Inexpensive Progress

Art & Books looked at by Robjn Cantus. A New Post Every Thursday.

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Relocated

This blog has now relocated to https://inexpensiveprogress.com/blog/

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Life after death

The death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 aged 36 was a shock to the world. It affected artists who would end up giving her life after she was dead though her image. Fun fact, my sister married into the Mortenson family. 

 The front page of the New York Daily Mirror published on August 6, 1962

Warhol was the first to make a print in tribute of her, below is the original publicity photograph for Niagara by Frank Powolny. It has the black pen lines where Warhol cropped the photograph and his in studio photographers ‘blew it up’.

 Frank Powolny - Publicity still for the 1953 film Niagara, cropped by Warhol. 

“The rubber-stamp method I’d been using to repeat images suddenly seemed too homemade; I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly-line effect. With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It all sounds so simple—quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. My first experiments with screens were heads of Troy Donahue and Warren Beatty, and then when Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face.” (Andy Warhol, Popism, 1980)

 Andy Warhol - Marilyn Diptych, 1962

Richard Hamilton made a print a few years later using a mocked up contact sheet with images crossed out from a series of photographs taken by George Barris in the Summer of 1962. 

 Richard Hamilton - My Marilyn, 1965

 Robert Rauschenberg - Test Stone #1 (Marilyn Monroe), 1967 

 Michael Rothenstein - She’s American - Cartier Bresson on Marilyn Monroe, 1977

Rothenstein would use Monroe’s image for his prints as well, it was a time when he was using famous starlets like Julie Christie. He juxtaposes them with planks of burnished wood and raw textures. The photographs are screen printed over the woodcut. 

 Michael Rothenstein - Marilyn I, 1978

 James Rosenquist - Marilyn Monroe, 1962

Andy Warhol - Popism, 1980

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Trafalgar Square

Ceri Richards painted Trafalgar Square in 1951 for the Festival of Britain exhibition 60 Paintings In ‘51. over the next few years he would continue making prints and paintings with a series of abstractions. 

He taught at various London art colleges and after 1951, when a large painting of Trafalgar Square (now in the Tate Gallery) was shown at the Festival of Britain, his reputation was international. †

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square, London, 1950

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square, 1951

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square II, 1951

After working on a series of these paintings and various drawings Richards issued the lithograph below in 1952. In another five years he would make another lithograph in 1957 and another in 1958. It was a theme that you would assume would be a year or two, but latest over a decade  

 Ceri Richards - Sunlight in Trafalgar Square, 1952

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square (Movement of Pigeons), 1952

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square, 1957

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square, 1958

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square, 1962

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square (trial proof), 1962

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square, 1961–2

† Ralph Alan Griffiths - The City of Swansea: Challenges and Change, 1991

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Keith Vaughan

In the late 1930s on PaghamBeach, West Sussex Keith Vaughan and some athletic men looked to be having a rather fun day during a heatwave. Likely taken in 1938 the end of July and the start of August were the hottest days of the year with temperatures reaching 28 degrees.

Working still as an art worker for the Lintas Advertising Agency as a painter who had not yet made his name, a year later in 1939 he left his job to become a full time artist. After the War he shared a house with Graham Sutherland and John Minton. 

The tone of the photographs changes a lot, and with the lewd subject matter I wonder if he developed them himself or had a friend do so. Working for an advertising agency in the 30s, photography must have been rather commonplace.

Like many artists used photographs as an aide-memoire and I have seen his pictures posted online a lot, but I haven’t seen any evidence of people looking at the photographs and then seeing if they translated into works. Well I have picked out a few examples of his paintings and placed them next to the photographs.

 Keith Vaughan - Man with army; Idol II, 1940

The picture above is a interesting one, dated 1940 those figured around the man must be an army? Well with the photograph it is likely they are waves. 

 Keith Vaughan - Cain and Abel, 1946

 Keith Vaughan - Figure Throwing at a Wave, 1950

 Keith Vaughan - Drawing of two stylized skeletal figures, 1939-45

 Keith Vaughan - Drawing of a naked male youth lying down, 1939–45

 Keith Vaughan - Figure lying on beach at night, 1939

 Keith Vaughan - Male Figure seated against sky, 1939 

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10 Churches

To some people church visiting might be the last thing they want to do with their free time, but here I have made a list of some of the most interesting churches in East Anglia that you might want to see. I also listed them in a driverable order, heading northwards.

Church of the Holy Trinity, Hildersham, Cambridgeshire CB21 6BZ

Holy Trinity, Hildersham's earliest parts date from 1050. The church has many fascinating features; a 13th century font, 15th century memorial brasses, including a rather beautiful skeleton brass; the chancel is filled with Clayton and Bell victorian murals and stained glass windows and an alabaster reredos by Rattee & Kette.

Church of St Cyriac and St Julitta & St Mary's, Swaffham Prior CB25 0LD

I chose Swaffham Prior because there are two churches and because of the beautiful stained glass windows. One is a war memorial depicting planes and signal stations. Both churches have round towers. 

