FREDERICK VARLEY- A CANADIAN ARTIST'S VIEW OF THE GREAT WAR

In the  various events which will commemorate the centenary of the Great War there will surely be some that will celebrate the work of War Artists. This British government scheme is well known, there was a similar rerun in the Second World War. If you are interested in Paul or John  Nash, Roberts, Bomberg, Orpen, Kennington, or  Nevinson or you will know that they were involved in the scheme. You will likely know as I did of Bomberg's work for the Canadian War Memorials Fund. But a Canadian artist in Europe? There is nothing to do with Frederick Varley in the Imperial War Museum, but Canada has some excellent paintings.

I came upon this artist when searching for an art work by John Varley. I did not find it, but what I did find was a painting by Frederick Varley and this more than compensated for the failure of my search.

Varley was born in Sheffield in 1881 and trained there and in Antwerp. He had just turned 30 when he emigrated to Canada where he was to become a member of the Group of Seven an important group of Canadian landscapists (mostly).

"Gas Chamber, Seaford", F Varley 1918

This striking painting was my first sight of a Varley image. it represents a testing station for gas masks for the military. You can see the soldiers emerging from the space in their protective gear. As a composition it is quite dramatic. The chamber seems to be underground and the figures are emerging into a wider landscape. I feel that the dramatic composition may owe something to the fact that Varley had worked as an illustrator. There is story telling here, more so than-for example- in Paul Nash's more symbolist work.Nevertheless it looks as if there is considerable enjoyment of paintwork .

The troops may well be Canadian as the Canadian Engineers Training Depot was based at Seaford, Sussex.

"For What?" F Varley

There is written evidence that Varley was considerably moved by the futility of the war. Here a burial detail is collecting and burying what relics of humanity they can find. Here are the rows of little wooden crosses. In the foreground a cart of corpses awaiting their turn in the earth.And what a background.The vast,sodden wasteland of the battlefield is powerfully evoked.

"German Prisoners" F Varley

The prisoners walk on, wrapped up and despondent through the shattered landscape and the debris of war.The broken trees are shot to matchwood. It is so muddy, so grey.This is, like the others, quite a large painting. The brushwork looks as though it might be somewhat expressionist. 

As far as I can see from these reproductions  the paintings must hold their own with any of the better known work by war artists. I hope you agree.

ALL IMAGES COURTESY WIKIMEDIA

SYLVIA WISHART-AN ARTIST'S LOVE FOR ORKNEY

In 2012 was published, Sylvia Wishart: A Study, with an introduction by Neil Firth and an essay by Mel Gooding.I  have long known about  Wishart  and this  handsomely produced book published by The Pier Arts Centre is just what was required to do justice to this remarkable artist..This is entirely appropriate as Sylvia Wishart was deeply concerned in the foundation of the arts centre.The design and printing are excellent-and I notice that it was in fact printed in Orkney. There's localism for you! But curiously it was not easy to obtain. One might ask if the book has a distributor.

It has an ISBN, but this was no help to my usually excellent local bookshop who could not trace it. Nor is it available from that well known on- line retailer which doesn't like to pay UK taxes...... So, I had to contact the staff at the Pier who could not have been more helpful when I called. The website was misbehaving.( But try this link  now if you want a copy). They took my details over the phone and I had the book in just over 48 hours. Pretty good- and friendly service!

So, how did I know about his artist who lived and worked mostly, no further south than Aberdeen.
Well, she did have an exhibition in Alnwick when I was very young- at the the then relatively new Bondgate Gallery. I still have the  brochure, you can see it with my review of the last Edinburgh show here. The prices now appear extraordinarily modest. But of course  would have represented several weeks  pay for the average worker.

Sylvia Wishart had much encouragement from her art teacher Ian MacInnes who happened to be a fine painter himself ( and it seems a well known local character). She did eventually apply to to study art in Aberdeen and it was at Gray's that she was to work for most of her  teaching career. Her early work includes two relatively academic male nudes-very well observed and unusually succesful for their date. One interior has a kind of slightly French look to it. It is again a highly competent not to stay confident exercise. You can see why her tutors were impressed.

 But then came the illustrations for An Orkney Tapestry by George Mackay Brown which to me were of  equal interest to the  text itself. These show the fastidious and delicate way in which she develops the airy structure of her drawing. Formally, as compositions, these are, like all her work extremely satisfying, and the nicely judged degree of abstraction and the clarity of structure make excellent illustrations for that book.They  entirely lack the common expressionist  side of Scottish art.

  Gooding is right to emphasise the importance of these works. In his words they have
" an uncanny stasis". And again he says that they are "a calendar of love for Orkney. That many resulted from  enlightened sponsorship by a well known local agricultural firm who did indeed want illustrations for their calendar is in some ways neither here nor there. But in another it is charming and appropriate.These subtle constructions show a real poetry of landscape and organisation . They are so quiet that you might think a breath of air could  blow them away. They focus on farm structures and to some degree the setting is only hinted at. They are if I may say so, entirely unique and I sometimes think they are the best of her work before the large late paintings . At times they have a simplicity which the Rembrandt of  the landscape drawings-or many Japanese artists would understand. It is the art of leaving out. She  likes fence posts, barbed wire and stone walls, habour walls also -these she might have said, "are things which made me a painter", these and so much else.

