Cares that wait upon a clown
Mark Archer
Everyone who collects art dreams of coming across a neglected genius, unappre- ciated in his lifetime and still cheap enough to be bought. Albert Houthuesen, who is best known for his vividly coloured seascapes and his drawings of clowns, is considered by many to be just such a genius. Sir John Rothenstein championed him, describing him as an 'unrecognised talent' in the third volume of his Modem Painters. The Rothenstein patronage of Houthuesen had started with William, Sir John's father, when he was principal of the Royal College of Art. Students with whom Houthuesen had attended evening classes were so angry when his application for admission to the RCA was turned down for the third time that they persuaded Rothenstein to inspect his work personally. Catching a taxi to County Hall (where the applications were held) he was so impressed by what he saw that he admitted him on the spot.
Houthuesen's most memorable paintings are his seascapes, intense and visionary in mood, which he used to paint to the accompaniment of his own loud sea noises. Houthuesen was an accomplished draughtsman. Much of his other work, however, like the dream paintings or cer- tain stiffly allegorical still-lifes, seems more the product of neuroses which preoccupied him throughout his life, and which he attributed to an incident in his childhood. Houthuesen was Dutch. His mother never forgave his father for abandoning a promis- ing career as a pianist and for impoverish- ing the family by becoming a painter. During one argument witnessed by Albert, which arose because his father had been encouraging him to paint, his mother killed his father in front of him, hitting him over the head with the heel of her shoe. The family moved to London where Houthuesen's mother ran a boarding- house. She remained implacably opposed to his work, attacking his paintings with scissors and performing fainting fits on the mornings he was due to attend college in order to make him late.
Houthuesen's success came late in life and was short-lived. He first exhibited in 1961, aged 58, enjoying great acclaim, but suffered a stroke in 1976 and died three years later. A BBC Omnibus documentary made about him in 1977 portrayed a pathetically disabled figure, shuffling crab- like around his studio. Before the stroke ill- health had limited his output, as had an unfortunate tendency to destroy his works in fits of despair. But another reason for his neglect must have been the oddness of his work, the way it never fitted in with anything being painted in England at the time, whether this was the Euston Road group, the neo-romantics or the abstract- ionists. Houthuesen's true confreres are the European expressionists, painters like Emil Nolde, whose work has only become known in this country in the last 20 years.
Richard Nathanson got to know Houthuesen when he was 20 and Houthuesen 67. He became his representa- tive and did much to publicise his work. His long-awaited biography of Houthuesen consists of snatches of conversation in which the painter recounts his life and his thoughts, his views on painting and other artists. Richard Nathanson illustrates the biography with 125 of Houthuesen's litho- graphic prints, chiefly of clowns, although there are also a few landscapes, which he is offering for sale in limited edition sets. The result is puzzling. In many passages Houthuesen is obviously describing paint- ings we can only guess at, as they are not reproduced. When he is not recounting incidents from his life, Houthuesen's con- versation seems, well, just conversation, often banal or pretentious and only very occasionally offering an interesting per- spective upon art or an artist. It could be that Houthuesen was clowning it, imitating the circus folk who feature in the book and leading his Boswell by the nose. For instance:
Every day is another couple of minutes day- light. It's marvellous. Spring is on the way my dear Richard. In a week or so, you will see the trees covered with a haze of green. It is always such a miracle to me but Nature doesn't stop and think about this.
Such mischievousness would not have been beyond Houthuesen who, by all accounts, was a highly entertaining com- panion, much loved by his friends. His memory would have been better served by a critical biography, which drew on others' reminiscences and which attempted to assess his place in 20th-century painting, than by this pretentious fanzine which skimps and pads at the same time. The last word is best left to Houthuesen, because it should have been the first:
One can only paint anything at all, whatever the subject, through knowing it. And one must love it and be moved more than one can say and certainly more than I care to talk about. In a sense, nothing in art can be explained. And the only talking that is worth talking is drawing and painting.
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