Both churches were established by the early 13th century. Initially separate parishes, their benefices were united in 1667. In 1743 the nave and chancel of St Cyriac's were restored, but by 1783 the church was in a dilapidated state, and services were being held in St Mary's. By the 1790s the roof of St Cyriac's was collapsing, and it was overgrown with ivy. However, in 1779 the tower of St Mary's had been struck by lightning, and in 1802, when builders were working on the tower, part of it collapsed. It was then decided to demolish St Cyriac's church, other than the tower, and rebuild it. Work began in 1806 to designs by Charles Humfrey of Cambridge and the church was re-consecrated in 1809. Towards the end of the century, work was carried out to restore St Mary's. 

Both churches are run by the Churches Conservation Trust.

St Mary, Huntingfield, Suffolk IP19 0PR

Though rather hard to find and to get to down narrow lanes this church has one of the most joyful painted ceilings in the country.

Huntingfield Church is beautiful outside because of the porch but inside it benefits from a painted ceiling. It was painted by Mildred Holland, the wife of William Holland who was rector for 44 years from 1848 until his death in 1892. The church was closed for eight months from September 1859 to April 1860 while she painted the chancel roof. Tradesmen provided scaffolding and prepared the ceiling for painting but there is no record to show that she had any help with the work, and legend has it that she did much of it lying on her back. We may imagine Victorian ladies wearing tight laced corsets and many petticoats, and wonder how she managed the ladders, scaffolding and hard labour of painting. She had an adviser on her schemes, a Mr. E. L. Blackburne F.S.A., an authority on medieval decoration.

St Mary the Virgin, Burgh St Peter, Norfolk NR34 0DD

The church dates from around 1200 and the tower is late 18th century, apparently inspired by the Ziggurat temples of Mesopotamia which had been seen by William Boycott, the second of the five Boycott rectors at the church. William’s son Charles was the famous Charles Cunningham Boycott, a land agent in Ireland during the troubles and who gave his name to the English language. The tower is strange and almost alien, it looks more like a construction from a film than anything else. Made of red brick the base of the tower is lined with knapped flints. The rest of the church is like thatched making them a curious pair.

Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh IP19 9LP

Blythburgh church is famous for it’s angeles on the ceiling, similar to ones found in Willingham and March. A beautiful building with a tower people can climb to see a view of the church interior from above. There is a marshland walk with a view of the church many local artists paint.

Saint Andrew’s, Covehithe, NR34 7JJ

The first of two ruins I have picked out, Covehithe is on the Suffolk coast and thanks to the Cliff errorsian, closer each year.  A ruin with a church inside it is a beautiful location and to me feels more like those oil tanker boats one can see on the horizon in the sea from the cliff. 

St. Michael the Archangel, Booton, Norfolk NR10 4NZ

The first time I saw this church my instinct was to laugh, it was such a presence on the landscape it looked more like it was made for Lord of the Rings. A beautiful church with a unique design.

This amazingly decorative and extraordinary church was the creation of one man - eccentric clergyman Reverend Whitwell Elwin - a descendant of Pocahontas. A friend of Charles Darwin, Elwin not only raised the funds for the building, he also designed it - without the help of an architect - borrowing details from other churches throughout the country. Some of his models can be identified; the west doorway was inspired by Glastonbury Abbey, for example, but the slender twin towers which soar over the wide East Anglian landscape and the central pinnacle which looks almost like a minaret, seem to have sprung solely from his imagination. The result is a masterpiece.

Inside, he filled his fairytale creation with angels all modelled on the rector's female friends! The wooden carved angels holding up the roof are the work of James Minns, a well-known master-carver whose carving of a bull's head is still the emblem on Colman's Mustard. The delicately coloured stained glass windows also show angels as a series of musicians with flowing hair and pretty faces. Edwin Lutyens, the distinguished architect who married the daughter of one of Elwin's oldest friends, said the church was "very naughty but built in the right spirit". You may love the church; you may be outraged by it, but you cannot remain unmoved by such an exuberant oddity.

St Lawrence's, Castle Rising, Norfolk  PE31 6AG

One of the most Norman looking churches it feels out of time. Beautiful in decoration and style it has a beautiful font and the Castle still stands nearby. 

St Peter’s, Wiggenhall  PE34 3HF

A ruin on the edge of the canal drain that stops the fens from flooding, St Peters is a wonderful location to cycle to from Kings Lynn.

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Thelma Annette Carstensen

Thelma Annette Carstensen was born 6th September 1906, born to Norwegian parents in Edmonton, North London. Her father Anders Carsttensen (1876 - 1940) was a Norwegian timber agent in Great Winchester Street, London. Her mother was Olga Alice Carstensen nee Olsen (1878 - 1955). 

Thelma was educated at Crouch End High School and Hornsey School of Art under John Charles Moody. She was admitted to the Slade School of Art studying under Randolph Schwabe. In 1933 she won the Slade Figure Painting Prize. She married Alastair Phillips but continued to use her maiden name to paint.

