards Heaven … As
to the rest – colours, music, motion – bang! boom! whizz!
It’s elegant.’ (23 February 1909, p.6). The flat iron building
is prominent in Gore’s drawing and also included are other
emblems of modern city living, including a motor car and
an electric trolley bus.
28 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
Provenance: Purchased at the Redfern Gallery, London in
1962 by Miss Erica Marx; Miss Anna Pollak; Browse & Darby,
London.
Gore would make drawings of the Alhambra performances
from his seat. In this case it would have been from a point
in the pit stalls, close to the stage, which a 1908 playbill
listed as costing two shillings. The artistic practicality of
drawing fleeting moments in the performance meant that
Gore might have to return again to complete his drawing,
perhaps several times. Sickert recalled in his obituary of
Gore: ‘I shall always remember my envy at the dogged way
in which he would take his stand, in all weathers, in the
queue at the door of the Alhambra at an impossibly early
hour, with the regularity of clockwork, so that he might find
himself in the desired seat to continue his study of some
chosen scene’ (‘A Perfect Modern’, The New Age, 9 April
1914).
[ 14 ] Spencer Gore
Les Cloches de Corneville 1909
Oil on canvas 40.7 x 45.7 cm (16 x 18 inches)
Exhibited: British Modernist Art 1905–1930, Hirschl & Adler,
New York 1987 (21, reproduced)
Composed by Robert Planquette in 1876, Les Cloches de
Corneville (‘The Bells of Corneville’) was probably the
most popular French operetta of all time and was almost
as big a hit in London as Paris. The Alhambra staged their
own special adaptation which opened in September 1909
and focussed particularly on ballet, and was so successful it
ran continuously for seven months. Gore chose one of the
most famous episodes in the ballet to depict, the ‘Orchard
Kissing Scene’.
Gore’s fascination with the ballet was long-standing and
formed the subject of many of his major works. Sickert described them as ‘miracles of charm, and above all of fullness.
Conder-like fancies, they had the resonance of reality, with
all their grace firmly established in its three dimensions as
sculpture. I can see ballets like forests of seaweed extended
like fans under an immense arch of some capricious border
of coloured darkness’ (‘A Perfect Modern’, The New Age,
9 April 1914).
30 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 31
[ 15 ] Spencer Gore
The Pond at Letchworth 1912
Oil on canvas 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 inches)
While Gilman was away in Sweden in the summer and
autumn of 1912 Gore and his family moved into his house
in Wilbury Road, Letchworth. The first Garden City,
Letchworth was an experiment in modern planning and design, merging town and country to provide an ideal way of
life that was intended to provide a template for the development of English towns. It was a consciously bold revolution
in modern living, and the ethos of the place seems to have
spurred Gore to produce some of his most advanced work.
Landscape forms became stylised and given geometric
shapes, and rendered in intense colours.
32 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 33
ROBERT POLHILL BEVAN
1865–1925
Bevan was born in Hove and grew up at Horsgate near
Uckfield in Sussex. His father was a partner in Barclays
Bank. Bevan studied at Westminster School of Art in 1888,
and then at the Académie Julian in Paris from 1889–90.
He worked in Pont Aven in 1890–1 and 1893–4 where he
was exposed to the circle around Gauguin, with whom he
was on friendly terms. From 1894–7 he lived and worked
on Exmoor. In Paris he had met Stanislawa de Karlowska,
a Polish student at the Académie Julian and in 1897 they
married. Bevan’s time in France and his regular journeys
through Europe to visit his wife’s family gave him considerable exposure to avant-garde art. He settled in London in
1900. Bevan had a solo exhibition in London at the Baillie
Gallery in 1905 which went largely unnoticed but in 1908
showed at the Allied Artists’ Association, where his work
was admired by Gilman and Gore who invited him to join
the Fitzroy Street artists. In 1911 he was a founder member
of the Camden Town Group, the London Group in 1913
and in 1914 formed the Cumberland Market Group with
Gilman and Ginner. Bevan devoted himself particularly to
the working horses of London in his art, and latterly to the
landscape of Devon where he spent considerable periods
from 1914 until his death.
34 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 16 ] Robert Bevan
The Road, Mydlow
Oil on board 36.7 x 30.5 (14½ x 12 inches)
Bevan painted in Poland where his wife’s family had an
estate at Mydlow. It is remarkable for the advanced nature
of the way it is painted. Bevan gained considerable exposure to modern French painting from his time in Paris
and is known to have visited exhibitions by artists such as
Cézanne, and he is likely also to have viewed the Fauves.
Abandoning a naturalistic palette, Bevan has set strokes of
bright, pure colour next to each other in an adapted version of divisionism that make his simple rural compositions
pulsate with energy.
centenary exhibition 35
[ 17 ] Robert Bevan
The Smithy from Lupitt Hill 1920
Watercolour and black crayon 28 x 38 cm (11 x 15 inches)
Estate stamp
Provenance: By descent to R.A. Bevan, the artist’s son;
Anthony d’Offay, London; Judge Stephen Tumin.
In 1920 Bevan went to spend the summer in the Blackdown
Hills, making paintings of the local landscape. He stayed
at Gould’s Farm in Luppitt with Mr and Mrs Eli Reuben
Loveridge. In this watercolour he shows the view from
Luppitt Hill down to the local smithy at Colehill which was
run by Mr Loveridge’s brother in law. Bevan was a highly
experienced rider and huntsman who maintained a lifelong
affinity for horses. Where they appear in his work their character is subtly suggested, and here they make a visual link to
the purpose of the building in the watercolour.
36 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 37
MALCOLM DRUMMOND
1880–1945
Drummond was born at Boyne Hill near Maidenhead, the
son of a vicar. He studied History at Oxford from 1898–
1902 and after graduation spent a year training as an estate
agent in Yorkshire. In 1903 he changed course to study as
an artist and attended the Slade until 1907, and then the
Westminster School of Art where he studied under Sickert
from 1908–10. He became part of the Fitzroy Street circle
and was invited to join the Camden Town Group on its
formation. Drummond exhibited work with the Group that
displayed considerable innovation, using bright, Fauve-like
colours and simplified design, and he chose sometimes
unusual subjects that included cinema audiences, isolated
figures in St James’s Park or the congregation at Brompton
Oratory (he was himself a Catholic convert). He became
a founder member and Treasurer of the London Group
on its formation in 1913. From 1925–31 he taught at the
Westminster School before returning to Berkshire to live
in 1932.