The Double Houses Stromness: from An Orkney Tapestry

I would love to know more about Wishart's prints-two are illustrated in the book. They look good-and are well founded on her already described draughtsmanship.One has some hand colouring and I'm guessing that she was more interested in creative possibilities than the production of editions.Her themes-reflections, interior and exterior, a ship in a bottle can get quite complicated and the colouring helps to clarify the image.

Gooding compares Wishart's work with that of several other women artists-all of an older generation and none to my knowledge Scottish.He is quite clear that Wishart knew their work and her sense of design is  quite justifiably compared with that of Prunella Clough-which is a high compliment.
He isn't suggesting that there is a special feminine sensibility- but illustrates their work for the good reason that they have  relevance for Wishart's art. Morandi and Robert Medley after all have made paintings in which the range of coloured greys is narrow.Mary Potter is mentioned as an artist working with closely related tones in a high key. She, incidentally, had a word of advice for  exhibition hangers-don't put a light toned work next to another.

At Rackwick, in a desolate valley, her home  at the most intense time of her relationship with George Mackay Brown, she found inspiration in the collapsing walls of broken crofts. Notice that the crofts are named- memory is strong here.

Crawnest and the Craig Gate: Rackwick

Rackwick as photographed by Meyer of Stromness

In her later work from Heatherybraes it is quite clear that  creatively she was going on from strength to strength.These large mixed media works play so creatively with the idea of the outer and inner worlds, reflection and transparency. Her colour becomes richer.

" Starting in the central area...I will let the picture "grow" in all directions until a decision is made where to stop the image."

This is where Gooding brings in Bachelard with reference to the interior/ exterior  views which combine in these last works.The artist obviously lived in the most wonderful landscape and the view from her cottage  makes one envious. Everything a landscape artist  could want just outside your window!  Cliffs and sky: lots of dramatic weather no doubt. And these which came from that home are some of her finest work.She achieves a fluid, dream like painting. The work is full of incident as the screens meld, interlock, dissolve. Its a bit like a double exposure in photography.

Reflection 1

I would have been curious to know where  went on her travelling scholarship? And what did her students think of her? The Marwick interview is quoted but I would have liked the chance to read it all.I cannot find it on the web.This is a fine study of an artist too reluctant to push herself forward. You can have a look around the Pier Arts Centre here. A selection of Wishart's paintings is available from the BBC here. My review of the show of her work at the RSA is here 

Sylvia Wishart: A Study:Pier Arts Centre, 2012. ISBN 978-0-95311131-0-1

JOHN PIPER-LANDSCAPE PAINTER?

Not long ago I picked up the catalogue for an exhibition of John Piper's Welsh art. Just a couple of days later I saw on the BBC the announcement that much of it has been acquired by the National Museum of Wales. They have surely obtained some of Piper's best work.

Reading through the catalogue I came upon David Fraser Jenkin's remark that Piper is perhaps our best landscape painter. This gave me pause for reflection alright, for, I thought to myself, is Piper really a landscape artist at all, and if he is then how should we rate him? Perhaps he was the best landscape painter of his time-after all,the C20 was not  a great age of British landscape painting.

I don't agree with Jenkins. Buildings are what really interest Piper. Not people and very rarely the landscape. He is at his best with the relatively monochromatic paintings of the Welsh mountains and Cardiff is now the possessor of the largest group of his finest work.But colour is not his forte.In the Seaton Delaval and Renishaw paintings the connections with stage sets are very strong.That is what Piper is like.I never feel that Piper loves nature, though he does love picture making.

The Rise of the Dovey: John Piper

Does Piper paint the sky with any confidence, interest or competence? The answer must be in the negative. Depictions of the sky-"the chief organ of sentiment in a landscape", as Constable proclaimed, are more or less perfunctory with Piper. He can do only one mode with  any confidence. It was easy for him to obtain unity in his paintings by adopting the methods he chose, by avoiding the drama of the sky and concentrating on the building which is what really interests him. The use of strong flat colour  also helps in this quest. You may object that landscapes do not have to show the sky.Most European landscape painters do, most Chinese artists do not. It is also true that most landscape painters are not good with skies.But that is another point, we cannot all be Cotmans.The only similarity between Cotman and Piper is the antiquarianism. The one suffering artistic struggle because of his workload and the other willingly scouring the country for  curiosities.

It may be objected that there are many fine landscape artists who take little interest in the sky-better ones than Piper such as Bonington have treated skies in a very formulaic manner.Piper really cannot be bothered.If he had produced less and better rather than more and worse he would have  a higher reputation. Can you imagine a Piper retrospective at the Musée d'Orsay? No, I didn't think so? 

Would that Piper had stuck to the topography and the guide books.Perhaps also the theatre.He doesn't seem to have much of a sense of colour and he certainly produced too much work. If you don't agree then take a look at those slim catalogues from Marlborough Fine Art. So much is dreadful. I shouldn't really comment on the stained glass, but, judging from the illustrations in Spalding it cannot be good. Some of the smaller designs verge on the crude or the silly, it seems to me.

The auction record for his work, set in 2008 was for a painting from his abstract period in the thirties, a tolerable but sterile period, not for his later work.Late Bomberg  is much to be preferred for landscape. Or Sheila Fell- a relatively conservative artist who had so much more feeling for paint-and nature.

For the BBC item on the recent acquisition by the National Museum of Wales see here.

John Piper in Wales,intro by David Fraser Jenkins, 1990.
John and Myfanwy Piper, Frances Spalding,2009