MARKETING IS ALL

This is a tale of two artists. One who died before his time, in the 1930s and in straightened circumstances, and one who is still living and producing art. Both were known as painters. The latter specialises in landscape painting. The other did plenty of landscape work but was accomplished in many subjects. Both worked in the same nation of the UK.

The living painter has said that he makes a lot of money from his art-more than a million pounds a year. The dead artist-let us call him Mr A never  obtained such wealth in his lifetime, even allowing for the change in purchasing power of the pound. The other artist, let us call him Mr B is happily still with us. He seems to be  a thoughtful, not to say religious person, and is working away to promote himself.

Mr A certainly did exhibit his work and was a member of an exclusive artists' group, but as I say he never had as much financial success as  Mr B; this is despite the fact that most people in the art world would see Mr B's work as negligible in comparison with that of Mr A. I have no doubt that Mr A was a very promising art student but he has not developed in accordance with his youthful promise. Much more promising was Mr A whose talent was recognised early in life and who was encouraged by some of the finest artists of his day.

So what happened? Mr B has claimed to be earning a considerable amount (he gives some of it away too), but I have known his oil paintings to be on sale recently at a price of £6000 from his dealer and the dealer wants a substantial cut from that price. Now to earn a million pounds a year from art at this rate you would have to produce and sell- an enormous number of works; do you want to do the maths? Whatever result you get it is a lot of paintings.And Mr B has said,one might think naively, that he does two or three paintings in a day. So there must be another income somewhere, and this is where marketing comes in. If you go to a certain region of the UK and enter a gift shop or a cafe you are very likely to see greetings cards or mugs with examples of Mr B's work.In the winter Mr B has a calendar available-and pricey it is.This may  be a good additional source of income as it appears to be self-published. Mr A's work was, I am fairly certain, not reproduced on mugs and greetings cards in his lifetime. Thus a mediocre-at best-artist Mr B  is making-as he says a fortune from his art but MrA whose  art is incomparably finer than Mr B's could never be financially secure.

Mr B had an exhibition in one of the UK capitals recently and he or his dealer, in some combination  has/have hired  a gallery in the city centre (twice).It must have cost a substantial sum but Mr B will now be able to say that he has exhibited in  a prestigious quarter-though not if course at a  prestigious gallery.I cannot find any independent reviews of these exhibitions.The information that an exhibition occurred will look good on Mr B's CV and will impress the credulous.But why Mr B needs to do this when he has been painting for years with so much financial success is beyond me. It seems like a vanity project and I would not recommend the expenditure to anyone trying to establish themselves in the art world.He also donates paintings to national institutions.He seems to have a strong need for recognition. Mr A would have laughed at all this.

The moral of this story may be that artists should not put all their eggs in one basket if they want financial success. This is an old idea. Many teach and some find ways of marketing their work in less expensive formats.But financial success is not everything as Mr B seems to know in his heart of hearts.(slightly edited, June 2019.)

DAVID JONES-A NEW BIOGRAPHY BY THOMAS DILWORTH

Vexilla Regis by David Jones, Kettle's Yard.

At last we have a full length biography of David Jones. It has been a long time coming and it is written by Thomas Dilworth for whom Jones has obviously been a lifelong interest. He met Jones at the end of his life so the author has had more than 40 years of interest in his subject. It must have been a huge task to take on  Jones's Celtic/Arthurian/historical interests and to explain them to the general reader.We already have an enlightening partial study by the same author which broke new ground on  David Jones and the Great War.

It is made quite clear that Jones, born to a Welsh father and an English mother in the southern London suburb of Brockley had decided that he saw himself as having Welsh culture before entering his teenage years.He was never much use at school and was often absent, not so much because of ill health but because his mother wanted a companion: he was her youngest child and the elder siblings noticed this special attention.This makes the later writings seem all the more remarkable.And though Wales was so important to him he got no maternal encouragement to learn Welsh. That interest came later and according to Dilworth he did acquire a  basic reading ability in the language.One is reminded of a similar maternal attitude in the case of a later Welsh artist, Kyffin Williams. His mother actively hindered Welsh language acquisition in her son. It was "common" to speak Welsh, only the poor and vulgar could speak it.