[ 18 ] Malcolm Drummond
Arabesque c.1912
Pen and ink 22.5 x 19 cm (9 x 7¾ inches)
Provenance: Charles Goodman, London.
Exhibited: New Grafton Gallery, Barnes.
This drawing relates to a painting Drummond made of his
wife Zina playing the piano in their sitting room. The title
derives from the famous Arabesque by Schumann that she is
playing, and the low perspective indicates that Drummond
was drawing her whilst seated. Like her husband, Zina was
an accomplished musician, and also illustrated books.
[ 19 ] Malcolm Drummond
Florrie 1911
Oil on canvas 40.6 x 50.8 (16 x 20 inches)
Inscribed on the stretcher ‘16 Bramerton Street – Chelsea’
Provenance: By descent to the artist’s son, Jamie Drummond.
Drummond shows a maid doing the laundry by an open
window, hot water pouring from a lustrous copper boiler.
It is an enormously innovative composition – the figure is
shown close up and half turned. Daylight falls subtly across
her face, while light is expressed as reflected green bars on
the copper, and we are offered a view out over her shoulder
and through the window to the adjacent houses. Choosing
to paint a domestic servant, and in a naturalistic and observational way was highly unusual in this period. Like Sickert,
Drummond was perhaps taking an investigative, sympathetic approach by raising to art the lives of people who in
this period were sometimes considered virtually invisible.
38 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 39
[ 20 ] Malcolm Drummond
The Doorman at the Savoy c.1912
Oil on board 30.8 x 25.1 cm (12.1 x 9.9 inches)
Provenance: Agnew’s, London.
This painting is evidence of the way the
Camden Town artists took as their models
working people from everyday life. The
doorman is shown without his jacket in his
braces, giving it an air of informality as if
he has just finished work. Drummond has
cropped the composition so that the figure fills almost the entire available picture
space, forcing complete focus on the model.
But it is most daring in the way in which
Drummond has used the same colours and
tones to define both the doorman’s face
and the background behind him, creating
a shimmering harmony of purples, browns
and blacks.
[ 21 ] Malcolm Drummond
Preparing the Sunday Sermon c.1912
73.7 x 55.1 cm (29 x 21½ inches)
Provenance: The artist’s family until 1948;
Mark Macdonald.
Drummond grew up in a vicarage and this
was undoubtedly a familiar scene from his
childhood. This painting dates from the
time of the Camden Town exhibitions but
was not included in the selection of works
that Drummond submitted to the shows.
The identity of the sitter is unknown but
the modern-looking pictures on the wall
and the bold-coloured wallpaper suggest
this may perhaps be Drummond’s own
house. The contrast of opposing reds and
greens as the principal colours in the composition give the picture a subtly modern
character, whilst treating a subject full of
sympathy and character.
40 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 41
CHARLES GINNER
1878–1952
While he had an English father and Scottish mother Ginner
was born in Cannes, where his father had a pharmacy, and
grew up entirely in France. Reputedly he retained a gallic
accent when he spoke English. Ginner initially trained as
an architect from 1899–1904, which perhaps explains the
exacting detail and thorough perspectival rendering of his
compositions. Subsequently in 1905 he attended the Vitti
Académie in Paris and the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1908 he
sent work from France to the Allied Artists’ Association, and
after a spell in Argentina in late 1909 he moved to London,
where his sister and mother had settled after her remarriage.
In 1910 he exhibited again at the AAA and because of his
surname found himself selected for the hanging committee
with Gore and Gilman. He formed an immediate friendship
with them and was quickly introduced to Sickert. Ginner
was a founder member of the Camden Town Group and the
London Group. With Gilman in 1914 he subsequently wrote
the manifesto for what they termed Neo-Realism, based on
rigorous observation from nature. Ginner was an official artist in both world wars, elected an Associate member of the
Royal Academy in 1942 and appointed CBE in 1950.
42 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 22 ] Charles Ginner
Pine Trees – Hampstead Heath 1925
Oil on canvas 42.5 x 52.5 cm (17 x 21 inches)
Signed
Provenance: Purchased at the Goupil Gallery 1925 by
Dorothea, Viscountess Helburn; by descent.
Exhibited: Goupil Gallery, London, November–December
1925 (37)
centenary exhibition 43
[ 23 ] Charles Ginner
[ 24 ] Charles Ginner
Doorway, Bloomsbury 1920
Upper Boscastle 1919
Pen and ink and watercolour 28.5 x 27 cm (111/8 x 83/16 inches)
Signed ‘C. GINNER’ bottom right
Pen and ink and watercolour 21 x 27 cm (81/4 x 105/8 inches)
Signed ‘C. GINNER’ bottom right
Provenance: Piccadilly Gallery, London.
Provenance: Piccadilly Gallery, London.
Exhibited: Leicester Galleries, March 1920
Literature: Ginner Notebooks, II, p.114
Literature: Ginner Notebooks, II, p.91
44 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 45
[ 25 ] Charles Ginner
At the Alhambra
Crayon and pastel 22.2 x 31.7 cm (8¾ x 12½ inches)
Provenance: Mrs Ruby Ginner Dyer, the artist’s sister;
Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London; purchased by Dr John Dayton,
1983.
Exhibited: British Drawings and Watercolours 1890–1940,
Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1982 (27); December
Exhibition, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1983 (31)
Ginner’s inspiration to capture the mood of the audience
at the Alhambra is likely to have come from his Camden
Town colleagues Gore and Sickert, for whom the theatre
was a recurrent subject in their art. Ginner has positioned
himself up in the Gods, the very cheapest seats in the house,
where people lean forward over the balustrade. The device
of including silhouetted members of the audience into
the composition was one pioneered by Degas, who work
Ginner is likely to have seen in France and would have been
a topic of discussion with Sickert and Gore.
46 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 47
JAMES BOLIVAR MANSON
1879–1945
Manson was born in Brixton. Between leaving school
in 1895 and 1903 he studied art at evening classes at
Heatherley’s while in office hours working in a bank, something he loathed. Having saved enough money to study fulltime, he left the bank and in a characteristic act of rebellion
on his last day threw his city hat up so that it lodged on
the lamppost outside. Manson went to Paris and studied at
the Académie Julian from 1903–4. He greatly admired the
Impressionists and between 1905 and 1907 made painting
trips to Brittany where he emulated their way of working.