 Thelma Carstensen - Figure Painting, First Prize, 1933

She Exhibited at the Royal Academy many times in: 1931, 1937, 1939, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1964, 1966, 1967. She was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. In 1957 she exhibited at Walker's Art Gallery, Bond Street with Valerie Thornton 27th March - 16th April, 1957. Other exhibitions can be traced to the Goupil Gallery, London. She was also a member and exhibitor at the Women's International Art Club.

In 1939 is living in 2 Gurney Drive, Hampstead Garden Suburb. In 1990 was living at 8 Monks Mead, Brightwell, Wallingford, Oxford where she died in 1992. Her work is in the collection of UCL Art Museum. 

Thelma Carstensen showed drawings and gouaches of places as far apart as Norway and Tuscany. 

 Thelma Carstensen - Dorset Coast, 1957

Rather more naturalistic, but equally successful at extracting design from landscape, is Miss Thelma Carstensen, whose work is also to be seen at Walker's Galleries. She is a plein-airiste, and a sense of immediacy is evident in the restless rhythms of her vegetation. A passionate admirer of Samuel Palmer, she shares his feeling for forms that curve and undulate, and although she does not disdain the starker wintry aspect of nature she somehow always manages to convey the sense of sap rising and roots stirring. 

† Studio International, Volume 157, 1959 p189 ‡ The Tablet - Volumes 209-210, 1957 p352  The Year's Art, 1940 p309 'By The Observer' - Hendon & Finchley Times - Friday 05 May 1939 p20

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Stack Dwellers

Below is an artical by the Earl of Cranbrook for the Shell Magazine ‘Land’, in volume 12, 1962. It was illustrated with drawing by John Nash and photos by Geoffrey Kinns. The ‘Land’ booklets were large and colourful, illustrated by famous artists and designed by the typographer John Lewis. 

I remember an old man in my Village telling me when I was young that the inhabitants of a neighbouring village were ‘that backward they call meece meezen’. Outside that backward parish, when a late threshed stack in Suffolk was overrun with mice, it was said to be ‘full of everlasting meece’ in fact, for those who don’t use combines today, it still may be, if it is not full of rats. In my experience you don’t find many mice in a stack that is full of rats or many rats in a mouse-infested one. 

It may be because the rats eat young mice or that the two species are mutually antipathetic. Be that as it may, the mice you find in stacks are not ‘country mice’ but ‘town mice’, not field mice but ordinary house mice which live on and with man almost throughout the world. I say ‘almost’ because there are places which man has reached but which the house mouse has not. House mice cannot live in competition with field mice in the open or field mice in competition with house mice in habitations. When the island of St Kilda was evacuated, there were house mice living in the crofts and field mice in the open. But, deprived of man on whose stores of grain, food, etc. they lived, the house mice disappeared when the human inhabitants left and are now extinct.

The field mice are still there. Another island off the west coast of Scotland, evacuated some 20 years before St Kilda, had no field mice, only house mice. Though deprived of the support of men, there was no competition from field mice; so the house mice were able to colonize the whole island and came back into the deserted crofts when these were reoccupied by a party of visiting naturalists many years later. House mice, therefore, can travel from place to place only with man and his goods. I know an isolated croft on the west coast of Scotland approachable only by rowing boat: there is no pier, the mail boat has to lie off and a sack of coal and other stores are tumbled into a rowing boat to be taken ashore. No house mouse could hide itself in that little load, and the local field mice come into that croft to eat the cheese in the larder. In townships with a pier, when a large boat with ample accommodation for mice can lie alongside overnight, you find house mice in the houses. 

As most of us know to our shame when we have left a stack too long, the mouse population can build up to enormous numbers. It has, of course, unlimited food and shelter from its enemies: nature does the rest. In these slum conditions the female mice seem to lose all sense of decency. Normally, mice have fairly strong ‘territorial instincts’, each male defending his own territory and each female her own nest. But, in the overcrowded conditions which exist at the bottom of a stack, one finds communal nests with litters of every age from naked new born babies to three-quarter grown fullyhaired adolescents. Mice kept in captivity, with unlimited food and in a high tier of intercommunicating nest boxes with runs, seem to develop a sort of hierarchical ‘peckorder’. At the top of the tier are found the most successful, one to each nest box, fighting to preserve their own territory against interlopers from below. Half way down are the middle classes, slightly overcrowded but, in their turn, resisting climbers from the grossly overcrowded slum at the bottom. There, two, three and even more females have to share the same box. 

Curiously enough, if the inhabitants of the uppermost nest boxes are removed, there are a few days of fighting and a new peck-order develops: after the revolution a new race of aristocrats ensconces itself in comfortable exclusiveness in the place of the old. It is some years since I saw a mouse-infested stack but my recollection is that, as the sheaves were thrown onto the platform of the drum, one found a very similar picture. Half way down, the Erst mice appeared and an occasional individual nest; it wasn’t until one got towards the bottom of the stack that one found mice in scores or hundreds and communal nests. Another mouse which is not uncommon in stacks, especially stacks of cocksfoot or other grasses harvested for seed, is the harvest mouse. Very small, with bodies about two-thirds the size of a man’s little finger and with long tails, these mice vary very much in colour from a bright foxy red to a reddish brown. In my part of the world. they are often called ‘red rannies’ ‘Ranny’ is a shrew but they are like the long-nosed shrews only in size. 