Personally, I never took to Jones's major  written works such as In Parenthesis and The Anathemata. I liked the war theme in In Parenthesis but I'm not ready for its fusion with he Celtic tradition. His interest in Joyce or Eliot (the latter published him) is obvious from Jones's personal voice. But I never took much to Eliot or Joyce so I have some way to go. But one remembers Auden's high opinion so maybe I shall try again.

From my point of view as an artist I would say that the author deals well with Jones's painted and engraved work. It was a pleasure to see  that Dilworth gives the benign A S Hartrick with his emphasis on linear drawing, his deserved place as one of Jones's first teachers at Camberwell. Jones was also taught by Sickert. A curious combination one would have thought! Of his  mentor Eric Gill, Jones thought more highly of him as a man than as an artist.

Later in life Jones produced little work in oils. Watercolour and  graphic media  were what he preferred. His living circumstances were probably influential in that respect. For most of his life he never had a studio but produced his art in his room in the boarding house and later on  the hotel where he lived.

Jones 's political views seem to have been rather naive. He had high hopes of Chamberlain at Munich. He wrote a poem about Hitler and Mussolini meeting at the Brenner Pass (apparently Jones optimistically hoped for peace and good intentions). The idea of the Reich incorporating Bohemia and Moravia was something to be passed over. He seems to have been a naive idealist.But there are plenty of places where  his  humanity shines through. One example being his concern about the Nazi Nuremberg Laws and persecution of the Jews.

We get a picture of Jones's involvement in various circles of lay Catholic men and -much connected with this- the development of Jones's theory of art as a sacrament, deriving to a fair degree from the writings of Maritain.

I get the impression from Dilworth that Jones became more isolated from the company of fellow artists as he got older. Ben Nicholson a former associate in the 7 and 5 group seems to fade away. His friends were Welsh, Catholics and those who cared about his writings and paintings.It was fellow poets, and often younger poets, who took him up, to his delight, as he got older.

One thinks of other Arthurian minded artists such as Morris Rossetti and Burne-Jones. In a way, beside Jones they seem like mere amateurs of the Arthurian world. Jones seems like a person of the interior, an intellectual for whom the text was so important. I think that the general reader will find that Dilworth has covered these topics quite adequately.

This ideas chart made by the artist in 1943 suggests something of the complexity-and self-awareness of Jones's creative processes 

The man who was in the front line for longer than any other British writer ( the Somme and  Passchendaele) became a reclusive phobic. Dilworth enlarges on the topic of Jones's anxiety and breakdowns which may indeed have been what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He was wounded and also had a very serious bout of trench fever. But added to the tragedy, in later years there appear what seem to be iatrogenic problems caused by overprescription of amphetamines and sleeping tablets.Dilworth has information on the medication provided and these drugs seem to have had a counterproductive effect on the artist's health for many of his later years.The rationally fearful young soldier who went  "over the top" became a shadow of himself and full of anxiety. He was frightened even when officials came to discuss his forthcoming entitlement to old age pension and sent them away.He was a confirmed valetudinarian. A bout of flu sent him to bed for  weeks, rather than days.

He panicked when left alone in the foyer of the Royal Academy whilst his companion parked her car.He was there to see the great Bonnard exhibition. Jones had enormous admiration for Bonnard's "magic"-his word. That is something I didn't know and was delighted to learn. But the exhibition ran from January to mid-March of 1966 by the way, not 1965 as given here. This is one of quite a few misprints and errors which mar this excellent work.More of those later.

Jones  was lucky that he had many, often wealthy friends, most notably   Helen Sutherland and Kenneth Clark (he less close but very rich) who helped this man  who could talk by the hour on subjects which concerned him. Jonesian monologues about Welsh topics flowed readily. Jim Ede deserves particular  mention as an early encourager and offerer of hospitality.Harman Grisewood and Douglas Cleverdon gave unending support. People seem to have recognised that they were in the presence of a unique personality.