In 1909 he met Lucien Pissarro, who became a lifelong
friend and supporter. Both believed in the primacy of the
pure Impressionism of Lucien’s father Camille Pissarro
and Claude Monet as representing the highest potential
development in modern art. Through Pissarro, Manson
48 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
became part of the Fitzroy Street circle and in 1911 was invited to join the Camden Town Group. Because of his years
in banking Manson was elected Secretary, responsible for
all the finances of the Group. Although he was also elected
Secretary of the London Group, Manson resigned in 1914
unable to find sympathy with the rigorously modernist
work that was being exhibited and he became a fierce opponent of the avant-garde. Manson supplemented his income
by writing criticism and art books, and for similar reasons
in 1912 became Clerk at the Tate Gallery, again a post
won because of his prior business experience. He rose to
become the Tate’s Director in 1930, but the administrative
demands of his museum career were a frustration that kept
him from painting. In 1938 he resigned after a diplomatic
incident in Paris.
detail of [ 26 ] >
centenary exhibition 49
[ 26 ] James Bolivar Manson
[ 27 ] James Bolivar Manson
Douélan, Brittany 1907
Summer Day, Douélan, Brittany 1907
Oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm (20 x 24 inches)
Signed and dated
Oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm (20 x 24 inches)
Signed ‘J.B. Manson’ bottom right
Provenance: Michael Webb; Browse & Darby, London.
Provenance: Mrs Herbert Somerville; F.A. Girling; Christie’s
South Kensington, 6 September 2001.
Exhibited: J.B. Manson Memorial Exhibition, Wildenstein,
London 1946 (2); Camden Town Recalled, The Fine Art Society,
October-November 1976 (99)
Douélan was a Brittany fishing village much favoured by
English painters in this era. Manson discovered it in 1907,
two years after his first visit to Brittany. Here he shows the
view across fields of ripe corn towards the village, with the
sparkling sea visible to the left. It is painted in the small
touches of paint that characterised the work of Monet and
Pissarro that Manson so admired, and is one of his most
authentic Impressionist landscapes.
Exhibited: The Camden Town Group, Leicester Galleries,
London, 1930; James B. Manson, Maltzahn Gallery, London,
1973 (19); Camden Town Recalled, The Fine Art Society,
October-November 1976 (100); The Painters of Camden Town
1905–1920, Christie’s, London, January 1988 (34, reproduced).
Literature: Wendy Baron, The Camden Town Group, London
1979 no.44 reproduced; David Buckman, James Bolivar Manson,
London 1973, p.51, no.19 reproduced
50 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 51
LUCIEN PISSARRO
1863–1944
Born in Paris, Lucien was the eldest son of the painter
Camille Pissarro. At Eragny he learnt his craft by painting
alongside his father, and was given further encouragement
and instruction by his father’s friends Cezanne, Degas,
Gauguin and Van Gogh. Together Lucien and his father
evolved a divisionist method of painting, meticulously applying small dots or dashes of contrasting or complementary
colour laid next to each other. Lucien exhibited at the final
exhibition the Impressionists held as a group in 1887. From
1890 Lucien lived almost permanently in England, and became naturalised in 1916. After a series of strokes in 1897 he
abandoned painting and concentrated on printmaking, but
returned to oils in 1903. In 1904 he started exhibiting at the
New English Art Club and became part of Sickert’s orbit,
although he somewhat disliked him, both personally and
for differences in their aesthetic ideology. Nevertheless he
was a founder member of the Camden Town Group in 1911.
Lucien believed in the pure Impressionism of his father
as the highest potential evolution of art and derided more
avant-garde developments in London and Paris. He refused
to exhibit with the London Group because of the Vorticist
and modernist works included.
52 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 28 ] Lucien Pissarro
La Route de Tierceville (Oise) 1885
Oil on canvas 45.7 x 38.1 cm (18 x 15 inches)
Signed in monogram and dated.
Provenance: Presented by the artist to Spencer and Mollie
Gore; private collection.
Literature: Anne Thorold, A Catalogue of the Oil Paintings of
Lucien Pissarro, London 1983 no.7
Exhibited: Paintings and Drawings by Members of the Camden
Town Group, Middlesbrough Art Gallery, December 1939 (3);
The Camden Town Group, The Redfern Gallery, London, March–
April 1939 (63); Post-Impressionism: Cross-currents in European
Painting, Royal Academy, London 1979 (157); Lucien Pissarro et
le Post-Impressionisme Anglais, Musée de Pontoise, November
1998–March 1999, Château-Musée de Dieppe March–June 1999
(1)
This was painted when Lucien Pissarro was just twenty-two
and learning his craft as a painter by working side by side
with his father Camille, and it is a very pure form of authentic Impressionism. While it is a very simple composition,
Pissarro has meticulously laid small strokes of complementary colours next to each other to produce a highly complex
shimmering harmony that is a pointillist tour de force. The
paint is also gathered into small curving ridges that produce
a serpentine rhythm which have the effect of leading the eye
through the picture and its contrasting juxtapositions and
harmonies of colour. Pissarro evidently valued it highly and
presented it to Spencer and Mollie Gore when they married
in January 1912.
Tierceville is a small settlement on the coast of Normandy,
not far from Bayeux.
centenary exhibition 53
WILLIAM RATCLIFFE
1870–1955
Ratcliffe was born near King’s Lynn but grew up in
Manchester where his father worked in the mills. After leaving school Ratcliffe worked as a clerk but attended evening
classes at Manchester School of Art, studying partly under Walter Crane. By 1901 he was working as a wallpaper
designer. In 1906 he moved to the new Garden City of
Letchworth just being constructed, perhaps drawn by the
social idealism of the venture and its focus on cooperative
working, particularly the printing business. Ratcliffe made a
living designing postcards, wallpapers and calendars. When
Harold Gilman and his family moved to Letchworth in 1908
Ratcliffe was a neighbour. Gilman encouraged Ratcliffe
to take up fine art and persuaded him to attend evening
classes at the Slade. Gilman acted as a mentor to Ratcliffe,
who was very shy, and introduced him to the Fitzroy Street
painters. When the Camden Town Group was formed he
was nominated by Gilman. Ratcliffe exhibited in all three
exhibitions, submitting work in oils, a medium to which
he was new. In 1913 he spent several months in Sweden,
staying with the brother-in-law of his neighbour and supporter Stanley Parker. From 1914 Ratcliffe moved frequently,
staying with his brother in Hampstead Garden Suburb and
Berkhamstead, and later in Sussex. He was greatly affected
by Gilman’s death, and while he exhibited with the London
Group from 1914 until 1926 he all but disappeared from
London art circles. He lived in Letchworth in the 1930s,
and then again after an absence returned in 1946. In 1954,
the year before his death, he was awarded a retrospective
exhibition of his work in Letchworth Museum and Art
Gallery.