Their noses are, in fact, shorter and rounder than those of house mice and field mice. Conventionally animals of cornfields, the same picture of harvest mice climbing on stalks of wheat is reproduced in nature book after nature book. In fact they seem to be much more animals of the water side, living as much in rough overgrown meadows and grassy scrub by streams as on arable land. 'l‘heir nests are found at the base of reeds in fen ditches and I have known them in young plantations and far out on salt marshes. Harvest mice are often said to be much less common than they used to be indeed, this has been said for generations, and the sail reaper, binder and combine have all been blamed in turn. In fact each in turn has, I suspect, been indirectly responsible for this statement. The man with a scythe saw more harvest mouse nests than the man on the reaper, the man who tied the sheaves behind more than the man on the binder and I certainly haven‘t seen a harvest mouse in a stack since I had a combine. I can, though, usually catch one in a rough grassy poplar plantation by the river ifI want to. A harvest mouse quickly becomes tame if kept in captivity and makes an entrancing pet. 

It is the only British animal that uses its tail as an extra hand, Curling it round a twig or corn stalk as it climbs about. It is rats, though, which remind one of the halcyon days when the dogs lay panting, too exhausted to do more than snap at the last rats which ran from the stack bottom as it was turned over, and one looked ruel‘ully at one’s palms, blistered by the sharp edges ofa thatching spick pulled from the roof at the beginning of the day. Overcrowding amongst rats has the same effect as amongst mice communal nests and the like but rats are less ‘territorial’ than mice. It is said that you can put your hand into a sackful of rats, huddled peacefully together, without getting bitten but I have never got beyond the point of thinking it might be an interesting experiment to try. Rats are comparative new-comers to this country, first reaching Europe from the East in the middle ages. Certainly the Romans had no word for ‘rat’ though they had one for ‘mouse’: the scientific name ‘Rattus’ is an artificial latinized form of the French ‘Rat’. Be that as it may, however and whenever they came, rats are an unmitigated pest. Inere isn’t much excuse, though, today for being overrun with rats. It was an uphill struggle all the way with traps, dogs, ferrets, nux vomica and extract of squills. With the new poison Warfarin, it’s a different story. It is often said that rye, producing bread corn from the poorest soils, is the greatest gift of God to man. 

Warfarin and myxomatosis are close rivals. I have said that these stack dwellers have shelter from their enemies, but weasels come pretty often into stacks and breed there amidst an abundance of food on the hoof. In most parts of England indeed on the continent of Europe too many countrymen maintain that there are two sorts of weasel, the ordinary weasel and the ‘mouse hunt’. The latter is said to be smaller than the ordinary weasel and to be the one which is most frequently found in stacks. In fact, weasels are one of those animals in which the males are always much larger than the females: an average male is about a foot from nose to tail tip, an average female 8 9 inches. I have had a number of ‘mouse hunts’ sent to me as a locally known disbeliever in the existence of two species of weasel. With one exception, they have all been females, the exception being a normal male weasel 12 inches long. I never allow weasels to be killed, so have never examined one from a stack. But, from the fact that nests of young weasels are not uncommon in stacks, would expect that most stack dwelling weasels are females. In any case, weasels or mouse hunts, I would sooner have a stackful of weasels than a stackful of mice and rats: with owls and kestrels they are the best friends a farmer or forester can have, killing large numbers of rats, mice and voles _ and any rat killer is a good friend to a game preserver. I must confess that I sometimes regret my combine and am sorry for the boys of tomorrow who will never run after rats as they come from a stack or have the opportunity of studying the habits of the common, but none-the-less interesting. animals which infest it.

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Kensington Roof Gardens

This is a look at the past of Derry & Toms, a department store in London. My interest was sparked by an old news reel piece of footage of the shop’s roof garden. 

Joseph Toms opened a small Drapery Shop on Kensington High Street in 1853. In 1862, Mr. Toms went into partnership with Charles Derry, and together, they ran this establishment. Evidently, their business was good and, in 1870, they purchased seven additional shops about their original site.  

They would later build a new department store on Kensington High Street, a vast shop in the style of many shops that would appear in the centre of London - to us it might be normal to have fashion, home-wears and a book section under one shop, but then it was still rather new. The start of modern convenience that would later morph into Tesco selling everything and then maybe Amazon. 

 William Walcot - A Perspective Design for Derry and Toms.

Derry and Toms new Art Deco department store was opened in 1933. 

 The Mannequin Theatre (Now called a catwalk), 1933

The gardens were laid out between 1936 and 1938 by Ralph Hancock, a landscape architect who had just created the “Gardens of the Nations” on the 11th floor of the RCA building in New York.

They cost £25,000 to create and visitors were charged 1 shilling to enter. Money raised was donated to local hospitals and £120,000 was raised during the next 30 years.

