Symposium - An Outbreak of Talent

Paul Nash photographed by Lance Sieveking, 1924

“Ten years ago I was teaching at the Royal College of Art. I was fortunate to be there during an outbreak of talent, and can remember at least eight men and women who have made names for themselves since then in a variety of different directions; in Painting, Edward Burra; Applied Design, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, and Eric Ravilious; Textiles, Enid Marx; Pottery, Bradon (sic), also William Chappel in Stage Design and Barbara Ker-Seymer in Photography.” 

Paul Nash writing in Signature magazine, November 1935 

Paul Nash only taught part-time at the Royal College of Art during the academic year 1924/25, but he greatly influenced the careers of some of those whom he mentored. In this Symposium we hope to find out what it was that Nash found in these young artists which caused him him to single them out ten years later.

I'll be talking about Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden... The Symposium is being run by the Fry Art Gallery, but it will be held at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge on 6 July 2019 - info and booking form on the Fry website.

An Outbreak of Talent at the Fry Art Gallery

Edward Bawden, Costume Design for The Tempest, 1933, Fry Art Gallery

If we could hitch a ride in the Tardis back to the 1930s we would return with a rather different view of the decade's art and culture. Not that too many people have much of a view at all, so brainwashed are we into believing that British art snoozed through a long period of under-achievement that began with the death of Turner and ended with the post-war success of Henry Moore, Francis Bacon and David Hockney.

It is true that interwar British art was for the most part a modest business, unsurprisingly perhaps given the economic vagaries of the time. Artists painted the artwork for posters or beavered away in other areas of industrial design. They produced murals (now mostly vanished) and wood engravings (now mostly hidden in old books and obscure archives) and worked in the under-appreciated medium of watercolour.

Edward Burra, Hop Pickers Who Have Lost Their Mothers, 1924, Fry Art Gallery

Few achieved international recognition at the time. The movers and shakers of the art world were continental Europeans, whose aggressive modernism mirrored political upheavals. In Britain, the well-meaning socialists of the Artists International instead pioneered auto-lithography as a means of sharing art with the masses, and bought ambulances for Republican soldiers in Spain.

One British artist who won international respect - Magritte named him 'master of the object' - was Paul Nash, and his influence on the period, and on British art more generally, is highlighted in an exhibition that opens at the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden this weekend.

Paul Nash, Poster for British Industries Fair, 1935, London Transport Museum

'An Outbreak of Talent' was the expression used by Nash to describe the remarkable collection of artists who studied at the Royal College of Art in 1923/4, when he was employed there as a part-time tutor in the Design School. Much later, in 1935, he wrote in the magazine 'Signature':

Ten years ago I was teaching at the Royal College of Art. I was fortunate in being there during an outbreak of talent, and can remember at least eight men and women who have made names for themselves since then in a variety of different directions; in Painting, Edward Burra; Applied Design, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, and Eric Ravilious; Textiles, Enid Marx; Pottery, Bradon (sic), also William Chappel in Stage Design and Barbara Ker-Seymer in Photography. 

Why he failed to 'remember' the two biggest stars of the RCA firmament, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, is unclear, but it may have had something to do with the battle then raging between abstract and non-abstract artists. Ravilious and co. were very much in awe of the Yorkshire contingent, whose table in the RCA refectory was - to use an expression from another time and place - where it was at.

Edward Bawden, The Three Graces, 1928, Fry Art Gallery

Anyway, what the Fry has done - and being the Fry, no doubt done with wonderful attention to detail - is to gather together paintings, drawings and other works by the artists named, all of which were created before 1935. In other words, Nash might have seen them before passing judgment, and they may have helped him form his opinion; the inclusion of his own work will perhaps enable visitors to see paths of influence or matrices of interest.

Knowing the Fry, you can expect some lovely things by Bawden and Ravilious in particular, but I'm hoping to see work by Barnett Freedman and Enid Marx, two excellent artists we should know better. As for Nash himself, I'm always on the look-out for pictures I haven't seen before. He could turn a shopping list into a thing of mystery and elegance. As far as I'm concerned, he was the grand-daddy of the YBAs, an artist way ahead of his time. But that's another story...

FFI: Fry Art Gallery - NB always check opening times before travelling!

Spoilt for Choice: Modern British Art in 2013

Dora Carringon, Lytton Strachey, 1916 (National Portrait Gallery)

The Lowry show at Tate Britain may be the big news of the year, but there are plenty of other treats in store for lovers of those once-maligned media, painting and sculpture. International stars include Lichtenstein, Klee, George Bellows, Picasso and of course Manet, while on the home front Paul Nash is set to feature prominently.

A thorough preview of the year's entertainment was posted at the beginning of the month by the ever-vigilant people at Culture 24, and it makes mouth-watering reading. In London we have David Inshaw at the Fine Art Society (April), Laura Knight at the National Portrait Gallery (July-Oct) and Whistler (James not Rex) at the Dulwich Portrait Gallery (autumn).

Before that, Dulwich plays host to 'A Crisis of Brilliance', an exhibition based on David Haycock's wonderful group biography of five artists who studied at the Slade shortly before World War One. Alongside Nash (whose solo show at Dulwich was a sensation) the book features CRW Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler and Dora Carrington; the exhibition also includes work by David Bomberg.

David Inshaw, The Badminton Game - visit David's London show in April

Outside London, Nash features again in a second pithy-remark-related exhibition, namely 'An Outbreak of Talent' at the Fry Art Gallery (March-June). This was Nash's own description of the talented group of students lured to the Royal College of Art in the early 1920s by director William Rothenstein, an intake that included Ravilious and Bawden, Edward Burra, Barnett Freedman and Enid Marx. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing some of Freedman's work...

I don't think the Fry is showing work by Barbara Hepworth or Henry Moore, the two biggest stars of the RCA firmament, but you can see the latter paired with Rodin at the Henry Moore Foundation (March-Oct) and with Francis Bacon at the Ashmolean (Sept-Jan).

Elsewhere we have the centenary exhibition of William Scott at Tate St Ives (Jan-May), continuing on to the Hepworth in Wakefield and the Ulster Museum, Belfast. Other touring shows include a major exhibition of Land Art, which kicks off at Southampton City Art Gallery in May, and 'Turner and Constable: Sketching from Nature', which premiers at Compton Verney in July. Or should that be Turner vs. Constable?

William Scott at Tate St Ives, the Hepworth and Ulster Museum

Group shows include 'Pop and Abstract' at the National Museum, Cardiff (March-Sept), which explores British art in the 1960s, and 'The Ingram Collection: The Colourful Lives of Artists' at the Lightbox in Woking. As Culture 24 put it, 'With a cast list including Dora Carrington, Eric Gill, and Stanley Spencer, it should be quite an eye opener'.

FFI: Culture 24