54 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 29 ] William Ratcliffe
Farm in Sweden 1913
Pen and ink, pencil crayon and watercolour on card 30 x 38 cm
Provenance: Acquired from the artist by Stanley Parker,
Letchworth; by descent.
Exhibited: Garden City to Camden Town: The Art of William
Ratcliffe, Letchworth Museum & Art Gallery, September–
October 2003 (13)
In 1913 Ratcliffe went to Sweden to stay with his neighbours
Stanley and Signe Parker. Signe was Swedish, and they
stayed at her brother’s farm at Sundsholm, in the south of
Sweden. The experience inspired Ratcliffe to produce some
of his best work. His mentor Harold Gilman had visited
Sweden the year before and this must have been a factor
in his decision to make the trip. This watercolour – which
recalls the delicate lines and soft, flat colours of the Swedish
artist and designer Carl Larsson – shows the homestead at
Sundsholm. It is in a distinctive frame made by Stanley
Parker, decorated with sections of bone or antler that were
reputedly found nearby.
centenary exhibition 55
[ 30 ] William Ratcliffe
Sundsholm, Sweden 1913
Oil on canvas 41 x 51 cm (16 x 20 inches)
Signed and dated ‘W. Ratcliffe 1913.’
Provenance: Acquired from the artist by Stanley Parker,
Letchworth; by descent.
Exhibited: London Group, Goupil Gallery, London, March
1914 (7); Garden City to Camden Town: The Art of William
Ratcliffe, Letchworth Museum & Art Gallery, SeptemberOctober 2003 (5)
Ratcliffe travelled to Sweden with Stanley and Signe Parker
and their young daughters Brynhild and Phyllis in 1913.
Sundsholm Säteri – ‘Mansion House’ – with 1500 acres was
owned by Sigfried’s brother Gottfrid from 1912–18. Here
Ratcliffe shows the distinctive large red barns at the farm.
The picture is painted in pointillist style, loading the
brush fully with colour and then using only the end of it
to dot paint onto the canvas. It was a demanding technique
akin to Gilman’s, but also one Ratcliffe would have discussed the practicalities of with Lucien Pissarro. The result
here is a visually compelling harmony of complementary
colours, dry touches of soft greens placed next to pinks and
lilacs to produce a sparkling Post-Impressionist landscape.
Paint is applied thickly with a pronounced impasto, a direction being investigated within the Camden Town Group
notably by Gilman and Ginner.
56 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 57
[ 31 ] William Ratcliffe
Still Life by the Fire c.1914
Oil on canvas 51 x 37.5 cm (20 x 14¾ inches)
Signed ‘W. Ratcliffe’ bottom left
Exhibited: The Camden Town Group, Southampton Art
Gallery, 1951 (108); Exhibition of Paintings by William Ratcliffe,
Letchworth Garden City Museum & Art Gallery, 1954 (21);
Garden City to Camden Town: The Art of William Ratcliffe,
Letchworth Garden City Museum & Art Gallery, 2003 (85)
58 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 59
[ 32 ] William Ratcliffe
Hampstead Pond c.1914
Oil on canvas 51 x 76 cm (20 x 30 inches)
Provenance: Acquired from the artist by Stanley Parker,
Letchworth; by descent.
Exhibited: Garden City to Camden Town: The Art of William
Ratcliffe, Letchworth Museum & Art Gallery, SeptemberOctober 2003 (68)
Ratcliffe shows Hampstead No.2 pond where the Heath
edge is near South End Green.
60 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 61
HAROLD GILMAN
1876–1919
Gilman was born in Somerset, the son of a vicar. At the age
of fifteen Gilman injured his hip in a fall and was confined
to bed for two years. In this challenging situation he took
up drawing. In 1896 he started at Hastings School of Art
before moving to the Slade the following year. Here his
fellow students included Spencer Gore. After leaving the
Slade in 1901 Gilman travelled to Madrid to copy Velasquez
in the Prado. Here he met Grace Canedey, an American art
student who Gilman married in 1902 in Spain. Back in
England Gilman exhibited at the New English Art Club,
and by chance in 1907 encountered Sickert. He was invited
to become part of the Fitzroy Street exhibiting circle. In
1909 Gilman’s wife and children visited America but did
not return and the marriage broke down. The refusal of the
NEAC to accept some of Gilman’s work in 1910 – a conservative backlash against innovation in the face of Roger Fry’s
Post-Impressionist exhibition – led Gilman to actively
propose the formation of a wholly new exhibiting society.
This was to become the Camden Town Group, which with
Sickert, Gore, Ginner and Bevan he was a founder. In 1913
he visited Sweden. Stylistically Gilman moved from the
smooth painting and limited palette of Whistler towards
brilliant colour and heavy impasto, inspired by seeing Van
Gogh and Gauguin pictures on a visit to Paris with Ginner.
Sickert somewhat disapproved of such developments and
after the end of the Camden Town Group in 1915 he used
his column in The New Age to attack Gilman and Ginner.
In 1917 Gilman married Sylvia Hardy, one of his students
at the Westmister School. The following year he was commissioned to paint Halifax Harbour for the Canadian
War Record. While nursing Ginner in 1919 he contracted
Spanish flu and died.
[ 33 ] Harold Gilman (1876–1919)
Head of Grace and Self -Portrait verso
Reed pen and ink on paper 17.2 x 14.5 cm (6¾ x 5¾ inches)
Provenance: The Artist’s Estate.