  The building housed the department store Derry and Toms until 1973, and then Biba until 1975. In 1978, the garden's Art Deco tea pavilion was redeveloped into a nightclub, in 1981 Virgin Limited Edition bought the lease to the roof garden and the pavilion, and in 2001 Virgin turned the pavilion into the Babylon restaurant. The roof garden is now closed.

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Festival of Britain

The Festival of Britain was a wonderful time for artists and designers. The artists were making statues and painting murals and the designers were making the advertising, maps and posters. The logo designed by Abram Games is now iconic and decorated many tourist pieces. 

Here is a list of prints that were issued for the Festival of Britain in 1951. It was a mixture of cross promotion, some of the series were from the Schools Prints series. The money came from a special government grant to the Arts Council for the Festival of Britain.

The AIA with the support of the Arts Council and School Prints Lmt is to produce a series of colour lithographs on the occasion of the 1951 exhibition. The scheme will include some invited designs from well-known lithographers, and designs selected by open competition among AIA members. †

Three of the Great Bardfield artists were to produce prints, Sheila Robinson, Bernard Cheese, John Aldridge and Michael Rothenstein. The rest prints were from other leading and emerging artists of the era. 

 Leonard Rosoman - Edinburgh

 Julian Trevelyan - Thames Regatta (Schools Prints)

 Michael Rothenstein - The Cockerel

 John Aldridge - Great Bardfield

 Keith Vaughan - Festival Dancers

 William Scott - Harbour

 Lynton Lamb - The Country House (Schools Prints)

 Edwin La Dell - MCC at Lords (Schools Prints)

 Bernard Cheese - Coffee Stall 

 Sheila Robinson  - Fair Ground

 Stella Marsden - Horse Guards Parade (Schools Prints)

 James Sellars - Sheffield Steel 

 Edward Ardizzone - The Wreck (Schools Prints)

Below is the original illustration made by Ardizzone, much the same but the sea has a darker layer printed over it.

 Edward Ardizzone - The Wreck, Original Watercolour 

 James Boswell - The Winning Side (Schools Prints)

 John Minton - Jamaica (Tropical Landscape)

Below is a list of the prints I couldn’t find. But for the ones I have it is quite the variety. 

Charles Mozley - Hyde Park Corner (Unpublished) Laurence Scarfe - The Bird Boy Fred Uhlman - North Wales Patrick Carpenter - Street Market Edwin Oldfield - Derby Day Anthony Gross - Oxford Street

† The Tamarind Papers, Volumes 1-14 1988, p161

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Still Life with Clay

‘Still Life with Clay Figure, 1’ was painted in Aix-en-Provence, where Matthew Smith lived between the years 1936 - 40. When France fell in June 1940 the artist was evacuated to London and this was one of a number of canvases left in Aix during the war years in the care of Madame Monay, wife of the artist Pierre Monay.

In 1946- 47, Smith returned to Aix to recover these works and subsequently took them to Paris, where, in June 1947, he was joined by Richard Smart, who had agreed to help him transport the works back to England. Richard Smart, at that time a director of Tooth's Gallery. Later that year, Tooth's mounted an exhibition of these works.

The numbering of these paintings doesn’t indicate when they were painted, but more likely the first one the cataloguer of the exhibition came across. 

Matthew Smith - Still Life with Clay Figure I, 1939

Matthew Smith - Still Life with Clay Figure II, 1939

Matthew Smith - Still Life with Clay Figure III, 1939

Matthew Smith - Still Life with Clay Figure IV, 1939

Matthew Smith - Still Life with Clay Figure V, 1939

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By The River

When I was younger and used film cameras I would take a photograph of a ditch, to my eye it was a channel of water and plants, but in reality when it came back it would look like a mess. The eye can be fooled by only seeing what it wants. This is why there is a joy of artists like John Nash, to paint what I thought I was seeing. Here are a series of paintings by Humphrey Spender. Spender was a talented painter and photographer, famous really for his work on Mass Observation. The paintings are abstract and in them I can see different lakes and rivers I know, but the genius and joy is that they can be anywhere.

 Humphrey Spender - River Plant, 1958

 Humphrey Spender - Reedy Pool, Essex, 1969

 Humphrey Spender - River landscape, 1963

 Humphrey Spender - River landscape, 1960

 Humphrey Spender - Winter Field, 1959

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The Day Marilyn Died

This post came about when I was writing about how artists reacted to the death of Marilyn Monroe and I wondered what the newspapers looked like on that day, well these are the front pages I found for 6th August, 1962, the day Monroe died.

I would guess these last four papers belong to the same company due to the same image of Monroe used, I find it interesting the amount of front page she got, the cropping of the picture. The news commanding the most coverage in Los Angeles, home of Hollywood. 

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Bernard Gay

Bernard Gay, was born at Exmouth, Devon on 11 April 1921, son of Ernest Garfield Gay and his wife Marguerite née Allen, who married at Newton Abbot, Devon in 1916. He grew up with a 'baby farmer' called Miss Wellaway an early type of foster family because his parents were poor and they sent him away. Miss Wellaway was an abusive woman who kept the children on bread and Margarine.

