Realism and the English

Richard Calvocoressi

Modern English Painters Sir John Rothenstein 3 volumes (Macdonald £14.95 each)

The British Landscape 1920-1950 Ian Jeffrey (Thames & Hudson £12.95)

since publication of the first, pioneering volume of Sir John Rothenstein's Mod- ern English Painters in 1952, the whole enterprise has expanded to such a degree that it is worth recalling exactly what Changes have taken place. Volume One, 'Sicken to Smith', contained essays on 17 artists, two of whom — Augustus John and Matthew Smith — were still living. The essays were arranged chronologically by date of birth of each artist, a practice from Which the author has not deviated. Inter- spersed with the text were 32 black-and- white plates (an average of nearly two per artist), while brief biographies were in- cluded at the back. A certain amount of bibliographical material was added to these in the second edition, published in 1976, When the biographies themselves were enlarged and, in the case of Smith (died 1957) and John (died 1961), updated. Otherwise the text and illustrations re- mained unaltered.

Volume Two, 'Lewis to Moore', covered the work of 16 artists and first appeared in 1956. It, too, was reissued in 1976 with Updated biographical information. In his Preface to the first edition, Rothenstein Spoke of his decision to exclude artists born after 1900, thus leaving Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and others to be dealt with in a later volume. The second editions of Volumes One and Two both carried the same new preface, in which the author Mentioned Kokoschka among those paint- ers he 'would have liked to have included' in his series had he chosen extensively to revise it. This was surprising news, if one haPPened to remember that not a single Painting by Kokoschka had been purch- ased by the Tate Gallery during Rothen- stein,s directorship, although two very F?,cod examples were accepted as gifts. Ifld you, even though he became a bl_ritish subject in 1947 and was awarded a (2.,)3E 12 years later, Kokoschka could 11,a.rdlY be described as an 'English painter' hms sources were in central European

aroque and German Expressionism), nr,nwever many fine views of London, "rnwall and Scotland he painted.

t The third and final volume, which even- uallY appeared in 1974, contained 16 new !ssays, 'from Wood to Hockney'. Defend- 111,8 his biographical approach, Rothenstein

argued in the preface that 'No doctrine was more false than the view of Roger Fry and Clive Bell that to the contemplation of a work of art we need not and should not bring any of the emotions of everyday life'. Rothenstein's writing has always been en- livened by a dislike of Bloomsbury, much of it inherited from his father, and by a particular mistrust of the Fry-Bell theory of 'significant form'. This scepticism is ex- tended to groups and movements in gener- al, most foreigners and, with one or two exceptions — Bridget Riley, late Pasmore — all abstract painters. The ideal Rothen- stein artist is therefore British, realist or figurative, and 'an individual'.

The latest edition of Modern English Painters adheres to the three-volume for- mat but pushes three artists originally included in the third volume back into Volume Two, and four originally in Two back into One. The reason for this intricate shift is to accomodate essays on 12 new subjects which Sir John has written, mak- ing a grand total of 61. Some of these are in the nature of tributes to friends and rela- tions (Catherine Dean, Michael Rothen- stein) or to unjustly neglected minor fig- ures such as Thomas Hennell and Percy Horton. Horton's grim experiences as a conscientious objector in the First World War are recounted in some depth, suggest- ing that Sir John's interest is aroused as much by the details of an artist's life as by his work; or at least when the two present an unusual degree of interdependence, as was the case with Horton. Rothenstein also writes sympathetically about Bomberg's years of poverty and neglect. But the liveliest essays are those on Edward Ba w- den and Eric Ravilious. Bawden's work, which ranges in theme from the domestic to the highly exotic and embraces a variety of media, earns high praise for its 'versatil- ity'. Both artists' horizons were widened as a result of the war, when they were commissioned to record campaigns in far- off places, Bawden in the Middle East, Ravilious in the Arctic (from which he never returned). Rothenstein quotes some characteristically wry observations on the isolation of the war artist from one of Bawden's letters to him: 'He is welcome nowhere — Public Relations know how to deal with newspaper men but a chap who draws and paints is a real pain in the neck.'