[ 34 ] Harold Gilman
Putting on the Coat (Ruth Doggett) c.1915
Black chalk on paper 29.3 x 20.3 cm (11½ x 8 inches)
Provenance: By descent to the artist’s family; Agnew’s, London;
Abbott & Holder, London; Roger Plant Esq.
62 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 63
[ 35 ] Harold Gilman
Meditation c.1910–11
Oil on canvas 42 x 32.4 cm (16½ x 12¼ inches)
Signed and inscribed on reverse ‘19 Fitzroy Street, Londres’
Provenance: Lefevre Gallery, London, 1948.
As it was with Sickert, a key subject in Gilman’s was the
study of figures in interiors but Gilman’s focus was suggesting intense moods of contemplation or introspection,
moments of stillness with which the viewer can empathise.
Here a favourite model rests her head on her hand as she
looks back at Gilman painting her, the gaze direct but
contemplative.
64 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 65
PUPILS AND FOLLOWERS
A
LTHOUGH
the Camden Town Group was relatively
short-lived as an exhibiting body, something of its
core values and essential spirit survived long into the
twentieth century. Key players within the group – notably
Sickert, Gilman, Gore, Drummond and Bayes – all spent
significant periods teaching at the Westminster School of
Art where they were able to influence students with their
characteristic working methods. Writing as early as 1922 it
was the influential critic and Camden Town Group supporter Frank Rutter who suggested that the Westminster
School of Art offered the most significant alternative to the
Slade. Rutter argued that it was Sickert who was responsible for establishing the ‘Westminster tradition’ which was
fundamentally opposed to the widely accepted Slade practices. Whilst the hierarchy of the Slade celebrated ‘sweeping
contours’ and free and lucid brush-strokes, the Westminster,
under Sickert’s guidance, mistrusted any work which betrayed a slickness of execution. Sickert instilled a regard for
the broken line and for the arrested, almost hesitant, application of paint – at the Westminster paintings were built
up like mosaics, ‘something to be fitted together’.1
The Westminster School of Art was founded in 1876 and
was originally located at the Royal Architectural Museum at
18 Tufton Street, not moving to its Vincent Square address
until 1903 when it was taken over by the LCC Technical
Institute. It was not until the arrival of Sickert in 1908 that
the school began to make a real impact on the course of
British painting. By 1915 an LCC inspector stressed to
Sickert that he wanted the Westminster to become ‘the
school of painting’ and in a letter to Ethel Sands, Sickert
revealed his enthusiasm for the task, ‘... I am to have a free
hand and direct the school entirely. I shall visit two or three
evenings a week.’2 However, whilst Sickert certainly set the
tone for the school’s emerging identity, it was the formidable
66 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
passion and commitment of Harold Gilman that was to also
affect profoundly the working methods of the Westminster
pupils. His great friend Spencer Gore had also begun to
make his mark at the school, but his sudden death in March
1914 left Gilman with the job of introducing young artists
to a characteristically English form of Post-Impressionism.
Whilst Sickert and Gilman had formerly agreed on many
of the fundamentals of drawing and painting they were to
fall out over Gilman’s burgeoning love of thick impasto
and vivid colour inspired by his admiration for Gauguin
and particularly Van Gogh. Sickert drifted in and out of the
school in typically chaotic fashion whilst Gilman embodied everything that was solid, permanent and trustworthy.
He approached teaching with the same intensity that he
approached painting and for him there was nothing more
important than guiding young artists on the correct path.
As Charles Ginner recalled: ‘One of his ambitions was to
see a revival of good sound painting in England.’3 Gilman
was dogmatic and believed definitely there was a right and
wrong way of painting and it was his pupils that felt the full
force of his passionately held views. Hubert Wellington, a
friend and follower of Gilman, remembered that, ‘If a man
was found to use umbers, siennas and blacks instead of
cadmiums, cobalts, veridian and the pure palette, he could
hardly be spoken to or mentioned.’4 It was over this crucial
subject of colour that Gilman broke decisively with Sickert’s
method and when he began teaching at the Westminster in
March 1914 the pupils were at once guided towards a more
liberated palette and away from the strict emphasis on low
tones.
During one of Sickert’s prolonged absences Gilman was
able to establish his stylistic obsessions among the pupils.
Throughout most of 1914 and 1915 Gilman introduced
Westminster pupils to a heightened palette, forbidding
centenary exhibition 67
them to use any form of medium with oil paint and instructing students to apply the paint dry with a loaded brush in
ponderous and deliberate dabs to create a crusted surface.
When Sickert did finally return to the school he was horrified to find his former pupils painting in the ‘thick’ Gilman
manner and using colours more akin to Van Gogh and
Gauguin than Whistler and Degas. Marjorie Lilly recalled
the rumpus that followed Sickert’s return to the school:
No wonder that their pupils were disturbed. Gilman had
been tempting them with every bright colour under the sun;
Sickert held that they should master a few colours before
they indulged in orgies of crimson and emerald green ...
There was widespread indignation and one student, describing the arrival of Sickert, recited his woes to me.
‘You can’t imagine how furious we were to find the place
all dark except for one strong light and to be allowed only
three or four colours at most. After all, Gilman uses plenty
of colours so why shouldn’t we?’5
Despite Gilman’s rather brief stint at the Westminster
he managed to inspire a loyal group of mainly women
followers. Artists like Ruth Doggett, Mary Godwin and
Marjorie Sherlock carried on with Gilman’s approach well
in to the 1920s and 30s and as Marjorie Lilly indicated the
new-found delight in colour and texture was impossible to
restrain. Some of Sickert’s long standing pupils like Sylvia
Gosse, Christiana Cutter, Marjorie Lilly, Madeline Knox
and Wendela Boreel could not resist the temptation to
experiment with colour and heavy paint and even Sickert’s
palette was to lighten in the last two decades of his life. It
would seem that the flood gates of colour were opened by
Gilman and the Whistlerian era of the restricted palette
was brought to an end. The pupils and followers combined
‘modern’ Sickertian subjects such as domestic interiors,
street scenes and music halls with a colour palette that owed
more to Gilman, Gore and Drummond who had in turn
gleaned much from the French Post Impressionists. Their
work became a feature of London Group exhibitions during
the First World War and throughout the inter-war period.
