When abstract art became
a worldwide phenomenon, great realist painters were marginalized and forgotten.
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Hiking, 1936, James
Walker Tucker, Laing Art Gallery
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The other was a catalog for True
to Life: British Realist Paintings in the 1920s and 1930s. I’ve written
about two of its artists before: Sir Stanley
Spencer and Meredith
Frampton.
Realism was a world-wide trend in the beginning of the 20th
century. There were realists among the American Modernist movement—the Ashcan School, Georgia O’Keeffe and Rockwell Kent all come
to mind. In Canada, the Group of Seven
were turning out powerful, popular landscapes. And in Britain, a generation of
fine painters were producing a lively, detailed record of the interwar period.
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Dorette, 1932, Gerald Leslie
Brockhurst, courtesy National Gallery, London
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The term “realism” is a wide net. It can include symbolism, magical realism, social realism, objects
pared down to their absolute minimum, or the finicky detail of trompe-l'œil. All found their expression
during the interwar years, but each nation had its own preoccupations.
Gerald
Leslie Brockhurst’s Dorette was a
young model at the Royal Academy who went on to be his lover and ultimately his
wife. With her portrait, Brockhurst was developing a style he would use with
great success later in his career: adapting Renaissance technique to depict the
hard-edged beauty of contemporary womanhood. Note the wispy background.
In fact, the British interwar artists were refuting trends in modern art. Their work runs a gamut of styles, but is united
by careful drawing, meticulous craftsmanship, and controlled brushwork. They explicitly rejected expressionism and impressionism.
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Elsie, 1929, Hilda Carline, courtesy Tate Museum |
The show includes work by Hilda Carline, Stanley
Spencer’s long-suffering wife. Her marriage was characterized by Alfred
Hickling as "the most bizarre domestic soap opera in the history of
British art.” That just understates her suffering. Elsie was the Spencers’ maid. Carline’s portrait of her shows just
how much of her own talent was subsumed into her husband’s naïve drama.
The Conscientious
Objector, 1917, is almost certainly a self-portrait by David Jagger. A hundred
years on, we have little concept of the opprobrium heaped on “conchies” in
Britain during the Great War; Jagger’s own brother referred to him as “that
great hulking lout in his mother's shop.”
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The Conscientious Objector, 1917, David Jagger, courtesy Birmingham Mail |
The paintings do not ignore the tensions of interwar Britain. James McIntosh
Patrick’s A City Garden, Dundee is
a portrait of his own home, purchased for a song because of its proximity to
the Tay Bridge, which might be a bombing target. His wife and daughter are in
the garden, hanging out washing. Meanwhile, in the corner there’s an air-raid
shelter being built. This was a British reality, and it is one we Americans can
only ponder from the outside.
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A City Garden, 1940, James
McIntosh Patrick, courtesy Dundee City Council
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Still, it is the pictures of everyday life that I like best.
Hiking, by James
Walker Tucker, shows three independent, fresh-faced Girl Guides calmly
considering their immediate plans. It’s part of the British mania for rambling
and a lovely, un-self-conscious feminist statement at the same time.
With the second World War, abstract art escaped from New
York and became a worldwide phenomenon. On both continents, great realist
painters were marginalized and forgotten. It’s a pity, because so many of them
were stunning virtuosos.
There will be no Monday Morning Art School on New Year’s Day.
Have a blessed, restful, refreshing holiday, and I’ll see you again in the New
Year!