When I was 16 and I eventually went home, I went to London to find my mother; I then discovered I had two sisters which I had never known about. One was two years younger than myself and was quite nice, and one was two years older who wasn’t very nice actually, though I mean I hardly knew them. I stayed there for about a year and a half and then I left, I went away and never went back. There was nothing to hold me there, there was no...no family feeling really.

Bernard left school at the age of 14 and after various jobs, just before the Second World War joined the merchant navy and travelled the world being introduced to art by Muriel Hannah in New York.

It was not until 1947 that he returned to education, when he studied textile part-time at the Willesden School of Art 1947-1952 and changed course to fine-art under Maurice de Sausmarez (1915-1969) and Eric Taylor (1909-1999) and began drawing classes at St Martins School of Art and quickly established himself as a painter.

While at Willesden School of Art Gay got involved with the drawing club:

Stanley Spencer came to do a criticism, and I remember him looking at an absolutely pathetically awful little painting and he turned to me and said you know, ‘Oh I do wish I could do something like that’. It was just ghastly. And I remember saying to him, ‘By the way, how do you do those huge paintings of yours?’ And he told ...he painted in the kitchen, and he said, ‘What I do, I have the roll of canvas and I square up my drawings and I start from the top left-hand corner and I work my way across the canvas, rolling it up as I go, and when I get to the other end I finish the painting’. And, it meant that he never ever saw, those huge Crucifixions and things, he never saw the paintings until they were stretched and framed. He just started from the top left-hand corner and worked his way across. And I remembered him saying to me, ‘Of course, the real difficulty is that I have an oil heater in the kitchen, and quite often the tops of my canvases get rather black with the smoke from the heater.’ But I thought it was lovely that he worked in this strange way, from left to right, right across his canvas... Stanley Spencer came. William Coldstream came, Minton came, Colquhoun and MacBryde came, they all came to give crits of our little sketch club events, and they happened every month. And it was marvellous, one met in that little art school on top of the technical college... Edward Bawden came I remember. So that was a wonderful thing really, that that little school could do all that.

Gay worked in setting up the Lisle Street Gallery, building shelving for them and went on to work for the Artists International Association. He moved to Hampstead and became involved with the Hampstead Artists Council. Then went on to give lectures for the Design Council.

During this time Gay was exhibiting London's top galleries: Gimpel Fils, Rowland Browse & Delbanco, Leicester, Redfern, Wildenstein and Piccadilly Gallery.

It was at this time that the Hertfordshire Collection of Pictures for Schools bought his painting of an Ivy Still life from the Pictures for Schools exhibition: 23 January – 14 February 1954? I acquired it when the Council sold off their collection.The fact that he was chosen to be in the Pictures for Schools scheme so early means a great deal as many of his contemporaries at the time are incredibly famous. 

In 1957 Jack Beddington was asked by The Studio Magazine to write a book on Young Artists of Promise. Beddington was the Art Director at Shell from 1928 until the late 40s and also was instrumental in setting up the Lyons Lithograph series of prints due to his working with new and young artists. In Young Artists of Promise Beddington selected Bernard Gay for one of the books colour plates (most of the works were in black and white) and when the Studio Magazine promoted their book they used one of Gay's pictures The Gate in the Hedegrow, 1955 on the cover of the magazine (It is also the same edition that features a report on the Great Bardfield open-house exhibitions).

A parallel career in arts education led him to become principal of the London College of Furniture and a member of Her Majesty's Inspectorate. An artistic all-rounder, author of 'Botticelli' (1961), co-founded the Camden Arts Centre, where he was chairman for 25 years and joined the council of the British School in Rome.

He set up the Committee for Higher Education in Art and Design and in the early 1970s, helped expand art and design programmes in many of the polytechnics, that later became universities. In 1974, Bernard was living at Church Cottage, Cookley, near Halesworth, Suffolk and married secondly at Islington in 1984, Catherine Ann Wilson (1952-1995) and in the late 1980s, they moved to Herefordshire where he became a board director at Hereford College of Arts. He died, after a short illness, on 15 March 2010 being survived by four children.

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V.E. Day

 Keith Vaughan - An Orchard by the Railway, 1945

Here is an account from Keith Vaughan’s diary of his Victory in Europe Day. As many in the cities danced and cheered in the streets Vaughan was on the fringes and knew of the news too late. From Keith Vaughan - Journals, 1939-1977:

They had no wireless in the cottage where I had supper, so I didn’t hear the nine o’clock news. Walking back to the camp afterwards, the first sign of anything unusual I noticed was a string of small triangular flags being hoisted up across the road by some workmen. The flags appeared quite suddenly out of the leaf-laden boughs of the chestnut, crossed a patch of sago-coloured sky, and disappeared in the dark foliage of another tree. They looked surprised to be there. They were not new flags. They had flapped for a jubilee and a coronation and numerous local festivals, and now they seemed to be getting a little tired of it all. They were faded and grubby and washed-out looking. They hung languidly in the bluish evening air. The workmen tapped away at the trees and thrust ladders up into the ripe foliage, bringing down showers of leaves and a snow of pink and white blossom. Further on there was a cottage with two new Union Jacks thrust out from the windowsill. They hung down stiffly to attention. Against the mellow sunbleached texture of the stone their strident colours looked ridiculous and, because they were there on purpose to disturb the familiar contours, they gave a feeling of uneasiness. From there onwards all the little cottages were sprouting flags.