The London Group evolved directly out of the Camden
Town Group and became a vital force in the development
of modern British painting and by 1936 was famously described by The News Chronicle as ‘The Intelligent Man’s
Royal Academy’.6
Also furthering the cause of the Camden Towners within
the London Group ranks were artists like Thérèse Lessore,
68 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
who married Sickert in 1926, Robert Bevan’s Polish wife
Stanislawa de Karlowska and Sickert’s great friends Ethel
Sands and Nan Hudson who had been so instrumental
in cementing the social network that supported Sickert’s
earlier Fitzroy Street Group. In their different ways these
artists echoed the variety of painterly mannerisms that the
Camden Town Group had represented, remaining true to
the principles of fine craftsmanship and the integrity of
everyday subject matter. These artists have often been overlooked in the available surveys of twentieth-century British
art perhaps because they seemed to lack the strident modernism of some of their London Group contemporaries.
They were never pre-occupied with radicalism for radicalism’s sake and neither did they strive to be ‘modern’ at any
price. Frank Rutter rightly observed that amid the London
Group exhibitions of the inter-war period where some
modernist experiment was facile and ‘downright silly’, the
Camden Town acolytes formed ‘oases of sense and sensibility’7 and indeed their work appeals to this day to those who
love good honest painting free of affectation.
Denys J. Wilcox
WENDELA BOREEL
1895–1985
JAMES BROWN
1863–1943
CHRISTIANA CUTTER
1893–1969
DOUGLAS FOX-PITT
1864–1922
SYLVIA GILMAN
1892–1971
SYLVIA GOSSE
1881–1968
ANNA HOPE (NAN) HUDSON
1869–1957
STANISLAWA DE KARLOWSKA
1876–1952
1. Frank Rutter, Some Contemporary Artists, London 1922, p.123
2. Wendy Baron, Sickert, London 1973, pp.150-1
3. Charles Ginner, ‘Harold Gilman: An Appreciation’, Art &
Letters, vol.II, no3. Summer 1919, p.134
4. Paintings and Drawings by Harold Gilman (1876-1919), Hubert
Wellington, Alex, Reid & Lefevre, London 1943
5. Marjorie Lilly, Sickert: The Painter and his Circle, London 1971,
p.131
6. ‘The Intelligent Man’s Royal Academy’, The News Chronicle,
11 November 1936
7. Frank Rutter, ‘The London Group’, Sunday Times,
15 November 1936
MARJORIE LILLY
1891–1980
MARJORIE SHERLOCK
1897–1973
MURRAY URQUHART
1880–1972
centenary exhibition 69
WENDELA BOREEL
1895–1985
Born in France, she studied at the Slade from 1911 under
Henry Tonks where she met Christiana Cutter and Marjorie
Lilly. She went on to study at the Westminster School of
Art under Sickert and Gilman and quickly struck up a close
friendship with Sickert. Marjorie Lilly remembered that
Sickert’s ‘interest in gouache was stimulated by the brilliant studies produced by his pupil and friend, Wendela
Boreel’. For a short period she acted as Sickert’s assistant
and adopted many of his methods, also becoming a highly
accomplished etcher. Her first solo exhibition was staged
at the Walker Gallery, London in 1919 and she also began
showing regularly with the New English Art Club, Frank
Rutter’s Allied Artists’ Association and the London Group.
In 1923 she was elected an associate of the Royal Society of
Etchers. She concentrated on subjects of London life using
many of Sickert’s compositional devices whilst developing a
70 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
colour palette more akin to Gilman. Her images of London
proved popular and her work was featured in the 1924
publication The Artist’s London published by John Castle.
During the 1930s she returned to live in Mougins, France
and from then on her output was limited. She was included
in the 1974 Michael Parkin Gallery exhibition The Sickert
Women and The Sickert Girls. The Victoria & Albert
Museum holds examples of her work.
[ 36 ] Wendela Boreel
Torrington Square 1918
Oil on canvas 53.3 x 71.1 cm (21 x 28 inches)
[ 37 ] Wendela Boreel
Piccadilly 1922
Oil on canvas 75 x 50 cm (30 x 20 inches)
Signed and dated
Exhibited: The Sickert Women and the Sickert Girls, Michael
Parkin Gallery, London, April 1974 (35, reproduced on back
cover of catalogue).
centenary exhibition 71
JAMES BROWN
1863–1943
A musician by profession, he worked closely with Lucien
Pissarro and J. B. Manson and holidayed with them at Rye
in the summer of 1913. He began painting in his forties and
his talent as a painter was first recognised by Frank Rutter
when he saw an exhibition of his work in Richmond in 1912.
He used the pseudonym ‘P. Conway’ and painted very much
in the French Impressionist style often employing a pointillist technique. Pissarro remained the most important influence on his work. His work was featured in an exhibition
at the Michael Parkin Gallery, Three on holiday at Rye 1913
in 1980 and in The Painters of Camden Town 1905–1920 at
Christie’s in 1988.
72 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 38 ] James Brown
The Bourne at Farnham c.1914
Oil on canvas 55 x 65.7 cm (213/4 x 26 inches)
centenary exhibition 73
CHRISTIANA CUTTER
1893–1969
Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, she studied at the Slade
School from 1911 under Tonks where she met Wendela
Boreel and Marjorie Lilly. In 1919 she married Lilly’s
brother, George. Throughout the 1910s she remained a close
associate of the Sickert circle and was much influenced by
the Camden Town Group. She showed as a non-member
with both the New English Art Club and the London
Group and in 1922 held a joint exhibition with Wendela
Boreel and Marjorie Lilly at the Walker Gallery, London. In
1974 she was included in the Michael Parkin Gallery exhibition The Sickert Women and The Sickert Girls. She died in
Chichester, Sussex.
74 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 39 ] Christiana Cutter
Regents Park Canal, London
Oil on canvas 50 x 35 cm (20 x 14 inches)
Provenance: Grant Walters.
centenary exhibition 75
SYLVIA GILMAN
1892–1971
Born into a family of German extraction, Sylvia Meyer
changed her surname to Hardy during the First World War.