The story of how Ede got hold of Vexilla Regis is a tale of cunning to say the least. Still, we can be glad that it is available for inspection at Kettle's Yard when so many of Jones's works are still in private collections.In effect that means the collection of the heirs to Helen Sutherland, Jones's main and great patron. It was pleasure to learn  that the artist had a high regard for Vexilla Regis. I would say that it is his masterpiece. He did not want to part with it and set £500 as a then incredible price. Ede heard about its quality from Helen Sutherland who was obviously interested and he found a buyer at that price -his own elderly mother, and of course in a while Ede inherited the painting. On a minor point about this work, I cannot see how the stone circle which appears at mid-right can be a memory of Stonehenge. It looks like a detail from an engraving of the C17 or C18. Stonehenge does not have a central trilithon as shown here.

Many of Jones's his friends were female and often considerably younger than himself; he tended to become infatuated with them and suffered the inevitable heartbreak when they did not respond and  married someone of their own age. Women seem to have been particularly understanding of his frailty. He was engaged to Petra Gill but the relationship foundered, apparently because of his lack of attention.

It  is sad to learn that Jones seems to have been exploited by his art dealer Rex Nan Kivell. If Dilworth is correct, and he makes the accusation quite clear, then Rex Nan Kivell's behaviour was criminal.

 David Jones was much concerned about the production values when it came to his books such as In Parenthesis.As an example this volume is good to look at-at first. There are the inevitable difficulties dealing with the reproduction of Jones' detailed  and sometimes contrastless work. This is a problem for most books on the artist. Cape do their best, and of course the inscriptions come over well.  The layout with the illustrations  in-text means that photographs and words are  close neighgbours. It is easy to refer from one to the other and this is a great convenience.But this results in openings where there are no numbers to the pages because their space has been taken over by the illustrations- this happens several times over and once there are two such openings succeeding each other so you have no idea where you are. Where there are numbers only to an opening you get on the left the number of the page plus the name of the chapter you are in.On the right you get-if you get it at all, the page number plus the dates in Jones' life which are covered by that chapter. A good idea.

It would be helpful if  the notes at the end had the chapter name as well as number.

It does seem that no one has read the copy/proofs of this book with  care.You are left with the impression that Cape does not employ editors.The number of typos is  rather more than the  average. As far as I know no monks ever  lived at Pinknash ( insert an r) and there is certainly no Ashmoleum Museum at Oxford.Barmoor is spelt correctly and incorrectly on the same page.The Victorian author is given as Thackery. Votodini should be Votadini. Kensington is given for Kennington when it was earlier given correctly as the place where Jones attended a life-class. Centurion is given as centurian.  N K Sandars has her name spelt wrongly. Ivon Hitchens is given as Ivor. To the best of my knowledge it was Fred Mayor who ran the long established Mayor gallery, not Meyer.

 On factual matters it seems to me that the author implies that Rheged was Northumbria or part of it. That was  not the case. Rheged was a western kingdom-from the Solway southwards.It did invade Northumbria..

Outside this book I cannot find any reference to any Bernard Beard as being a great expert on Italian Renaissance art. Maybe Bernard Berenson?

Effie Ruskin did correspond with at least one artist but I think it safe to assume that he was her future husband Millais, and not the great French artist Millet as given here. 

The NHS -or what remains of it was not founded in 1946 but two years later.It was in 1948 that the service came into operation,the legislation had passed in 1946, that is true. No one as far as I know drinks Earl Gray Tea.

The author continually and almost always inaccurately uses the word convince when he means persuade.Why didn't an editor deal with this? I shouldn't have liked to try to convince Jones of anything.

David Jones in his room at the Monksdene Residential Hotel, Harrow

David Jones: Engraver, Soldier,Painter, Poet, by Thomas Dilworth, Jonathan Cape, 2017.
My earlier post about Helen Sutherland and her artist friends-including Jones at Rock is here.