Such brief insights draw attention to the real value of these portraits, which lies in the frequent use made of the artist's own words, or the words of those — pupils, friends, family — close to him. Rothen- stein is a great believer in the personal touch, even going so far as to update his

essay on John Nash to incorporate a poignant description of the latter's death in 1977 by Ronald Blythe, who had earlier dedicated Akenfield to Nash. But not every quotation is backed up by a source and it is a shame that the bibliographies are so inadequate. Virtually no important mono- graph or exhibition catalogue after 1976 — and there have been several — is listed, and those artists admitted to the Rothen- stein canon for the first time are denied a bibliography of any kind. The short biog- raphies have gone, and while all illustra- tions are in colour (sometimes on the crude side) there are now only half the number of plates per volume, so that the work of certain artists is not reproduced at all. This sort of economising would be excusable were it not for some sloppy proof-reading which has left uncorrected the occasional jump in chronology and confusion over dating (different dates given for the same event, for example), and has failed to check the accuracy of certain cross- references. The surnames of David Sylves- ter and Felicitas Vogler, and the forename of Oskar Kokoschka, are misspelt; the date of Unit One is given as 1938 when it should be 1934; and Kenneth Armitage's sculp- ture People in a Wind is said to be 1956 when it was exhibited at the Venice Bien- nale four years earlier. Mention of sculp- ture brings one to Sir John's choice of Elizabeth Frink as the subject of one of his latest essays, which many will question. Frink holds the anomalous distinction of being the only 20th-century sculptor apart from Henry Moore (who is, however, consi- dered primarily as a draughtsman by Rothenstein) to have crept into a work entitled Modern English Painters.

The majority of Sir John Rothenstein's artists, including Horton and Hennell, feature in Ian Jeffrey's The British Land- scape 1920-1950, which it would be mis- taken, though forgivable, to dismiss as just another picture book: 150 illustrations, a third in colour, compared to ten pages of text (excluding artists' biographies). But Jeffrey's introductory essay, however tan- talisingly short, is as stimulating as any- thing he has written. In showing how the artist's response to landscape developed between the end of the First War and the period of 'reconstruction' which followed the Second — 30 years during which the English countryside itself underwent dramatic changes at the hands of farmers, industrialists, speculators and planners — he brings to his subject an ability to interpret the social, as much as the auto- biographical and stylistic, clues embedded in a painting. And it is refreshing to find, for once, this kind of iconographical approach applied to minor genres such as book illustration, particularly wood- engraving. Jeffrey believes that the mid- 20th-century landscapist was essentially a solitary, alienated figure fashioning images for private consumption, however widely disseminated those images may have been. He identifies some disturbing threats to the future of the countryside and suggests ways in which artists attempted to counter them in their work.

Chief among these threats was the vul- garising tendency of modern society, with its roads, suburbs, golf courses and motor- rised trippers. By 1946, some 15 million wage earners were covered by agreements under the Holidays With Pay Act of 1938, necessitating the publication of cheap

didactic books in colourful wrappers with titles like The Countryside and How to Enjoy It. The 'untutored townsman' was

constantly being reminded that the coun- tryside was no longer a playground for his leisure, as it had been in the Thirties, but the 'countryman's business premises'. This emphasis on the working agricultural land- scape signified a defence of modern inten- sive farming methods introduced at the beginning of the war to increase food production. By 1947, England could boast 'the most highly mechanised agriculture per acre of any country' — another source of regret to the artist, whose retreat from the prospect of an increasingly ordered, mechanised environment took various forms. Some recreated ancient or primitive landscapes, often in a childlike style; others sought reassurance in the familiar: a few square miles of unspoiled farmland, or

even the artist's own back garden, observed and recorded through the chang- ing seasons. Others exploited the man- made geometry of fences, telegraph poles and road signs to give their compositions a greater sense of design. The only regrettable thing about Jef- frey's book is that too much valuable,

information is relegated to the artists biographies, some of which might have been used to substantiate points in tus

argument. The Pilgrim Trust's Recording Britain project, for instance, is only twice referred to, in the entries on Hennell and Charles Knight; and yet a number of other artists whose work is discussed by JeffreY took part in it. The results of this venture, over 1500 watercolours by more than 60 commissioned artists, form a unique pic-

torial document showing not only places and buildings of historic or national jut' portance vulnerable to war damage, but also 'the outward aspect of Britain . • • changing all too quickly before the War at the sinister hands of improvers and des- poilers'. A more scientific version of this scheme was the National Buildings Record

directed by John Summerson, which em- ployed Bill Brandt as one of its photo- graphers.

As has been pointed out by Margaret Drabble and others, few 20th-century rural

authors have been countrymen by birth. The same is true of landscape painters. Mr Jeffrey's credentials, advertised on the dustjacket, are impeccable. A North- umbrian brought up in the Cheviots, he now lives in Sussex where he is it:lilt Chairman of the Rodmell and District Horticultural Show. What the dustjacke, t fails to mention, however, are the gigantic onions which he enters every year in the Rodmell Show.