She trained as an artist at the Westminster School, where
in 1914 she was taught by Harold Gilman. The two married
in the summer of 1917, living first with Sylvia’s parents on
Cheyne Walk and afterwards moving to Hampstead. After
Gilman’s death from Spanish flu, in 1921 Sylvia married
his brother Leofric. She appears to have largely given up
DOUGLAS FOX-PITT
1864–1922
Born in London, he studied first at the Bartlett School of
Architecture between 1881 and 1882 and then at the Slade
School from 1889 to 1890. A painter mainly in watercolours
of townscapes and figure subjects he was associated with
Sickert and his circle over many years. He worked closely
with Walter Taylor in France and after 1911 was based
in Brighton where he worked occasionally with Sickert.
He also made frequent visits to Dieppe. He travelled to
Morocco with Count Sternberg, illustrating Sternberg’s The
Barbarians of Morocco. He exhibited with the New English
Art Club and was a founder member of the London Group
76 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
painting sometime after her marriage to Harold Gilman
due to the demands of bringing up a young family. Yet her
rare surviving canvases show a bold and brilliant talent, evidently inspired by Gilman’s teaching but wholly possessing
her own identity and style.
[ 41 ] Sylvia Gilman
Portrait of a Woman c.1916
Oil on canvas 45.8 x 30.5cm (18 x 12 inches)
Provenance: By descent to the artist’s family.
in 1913 and exhibited with the Camden Town Group in
Brighton in that same year. His carefully designed paintings
expressed a keen eye for colour and were clearly influenced
by Walter Taylor. Writing about his work in 1916 Sickert
noted: ‘Mr Fox Pitt’s watercolours seem to me the ideal
of what a watercolour should be. A watercolour without
lightness and transparency has lost its reason for being.’
His work is represented in public collections including the
Imperial War Museum.
[ 40 ] Douglas Fox-Pitt
Bedford Square, Brighton c.1910
Watercolour and crayon 28 x 22.3 cm (11 x 83/4 inches)
Provenance: By family descent.
centenary exhibition 77
SYLVIA GOSSE
1881–1968
Daughter of Sir Edmund Gosse, the eminent man of letters,
she trained at the St John’s Wood School of Art, the Royal
Academy Schools and under Sickert at the Westminster
School of Art. From 1909 she exhibited at Frank Rutter’s
Allied Artists’ Association and began showing with the
New English Art Club from 1911. In 1913 she exhibited with
the Camden Town Group in their exhibition in Brighton.
Her first solo exhibition at the Carfax Gallery in 1916 revealed the influences of both Sickert and Gilman. She was
a founder member of the London Group and exhibited
over fifty works with them throughout the 1910s and 20s.
Remaining very close to Sickert, she taught with him at his
Rowlandson House school in London and then followed
him to Dieppe where she nursed him through periods of ill
health. She was a loyal disciple of Sickert’s methods in both
painting and etching. In 1934 she instigated the Sickert
Fund to support him in his old age. She was also close to
Gilman for a period and modelled for him (see Sylvia Gosse,
1913, Southampton City Art Gallery). Admired by the critic
Frank Rutter, she was included in his 1935 book Modern
Masterpieces where she was recognised as ‘belonging to the
group of English Impressionists’. In 1989 a significant exhibition of her work was staged at the Michael Parkin Gallery
and travelled to the University of Hull. Examples of her
work are held by the Tate Gallery and Ashmolean Museum.
She spent her final years living near Hastings in Sussex.
[ 42 ] Sylvia Gosse
Reclining Nude
Oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm (16 x 20 inches) · Signed
Provenance: Private Collection, France.
[ 43 ] Sylvia Gosse
Street Vendor, Dieppe
(North Side of Notre-Dame Square, Envermeu) c.1919
Oil on canvas 50.7 x 50.7 cm
Provenance: Mark Macdonald.
78 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 79
STANISLAWA DE KARLOWSKA
1876–1952
Born in Poland, she studied at the Académie Julian in Paris
and through her acquaintance with Eric Forbes Robertson
she met Robert Bevan and subsequently married him in
1897. After settling in London she began exhibiting at the
Allied Artists’ Association and became very involved with
Sickert’s Fitzroy Street Group. Not eligible as a woman
to be a member of the original Camden Town Group, she
nonetheless showed with them at their Brighton exhibition
in 1913. She was a founder member of the London Group
and between 1915 and 1918 served on the hanging committee and played an important role in the day-to-day running
ANNA HOPE (NAN) HUDSON
1869–1957
Born in New York, she was brought up in Washington
and during the 1890s went to Paris to study art at Eugène
Carrière’s atelier. It was whilst in Paris that she met her
lifelong friend and fellow American Ethel Sands. She began exhibiting at the Salon d’Automne in Paris and at the
New English Art Club in London. With Ethel Sands she
became closely involved with Sickert and his Fitzroy Street
Group and became a student of his methods, regularly seeking his advice. In turn Sickert admired her work and gave
her much encouragement. She shared an exhibition with
Ethel Sands at the Carfax Gallery in 1912 and in the following year showed with the Camden Town Group in their
Brighton exhibition. A founder member of the London
80 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
of the group. Although influenced by her husband’s strong
design and bold colour, she retained a very individual naïve
charm which was possibly rooted in traditional Polish crafts.
Exhibiting well over a hundred works with the London
Group throughout the 1920s and 30s she also had a solo
exhibition at the Adams Gallery in 1935. The Polish Library
staged a major exhibition, Robert Bevan and Stanislawa de
Karlowska, in 1968. She is represented in many public collections including the Tate.
[ 45 ] Stanislawa de Karlowska
A Street in Hampstead c.1923
Oil on canvas 65 x 52.5 cm (26 x 21 inches) · Signed
Provenance: The artist’s family.
Exhibited: The London Group 1923 (?126)
Group, she showed at their first exhibition staged at The
Goupil Gallery in 1914. During World War I she stayed in
France and helped at a hospital in Puys. In 1920 she bought
Chateau d’Auppergard near Dieppe where she spent most
of her time, but continued to exhibit her work with the
London Group well in to the 1930s. A full account of her
life and influential social network can be found in Wendy
Baron’s Miss Ethel Sands and Her Circle, London 1977.
[ 44 ] Anna Hope Hudson
Vauvenargue, near Aix, Provence
Oil on canvas 52.5 x 62.5 cm (21 x 25 inches)
Provenance: The Fine Art Society 1977.