There was no one about to see them, and no very clear reason how they came to be there. Menacing each other across the road with their shrill colours they were like a flock of rare and fabulous birds which had alighted suddenly and without warning, clinging to chimney pots, windowsills and door posts. They were of many different sizes and shapes and attitudes corresponding partly to the income levels and patriotic fervor of their owners and partly to a certain capriciousness which they seemed to acquire on their own. Some of them, having been unfurled, had hitched themselves up again shyly over the poles. Others had a narrow strip of wood fastened along the extreme edge, so they were forced to suffer the maximum exposure. The large houses had older flags sewn together with pieces of silk with white painted poles and sometimes a gold tassle. The cottages all had new flags; the pieces of calico dyed with raw-looking colours. And when it rained they would run.

Outside one cottage an old woman was standing in a black dress with folded arms. She stood there most evenings, and I had passed her a hundred times without either of us taking any special notice of the other. But to-night she seemed to be standing there for a special purpose, as though expecting something to happen. As I passed her she smiled broadly at me. It was an indescribable smile that lay right across the road blocking my way and demanding an answer. I acknowledged it and hurried past, feeling guilty and uncomfortable and afraid that I might suddenly be called to play some part I had not rehearsed.

 Keith Vaughan - Army Medical Inspection, 1942

On the dung-crusted door of a stable a V had been made with red, white and blue ribbon, and inside the V, hurriedly chalked as an afterthought, a red E. In the little window of the grocer’s was a newspaper cutting of the Prime Minister. It was stuck on the window with four large pieces of brown tape like a police notice. In the window that has bird seed and bottles of sauce was a gold frame with a reproduced oil-painting of two exceedingly mild and dignified lions, and in the bottom left hand corner the words ‘PEARS.’ In front there was a photograph of the Royal Family in sepia, with the word ‘CORONATION’ underneath and round circle of rust from a drawing pin. All the familiar and reliable things had suddenly disclosed a secret and unsuspected threat, though it would be impossible to say exactly what it was they threatened. But when the last house was passed and there were only fields and hedges and ditched frothing with tall white cow-parsley, there was a feeling of relief and reassurance.

Where the road swings sharply to the right before reaching the camp I crossed the little footbridge and sat down on the stile to smoke a cigarette. Between the layers of high lead-coloured cloud and the horizon, a narrow margin had been left in which the sun burned an enormous liquid orange disc. The air was like a thin violet fluid. In the further field was the boy who drives the tractor every morning past the camp. He was shooing some geese under a fence and into the straw-strewn yard if the cowhouse. He walked slowly forward towards the geese and at each step brought both arms up simultaneously above his head as though he were lifting something large that had suddenly lost all weight. His skin and clothes were soaked with the orange liquid from the sun. When the geese had gone he went out of sight behind the barn.

The near field was full of sheep. The full, woolly forms with sharp accents of light against the dark grass, the alternation between light-coloured sheep and dark ones, small and large, had that air of carefully-planned accident which one sometimes sees in paintings, but not often in nature. They glowed a deep gold colour like lumps of phosphorescent substance, and there were little pools of violet between their legs and in their ears. Two sheep had strayed down on to the steep bank of the ditch and were tearing ravenously at the thick, dark water-grass which met over their backs. They had pushed their way through gaps in the hedge and seemed to be expecting at any moment to be driven back. They were gulping as much as they could in the time, their eye wide with anxiety. Standing almost vertically faced downwards, they seemed to be in the most disadvantageous position both for eating and for coping with any sudden emergency that might arise.

The grass in the field was lighter in colour and had already been grazed down to a short turf like the thick pile on a carpet. Each sheep was eating with a sort of desperate concentration as though it had not seen grass for some time. They just kept their heads down and moved slowly forward, one foot at a time. But some, perhaps, because their necks had got stiff, had bent their front legs and were kneeling on their little fluffy knees with their black hoofs tucked up off the ground so as not to soil them and their backsides sticking absurdly into the air. The rams had hardly any wool and their skins had that grey, flatulent look that dead sheep have. They seemed inflated with eating and walked about painfully and awkwardly as though they were pregnant. They seemed just able to eat and transport their cumbersome genitals and excrete the little shiny damp balls of dung from time to time. That was a complete existence. The only sound was the crisp tearing of grass and an occasional low grunt and from the nearer sheep the muffled reverberations of some digestive process and blowing out of wind suddenly through the nostrils.