Exhibited: Ethel Sands and her Circle, The Fine Art Society,
April 1977 (32)
centenary exhibition 81
MARJORIE LILLY
1891–1980
Born in London, she studied at the Slade School
under Tonks where she met and became friendly
with Christiana Cutter and Wendela Boreel. She
met Sickert in 1917 and was thereafter closely associated with his circle and she provided a detailed
account of this period in her book Sickert: The
Painter and his Circle, London 1971. She held several joint exhibitions with Boreel and Cutter, often
showing at the Baillie Gallery and also exhibited
with the London Group and at the New English
Art Club. Although heavily influenced by Sickert
in both subjects and technique, she did experiment with colour and the purer palette. Describing
her visits to Gilman and Ginner’s evening club in
Pulteney Street where Van Gogh was considered
‘master’ she wrote, ‘Everyone followed in the steps
of the master and I found this orgy of rainbow
hues confusing; I was battling with combinations
of new colours before I was at home with the old
ones. As for spreading the thick paint, consistency
of clay, on the canvas, I soon decided that Sickert
was right; it was like walking across a ploughed
field in pumps.’ During World War II she worked
as an Arts Council lecturer. She was included
in the exhibition The Sickert Women and The
Sickert Girls at the Michael Parkin Gallery in 1974.
[ 46 ] Marjorie Lilly
The Visitor
Oil on canvas 37.5 x 30 cm (15 x 12 inches)
Provenance: Hermione Hammond (1910–2005);
with Michael Parkin Gallery, London.
Exhibited: Maclean Gallery, London 1992.
[ 47 ] Marjorie ­i lly
Camden Market
Oil on canvas 45 x 30 cm (173/4 x 12 inches)
82 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 83
MARJORIE SHERLOCK
1897–1973
Born in Essex, she studied under Sickert and Gilman at the
Westminster School of Art just before World War 1 and her
early work was much influenced by the Camden Town painters. Continuing her studies during the 1920s, she worked
under Malcolm Osborne at the Royal College of Art and
became a highly accomplished etcher. From 1916 she began
exhibiting at the New English Art club and Rutter’s Allied
Artist’s Association. In 1917 she exhibited her now well-known
picture Liverpool Street Station (Government Art Collection)
at the Royal Academy. During the 1930s she studied in Paris
at André Lhote’s Academy and her work was briefly influenced by Cubism. After long periods of travel in Europe and
America she settled in Axminster, Devon, where she lived in
comparative obscurity for the last 30 years of her life. She
helped to found the Axminster Art Society in 1947 and maintained a close friendship with fellow artist Orovida Pissarro.
Although she held no solo exhibitions during her lifetime, a
retrospective was staged by Maltzahn Gallery, London in 1973.
The Government Art Collection, Bristol City Art Gallery and
museums in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Amsterdam hold
examples of her work.
[ 48 ] Marjorie Sherlock
The Art Class
Oil on canvas 50 x 37.5 cm (20 x 15 inches)
Signed on the stretcher
Provenance: Maltzahn Gallery, London.
[ 49 ] Marjorie Sherlock
Liverpool Street Station c.1917
Oil on board 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 inches) · Signed
Sherlock made two larger versions of this composition, one of
which is now in the Government Art Collection and the other
in the National Railway Museum, York. It was one of these
pictures that she sent as her first exhibited work at the Royal
Academy in 1917, when she was aged just twenty. Sherlock
made a specialism of painting railways and their passengers
around this time, emblems of a modern age and city living.
84 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
centenary exhibition 85
MURRAY URQUHART
1880–1972
Born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, he studied first at the
Edinburgh School of Art, then at the Slade School and under Sickert at the Westminster School of Art. Sickert was to
have a lasting influence on his work. After a short period at
Académie Julian in Paris under J. P. Laurens, he began exhibiting with the Royal Society of British Artists, the New
English Art Club and at the Lefevre Gallery in London. He
experimented with a pointillist style often painting landscapes, portraits and domestic interiors and completed a series of pictures of fairground subjects. He painted a portrait
of Lord Snell for Chatham House, London. His last years
were spent in Meopham, Kent.
86 the camd e n t o w n g r o u p
[ 50 ] Murray Urquhart
Front Hall
Oil on canvas board 35 x 25 cm (14 x 10 inches)
Signed
centenary exhibition 87
Acknowledgements
The Fine Art Society is delighted to stage this exhibition to
mark the centenary of the Camden Town Group, a distinctive set of painters who championed modern art in Britain.
We are particularly grateful to the various individuals
who have made this show possible. Many of the works have
never been exhibited before and are new to the market. We
have been helped very much by several of the artists’ descendents and we owe them a particular debt of thanks for
the enthusiasm with which they have embraced this project.
Lenders, to whom we are thankful for their kindness, have
also generously supported the exhibition.
Many pictures, particularly those by the circle of students and followers that are such an important part of the
Camden Town Group’s story, were brought together by Tom
Bell of Tom Bell Fine Art and Denys Wilcox of the Court
Gallery. Together we have collaborated to make a show that
presents both the achievements of the Group itself and the
impact it had on a younger generation of artists.
Patrick Bourne
Managing Director, The Fine Art Society
Tom Bell Fine Art
Troon · Ayrshire · Scotland
Email [email protected]
Telephone 01984 639969
www.tombellfineart.com
Denys Wilcox Fine Art
The Court Gallery · West Quantoxhead · Somerset
Email [email protected]
Telephone 07831523300
www.courtgallery.com
The Fine Art Society
Dealers since 1876
148 New Bond Street · London w1s 2jt
Email [email protected]
Telephone 020 7629 5116
www.faslondon.com
Published by The Fine Art Society for
The Camden Town Group: Centenary Exhibition
held at 148 New Bond Street, London w1
from 15 June to 16 July 2011.
Catalogue © The Fine Art Society and the Authors
All rights reserved
Front cover: detail from Walter Sickert
Chicken – Girl at a Mantelpiece c.1908 [ 1 ]
Back cover: Wendela Boreel Piccadilly 1922 [ 37 ]
Inside covers: pattern paper by Albert Rutherston
(1881–1953) for the Curwen Press, 1924
Photography by Ian Brown and Tim Golding
Designed and typeset in Fleischman by Dalrymple
Printed in Belgium by die Keure