This, then, I thought, was the beginning of it all. This was perhaps the oldest thing on earth. Before cities and civilizations men had sat and watched sheep graze. In Canaan and Galilee and Salonica and Thrace, on the mountain slopes of Olympus and the Caucasus, on the plains of Hungary and the shores of the Black Sea, in Lombardy, Burgundy, Saxony, along all the routes where men had fought and followed, searching for a home and a pasture, sheep had grazed and men had watched them. Daphnis, Hyacinthus, Thyrsis, Corydon and the famous and anonymous shepherds of Galilee. And I tried to remember all that had gone on as an accompaniment to that watching, the immense architecture of hope that had been built up round sheep. The burnt offerings and symbols of love and innocence; the preyed-upon, the lost and the helplessly young. Sacrificed, worshipped, or just eaten, through mankind’s long adolescence sheep went on being sheep, somewhere in the background of every picture, greedy and silly and perpetually anxious. And each year the same disappointing story of promise and unfulfilment. The tiny wet thing with enormous legs first learning to kneel in the winter grass, as awkward and dangerous-looking as a child with a deck chair. The insolent butting at the udders. The entirely beautiful and unnecessary prancing of lambs, movement purely for the sake of movement, only to be forgotten in a few months in a complacent and woolly middle age.

Out of the north a flock of Fortresses came flying high. It was time for them to come and they crossed every night. The slowly-mounting noise focused the uneasiness in the air. Then I realized that tonight they would not be carrying bombs; the meaning of all the little flags suddenly became real. It was as if one had dreamt the noise: the approaching impersonal menace, the indiscriminate individual death and obliteration of cities, then at the climax of terror, walking, recognized the cause of the dream – after all, only airplanes flying. A sense of absolute security closed over every thing.

The sun has gone and over the horizon was left a stain of dried blood. The air was the colour of watery ink. At the camp the German bugler was blowing lights out. The sheep had finished eating and sat with folded feet, looking without concern on the first night of peace.

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60 Pictures

60 Pictures in '51 was part of the Festival of Britain celebrations, a touring exhibition of art with 60 paintings by Britain's leading artists. It came with a booklet but like many books of the time, all the images were in monochrome. I thought it would be entertaining to present the pictures in colour and though I haven’t found all of the paintings, here is what I amassed.

 Gerald Wilde cover for the book 60 Paintings for ‘51.

If the Festival of Britain is to achieve its avowed aim of showing the British way of life in all its various facets it is clearly appropriate that a number of our distinguished painters and sculptors should have been given an opportunities to make their contribution.

With this very end in view - and also in the  hope of handing down to posterity from our present age something tangible and of permanent value - the Arts Council has commissioned twelve sculptors and invited sixty artists to paint a large work, not less than 45 by 60 inches on a subject of their own choice. † 

 Keith Vaughan - Interior at Minos, 1950

 L S Lowry - Industrial Landscape, River Scene, 1950

 Lucian Freud - Interior Near Paddington, 1951

 Rodrigo Moynihan - Portrait Group, 1951

 John Tunnard - Return, 1951

 Michael Ayrton - The Captive Seven, 1950

 Ceri Richards - Trafalgar Square, London, 1950

 John Nash - Afon Creseor, North Wales , 1951

 Keith Baynes - Hop-Picking, Rye, 1950

 Elinor Bellingham Smith - The Island, 1951

 Martin Bloch - Down from Bethesda Quarry, 1951

 Edward Burra - Judith and the Holofernes, 1951

 Prunella Clough - Lowestoft Harbour, 1951

 Roy de Maistre, Noli Me Tangere

 Hans Feibusch, The Prodigal Son

 Carel Weight, "As I wend to the Shores..."

 Ivon Hitchins, Aquarian Nativity, Child of this Age

 Gilbert Spencer, Hebridean Memory

 Charles Mahoney - The Garden, 1950

 Claude Rogers, Miss Lynne

 Ruskin Spear - River in Winter, 1951

 Victor Pasmore - The Snowstorm: Spiral Motif in Black and White, 1951

 Robert Medley - Cyclists against a Blue Background, 1951 

 William Gillies - The Studio Table, 1951 

 Patrick Heron - Christmas Eve, 1951

 William Gear - Autumn Landscape, 1950

 Peter Lanyon - Porthleven, 1951

 Robert MacBryde - Figure and Still Life, 1951

Below are some of the sculptures mentioned in the forward, but these really had their own booklet and part of the Battersea Park Festival Of Britain Pleasure Garden.

 Henry Moore - Reclining Figure, 1951

 Jacob Epstein - Youth Advances, 1951

 Barbara Hepworth Contrapuntal Forms, 1951

 Frank Dobson - Woman and Fish, 1951

The statue above stood in Frank Dobson Square, Tower Hamlets until it was vandalised and she had her head destroyed. Now with scars she sits in Delapre Abbey, Northampton, pictured below.

† -  Philip James - 60 Paintings for ‘51, 1951

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Live Chat

This week on instagram I will be broadcasting live with Mark Hill, an informal chat from 7pm On Thursday. Join us if you can, gives you time to clap the NHS at 8pm.